Abstract art is what? Abstractionism in painting: representatives and works

People tend to put everything in order, find a place and give a name. This is especially difficult to do in art, where talent is a category that does not allow you to cram a person or a whole direction into the cell of a general ordered catalog. Abstract art is just such a concept. About him argue for more than a century.

Abstractio - distraction, separation

Expressive means of painting - this is the line, shape, color. If you separate them from unnecessary values, links and associations, they become ideal, absolute. Plato also spoke of the true, correct beauty of straight lines and geometric figures. The lack of analogy depicted with real objects opens the way for the influence on the viewer of something else unknown that is inaccessible to ordinary consciousness. The artistic value of the picture itself must be higher than the importance of what it depicts, because a talented painting gives rise to a new sensual world.

So reasoned artists reformers. For them, abstract art is a way of searching for new artistic methods that have unprecedented power.

New century - new art

Art critics argue about what abstract art is. Historians of art with a passion defend their point of view, filling the white spots in the history of abstract painting. But most agreed with the time of his birth: in 1910 in Munich, Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) exhibited his work "Untitled. (First Abstract Watercolor). "

Soon Kandinsky in the book "On the spiritual in art" proclaimed the philosophy of a new trend.

The main thing is the impression

Do not think that abstractionism in painting arose from scratch. Impressionists showed a new meaning of color and light in painting. At the same time, the role of the linear perspective, the exact observance of proportions, etc. became less important. Under the influence of this style were all the leading masters of that time.

Landscapes of James Whistler (1834-1903), his "nocturnes" and "symphonies", are surprisingly reminiscent of the masterpieces of abstract expressionist artists. By the way, Whistler and Kandinsky possessed a synaesthesia - the ability to impart color to the sound of a certain property. And the colors on their works sound like music.

In the works of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), especially in the late period of his work, the form of the object is modified, acquiring expressiveness of a special kind. Not without reason, Cezanne is called the precursor of Cubism.

General forward movement

Abstract art in art took shape in a single stream in the course of the general progress of civilization. The environment of intellectuals was excited by new theories in philosophy and psychology, artists sought the connection between the spiritual world and the material, personality and cosmos. Thus, Kandinsky, in his justifications of the theory of abstraction, relies on ideas expressed in the theosophical books of Elena Blavatsky (1831-1891).

Fundamental discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology have changed the concept of the world, the power of human influence on nature. Technical progress reduced the earth's dimensions, the scale of the universe.

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

Abstraction is a revolution. And talented people with sensitive mentalities felt: the time of social change is coming. They were not mistaken. The twentieth century began and continued with unprecedented upheaval in the life of the whole civilization.

Founding fathers

Along with Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Dutchman Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) were at the sources of the new current.

Who does not know Malevich's Black Square? Since its inception in 1915, he excites both professionals and lay people. Some see a dead end in it, others - a simple shock. But all the work of the master speaks about the discovery of new horizons in art, about moving forward.

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

The same influence has had on the next generation of creativity Mondrian. Its neoplasticism is based on the generalization of form and careful use of open, undistorted color. Direct black horizontals and verticals on a white background form a grid with cells of different sizes, and cells are filled with local colors. The expressiveness of the master's canvases prompted the artists to do their creative thinking, then to blind copying. Abstractionists artists and designers use when creating quite real objects. Especially often, the 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. Especially organically, these ideas have blended into the turbulent era of the birth and formation of a new social order. The theory of Suprematism was transformed by Lyubov Popova (1889-1924) and Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) into the practice of constructivism, which had a special impact on the new architecture. The objects built in that era are still being studied by the architects of the whole world.

Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) became the founders of rayism or districtism. They tried to reflect the bizarre interweaving of rays and light planes emitted by everything that fills the surrounding world.

Alexandra Esther (1882-1949), David Burlyuk (1882-1967), Olga Rozanova (1886-1918), Nadezhda Udaltsova (1886-1961) participated in the movement of the cubo-futurists, who were engaged in poetry as well.

Abstractionism in painting has always been an expression of extreme ideas. These ideas irritated the power of the totalitarian state. In the USSR, and later in fascist Germany, ideologists quickly determined what kind of art would be understandable and necessary for the people, and by the beginning of the 1940s the center for the development of abstractionism had moved to America.

One-stream loops

Abstraction 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 fine arts, the forms and forms of this direction are particularly diverse.

One can single out the following types of abstract art in painting:

- 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), Orphist Robert Delone (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 the linear perspective and the illusion of depth, solving the question of the interrelationships of geometric forms (Malevich, Mondrian, elementary painter Theo van Dusburg (1883-1931), Joseph Albers (1888-1976), follower of the op-art Victor Vasarely (1906-1997)).

- Expressive abstractionism - the process of creating a painting is especially important here, sometimes the very method of applying a paint, like the one for tashists (from tache - a spot) (Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), tachist George Mathieu (1921-2012), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Robert Motherwell (1912-1956)).

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

Abstract art is far in the past?

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

Information: one of the most expensive paintings in 2006 sold for more than 140 million dollars. It is called "No. 5,1948", the author is Jackson Pollock, an expressive abstractionist.