Thank you for your report!
We have received your report and it is currently under investigation by a forum moderator.
Abstract Art
Welcome to the forum.
Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.
Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.
Hang on Studio Wall
This is a Studio member-only feature!
Join our Studio membership and save your favourite Painters Online content, from gallery artwork to step-by-step guides, to your own online mood boards. Create your go-to place for inspiration and learning. Plus, members can also enjoy a range of exciting features including monthly art videos and a digital magazine library.
If you are already a Studio member, simply login to your account.
Not a Studio member? Why not try our free 30-day trial - no commitment, no credit card required
Message
Posted
You can indeed, the corollary of that might be - "but you don't have to", there being no particular virtue, or vice, in abstraction.
I'm not drawn to the abstract in my own practice - but I appreciate it in others' - I've wondered why that might be from time to time. The only well-known abstract artists I don't understand are Howard Hodgkin and just one or two others; I suppose I mean don't like, rather than don't understand. I'm not sure that I've ever found it useful - or possible - to analyse it further than that. So if I'm asked - usually incredulously - what do you see in Pollock, or Rothko, my usual reply is "what don't you see in them?": you have design; colour; complexity, pattern, composition..... the only thing you don't have is photographic representation of objects (or perhaps any attempt to represent objects at all). And then the reply is - because people don't want to admit that what they want is a recognizable house, tree, or person (and I don't see why they should be ashamed of that: there's no reason why they shouldn't) - "but it's so ugly!", usually in relation to Pollock. Even granted that this is true, I don't see that as an artistic criticism - there's a conservative English philosopher named Roger Scruton who tells us that art should be about beauty; but should it? Why should it? This doesn't mean it SHOULDN'T be about beauty, for Heaven's sake, if we can achieve it, but it doesn't have to be. And anyway, there's beauty in complexity and abstraction for many of us.
There was also an English historian, whom many will remember, named A J P Taylor; he was acquainted with the poet Dylan Thomas - and described him as a sponging drunk, not entirely unfairly. Well, Thomas would - according to Taylor: one has to remember Taylor hated him - write his poetry, then remove any readily understandable words from it: which was anathema to Taylor, for whom writing was about precision, and conveying meaning, not obscuring it. I suspect some will think of that when reading the Picasso quote - that it's just a clever-clever trick, a means of baffling the audience with your profundity........ smoke and mirrors.
And up to a point it may be: but the idea of abstraction is to go further and deeper than the literal and obvious; whether it always achieves that is of course something else again. Art is all illusion, though, anyway - every time I paint a tree, while I want it to look like a tree I'm still using shapes and symbols that I know from experience will convince the observer that yes, that's a tree - not only a tree, but a recognizable tree, an oak, an ash, a beech. I do that because I enjoy it, but I could just as easily start with the object and remove any hint of reality from it so that while I would know where it started, others wouldn't. Would that be better or worse than seeking to represent the actual object so that people knew what it was and could perhaps invest their own meaning - because I think you can do that with the most literal interpretation, if it's done well - ie, interestingly, colourfully, evocatively....
Well, you did say Discuss................
Posted
I do like your last paragraph Robert.
I am convinced that abstraction is an integral part of the process of converting the three dimensions we see into the two dimensions we use on the canvas. With practice we arrive at simplified symbols or schemata to replace the confusing complicated mass of information observed with a set of coloured shapes.
This makes painting practical and therefore not only possible to paint but interpretable to the onlooker as representing an identifiable connection with reality that he or she can recognise.
John
Posted
I paint abstracts and I know a number of abstract artists but none of us start out with any traces of reality. What we do have (I like to think) is an understanding of colour, tone composition etc and without this, except by pure fluke or accident, I would suggest that no abstract painting would ever be frame-worthy.
Posted
He's wrong in one major respect - you don't "remove all traces of reality" - you START without reality.
Abstract: - existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence. - relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colours, and textures.Referring to that last line - an abstract drawing/painting doesn't try to "represent reality" - as a sketch of a barn does. An abstract artwork uses shape and colour, etc, to directly be those things - what we see is in our perception of it. A barn is a barn is a barn - providing the artist is moderately skilled, it'll be a barn to anyone who looks at it. But abstract art can be different to each person, even loved or hated by each person... what we see tells more about us than the painter... I feel that to do abstract art you have to start off without reality.. not remove it from the "something". (( Technically, it's impossible to start with something then remove all traces of reality - the art itself is "reality", paint strokes, paint, texture, paper... it's all reality. What you do is start without reality in mind but use reality to draw that "no reality")) Another point to ponder -- is it even possible for a human designed image to be truly "abstract" - we can't help but put our inner self, the subconscious, into even random strokes... they're not truly random. I suppose the most abstract art would be where the artwork medium is directed and defined by so many factors that we have no input in them - random chaos, Brownian motion, gravity, etc. Like oil paint in water - then you dip the paper in on the edge and draw it up and forward through the oily swirls - that would be the closest to real abstraction in art. I've also seen explosive art - small pots of paint with little explosives in them (like large firecrackers) - the artist fitted the paper in a tube around the paints then ignited them by wire from a distance - the resulting explo-painting was more random and abstract that any human-controlled brush could do. Not always good or even worthwhile - but fun and very abstract.
Edited
by DippyDipper
Posted
That's a very beautiful painting - of course one could find reality in it, if one wanted to a) look for it b) theorize about what it might be - say, to take something absurdly simple, cracked cobble-stones. But I don't need any hint as to what it might be, assuming it was anything in particular, to enjoy it.
I also wonder about Picasso's statement - I suppose one could try to be terribly clever and analyse it, but I think I'd rather know if there were a context to it beyond the simple quote. Eg, what did he actually mean by reality - was he referring to the shapes and forms that we all have in our heads? In any event, like a lot of artists' statements, I wonder how much truth there is in it if applied to other artists, as Syd suggests. I'm not familiar with all of Picasso's work - there was so much of it: if there were ever a fountain of creativity, Picasso was it. But from what I do know of it, the reality is very often there; there's Guernica, of course, but many other paintings and drawings, of bulls, owls, figures, painted over at least 70 years and falling into different schools or stages; I can think of a few that I'd struggle to identify, but many of them start with a very definite reality, and abstract from it. And this perhaps - one must be a BIT careful about likening oneself to Picasso! - is why I don't do abstracts; I haven't yet finished exploring that reality so am not ready (even after all these years) to depart from it.
Whereas - if I took the approach of Syd and Michael, I wouldn't be starting from that premise at all: the most that could be said if one wanted to criticize them (and Heaven forfend...) is that they're not aware of the reality from which they're abstracting, but I doubt that's true; they just have a talent I know I don't have to create a picture from a void.... not entirely, because they have colour, and brushes, and they shape whatever we do in their own way; but certainly it would seem they don't need the framework in real things that I need, and perhaps Picasso needed....
Going back to Hodgkin, whose work I've already said I don't like or understand, he did once explain that while he wasn't painting specific objects, on occasion he painted the impression they made - eg, a shadow, a shape (which of course figurative artists do as well, in all sorts of ways). So perhaps he too requires a reality to work from; it just isn't necessary for the viewer to know what it is. For DippyDipper, though - you "start without reality"; I hadn't really thought about that before, and perhaps - although unconsciously - assumed that abstract artists actually DID abstract from a real thing. Hmmmmm - as one who has never painted an abstract in his life (not quite true: but it was long, long ago) these are unfamiliar waters.
Posted
These so called tectiforms are prevalent in paleolithic cave art. Below images are from the Castillo cave in Spain. Designs such as these are found in all of the painted caves. Sometimes rectangular patterns have been filled in with different earth colours. (From Prehistoric Cave Paintings by Rebecca B. Marcus, 1968). Do they depict the spirit world, or what? /Mats
Edited
by MWinther
Posted
<blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"></blockquote>Excerpt from 'The Surrealist Movement' (here) :
<blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;">
An exchange between Masson and Matisse in 1923 underscored the fundamental differences between the early Surrealists and other Modernists of their time:
Masson: "I begin without an image or plan in mind, but just draw or paint rapidly according to my impulses. Gradually, in the marks I make, I see suggestions of figures or objects. I encourage these to emerge, trying to bring out their implications even as I now consciously try to give order to the composition."
Matisse: "That's curious. With me it's just the reverse. I always start with something--a chair, a table--but as the work progresses I become less conscious of it. By the end, I am hardly aware of the subject with which I started."[7]</blockquote>
Edited
by MWinther
Posted
Could it be board games? The lower image looks very much like a Ludo board. The Aztecs played Patolli, which was very similar. The Indians play Pachisi. The ancient Egyptians played Senet. People have always incised board game structures onto walls, into the bedrock, onto temple walls, etc. "In the ancient temple at Kurna in Egypt (c. 1400 B.C.) there are more than 70 board games painstakingly carved into the roofing slabs, dating from different epochs in history" (here). People have always viewed board games as divine, because the dice follow the will of the gods. Did paleolithic man play a version of Ludo?
Mats