What Is Abstract Art?

abstract Aires is the dominant art form of the 20th century despite generally being accepted as closed really important it's often seen as something of an elaborate joke or worse a case of the Emperor's New Clothes this is because abstract art is not supposed to really look like anything which can make it kind of hard to understand instead of looking like stuff it's more often comprised of forms and colors that are there for their own expressive sake they can be minimal or contain many elements and arrangements of forms that don't really look like anything most sober people will ever see this is where the issues begin when trying to understand just what these paintings are or why someone made especially by anyone would declare them to be genius works of art I mean what is this even supposed to be and look at these prices is this all some elaborate money-laundering scheme well some of it might be with a really understand abstract edge we need to understand a little bit about its history and its goals first abstraction rose to prominence in the 20th century as a result of factors both cultural and political as with everything else involved in the 20th century it gets very complicated very quickly abstraction didn't come out of nowhere though it had always been around the periphery of art if you look back into history Joshua Reynolds the patron saint of the English royal academy once wrote about the beauty of form alone which made paintings great without the need for any assistance from other qualities this expresses the aesthetic premise behind abstract art that formal qualities are more important than the subject matter they are used to depict for example it's not the tree that you paint that's important it's the colors you use where you place it on the canvas how it relates to the other elements in the picture etc that's what really makes a good picture and that's what we enjoy about the painting not just the simple fact that we recognize it as being a tree once people realize this it becomes quite liberating if it's just the pleasing arrangement of colors and such that we need for our aesthetic hit why not get rid of the tree altogether well a lot of groups around the beginning of the 20th century were thinking like this and they all wanted to chop down that tree in their own way movements like fav ism or cubism appeared that looked analytically at the world and rearranged the formal elements they found to create new works the reference their subjects and reconstructed them in new formally elegant ways in Italy the futurist movement celebrated technology and industrialization in its works which broke from academic tradition and headed into extraction as a new way to depict the new world meanwhile the Surrealists were taking painting further away from an e depict reality and the Dada movement was doing well whatever it felt like really mostly acting irrationally finally in Russia a group of artists were extreme enough to push the boat out and go full abstract having been inspired by the works of the other movements Casimir Malevich would exhibit geometric works like the box square which would set the tone for painting to comb in the 20th century all of these movements were pushing Eric forwards towards abstraction other factors such as two world wars industrialization the rise of communism fascism and capitalism and the increasing secularity of the Western world all played a role to others rapid change was making traditional Arab under-equipped to represent the modern world Stoker's awaaz and the trappings of traditions that stretched back into previous less volatile centuries abstraction in contrast could respond to the new questions of culture that the 20th century brought and do so in a much more effective way than traditional representational art court using only color and shapes to make us feel something it didn't need to rely on traditional trappings of courage such as millions of angels or whatever this thing is to evoke a response in the viewer at least in theory figures such as wassily kandinsky would further develop the theory of abstraction during this period Kandinsky is often credited as the first person to paint abstractly and while it's very hard to confirm this he did lay out some core tenets of what would eventually become abstract earth condensed key thought that Eric was seeking to represent a sort of internal necessity of its subjects the bare minimum needed to convey their essence or they where he realized that to do this an accurate depiction of a subject form was not really necessary instead what was needed was an understanding of what a VOC Don us and how we could represent that visually as what he termed an external necessity think of it as being a kind of visual Platonism if that helps where everything has an essential essence that allows us to understand them Kandinsky's influenced her thinking like this came from his own practice as an artist as well as his interest in music and law which predisposed him to placing his visual ideas into a codified system of notation and rules he was also influenced by the ideas of contemporary philosophers and New Age movements like theosophy theosophy itself is quite interesting for its huge impact on art and culture which is really weird but one thing at a time for Kandinsky pure form had a spiritual purpose to it a round spot could be more significant than the human figure or a triangle placed over a circle could be as significant as God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo how much this had to do with Kandinsky's philosophical and spiritual inclinations and how much of it was a result of his condition as a synesthesia is uncertain this possible condition makes reading Kandinsky's work quite entertaining as he earnestly tries to explain to you how a blue circle sounds or a yellow triangle fields so now that we have some idea of the why of abstraction how do we go about reading these artworks how can we understand what they are trying to say to us and where they come from most importantly how do we make sense of it all abstract art can be made about practically anything it can be based on something the artist has observed or an idea they had or even or nothing at all abstract art may also stem from an artist's observations of something in the world but that doesn't mean it has to look like that subject Kandinsky himself outlined a few basic sources of inspiration for abstract art first an impression of nature the world around us could provide an idea or an emotion which triggers an artwork that may not be exactly representative of what we saw what still seeks to convey something of its essence to us secondly it may be an unconscious expression of internal non material ideas an artwork based on nothing at all Arwa Kandinsky terms an improvisation creating freely and without the restraint of any physical subject-matter finally it may be a slowly formed expression of inner feelings that have been considered and given form in a composition this is probably what most people are thinking about when they think of abstract art much like the other two methods it can depict a feeling or an idea without much correspondence to physical world but is much more reliant on composition and arrangements of formal elements these are not the only ways to create abstract work there are as many ways to paint as there are painters to paint them it does give us a little bit of an idea of what abstract artists are thinking about when they create their work so now that we understand some of these basic possibilities for the creation of abstraction what are some ways we can read or understand what the iris is intending or which mode of working they are engaged in three more aspects that can characterize abstract art are reduction and simplification the pairing back of what is needed to communicate an idea sure we can overload the eye with information or create very realistic works we can also go the other way and attempt to reduce to barest essential forms just as Kandinsky thought about the external necessity of depicting a subject this might sound like a way of doing less work but removing all but the necessary is actually a very difficult thing to do the sculptor Brancusi is an example of this working method he was able to pare back the unnecessary elements in his subjects and leave only those he needed which results in fluid sculptures that express their subjects in his early elegant ways this one here for example is a bird I don't know about you but I think that conveys the essence of earnest pretty well construction arranging basic forms to create a composition that is not based in any real reality ie it is non representational all clay or Kandinsky himself are good examples of this these paintings can either be sensually appealing or on very cerebral as they rely on pure composition and formal elegance to achieve their goals their mileage may vary by how much of an art snob you are but this kind of art provides some of the purest expressions of what we find beautiful and explores why we feel that way free acts of spontaneity this requires the artist to react naturally to the composition and embrace chance and randomness often this will incorporate the chosen media and embrace its natural tendencies to splash or drip for example they can tend to look messy and be very hard on the eye but it also provides another way to paint abstractly which is not so limited to compositional rules as in Kandinsky's work Pollock is probably one of the best-known examples of this kind of art and it has become an important part of painting today which often falls under the umbrella term of materiality this kind of painting rejects the illusionistic qualities of art and instead embraces the natural qualities of the materials in use it calls attention to their existence as well as the act of using these materials to make the non-physical physical so now that we have a grasp of the history of abstraction some ways it can be inspired and some ways in which artists can work with that inspiration we can come a little bit closer to understanding all of this mad abstract art there may actually be some methods dis madness after all it seems there are a few other interesting things about abstraction that contributed to its creation which we do not typically think of today when someone brings up these mad abstract artists firstly obstruction was intended to be a rational and logical kind of art not some flaky subjective nonsense as it was often characterized today it attempted to remove all artifice and subjectivity paring back at the urge to leave only what was essential to its needs as Kandinsky and others had proposed it did not seek all necessary complications or embellishments just for the sake of and by doing so hoped to make itself more accessible to the average person following on from this the new era was kind of secular it didn't spend its time depicting God's glories or the power of church and state as most IRA before had occupied itself with the angels and cherubs of Renaissance art are long gone and replaced with a calculating mode of representation that in theory could be understood by everyone not just the devotees of a particular ideology third it was intended to be ad for the people it wouldn't require special knowledge of history or religion to understand what was going out of these paintings and wouldn't rely on insider information of the air world to understand his either if the air was logically created to be accessible to all then everyone could enjoy it and engage with it regardless of nationality education or social standing it was to be an earth for a global society you can imagine what a great job they did with all of this when you consider how with this kind of air is seen today as pompous elitist and totally disconnected from reality the fact that so few people understand or care about it today is probably the greatest failing of this kind of art the intentions are there though and the ideas of a cold hard logical system of erekt would probably be very appealing to a lot of people today who hate exactly this kind of arish ironically enough what brought about this downfall of abstraction in the eyes of the public was not the works of Kandinsky and his cohorts however that would be the result of an even more complex affair that began in the aftermath of World War two it would involve shadowy cabal mass manipulation of the public an artificial control of information as with many other ideas with disastrous consequences it would originate in America and it would use abstraction as a way of waging an ideological war

Channel: The Arts Hole

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Keywords: art, abstract art, abstraction, geometric art, modern art, modernism, painting, sculpture, kandinsky, 20th century art, fine art, contemporary art, what is abstract art, the arts hole, lifestyle, history, entertainment, education, artist, drawing, abstract art documentary, abstract art tutorial for beginners, abstract art techniques, abstract art for kids, abstract art easy

Id: wSEtfqGWlN8

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2017