>it’s entirely possible that a lot of abstract contemporary art is frankly not great, because it tries to imitate Picasso’s pure linear bull without going through the intermediary bovines.
>but the best abstract art actually teases out interesting aesthetic properties and is therefore actually good.
I'm going to assume, from these two sentences, that you consider the bull to be great abstract art. But I disagree with that assessment: the bull is not just reduced to a pure linear form, it's reduced to a vague linear form. It could be a number of horned quadrupedes, with no distinctive feature. Information is lost, rather than drawn down to it's essence.
I also contest that "The people claiming these things usually don’t have a lot of knowledge about art history". As you show in the devolution of various artists, one can see abstract art as a kind of navel gazing, where the artists starts mistaking the mean of it's art with it's purpose. It's not a behaviour limited to painting either. Some theater playwright, feeling there's no more point of doing yet one more play with dialogues, characters, story or costumes, will have actors silently perform meaningless movements naked on scene for 2 hours and a half. Some programmers, bored with usefuls programming languages, will start conceiving & toying with things that read like "++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++."
I can understand why/how some people, after reaching a degree of mastery of a given field, start substituting the means to the end, and researching ever-increasing mastery of said means. But I refuse to pretend it's anything but meaningless navel gazing, or that it should be encouraged.
And finally there's also a personal, and a bit childish, dislike for the unfalsifiability of abstract art. As I was looking at an exposition with a friend who enjoy these much more than I do, all he could give, on pieces he liked, was "I like the vibe it gives". Which is probably the best way to enjoy it, relying on pure gut feeling. It also means there's no bad abstract art. For any drivel produced, hey, maybe there's someone out there that will see it and go "oh yeah that's a good feel". And if there's no bad abstract art, is there good abstract art?
I loved this post! The irrational anger that some people feel about abstract art has always struck me as a sign of a lack of empathy and imagination. Abstract art isn't everyone's thing, no big deal. But the absolute venom some people have towards it is a red flag to me.
I enjoy the read! What really resonates with me personally is the artists' synesthetic concept of drawing. I know artists such as Kandinsky perceive sounds/chords when seeing different colors. Artists like Mondrian, Beckmann, and Klint purposefully assign mysticism and spiritual significance to each color, and they view the process of creating abstract drawings as a way to achieve a higher form of spirituality.
I'm not sure if they are synesthetes, but I find it incredible. Personally, I particularly think that the works of Kandinsky and Klint convey an audio quality, very much like the colors I see when I listen to Scriabin's piano music.
In that sense, it's definitely not just randomly dropping paints! I think the drawing process and the color scheme actually convey much significance to the artists themselves---the drawing process itself is like a ritual mapping color/shape to spiritual significance!
I think Pollock's random canvases are kind of experiments: "if I, artist, do this, will it be art?". He (and many other artists) tried to discover what art is. Now we understand that art is a cluster without strict formal definition, but they lived many years in the past when this idea wasn't so obvious.
This post was a great excuse to look at some excellent art, thank you! I feel like abstract catches more flak than other styles mostly because it doesn't have much to fall back on? Abstraction is at its best when it 'captures' the viewer while using far less than a viewer could ever expect to be captured by. It's weird that a network of squiggles, or a grid with three colored squares could ever create an emotion or add a palpable, unique aesthetic to a painting, but they definitely can. Trouble is that when they don't, then all you've got is a weird, comparatively simple painting, touting itself as high art. Once it fails to woo them, abstract art doesn't give people excuses to think it's still great, the way that, say, the Mona Lisa does.
Thank you, really good, lots of excellent examples. My most recent review was of an abstract artist in Malta, her work reflects on the local environment and, as you say, seeing it in the flesh is quite a different world to a digitalised version because the materials and the treatment of them is what it’s about rather than the replication of an image. She and her agent encounter the hesitancy about abstract art in spades which is a shame as it’s really great stuff. Perhaps they’re pioneers of change!
Children start to draw abstract lines/figures that we call in french « gribouillis » and, then, they get to draw figuratives pictures that represent what they see. I think, as a parent, we are very happy when our child start drawing humanoid body with the house and the sun. « Abstract art to figurative art pipeline » ;) I am not calling what every children do « art », I just find the brain development amazing. I am sure many neuropsychologist study brain development and drawing.
Hyperealist painting is that the absolute goal of our brain? I think it is not the only one. We like poems, not only bibliographies.
It is sure that abstract art is more complexe than the gribouillis of a child. But, are they letting the child in them come back?
Or being able to do abstract art you need the capacity of abstraction and that is something we get in adolescence? I dont know
I just have one problem with your otherwise wonderful piece here. It seems like the implicatin and your defense of these artists (and are they the "top" abstract artists? No women? I can think of several....) is that they were figurists first. I do not think that is a great defense of abstract art, nor that it has to come first. Do you feel artists need to prove something? How do we judge these abstract works on their own? Do people have to know art history to do so? Many of us do, but I do not think that is a great criterion or requirement.
I think you’ve set up a bit of a straw man here, in using the examples of early abstract art as representative, when in actuality more criticism is put toward post-60s art, which indeed “could be done by my kid.” I’m talking about minimalism, conceptual art, etc.
Abstract is also way too broad a label here and I wouldn’t put Kandinsky and Rothko in the same category, in terms of types of art laypeople critique. Rothko gets much more criticism than Kandinsky, and justly.
Interesting and well put, thank you. But, as you point out, this was culturally specific - an early 20th century thing. It's not something that we see in the career of, say, Rubens. No doubt it was inspired, at least in part, by various other things going on at that time eg: the rise of photography (in the field of representational art or 'art'), changes in architectural and musical styles (note that both architecture and music are always 'abstract' art) and experiments in literature. Not only was there a zeitgeist that helped, but there was also an educated audience for these new experiments - and moreover the artists had earned the trust of their audience by having developed over time (as you have shown). But all of that has changed now, surely? Modern music has tunes; modern writing is not Ulysses, it's pretty conventional; architecture has become post-modern. People doing abstract art *now* are (perhaps?) like people writing serialist music now: dabbling in a outdated form that was regarded as a bit of dead end. Or else, perhaps the sceptics have a point?
I don't claim anything even near expertise, but I wonder why Miro gets no mention in the article or as far as I've seen in the comments. I'll be glad to be enlightened.
I visited the Miro retrospective at the Guggenheim in the '80s with an open mind neither aligned favorably or not with regards to abstraction. I left favorably inclined, but the painting that made the largest, longest lasting impression on me was the first piece in the show - The Farm, which would be a perfect way to begin with using him as an example in line with your top five. I don't appreciate all abstract art that bears the title "great", but I have found that the works which I most appreciate have certain similarities to each other.
The transition from figurative to abstract art was certainly more of a gradual evolution than a sudden replacement. It's sad that so many people don't realize this, and can't appreciate any value in abstract art.
Still, this is one area where I'm inclined to have some sympathy for the philistines, especially if we're talking about modern and contemporary art overall rather than strictly abstract art. A couple thoughts, not necessarily in order:
-What was bold and inventive at the time is not necessarily so today. Basic one point perspective was a world changing, mind blowing innovation when Brunelleschi did it, then it became commonplace, and then eventually it became in some sense obsolete once photography was invented. So while it makes perfect sense that by the turn of the 20th century people were ready for something different, something that did away with realism or even the entire third dimension, I also wonder if in the 21st century it's healthy for people to feel a similar fatigue with abstract art, a similar hunger for something new. Malevich's later work is interesting to think about in this regard. Those colorful geometric shapes are fascinating, but they're also pretty similar to images the average person can make themselves now in Google Docs or GIMP and things like that, not to mention pieces of modern artwork they've already seen.
-Related to the above, I also wonder if the people producing and enjoying abstract art today are really on par with Picasso. There isn't the same risk, the same novelty, and as the post mentions, it's possible that training in more traditional art is actually a necessary step to creating truly good abstract art. I mean, can you look at Maurizio Cattelan or Pierre Brassau, and then tell me they're really as good as Picasso? That nothing has gone wrong whatsoever in modern art? And, I haven't looked into this much, but there is some money laundering going on too, right?
-I think there's something of a false dichotomy between abstract and figurative art here. Not everyone who criticizes abstract or modern art believes all art should represent something real, or that it should be drawn in traditional styles. Almost everyone has had an aesthetic reaction to an image, even if that's something not exactly three dimensional, like a rug for example. (I mean rugs have three dimensions obviously, but they don't usually depict any realism or perspective.) Or something that is fully three dimensional, but not considered art, like a car, a pair of socks, or a bong. I think part of the problem with modern art is that it's often not evoking a unique aesthetic or emotional reaction in its viewers, and people naturally have a tendency to get resentful when this failure is blamed entirely on themselves rather than on the artist. I think really a bigger cause of strife here than the figurative-abstract dichotomy, which is kind of a distraction in my view, is the dichotomy between fine art and decorative art. To analogize a little, people don't care if a song is abstract or not but they do care if it sounds good, so overly experimental music which subverts common aesthetic standards or ignores normal time keeping rules is going to rub people the wrong way, and likewise, they don't care if a building is realistic, they just want it to look good. The common people aren't clamoring for architecture parlante, or for lifelike murals on every wall, or for every pillar to be a caryatid, do you see what I mean? Now there's a fine line to walk here, since if we did away with all experimental or difficult art, leaving only what was palatable to the least cultured, we might be left in a world with nothing but tacky knick knacks and Thomas Kinkade paintings, which is almost too bleak to contemplate, but it seems to me that we're currently moving too far in the opposite direction, where the surest way for an artist to be taken seriously and make money is to produce art which is designed to confuse and repel the average person.
-I think there's something to what TasDeBoisVert said about abstract art being navel gazing. Not that it's necessarily all true (I wouldn't put it in nearly such strong terms myself), but I think it's a plausible claim to an extent because I've noticed a general tendency towards artistic communities of any sort to grow more self referential and deconstructive over time, not necessarily in a good way, and certainly not necessarily limited to high art, or even art at all. Even boards for fan fiction, memes, or anime discussion follow a similar pattern, where people who overindulge in a certain form of entertainment end up prizing novelty over quality, and start to resonate more with art that comments on art than with art that comments on life. You can see something similar even on Twitter (excuse me, it goes by X now) where over time more and more people start talking about "ratios," referencing older tweets (oops, I mean xeets), commenting on meta dynamics of twitter (sorry, x), and other things absolutely baffling and irrelevant to those not already addicted to twitter (ok I give up, I'm just gonna call it twitter from now on). I think it's possible in theory and likely true in reality to some degree that the art world could be vulnerable to similar issues. As for the bulls, I think they're best around the middle of the sequence, when simplification has highlighted the most essential aspects, but before oversimplification has destroyed them. Maybe art as a whole is heading down the same path?
So to summarize, I think it's important to educate people about the origins of abstract art, and I think this post is a great place to direct people with certain basic misconceptions, but I also think that there are bigger, more interesting questions beyond this.
I just recently saw "The Old Fisherman" by Picasso (it is in the Montserrat Museum near Barcelona). It is a very, very good classical painting. It is probably as good as many masterpieces of old. Google it to see what I mean. But he painted it when he was 14! At 14, he had already reached the peak of what realism could give him as an artist. No wonder he went exploring and looking for new, crazy lands in this ocean of art.
It shows when a person is trying to represent something without ever having experienced it. This applies to painting, writing, music, and lots of things.
As a student of art, way back, I totally got Picasso. Mondrian, not so much, but have to admit that his New York City jumps around, just like the real place.
What an interesting article! I’m fond of abstract art, in person, but had no idea that so many of the early practitioners had previously worked in a representational style. I enjoyed reading.
I totally agree with what you’ve written and I love the artists you chose to represent. I love Kandinsky and I had no idea about pollock’s early work. It seems to me that every movement...for example mannerism or Impressionism...can be seen as artists growing tired of the current thing and longing to put their own spin on it. Artists are always trying to innovate. Thank you for the insightful, thought provoking read!
>it’s entirely possible that a lot of abstract contemporary art is frankly not great, because it tries to imitate Picasso’s pure linear bull without going through the intermediary bovines.
>but the best abstract art actually teases out interesting aesthetic properties and is therefore actually good.
I'm going to assume, from these two sentences, that you consider the bull to be great abstract art. But I disagree with that assessment: the bull is not just reduced to a pure linear form, it's reduced to a vague linear form. It could be a number of horned quadrupedes, with no distinctive feature. Information is lost, rather than drawn down to it's essence.
I also contest that "The people claiming these things usually don’t have a lot of knowledge about art history". As you show in the devolution of various artists, one can see abstract art as a kind of navel gazing, where the artists starts mistaking the mean of it's art with it's purpose. It's not a behaviour limited to painting either. Some theater playwright, feeling there's no more point of doing yet one more play with dialogues, characters, story or costumes, will have actors silently perform meaningless movements naked on scene for 2 hours and a half. Some programmers, bored with usefuls programming languages, will start conceiving & toying with things that read like "++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++."
I can understand why/how some people, after reaching a degree of mastery of a given field, start substituting the means to the end, and researching ever-increasing mastery of said means. But I refuse to pretend it's anything but meaningless navel gazing, or that it should be encouraged.
And finally there's also a personal, and a bit childish, dislike for the unfalsifiability of abstract art. As I was looking at an exposition with a friend who enjoy these much more than I do, all he could give, on pieces he liked, was "I like the vibe it gives". Which is probably the best way to enjoy it, relying on pure gut feeling. It also means there's no bad abstract art. For any drivel produced, hey, maybe there's someone out there that will see it and go "oh yeah that's a good feel". And if there's no bad abstract art, is there good abstract art?
I loved this post! The irrational anger that some people feel about abstract art has always struck me as a sign of a lack of empathy and imagination. Abstract art isn't everyone's thing, no big deal. But the absolute venom some people have towards it is a red flag to me.
I enjoy the read! What really resonates with me personally is the artists' synesthetic concept of drawing. I know artists such as Kandinsky perceive sounds/chords when seeing different colors. Artists like Mondrian, Beckmann, and Klint purposefully assign mysticism and spiritual significance to each color, and they view the process of creating abstract drawings as a way to achieve a higher form of spirituality.
I'm not sure if they are synesthetes, but I find it incredible. Personally, I particularly think that the works of Kandinsky and Klint convey an audio quality, very much like the colors I see when I listen to Scriabin's piano music.
In that sense, it's definitely not just randomly dropping paints! I think the drawing process and the color scheme actually convey much significance to the artists themselves---the drawing process itself is like a ritual mapping color/shape to spiritual significance!
I think Pollock's random canvases are kind of experiments: "if I, artist, do this, will it be art?". He (and many other artists) tried to discover what art is. Now we understand that art is a cluster without strict formal definition, but they lived many years in the past when this idea wasn't so obvious.
This post was a great excuse to look at some excellent art, thank you! I feel like abstract catches more flak than other styles mostly because it doesn't have much to fall back on? Abstraction is at its best when it 'captures' the viewer while using far less than a viewer could ever expect to be captured by. It's weird that a network of squiggles, or a grid with three colored squares could ever create an emotion or add a palpable, unique aesthetic to a painting, but they definitely can. Trouble is that when they don't, then all you've got is a weird, comparatively simple painting, touting itself as high art. Once it fails to woo them, abstract art doesn't give people excuses to think it's still great, the way that, say, the Mona Lisa does.
Thank you, really good, lots of excellent examples. My most recent review was of an abstract artist in Malta, her work reflects on the local environment and, as you say, seeing it in the flesh is quite a different world to a digitalised version because the materials and the treatment of them is what it’s about rather than the replication of an image. She and her agent encounter the hesitancy about abstract art in spades which is a shame as it’s really great stuff. Perhaps they’re pioneers of change!
Children start to draw abstract lines/figures that we call in french « gribouillis » and, then, they get to draw figuratives pictures that represent what they see. I think, as a parent, we are very happy when our child start drawing humanoid body with the house and the sun. « Abstract art to figurative art pipeline » ;) I am not calling what every children do « art », I just find the brain development amazing. I am sure many neuropsychologist study brain development and drawing.
Hyperealist painting is that the absolute goal of our brain? I think it is not the only one. We like poems, not only bibliographies.
It is sure that abstract art is more complexe than the gribouillis of a child. But, are they letting the child in them come back?
Or being able to do abstract art you need the capacity of abstraction and that is something we get in adolescence? I dont know
I just have one problem with your otherwise wonderful piece here. It seems like the implicatin and your defense of these artists (and are they the "top" abstract artists? No women? I can think of several....) is that they were figurists first. I do not think that is a great defense of abstract art, nor that it has to come first. Do you feel artists need to prove something? How do we judge these abstract works on their own? Do people have to know art history to do so? Many of us do, but I do not think that is a great criterion or requirement.
I think you’ve set up a bit of a straw man here, in using the examples of early abstract art as representative, when in actuality more criticism is put toward post-60s art, which indeed “could be done by my kid.” I’m talking about minimalism, conceptual art, etc.
Abstract is also way too broad a label here and I wouldn’t put Kandinsky and Rothko in the same category, in terms of types of art laypeople critique. Rothko gets much more criticism than Kandinsky, and justly.
Interesting and well put, thank you. But, as you point out, this was culturally specific - an early 20th century thing. It's not something that we see in the career of, say, Rubens. No doubt it was inspired, at least in part, by various other things going on at that time eg: the rise of photography (in the field of representational art or 'art'), changes in architectural and musical styles (note that both architecture and music are always 'abstract' art) and experiments in literature. Not only was there a zeitgeist that helped, but there was also an educated audience for these new experiments - and moreover the artists had earned the trust of their audience by having developed over time (as you have shown). But all of that has changed now, surely? Modern music has tunes; modern writing is not Ulysses, it's pretty conventional; architecture has become post-modern. People doing abstract art *now* are (perhaps?) like people writing serialist music now: dabbling in a outdated form that was regarded as a bit of dead end. Or else, perhaps the sceptics have a point?
I don't claim anything even near expertise, but I wonder why Miro gets no mention in the article or as far as I've seen in the comments. I'll be glad to be enlightened.
I visited the Miro retrospective at the Guggenheim in the '80s with an open mind neither aligned favorably or not with regards to abstraction. I left favorably inclined, but the painting that made the largest, longest lasting impression on me was the first piece in the show - The Farm, which would be a perfect way to begin with using him as an example in line with your top five. I don't appreciate all abstract art that bears the title "great", but I have found that the works which I most appreciate have certain similarities to each other.
Thanks for a truly great essay and lesson.
The transition from figurative to abstract art was certainly more of a gradual evolution than a sudden replacement. It's sad that so many people don't realize this, and can't appreciate any value in abstract art.
Still, this is one area where I'm inclined to have some sympathy for the philistines, especially if we're talking about modern and contemporary art overall rather than strictly abstract art. A couple thoughts, not necessarily in order:
-What was bold and inventive at the time is not necessarily so today. Basic one point perspective was a world changing, mind blowing innovation when Brunelleschi did it, then it became commonplace, and then eventually it became in some sense obsolete once photography was invented. So while it makes perfect sense that by the turn of the 20th century people were ready for something different, something that did away with realism or even the entire third dimension, I also wonder if in the 21st century it's healthy for people to feel a similar fatigue with abstract art, a similar hunger for something new. Malevich's later work is interesting to think about in this regard. Those colorful geometric shapes are fascinating, but they're also pretty similar to images the average person can make themselves now in Google Docs or GIMP and things like that, not to mention pieces of modern artwork they've already seen.
-Related to the above, I also wonder if the people producing and enjoying abstract art today are really on par with Picasso. There isn't the same risk, the same novelty, and as the post mentions, it's possible that training in more traditional art is actually a necessary step to creating truly good abstract art. I mean, can you look at Maurizio Cattelan or Pierre Brassau, and then tell me they're really as good as Picasso? That nothing has gone wrong whatsoever in modern art? And, I haven't looked into this much, but there is some money laundering going on too, right?
-I think there's something of a false dichotomy between abstract and figurative art here. Not everyone who criticizes abstract or modern art believes all art should represent something real, or that it should be drawn in traditional styles. Almost everyone has had an aesthetic reaction to an image, even if that's something not exactly three dimensional, like a rug for example. (I mean rugs have three dimensions obviously, but they don't usually depict any realism or perspective.) Or something that is fully three dimensional, but not considered art, like a car, a pair of socks, or a bong. I think part of the problem with modern art is that it's often not evoking a unique aesthetic or emotional reaction in its viewers, and people naturally have a tendency to get resentful when this failure is blamed entirely on themselves rather than on the artist. I think really a bigger cause of strife here than the figurative-abstract dichotomy, which is kind of a distraction in my view, is the dichotomy between fine art and decorative art. To analogize a little, people don't care if a song is abstract or not but they do care if it sounds good, so overly experimental music which subverts common aesthetic standards or ignores normal time keeping rules is going to rub people the wrong way, and likewise, they don't care if a building is realistic, they just want it to look good. The common people aren't clamoring for architecture parlante, or for lifelike murals on every wall, or for every pillar to be a caryatid, do you see what I mean? Now there's a fine line to walk here, since if we did away with all experimental or difficult art, leaving only what was palatable to the least cultured, we might be left in a world with nothing but tacky knick knacks and Thomas Kinkade paintings, which is almost too bleak to contemplate, but it seems to me that we're currently moving too far in the opposite direction, where the surest way for an artist to be taken seriously and make money is to produce art which is designed to confuse and repel the average person.
-I think there's something to what TasDeBoisVert said about abstract art being navel gazing. Not that it's necessarily all true (I wouldn't put it in nearly such strong terms myself), but I think it's a plausible claim to an extent because I've noticed a general tendency towards artistic communities of any sort to grow more self referential and deconstructive over time, not necessarily in a good way, and certainly not necessarily limited to high art, or even art at all. Even boards for fan fiction, memes, or anime discussion follow a similar pattern, where people who overindulge in a certain form of entertainment end up prizing novelty over quality, and start to resonate more with art that comments on art than with art that comments on life. You can see something similar even on Twitter (excuse me, it goes by X now) where over time more and more people start talking about "ratios," referencing older tweets (oops, I mean xeets), commenting on meta dynamics of twitter (sorry, x), and other things absolutely baffling and irrelevant to those not already addicted to twitter (ok I give up, I'm just gonna call it twitter from now on). I think it's possible in theory and likely true in reality to some degree that the art world could be vulnerable to similar issues. As for the bulls, I think they're best around the middle of the sequence, when simplification has highlighted the most essential aspects, but before oversimplification has destroyed them. Maybe art as a whole is heading down the same path?
So to summarize, I think it's important to educate people about the origins of abstract art, and I think this post is a great place to direct people with certain basic misconceptions, but I also think that there are bigger, more interesting questions beyond this.
A very good post, thank you.
I just recently saw "The Old Fisherman" by Picasso (it is in the Montserrat Museum near Barcelona). It is a very, very good classical painting. It is probably as good as many masterpieces of old. Google it to see what I mean. But he painted it when he was 14! At 14, he had already reached the peak of what realism could give him as an artist. No wonder he went exploring and looking for new, crazy lands in this ocean of art.
Plus, the whole deal with photography, of course.
Good Modern Art presentation.
It shows when a person is trying to represent something without ever having experienced it. This applies to painting, writing, music, and lots of things.
As a student of art, way back, I totally got Picasso. Mondrian, not so much, but have to admit that his New York City jumps around, just like the real place.
What an interesting article! I’m fond of abstract art, in person, but had no idea that so many of the early practitioners had previously worked in a representational style. I enjoyed reading.
I totally agree with what you’ve written and I love the artists you chose to represent. I love Kandinsky and I had no idea about pollock’s early work. It seems to me that every movement...for example mannerism or Impressionism...can be seen as artists growing tired of the current thing and longing to put their own spin on it. Artists are always trying to innovate. Thank you for the insightful, thought provoking read!