Abstract art is a name relative to representational art and can also be called non-representational art. Its characteristic is to express concepts by means of emotional methods. They were first seen in the works of Kandinsky. They are derived from the fusion of various anti-traditional artistic influences, especially evolved from Fauvism and Cubism.
Picasso’s and Michel Seuphor’s views on abstract art
In Picasso’s opinion, there is no such thing as “abstract” art. He believes that some people emphasize style, while others emphasize life. In Michel Seuphor’s opinion, abstract art is: “I call all art that does not carry any reminder or any memory of reality (whether this reality is the starting point of the painter or not) abstract art.”
The origin of abstract art
Fauvism and Cubism promoted the independent development of form and color. Kandinsky further discovered its mystery. He painted the first abstract watercolour painting in 1910. This is a non-representational, energetic overlapping colour dots. Kandinsky’s creative invention obtained aesthetic inspiration from music. Later, the Czech Kupka directly obtained inspiration from music to carry out abstract art creation. He is known as the originator of musical painters, and later they jointly formed the abstract school.
Worringer’s “Abstraction and Empathy”
The work “Abstraction and Empathy” by the German philosopher W. Worringer. He believes that in addition to the impulse of empathy, there is also an impulse contrary to it that dominates in artistic creation, and this is the “tendency of abstraction”.
The reason for the generation of abstraction is that there is a conflict between people and the environment. People feel the vastness of space and the disorder of phenomena. There is a psychological fear of space and a feeling of difficulty in finding a foothold. Since people’s souls cannot find peace in the fickle external phenomena, they only seek comfort in the forms of art. Since people cannot obtain aesthetic enjoyment from external objective things, they hope to liberate objective things from their fickle contingency and make them have permanent value in an abstract form.
Worringer’s theory has influenced expressionist painters including W. Kandinsky. The earliest abstract paintings were painted by Kandinsky around 1910. Worringer is a friend of Kandinsky. He actively supported the Expressionist movement and expanded its influence.
The development of abstract art
The influence of industry and technology on abstract art
In addition to the factor of escaping from reality, the emergence of abstract art is also due to the promotion by industry and technology. Modern buildings and environments require more generalized, refined and simplified artistic forms to adapt to them. The relatively abstract factors for the vision such as the speed, power and efficiency of the machine operation. These stimulate artists to make attempts at creating abstract beauty. The emergence of abstract art is a supplement to realistic art.
Absorb nutrients from various cultures
Abstract art that does not take depicting specific objects as the goal conveys various emotions through lines, colors, patches, forms and compositions, stimulating people’s imagination and enlightening people’s thinking.
Abstract art has absorbed nourishment from early art, medieval art, African and Oceanian art, Eastern characters and calligraphy, and also selected concepts from Chinese Lao-Zhuang philosophy and Buddhist Zen that are suitable for Western philosophy and people’s psychological states in the 20th century. Many abstract works show the tendency of escaping from reality and social nihilism, but there are also works that reflect people’s longing for a beautiful future and have positive, enterprising and optimistic thoughts and feelings.
The abstraction of artistic forms
The focus of most abstract works lies in the unique creation of artistic forms. The most representative abstract artists are the Russian Kandinsky and the Dutch P. Mondrian and the De Stijl founded by him. The former is mainly a lyrical abstract artist, and the latter has opened up the path of geometric abstract art. Suprematism represented by Malevich in Russia and the Constructivism associated with it are also branches of geometric abstract art. Orphism that emerged in France after Cubism is actually abstract art that pays attention to light and color.
Tachisme that emerged in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is an abstract school that pays attention to the patterns and texture beauty formed by accidental smears, stains and traces. Abstract Expressionism that emerged in the United States in the mid-1940s is an abstract art that combines the automatic techniques of Surrealism, and the representative figure is J. Pollock. The post-painterly abstraction that emerged in the United States and Europe after Abstract Expressionism is actually the development of geometric abstract in the contemporary era. Because it is a relatively regular abstract painting with a clear shape and clear borderlines, it is called hard-edge abstraction by American critics.
Summarize various abstract art in the 20th century
Summarizing various abstract art in Europe and America in the 20th century, those that focus on emotional expression are called lyrical abstraction or hot abstraction; those that focus on expressing ideas are called rational abstraction or cold abstraction. Abstract art has unique value and also has its limitations. It can only exist as a form of expression and can never replace realism. Some Western abstract art theorists’ propaganda that realism is outdated and that abstract art represents the direction of artistic development does not conform to the actual situation.
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