Abstract art employs a visual lexicon of shape, form, color, and line to construct compositions that possess a degree of autonomy from real-world visual referents. Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and non-representational art represent closely related concepts. While their meanings are similar, they are not necessarily interchangeable.
From the Renaissance through the mid-19th century, Western art was fundamentally structured by the principles of perspective and the endeavor to replicate the illusion of visible reality. However, by the close of the 19th century, numerous artists perceived a necessity to forge a novel artistic paradigm that could integrate the profound transformations occurring across technology, science, and philosophy. The theoretical underpinnings adopted by individual artists were varied, mirroring the prevailing social and intellectual concerns across all facets of Western culture during that period.
Abstraction, within the context of art, signifies a divergence from the realistic depiction of imagery. Such deviations from precise representation may manifest as subtle, partial, or complete. Consequently, abstraction operates along a spectrum. Artworks that exhibit deliberate alterations, such as conspicuous modifications to color or form, are categorized as partially abstract. Conversely, total abstraction contains no discernible allusions to recognizable forms. For example, geometric abstraction typically eschews references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are largely antithetical. Nevertheless, both figurative and representational (or realistic) art frequently incorporate elements of partial abstraction.
Both geometric and lyrical abstraction are frequently characterized by complete abstraction. Numerous art movements exemplify partial abstraction; notable examples include Fauvism, which conspicuously and intentionally modifies color relative to reality, and Cubism, which reconfigures the forms of depicted real-life entities.
History
The Nineteenth Century in Europe
During the 19th century in Europe, ecclesiastical patronage declined, while private patronage from the public increasingly sustained artists. Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism were three pivotal art movements that fostered the emergence of abstract art. The 19th century also marked a period of increasing artistic autonomy for practitioners. An objective engagement with visual perception is evident in the works of John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, and Camille Corot, a lineage that extended to the Impressionists, who further developed the plein air painting tradition of the Barbizon school. Early indications of a nascent artistic approach were demonstrated by James McNeill Whistler, whose 1872 painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, prioritized visual sensation over objective representation. Preceding this, Georgiana Houghton's 'spirit' drawings, exhibited in 1871, featured abstract shapes that aligned with the non-naturalistic essence of her subject matter, at a time when the concept of abstraction was not yet formally articulated.
Expressionist artists pioneered the audacious application of paint, employing distortions, exaggerations, and vibrant color palettes. Their emotionally charged canvases served as responses to and interpretations of contemporary experience, as well as critiques of Impressionism and other more conventional artistic trends of the late 19th century. Expressionism fundamentally shifted the focus from objective subject matter to the depiction of internal psychological states. While figures such as Edvard Munch and James Ensor primarily derived inspiration from Post-Impressionist works, their contributions were crucial to the emergence of abstraction in the 20th century. Paul Cézanne, initially an Impressionist, pursued an objective to construct reality logically from a singular viewpoint, utilizing modulated color within planar areas; this approach subsequently formed the foundational principles for a new visual art, which later evolved into Cubism.
In the late 19th century, Eastern European mysticism and early modernist religious philosophy, particularly the teachings of theosophist Mme. Blavatsky, profoundly influenced pioneering geometric artists such as Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky. Similarly, the mystical doctrines of Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky significantly shaped the nascent geometric abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the early 20th century. This spiritualist current also inspired the abstract art of Kasimir Malevich and František Kupka.
The Early 20th Century
Fauvism and Cubism
Early in the 20th century, Henri Matisse, alongside other emerging artists such as the pre-Cubists Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, and Jean Metzinger, revolutionized the Parisian art scene. Their distinctive style, characterized by vibrant, multi-colored, and expressive landscapes and figure paintings, was critically dubbed Fauvism. The Fauves' innovative use of raw color profoundly impacted Wassily Kandinsky, another seminal figure in the development of abstraction.
Cubism, an art movement predicated on Cézanne's assertion that all natural forms could be distilled into fundamental geometric shapes—the cube, sphere, and cone—emerged alongside Fauvism as a pivotal force directly facilitating the advent of abstraction in the early 20th century.
Early Abstract Art
At the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or, František Kupka presented his abstract painting Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors) (1912). During this event, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term Orphism to describe the work of several artists, including Robert Delaunay. Apollinaire characterized this style as "the art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art."
From the turn of the 20th century, robust cultural exchanges flourished among artists in major European cities, driven by a collective ambition to forge an art form commensurate with modernism's elevated ideals. The dissemination of ideas through artists' books, exhibitions, and manifestos fostered a fertile environment for experimentation and discourse, thereby establishing a foundation for diverse approaches to abstraction. An excerpt from The World Backwards illustrates the extensive cultural interconnectedness of this era: "David Burliuk's knowledge of modern art movements must have been extremely up-to-date, for the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition, held in January 1912 (in Moscow) included not only paintings sent from Munich, but some members of the German Die Brücke group, while from Paris came work by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger, as well as Picasso. During the Spring David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned a polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was to finance. He went abroad in May and came back determined to rival the almanac Der Blaue Reiter which had emerged from the printers while he was in Germany".
Between 1909 and 1913, numerous artists produced experimental works in pursuit of this 'pure art.' Notable examples include: Francis Picabia's Caoutchouc (c. 1909), The Spring (1912), Dances at the Spring, and The Procession, Seville (1912); Wassily Kandinsky's Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor) (1913), Improvisation 21A, the Impression series, and Picture with a Circle (1911); František Kupka's Orphist pieces, Discs of Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colors) (1912) and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors) (1912); Robert Delaunay's series titled Simultaneous Windows and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2 (1912–13); Léopold Survage's Colored Rhythm (Study for the film) (1913); and Piet Mondrian's Tableau No. 1 and Composition No. 11 (1913).
Henri Matisse approached pure abstraction through his expressive color palette and unconstrained, imaginative drawing, particularly evident in works such as French Window at Collioure (1914), View of Notre-Dame (1914), and The Yellow Curtain (1915).
The exploration of abstraction progressed with Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov's Rayist (Luchizm) drawings, which employed lines resembling light rays to construct compositions. In 1915, Kasimir Malevich produced his inaugural fully abstract piece, the Suprematist Black Square. Concurrently, Liubov Popova, another member of the Suprematist movement, developed the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions from 1916 to 1921. Between 1915 and 1919, Piet Mondrian refined his abstract idiom, characterized by horizontal and vertical lines intersecting with colored rectangles. This aesthetic, known as Neo-Plasticism, was conceived by Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and other artists within the De Stijl group, with the aim of reconfiguring future environments.
The Russian Avant-Garde Movement
A significant number of Russian abstract artists embraced Constructivism, asserting that art should not be a detached entity but rather an integral part of life itself. They advocated for artists to adopt the role of technicians, mastering the instruments and substances of contemporary manufacturing. Vladimir Tatlin's rallying cry, Art into life!, encapsulated the ethos of all subsequent Constructivists. Figures such as Varvara Stepanova and Alexandre Exter eschewed traditional easel painting, redirecting their creative efforts toward theatrical design and graphic arts. In contrast, Kazimir Malevich, Anton Pevsner, and Naum Gabo maintained that art constituted an inherently spiritual endeavor, focused on establishing an individual's position within the cosmos, rather than pragmatically structuring life in a materialist fashion. During this period, key figures of the Russian avant-garde engaged in collaborative projects with other Eastern European Constructivist artists, including Władysław Strzmiński, Katarzyna Kobro, and Henryk Stażewski.
Numerous artists who opposed the materialist production concept of art emigrated from Russia. Anton Pevsner relocated to France, while Gabo initially moved to Berlin, subsequently to England, and ultimately to America. Kandinsky, after studying in Moscow, departed for the Bauhaus. By the mid-1920s, the revolutionary era (1917–1921), which had afforded artists considerable experimental freedom, concluded. By the 1930s, only socialist realism received official sanction.
Musical Influences
As visual art progressed towards abstraction, it began to manifest attributes akin to music, an art form inherently employing abstract components of sound and temporal segmentation. Wassily Kandinsky, an amateur musician himself, found inspiration in the potential for visual marks and evocative colors to be resounding in the soul. This concept was previously articulated by Charles Baudelaire, who posited that while our senses react to diverse stimuli, they are interconnected at a profound aesthetic stratum.
A closely associated concept posits that art possesses The spiritual dimension, enabling it to transcend mundane experience and attain a spiritual realm. The Theosophical Society played a pivotal role in disseminating the ancient wisdom contained within the sacred texts of India and China during the early 20th century. Within this intellectual milieu, artists such as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint, who were pursuing an 'objectless state' in their work, developed an interest in the occult as a means to manifest an 'inner' object. Geometric forms—the circle, square, and triangle—represent universal and timeless shapes that serve as fundamental spatial elements in abstract art, functioning, much like color, as foundational systems underpinning perceptible reality.
The Bauhaus Movement
Established in 1919 by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, operated under a foundational philosophy emphasizing the synthesis of all visual and plastic arts, encompassing disciplines from architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass. This pedagogical approach originated from the principles of the English Arts and Crafts movement and the Deutscher Werkbund. Notable faculty members included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, and László Moholy-Nagy. The institution relocated to Dessau in 1925, and its operations ceased in 1932 following the Nazi party's ascent to power. By 1937, an exhibition titled 'Entartete Kunst' (Degenerate Art) showcased various forms of avant-garde art deemed unacceptable by the Nazi regime. Subsequently, a significant exodus of artists commenced, not only from the Bauhaus but from Europe broadly, leading many to Paris, London, and America. While Paul Klee settled in Switzerland, a substantial number of Bauhaus artists emigrated to the United States.
Abstraction in Parisian and London Art Scenes
In the 1930s, Paris emerged as a sanctuary for artists fleeing totalitarian regimes in Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and other European nations. Sophie Tauber and Jean Arp engaged in collaborative projects, creating paintings and sculptures that integrated organic and geometric forms. Polish artist Katarzyna Kobro incorporated mathematically derived concepts into her sculptural works. The convergence of diverse abstract art forms prompted artists to analyze their distinct conceptual and aesthetic categories. An exhibition featuring forty-six members of the Cercle et Carré group, curated by Joaquín Torres-García with assistance from Michel Seuphor, showcased works by Neo-Plasticists alongside a range of abstractionists including Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner, and Kurt Schwitters. Theo van Doesburg, criticizing the collection as overly indefinite, subsequently published the journal Art Concret, which included a manifesto asserting that in abstract art, line, color, and surface constitute the sole concrete reality. Abstraction-Création, established in 1931 as a more inclusive collective, served as a significant reference point for abstract artists. As the political climate deteriorated in 1935, many artists reconvened, particularly in London. England hosted the inaugural exhibition of British abstract art in 1935. The subsequent year, Nicolete Gray organized the more internationally focused Abstract and Concrete exhibition, featuring works by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson, and Gabo relocated to St. Ives, Cornwall, to continue their constructivist artistic endeavors.
Late 20th Century
In the 1930s, as Nazism gained power, numerous artists emigrated from Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s, New York City had become a hub for major modern art movements, including expressionism, cubism, abstraction, surrealism, and Dada, with exiled European artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, André Masson, Max Ernst, and André Breton among its residents. The profound cultural contributions of these European artists were assimilated and further developed by local New York painters. New York's atmosphere of artistic freedom fostered the proliferation of these diverse influences. Art galleries, previously focused predominantly on European art, began to acknowledge the burgeoning local art community and the maturing works of younger American artists. During this period, several artists developed a distinctly abstract style in their mature oeuvres. Piet Mondrian's painting Composition No. 10 (1939–1942), featuring primary colors, a white ground, and black grid lines, exemplified his radical yet classical approach to the rectangle and abstract art broadly. Some artists of this era resisted easy categorization; for instance, Georgia O'Keeffe, a modernist abstractionist, remained an independent figure, creating highly abstract forms without affiliating with any particular group of the period.
Over time, American artists, initially working in diverse styles, began to converge into cohesive stylistic groups. The most prominent collective of American artists became recognized as the Abstract Expressionists and the New York School. New York City fostered an environment conducive to artistic discourse and offered new opportunities for learning and development. Artists and educators John D. Graham and Hans Hofmann served as crucial intermediaries between the recently arrived European Modernists and the emerging generation of American artists. Mark Rothko, a Russian-born artist, initially employed strong surrealist imagery, which subsequently evolved into his impactful color compositions of the early 1950s. For Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Franz Kline, the expressionistic gesture and the very act of painting gained paramount significance. Concurrently, the figurative works of Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning transitioned into abstraction by the close of the 1940s. New York City emerged as a global artistic epicenter, attracting artists from around the world, including other regions of America.
21st Century
Digital art, hard-edge painting, geometric abstraction, minimalism, lyrical abstraction, op art, abstract expressionism, color field painting, monochrome painting, assemblage, neo-Dada, and shaped canvas painting represent some of the diverse trajectories related to abstraction in the latter half of the 20th century.
In the United States, contemporary manifestations of abstract art include Art as Object, exemplified by the Minimalist sculptures of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank Stella. Additional examples encompass Lyrical Abstraction and the evocative application of color evident in the oeuvres of artists such as Robert Motherwell, Patrick Heron, Kenneth Noland, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, and Veronica Ruiz de Velasco.
Analysis
A socio-historical interpretation, notably associated with Theodor W. Adorno, posits that the increasing prominence of abstraction in modern art constitutes both a response to and a reflection of the escalating abstraction of social relations within industrial societies.
Frederic Jameson similarly interprets modernist abstraction as a consequence of the abstracting influence of money, which homogenizes all entities into equivalent exchange-values. Consequently, the social dimension of abstract art precisely embodies the abstract character of social existence—manifested through legal formalisms, bureaucratic depersonalization, and the dynamics of information and power—within the context of late modernity.
Conversely, Post-Jungian perspectives suggest that quantum theories, by challenging conventional notions of form and matter, underpin the separation of the concrete and the abstract observed in modern art.
Artist Al Capp provided a more straightforward assessment, characterizing abstract art as "A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
Gallery
In other media
- In other media
- Absolute music
- Abstract animation
- Abstract comics
- Abstract photography
- Atonality
- Avant-garde music
- Bauhaus dances
- Concrete poetry
- Experimental film
- Indeterminacy
- Literary nonsense
- Minimal music
- Modern dance
- Modern art
- Musique concrète
- New Formalism
- Noise music
- Sound poetry
References
Sources
- ^ Compton, Susan (1978). The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books 1912–16. The British Library. ISBN 978-0-7141-0396-9.^ Stangos, Nikos, ed. (1981). Concepts of Modern Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-20186-2.^ Gooding, Mel (2001). Abstract Art. Movements in Modern Art series. Tate Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85437-302-1.^ Rump, Gerhard Charles (1985). How to look at an abstract painting. Inter Nationes.
- The term "Abstraction" spoken about at Museum of Modern Art by Nelson Goodman of Grove Art Online
- Abstract Art Demystified