Historically, art aimed to represent scenes and figures from the real world.
About a century ago, artists began to deviate from this representational style.
This shift was initially shocking and disorienting, lacking a clear framework for interpretation or appreciation.
The Challenge of Abstraction
The central question is how to engage with art that doesn't depict recognizable objects.
More importantly, why should we even bother with this abstract art?
The Gradual Shift Towards Abstraction
The transition to complete abstraction was gradual.
JMW Turner's landscapes hinted at abstraction, showing how real-world subjects could appear abstract.
James McNeil Whistler's Nocturne and Victor Hugo's ink drawings also demonstrated abstract qualities.
Influence of the Industrial Revolution
The 19th-century Industrial Revolution and the invention of photography transformed life in European and American cities.
This transformation influenced artistic representation.
Artists began depicting subjects in non-naturalistic ways, abstracting them through stylization, simplification, and flattening.
Early Pioneers of Abstraction
Matisse and Derain: Painted familiar subjects with intense colors and broad brushstrokes, leading to the term "Fauves" (wild beasts).
Picasso and Braque (Cubism):
Broke down still life subjects into geometric shapes.
Fragmented the picture plane.
Showed multiple sides of an object simultaneously.
Revealed more than the eye could see by using multiple perspectives and moments in time.
Drew attention to the flatness of the canvas.
Italian Futurists: Sought to capture the speed and stimulation of modern urban life, collapsing space and time into single images.
German Expressionists (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner): Used unreal colors and abstraction to depict the chaos and anxiety of city streets.
Kandinsky and Spiritual Abstraction
Contemporaries like Franz Marc and Vasily Kandinsky drew inspiration from various sources:
Tribal art from Africa.
Medieval German woodcuts.
Russian folk art.
Art Nouveau.
Children's art.
Marc used abstraction to connect with nature.
Kandinsky aimed to connect with the spiritual realm.
Kandinsky believed art should evoke emotions and feelings through form and color combinations.
He argued abstraction wasn't opposed to realism, but a form of realism itself, representing unseen realities like emotion and consciousness.
Malevich and Suprematism
Kazimir Malevich developed suprematism, using geometric elements to reach the "zero of form."
Suprematism aimed for the "supremacy of pure artistic feeling."
Emergence of Abstraction Before World War I
Abstraction emerged through an international network of artists.
Hilma af Klint
Swedish painter Hilma af Klint created abstract works as early as 1905.
She belonged to "the five", a group that conducted seances to communicate with spirits through pictures.
Klint's abstractions were influenced by spiritualism, the occult, science, and the depiction of invisible forces like electromagnetic fields, X-rays, and infrared light.
Theosophy and Thought Forms
Theosophist Annie Besant published "thought forms" in 1901.
These images illustrated the belief that ideas, emotions, and sounds manifest as visual auras.
Kandinsky and others were influenced by this work.
Music as Inspiration
Music served as an important parallel to abstraction, being an art form free from representing worldly objects.
Kandinsky admired Wagner and Schoenberg.
Paul Klee loved Bach.
Frantisek Kupka saw a connection between music and painting, believing art could directly affect the soul without the distraction of subject matter.
Other Approaches to Abstraction
Robert Delaunay focused on the immediacy and pictorial realities of color and contrast.
He was "horrified" by music and noise.
His "first disc" was considered the purest abstraction at the time.
Sonia Delaunay illustrated a poetry book, blending abstraction and typography, later extending this style into painting and fashion.
Piet Mondrian translated subjects into gridded arrangements, replacing spatial illusion with "truth."
Mondrian reduced everything to horizontal and vertical lines, revealing the world's structure through binary oppositions.
Abstraction During World War I
Paul Klee turned away from the material world during the traumatic years of World War I.
Serving in the German army, Klee wrote in 1915 that the more horrifying the world becomes, the more abstract art becomes.
Bauhaus School
After World War I, Klee and other abstract artists taught at the Bauhaus School.
Founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany.
The school promoted the idea that crafts were equal to art.
It aimed to improve the quality of life through architecture, objects, and art.
De Stijl Group
Theo van Doesburg and the Dutch De Stijl group advocated a simplified geometric style.
They called this "a new plastic art", intended as a universal aesthetic language for everyday life.
Dada and Chance
Dada artists like Hans Arp explored chance, creating collages by dropping squares arbitrarily onto paper.
Abstract Sculpture
Abstract sculpture gained prominence in Russia, with the work of Vladimir Tatlin.
Tatlin emphasized "truth to materials."
Alexander Rodchenko exhibited monochromatic paintings in 1921 and declared "it's all over", denouncing painting and fine art.
Rodchenko and the productivists aimed to integrate art into life, focusing on poster and ad design.
Continued Evolution of Abstract Painting
Abstract painting continued with diverse motivations among artists like El Lissitzky, Marsden Hartley, Joan Miró, and Alexander Calder.
Influence of European Artists in the US
During World War II, many European artists fled to the US, including Joseph and Anni Albers, Fernand Léger, Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, Hans Hofmann, André Masson, and Max Ernst.
Their presence brought new approaches to abstraction.
This influx of avant-garde thinking was an important precondition for the success of the abstract expressionists in New York in the 1940s and 50s.
Abstract Expressionists drew inspiration from ancient myths, archaic cultures, Jungian psychology, and jazz.
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism was largely improvisational.
It aimed to provoke strong emotional responses through large scale and dynamic gesture or expansive fields of color.
Other Developments in Abstraction
The Gutai group in Japan embraced the canvas as an arena for action; Kazuo Shiraga painted with his feet.