Abstract art
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Kazimir Malevich, Black square 1915

Abstract art is art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses colour and form in a non-representational way.^[1] In the very early 20th century, the term was more often used to describe art, such as Cubist and Futurist art, that depicts real forms in a simplified or rather reduced way—keeping only an allusion to the original natural subject. Such paintings were often claimed to capture something of the depicted objects' immutable intrinsic qualities rather than its external appearance. (See abstraction.) The more precise terms, "non-figurative art," "non-objective art," and "non-representational art" avoid any possible ambiguity.

History

Wassily Kandinsky, On White 2, 1923

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The term Abstract Art was coined in the 20th century (ca. 1911) to describe a cultural phenomenon that occurred simultaneously throughout western culture. For this reason, it isn't clear who the first Modernist abstract painter was: it could have been Robert Delaunay in Paris; or the American Arthur Dove; the Czech František Kupka; the Russians Wassily Kandinsky or Kasimir Malevich; the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian; Balla in Italy or many others. Rather than an invention of an individual, abstraction in Modernist painting appeared as a cultural phenomenon.

Non-objective art is not an invention of the 20th century — that humans have made non-objective art since they first drew pictures in the dirt. In the Islamic religion the depiction of humans is not allowed, and consequently the Islamic culture developed a high standard of decorative arts. Calligraphy is also a form of non-figurative art.

Constructivism (1915) and De Stijl (1917) were parallel movements which took abstraction into the three dimensions of sculpture and architecture. The Constructivists believed that the artist's work was a revolutionary activity, to express the aspirations of the people, using machine production, graphic and photographic means of communication. Some of the American Abstract expressionists are purely abstract and include: Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, and Hans Hofmann. Op Art (1962) and Minimalism (1965) were two recent idioms.

Gallery

Barnett Newman, Onement1

Jackson Pollock, Composition no. 16

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10

Theo van Doesburg Counter-Composition V

References

1. ^  Compton, Susan (1978). The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books 1912-16. The British Library. ISBN 0714103969. 
2. ^  Stangos, Nikos (editor) (revised 1981). Concepts of Modern Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500201962. 
3. ^  Gooding, Mel (2001). Abstract Art (Movements in Modern Art series). Tate Publishing. ISBN 1854373021. 

See also

• Abstract expressionism
• Action painting
• Art history
• Art periods
• American Abstract Artists
• De Stijl
• Geometric abstraction
• Hard-edge
• History of painting
• Lyrical Abstraction
• Western painting
• Piet (programming language), an esoteric programming language whose programs are bitmaps that look like abstract art, named after the Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian

External links

• Scientific inquiry in modern art
• American Abstract Artists