Art History Abstract art E-Book

Victoria Charles

• Herausgeber: Parkstone International
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 57

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

At the beginning of the 20th-century, trends started to emerge that began to diverge from a naturalistic conception of reality and set out to explore beneath the mere superficial appearance of things. Throughout, the author shows that, regardless of the multitude of stylistic backgrounds in individual Western countries, everywhere, realisation that a work of art was no longer made in the spirit of the old aesthetics of imitation as if taken from nature, but rather rises from its own independent dimension of existence. A work of art is now autonomous. In this book, the author traces and analyses the origins and the history of abstract art as well as iconic movements and groundbreaking visionaries in an original and exciting way.

Leseprobe

Victoria Charles

ABSTRACT ART

© 2024, Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA

© 2024, Parkstone Press USA, New York

© Image-Barwww.image-bar.com

All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world.

Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.

ISBN: 978-1-63919-849-8

Contents

The Origins Of Abstract Art

The Russian Avant-Garde - Exchange Between East And West

Rayonism

Matyushin and Malevich

Pure Painting: Suprematism

Constructivism

De Stijl:The Uniformity of the Painting Surface

The Bauhaus

New York and Abstract Expressionism

Europe and Abstract Expressionism

École de Paris and Tachists

List of Illustrations

Albert Gleizes, Brooklyn Bridge, 1915. Oil on cardboard, 148.1 x 120.4 cm. Private collection.

The Origins Of Abstract Art

With this, the boundaries and the possibilities of artistic expression were explored to the outer limits. The divergent kaleidoscope of languages in the visual arts developed with the resulting extreme confrontations; but the overarching, all-encompassing style, which had crystallised in other centuries, was still missing. A variety of turbulent political developments, economic and social changes, technical advancement, and scientific discoveries, the wars and political tensions, as well as the rapidly advancing industrialisation had, at the close of the 19th century, led to a significant change in he existing view of the world, and to an increasing degree, a transformation of the prevailing ethical constructs. The discoveries in the natural sciences, primarily in chemistry, physics, and medicine had a huge impact on practically every person by providing a higher quality of life.

Visual habits changed with the introduction of the car, radio, and telephone because of the new speeds and the manner of seeing things from great heights, from aircraft, hot air balloons, and from tall buildings.

Scientific research, and the discoveries which resulted, radically altered the way people conceptualised the world around them. In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered Röntgen rays, better known as X-rays, and suddenly, it was possible to see inside of a person. In 1900, Max Planck developed with quantum theory, which contradicted the very basis of traditional physics. In the same year, the world was shaken by the psychoanalytic interpretations of Sigmund Freud, giving further insight into a person’s innermost feelings and motivations. Shortly thereafter, Hermann Minkowski developed the mathematical model to describe the space-time dimension, which in turn led his student, Albert Einstein, to develop his famous theory of general relativity.

Since around 1890, fundamental changes have occurred in the art of Western cultures. These developments were born from the desire for pure, unconditional vision. Over the years, it was no longer visual improvement of an object that was the goal of artistic expression, but rather the depiction of the ‘second reality’. Therefore, that became the goal of artistic creation.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912. Oil on canvas, 147.5 x 89.2 cm. Louise and Walter Arensberg collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

At the beginning of the 20th century, trends started to emerge that began to diverge from a naturalistic conception of reality and set out to explore beneath the mere superficial appearance of things. Regardless of the multitude of stylistic backgrounds in individual Western countries, everywhere, the new realisation that a work of art ought no longer to be made in the spirit of the old aesthetics of imitation, as if taken from nature, but rather rise from its own independent dimension of existence. A work of art is now autonomous.

The inner mission of the artist was no longer to portray or interpret, as in the previous centuries, for photography had perfected that aim. Invented and developed by two Frenchmen, Jacques Mandé Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, between 1822 and 1838, photography increasingly competed with painting as a means to document events and to depict situations. However, it was also helpful to artists as an aid to a broadened vision.

Almost all modernist artistic movements received their momentum from the new visual relationship to the non-stationary object that had suddenly revealed itself to be a mobile and fragmented. Despite the artistic developments of individual countries, all innovative artists were united in the common search for a new graphic style of movement, one which encompassed a sense of autonomous colour creation and an abstract language of independent forms. In 1905, the Fauves, the new wild ones, displayed their subversive explosions of colour at the Salon d’Automne in Paris.

Juan Gris, Still Life (Violin and Ink Pot), 1913. Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 60.5 cm. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

František Kupka, Apathetic — Escape in Two Colours, 1912. Oil on canvas, 211 x 220 cm. Národní Gallery, Prague.

Expressionism started in Germany in 1905 with the founding of the Dresden artist group, Die Brücke. In 1907, Paris dedicated an extensive exhibition to the works of Paul Cézanne. It was at this exhibit that Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso came into contact with the gray shades of Cubism, which rejected the perspective of the Renaissance, fragmented the visual world, and radically separated the world of painting from that of natural phenomenon. The Cubists stemmed from Cezanne with tremendous reinforcements from Picasso, Braque, Leger, Gris. They strove for the geometric constants of form, decomposed natural objects into their form elements, and with these tried to create new objects capable of stirring us by their art qualities alone. It was immaterial to Cubists whether these retained or lost all semblances to natural objects. Marcoussis, Lurcat, Delaunay and Picabia contributed their influence.

In 1911, the Cubists exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon d’Automne. The same year in Paris, Robert Delaunay developed Orphism, which sought to give colours their autonomy. In Italy, Emilio Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded Futurism, a vocal movement that infused the visual world with a net of dynamic energy. His first manifesto was published in February 1909 in Paris. The Futurist painters announced their first manifestos in 1910. In 1909, the Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artists’ Association) was formed in Munich. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) would later emerge from this around the intellectual centre of Kandinsky and Marianne von Werefkin. In early 1912, a touring exhibit of Futurist painters began in Paris that would trigger a veritable avalanche of explosive painting genres in almost all Western-oriented countries.