A History Of Abstract Art

Nonrepresentational or nonobjective art isn't an invention of the 20th century. Several cultures, like the Islamic and Jewish, have developed over the centuries a very high standard of ornamental or non-figurative art forms. Today, abstract art is generally understood to be the kind of art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colors in a nonrepresentational or subjective way.

According to art gurus, in its best form in Western art, an abstract art is one without a distinguishable subject, one which doesn't relate to something external. This type of ornamental art, without figurative illustration happens today in numerous cultures. As the modern abstract movement in sculpture and paining appeared in Europe and North America between 1910 and 1920, 2 approaches have been typically accepted to supply different abstract styles: pictures which have been “abstracted” from nature to the point at which they no longer reflect a traditional fact, and nonobjective, or “pure” art forms, which don't share any reference to fact.

A further distinction tends to be made between abstract art which is geometrical, for example the work of Piet Mondrian, and abstract art that is more fluid,eg in the works of Wassily Kandinsky. It was Kandinsky who once recounted that “of all arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and of colours, and that you are a true poet; this last is essential.”

Abstract art started in the fashionable movements of the late 19th century -Impressionism, neo-Impressionism, and post-Impressionism. These painting styles reduced the seriousness of the original subject matter and started to stress the creative process of painting itself. As artists in Europe at the early 20th century “broke free” from the typical representational rules art forms had to follow, figurative abstractions, or simplifications of reality, where detail is eliminated from familiar objects leaving only the essence or some degree of recognisable form, became preferred enlarging the variances of art forms and view points.

With different abstract styles, like Synchronism and Orphism, abstract art emphasised on color over form, on feelings over logic. The action painting of an American Abstract Expressionist, Jackson Pollock, who dripped, dropped, smeared, spattered, or thrown paint on the canvas, is an excellent example of such a tremendous change in art focus and technique.

After the introduction of technology and the mass function of software programmes that aided folk “play around” with their own photographs, paintings or other art forms, abstract art has gained more acceptance than ever seen. But although being able to draw well isn't a problem any longer, as Kandinsky indicated, being a “true” poet is what still separates the amateur attempts to create abstract art from the artifacts of a real talent.

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