Abstractionism - what is it? Abstractionism in painting: representatives and works

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

It is human nature to put everything in order, to find a place for everything and give a name. This can be especially difficult to do in art, where talent is such a category that it does not allow one to squeeze a person or a whole movement into a cell of a general ordered catalog. Abstractionism is just such a concept. It has been debated for more than a century.

Abstractio - distraction, separation

The expressive means of painting are line, shape, color. If you separate them from unnecessary values, references and associations, they become ideal, absolute. Even Plato spoke about the true, correct beauty of straight lines and geometric shapes. The absence of an analogy of what is depicted with real objects opens the way for the influence on the viewer of something still unknown, inaccessible to ordinary consciousness. The artistic value of the picture itself should be higher than the importance of what it depicts, because talented painting gives birth to a new sensual world.

So reasoned the artists-reformers. For them, abstract art is a way of finding new artistic methods with power never seen before.

New age - new art

Art critics argue about what isabstractionism. Art historians defend their point of view with fervor, filling in the gaps in the history of abstract painting. But the majority agreed with the time of his birth: in 1910 in Munich, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) exhibited his work “Un titled. (First abstract watercolor).

Soon Kandinsky in his book "On the Spiritual in Art" proclaimed the philosophy of a new trend.

The main thing is the impression

Don't think that abstractionism in painting arose from scratch. The Impressionists showed a new meaning of color and light in painting. At the same time, the role of linear perspective, the exact observance of proportions, etc., has become less important. All the leading masters of that time fell under the influence of this style.

The landscapes of James Whistler (1834-1903), his "nocturnes" and "symphonies", surprisingly resemble the masterpieces of abstract expressionist painters. By the way, Whistler and Kandinsky had synesthesia - the ability to endow colors with a sound of a certain property. And the colors on their work sound like music.

In the works of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), especially in the late period of his work, the form of the object is modified, acquiring a special kind of expressiveness. No wonder Cezanne is called the forerunner of Cubism.

Common movement forward

Abstractionism in art took shape in a single trend in the course of the general progress of civilization. The environment of intellectuals was excited by new theories in philosophy and psychology, artists were looking for connections between the spiritual world and the material, personality and space. So, Kandinsky in his justificationsThe theory of abstraction is based on the ideas expressed in the theosophical books of Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891).

Fundamental discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology have changed ideas about the world, about the power of human influence on nature. Technological progress reduced the scale of the earth, the scale of the universe.

With the rapid development of photography, many artists decided to give it a documentary function. They argued: the business of painting is not to copy, but to create a new reality.

Abstractionism is a revolution. And talented people with sensitive mental attunements felt that the time for social change was coming. They weren't wrong. The twentieth century began and continued with unprecedented upheavals in the life of the entire civilization.

Founding Fathers

Along with Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and the Dutchman Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) stood at the origins of the new trend.

Who doesn't know Malevich's Black Square? Since its appearance in 1915, it has excited both professionals and laymen. Some see it as a dead end, others as a simple outrageous. But all the work of the master speaks of the opening of new horizons in art, of moving forward.

The theory of Suprematism (lat. supremus - the highest), developed by Malevich, asserted the primacy of color among other means of painting, likened the process of painting a picture to an act of Creation, "pure art" in the highest sense. Deep and external signs of Suprematism can be found in the works of contemporary artists, architects and designers.

The work of Mondrian had the same influence on subsequent generations. His neo-plasticism is based on the generalization of form and the careful use of open, undistorted color. Straight black horizontals and verticals on a white background form a grid with cells of different sizes, and the cells are filled with local colors. The expressiveness of the master's paintings prompted the artists either to their creative comprehension, or to blind copying. Abstractionism is used by artists and designers when creating very real objects. Especially often Mondrian motifs are found in architectural projects.

Russian avant-garde - poetry of terms

Russian artists were especially receptive to the ideas of their compatriots - Kandinsky and Malevich. These ideas fit especially well into the turbulent era of the birth and formation of a new social system. The theory of Suprematism was transformed by Lyubov Popova (1889-1924) and Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) into the practice of constructivism, which had a particular influence on the new architecture. Objects built in that era are still being studied by architects around the world.

Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962) became the founders of Rayonism or Rayonism. They tried to display the bizarre interweaving of rays and light planes emitted by everything that fills the world around.

Alexander Esther (1882-1949), David Burliuk (1882-1967), Olga Rozanova (1886-1918), Nadezhda Ud altsova (1886-1961) participated in the Cubo-Futurist movement, who also studied poetry, at various times.

Abstractionism in painting has always been a spokesman for extreme ideas. These ideas irritated the authorities of the totalitarian state. In the USSR, and later in Nazi Germany, ideologists quickly determined what kind of art would be understandable and necessary for the people, and by the beginning of the 40s of the twentieth century, the center for the development of abstractionism had moved to America.

Channels of one stream

Abstractionism is a rather vague definition. Wherever the object of creativity does not have a specific analogy in the surrounding world, one speaks of abstraction. In poetry, in music, in ballet, in architecture. In the visual arts, the forms and types of this direction are especially diverse.

The following types of abstract art in painting can be distinguished:

- Color compositions: in the space of the canvas, color is the main thing, and the object dissolves in the play of colors (Kandinsky, Frank Kupka (1881-1957), orpist Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Barnet Newman (1905-1970)).

- Geometric abstract art is a more intellectual, analytical kind of avant-garde painting. He rejects linear perspective and the illusion of depth, solving the question of the relationship of geometric shapes (Malevich, Mondrian, elementalist Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931), Josef Albers (1888-1976), op-art follower Victor Vasarely (1906-1997)).

- Expressive abstractionism - the process of creating a picture is especially important here, sometimes the very method of applying paint, as, for example, among the tashists (from tache - spot) (Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), tashist Georges Mathieu (1921-2012),Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Robert Motherwell (1912-1956)).

- Minimalism - a return to the origins of the artistic avant-garde. Images are completely devoid of external links and associations (Frank Stella (b.1936), Sean Scully (b.1945), Ellsworth Kelly (b.1923)).

Abstract art is far in the past?

So, what is abstract art now? Now you can read online that abstract painting is a thing of the past. Russian avant-garde, black square - who needs it? Now is the time for speed and clear information.

Information: one of the most expensive paintings in 2006 was sold for more than 140 million dollars. It is called "No. 5.1948" by Jackson Pollock, an expressive abstract artist.