Abstract Art
Abstract art is an art form that does not try to represent the sensory world. Abstract art can happen model and overcomes the visual fidelity to reality.
Definition
In the visual arts, abstract art is a "visual language" born in the twentieth century. He does not try to represent "the visible appearances of the outside world, but attempts to give a contraction of real or to highlight the "tears". Abstract art can happen model and overcomes the visual fidelity to reality and thus plastic creations mimetics. It does not represent the people or objects in the natural world, real or imaginary, but only shapes and colors for themselves.
The painter Wassily Kandinsky is considered the founder of abstract art. He painted his first abstract watercolor in 1910 Untitled (in reality it is backdated). According to the philosopher Michel Henry, "Kandinsky calls abstract the content that painting must express, that life is invisible we are.
In the early twentieth century, the term also included cubism and futurism, genres in which there is much desire to represent the real world, not imitate or copy, but rather by showing the intrinsic qualities. It represents what we know of an object rather than what one sees.
Abstract art uses a formal language, pictorial and linear composition to create a separate report to visual references exist in the tangible world. Western art was, from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce the illusion of visible reality. The discovery and increased access to arts and cultures from outside Europe have inspired other description models and permits a visual experience of the artist freed from the constraints of representation. Some, following an Impressionist movement, have tried to deformation of modern print and even Sanskrit symbols. In the late nineteenth century, many artists have thus found it necessary to create a new art form assimilating technological change, science and philosophy of their time. The sources from which artists draw their theoretical arguments are varied and reflect the social and intellectual concerns in all areas of Western culture from that era.
Abstraction for point of departure, a new depiction of reality and imagery in art. Since the realism of the early nineteenth century and the emergence of the daguerreotype, an accurate representation of reality is conducted. The difference between art and reality, the classic theme of artistic representation, has passed through the mirror of visual accuracy. Abstraction is part of this continuity, this constant search for a fair representation of reality. It is a response to these new forms recently emerged, despite their technical accuracy considered as partial, incomplete. The idea of sublimation of reality disappears in favor of an abstraction that is outside its tangible representation, art does more likelihood the largest, most accurate realism, because it can be replaced, short, at least theoretically by new forms of representation automated, since perfect representation is likely to be extremely difficult to achieve. The artwork takes liberties, for example changing the color and shape a way that is visible and contained in an essence that can be concisely called "abstract". The result no longer includes the steps of abstraction and recognizable references disappear to make a visible impact, geometric shapes, clean lines or proliferating, single colors or mixed. Thus, the geometric abstraction does not retain any references natural and real entities presented. Figurative Abstraction, and Total are almost mutually exclusive, except that the figurative representation (or realistic art) often contains a partial abstraction.
The geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are most often totally abstract. Among the many artistic movements pre-abstraction, those who represent a substantial and significant abstraction are Fauvism for his use of color, clearly and deliberately altered from reality, and cubism, which amends blatantly forms of real life. Finally Futurism, in its desire to de-listed by the real dynamic and kinetic movement comes to abstract art, including Giacomo Balla.
The origins of abstraction
In the years before the First World War, several varieties of abstract art emerged in different contexts, although the city of Paris is often recognized as the capital of Western culture at the time, and expose him to Robert Delaunay's Cubist works prismatic. But it is equally important to look elsewhere, eg in Germany and Russia, artists created paintings that varied greatly, not only its appearance but also in the intentions.
The influence of the development of science and technology specific to the paint on the evolution of the art is well established. Furthermore, the invention and evolution of photography in the nineteenth century painting of the free representation of reality.
However, apparently strong remote areas of the painting have also led to changes in the position of artists.
Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century physiological optics made significant progress under the leadership of the German von Helmholtz (1821-1894). It distinguishes two stages in the vision in the eye, light rays produce an "impression" and then the nerves of the retina are transmitted to the brain where they appear as "sensations".
Some artists are influenced by this new knowledge. The "impressionist" had actually already tried to make the "impression" (the first stage) was their nature. Other artists will recognize that it is futile to try to restore nature on a canvas with complete objectivity. For the 'sensations' (second stage) are "disrupt" the process of creation and they appear very complex. They are not simply a passive recording of information of shapes and colors, but involve neural mechanisms contributing other results. There will be more to make the results of introspection that copy more or less faithfully the effects of nature.
Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), pioneer of abstract painting, was quickly seized the impact of this new conception of vision about the purpose of art, previously seen as an imitation of nature. The "feel" part of the painter now a priority in his vision. Kupka interested in the psychophysical aspects of color: "So it seems more appropriate to consider and examine the sensations of light, nature and value different, as they evoke in us moods . We will speak of "solar eye".
Advances in another science, that of understanding the wave nature, both light and sound, also open new perspectives. She leads the development of instruments by researchers projection of colored light. These are used with musical accompaniment. One of the inventors of "color music" ("chromatic music, to be called now" sound and light), Wallace Rimington, written in 1895, "In painting, color was only used as a elements of the image. We have not yet had any pictures in which there is neither form nor matter, but only the pure color. " He also writes: "... In fact, there has never been pure art color only deals with the color alone and relying only subtle changes at all, wonderful, and the The color combinations are capable as a means of its own expression. At that time, his concerts "color music" were successful. It is therefore not surprising to find an article published in 1908 titled The laws of harmony of Painting and Music are the same (Henry Rovel). Its content, in the spirit of chromatic music, have a great influence on the painters Kandinsky (1866-1944), Larionov (1881-1964) and again Kupka. In another article, Rovel confirms, "Life is characterized by the vibration. Without vibration, there is no life. The whole world is subject to this law."
Developments
It is in the same period in 1911, the Russian composer Scriabin (1872-1915), who had probably known Rimington, this symphony "Prometheus, Poem of Fire", whose implementation requires the presence of a keyboard to color in the orchestra. Scriabin wanted to go to all the senses of his listeners to give them the perception of a world in constant vibration.
Returning to painting. By adopting this new worldview, the artist will attempt to reproduce more by imitating. It will mainly be based on sensations, visual and acoustic, to give an inner vision more in line with new scientific data. We must bring art to the continuum vibrational nature. Gauguin wrote, "Think of the musical will now share the color in modern painting. The color is vibration just as music is able to achieve what is most general and therefore more vague in nature: its inner strength. "The emphasis is on emotional function of the same color as the emotional function of the music. This will be the "eye music".
In the same vein, other researchers have successfully transformed into graphic inscriptions sound vibrations. The pictures they have learned have been published and some will be used by artists seduced by these new perspectives. The milestones of abstract painting are well placed.
How developed abstraction on the picture plane? Jean-Louis Ferrier (critic and author of "The Adventure of the Art in the Twentieth Century" founders identified three equal parts:
* Wassily Kandinsky, a true pioneer, who in 1910 wrote in his book On the Spiritual in Art, and Painting in particular, that the idea of the futility of representation has been blown by one of his paintings posed by error on one side;
* Piet Mondrian, who earned his abstract geometric structures by a gradual diversion of his paintings of an oyster against the light of the sea;
* And Kazimir Malevich, who sought the extreme simplification leading to the famous "Black Square on a white background.
For these three founders transition from figuration to abstraction has occurred relatively slowly between 1910 and 1917. But the genre has been well prepared by the general pictorial evolution of the time, which will also founded Cubism, Rayonism, futurism, etc.. And even the ready-mades (1913): abstraction has not a single revelation, it is part of a global context extraordinarily creative in all the arts. In particular, the Impressionists had already produced almost abstract paintings, all addicted to light (eg in some paintings by Bonnard, the characters are almost invisible).
Among these developments, today, abstraction remains the most readily accepted by the public because such a statement does not "represent" anything, which sometimes offends the taste, habits, training, an abstract work must Indeed accost each other in a different spirit figurative works.
Art and the transcendental
Wassily Kandinsky is one of the artists who could be considered as initiators of abstract art. His works from the early 1910s, in Munich, employs an impressive array of colors and painting techniques. In the writings of Kandinsky, it announces clearly have abandoned the outward appearance in hopes of being able to communicate more directly to the viewer's feelings. Kandinsky believed that colors and shapes could communicate the spiritual truths, hidden behind the appearances daily, and are difficult to describe in words. He even saw a similarity between music and painting, in 1912 he wrote: "Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that is strong vibrations in the soul by means of a particular key. "
In Russia, at the same time, Kasimir Malevich painted arrangements of abstract forms that seem suspended in space. But the rigid geometry of a table such as Rectangle black supremacist contrast sharply with the relaxed appearance of the works of Kandinsky, is an indication that he has faith in technological progress rather than evoking a world of nature. Malevich's work evolved in departing from cubism and futurism. Malevich, like Kandinsky, considered as the colors and feelings depicted floating through white space, which for him represented the "empty". His squares and rectangles were new symbols, breaking with the past of painting tools. But these symbols were emblematic of a new spiritual reality.
Malevich described as his supremacist type paint, which means "supreme leader or absolute." Kandinsky and he shared a strong faith in the value of a new art and independent, also shared an interest in mystical philosophies and aspired to discover universal truths.
Ends and beginnings
Malevich claimed to have painted his first black square in 1913. It would be understandable to interpret this radical rejection of representation as the end of painting, and yet for the artist, it was a new beginning. In fact, his art was a radical art in an era of radical change in Russia, and many other artists turned to abstraction at this time. The revolution of 1917 had a dramatic impact on almost all aspects of Russian society, including attitudes towards culture. The art, as understood in Western capitalist societies, was questioned and artists, traditionally regarded as geniuses different from the rest of society, is now represented as "workers". The art could no longer be a luxury for the wealthy, but would be useful, play an integral role in the construction of the new Soviet Russia.
The Russian Alexander Rodchenko would probably have been unfortunate to see his painting "non-objective" described as "a work of art." This work was not conceived as an object of aesthetic contemplation but as an exploration of line and space that could have other applications, for example design and architecture.
Read also Gothic art
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