Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition

which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. [1]
Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned
by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts
of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of
describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a
need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking
place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew
their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual
preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time.[2]
Abstract art, nonfigurative art, nonobjective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely
related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning.
Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure
from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a
continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be
abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive.
Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are
conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any
reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to
find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually
exclusive. But figurative and representational (or realistic) art often contains partial
abstraction.
Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Among the very
numerous art movements that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism in
which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism, which
blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities depicted.
Abstraction in early art and many cultures
Main articles: Prehistoric art and Eastern art history
Much of the art of earlier cultures signs and marks on pottery, textiles, and inscriptions and
paintings on rock were simple, geometric and linear forms which might have had a
symbolic or decorative purpose.[5] It is at this level of visual meaning that abstract art
communicates. One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy or Islamic calligraphy
without being able to read it.
19th century
Main articles: Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Expressionism
Three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were
Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was
advanced during the 19th century. Patronage from the church diminished and private

patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists. [citation
needed]

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874), Detroit
Institute of Arts. A near abstraction, in 1877 Whistler sued the art critic John Ruskin for libel
after the critic condemned this painting. Ruskin accused Whistler of "ask[ing] two hundred
guineas for throwing a pot of paint in the public's face." [6][7]
Early intimations of a new art had been made by James McNeill Whistler who, in his painting
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The falling Rocket, (1872), placed greater emphasis on visual
sensation than the depiction of objects. An objective interest in what is seen, can be discerned
from the paintings of John Constable, J M W Turner, Camille Corot and from them to the
Impressionists who continued the plein air painting of the Barbizon school. Paul Czanne had
begun as an Impressionist but his aim to make a logical construction of reality based on a
view from a single point,[8] with modulated colour in flat areas became the basis of a new
visual art, later to be developed into Cubism by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Expressionist painters explored the bold use of paint surface, drawing distortions and
exaggerations, and intense color. Expressionists produced emotionally charged paintings that
were reactions to and perceptions of contemporary experience; and reactions to
Impressionism and other more conservative directions of late 19th-century painting. The
Expressionists drastically changed the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of
psychological states of being. Although artists like Edvard Munch and James Ensor drew
influences principally from the work of the Post-Impressionists they were instrumental to the
advent of abstraction in the 20th century.

Henri Matisse, The Yellow Curtain, 1915. With his Fauvist color and drawing Matisse comes
very close to pure abstraction.
Additionally in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe mysticism and early modernist
religious philosophy as expressed by theosophist Mme. Blavatsky had a profound impact on
pioneer geometric artists like Wassily Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint. The mystical teaching
of Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky also had an important influence on the early
formations of the geometric abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the early
20th century.[9]
20th century
Main articles: Western painting, Fauvism and Cubism
Post Impressionism as practiced by Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh and
Paul Czanne had an enormous impact on 20th-century art and led to the advent of 20thcentury abstraction. The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Czanne, Gauguin, and Seurat
was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri
Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, Andr
Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild",
multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism.
With his expressive use of color and his free and imaginative drawing Henri Matisse comes
very close to pure abstraction in French Window at Collioure (1914), View of Notre-Dame
(1914), and The Yellow Curtain from 1915. The raw language of color as developed by the
Fauves directly influenced another pioneer of abstraction Wassily Kandinsky (see
illustration).
Although Cubism ultimately depends upon subject matter, it became, along with Fauvism, the
art movement that directly opened the door to abstraction in the 20th century. Pablo Picasso
made his first cubist paintings based on Czanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be
reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(1907), Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive

brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal
masks and his own new Cubist inventions. Analytic cubism was jointly developed by Pablo
Picasso and Georges Braque, from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear
manifestation of cubism, was followed by Synthetic cubism, practised by Braque, Picasso,
Fernand Lger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp and countless other artists into
the 1920s. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures,
surfaces, collage elements, papier coll and a large variety of merged subject matter. The
collage artists like Kurt Schwitters and Man Ray and others taking the clue from Cubism
were instrumental to the development of the movement called Dada.
Frantiek Kupka, Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912, oil on
canvas, 210 x 200 cm, Narodni Galerie, Prague. Published in Au Salon d'Automne "Les
Indpendants" 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris.

Robert Delaunay, 1912, Windows Open Simultaneously (First Part, Third Motif), oil on
canvas, 45.7 x 37.5 cm, Tate Modern
The Italian poet Marinetti published 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' in 1909,
which inspired artists such as Carlo Carra in, Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells and
Umberto Boccioni Train in Motion, 1911, to a further stage of abstraction and profoundly
influenced art movements throughout Europe.[10]
During the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or the poet Guillaume Apollinaire named the work of
several artists including Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Orphism.[11] He defined it as, the art of
painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere,
but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art.[12]
Since the turn of the century cultural connections between artists of the major European and
American cities had become extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal to the
high aspirations of modernism. Ideas were able to cross-fertilize by means of artists books,
exhibitions and manifestos so that many sources were open to experimentation and
discussion, and formed a basis for a diversity of modes of abstraction. The following extract
from,'The World Backwards', gives some impression of the inter-connectedness of culture at
the time: 'David Burliuk's knowledge of modern art movements must have been extremely
up-to-date, for the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition, held in January 1912 (in Moscow)
included not only paintings sent from Munich, but some members of the German Die Brcke

group, while from Paris came work by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse and Fernand Lger,
as well as Picasso. During the Spring David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned
a polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was to finance. He went abroad in
May and came back determined to rival the almanac Der Blaue Reiter which had emerged
from the printers while he was in Germany'.
From 1909 to 1913 many experimental works in the search for this 'pure art' had been
created: Francis Picabia painted Caoutchouc, 1909,[13] The Spring, 1912,[14] Dances at the
Spring[15] and The Procession, Seville, 1912;[16] Wassily Kandinsky painted Untitled (First
Abstract Watercolor), 1910,[17] Improvisation 21A, the Impression series, and Picture with a
Circle (1911);[18] Frantiek Kupka had painted the Orphist works, Discs of Newton (Study for
Fugue in Two Colors), 1912[19] and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two
Colors), 1912; Robert Delaunay painted a series entitled Simultaneous Windows and Formes
Circulaires, Soleil n2 (191213);[20] Lopold Survage created Colored Rhythm (Study for the
film), 1913;[21] Piet Mondrian, painted Tableau No. 1 and Composition No. 11, 1913.[22]

Wassily Kandinsky, On White 2, 1923

And the search continued: The Rayist (Luchizm) drawings of Natalia Goncharova and
Mikhail Larionov, used lines like rays of light to make a construction. Kasimir Malevich
completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist, 'Black Square', in 1915. Another
of the Suprematist group' Liubov Popova, created the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial
Force Constructions between 1916 and 1921. Piet Mondrian was evolving his abstract
language, of horizontal and vertical lines with rectangles of colour, between 1915 and 1919,
Neo-Plasticism was the aesthetic which Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and other in the group
De Stijl intended to reshape the environment of the future.
Music
As visual art becomes more abstract, it develops some characteristics of music: an art form
which uses the abstract elements of sound and divisions of time. Wassily Kandinsky, himself
a musician, was inspired by the possibility of marks and associative color resounding in the
soul. The idea had been put forward by Charles Baudelaire, that all our senses respond to
various stimuli but the senses are connected at a deeper aesthetic level.

Closely related to this, is the idea that art has The spiritual dimension and can transcend
'every-day' experience, reaching a spiritual plane. The Theosophical Society popularised the
ancient wisdom of the sacred books of India and China in the early years of the century. It
was in this context that Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint and other artists
working towards an 'objectless state' became interested in the occult as a way of creating an
'inner' object. The universal and timeless shapes found in geometry: the circle, square and
triangle become the spatial elements in abstract art; they are, like color, fundamental systems
underlying visible reality.
Russian avant-garde

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1923, The Russian Museum

Main articles: Russian avant-garde and Futurism (art)
Many of the abstract artists in Russia became Constructivists believing that art was no longer
something remote, but life itself. The artist must become a technician, learning to use the
tools and materials of modern production. Art into life! was Vladimir Tatlin's slogan, and that
of all the future Constructivists. Varvara Stepanova and Alexandre Exter and others
abandoned easel painting and diverted their energies to theatre design and graphic works. On
the other side stood Kazimir Malevich, Anton Pevsner and Naum Gabo. They argued that art
was essentially a spiritual activity; to create the individual's place in the world, not to
organise life in a practical, materialistic sense. Many of those who were hostile to the
materialist production idea of art left Russia. Anton Pevsner went to France, Gabo went first
to Berlin, then to England and finally to America. Kandinsky studied in Moscow then left for
the Bauhaus. By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to 1921) when artists had been
free to experiment was over; and by the 1930s only socialist realism was allowed.[23]
The Bauhaus
The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius.[24] The
philosophy underlying the teaching program was unity of all the visual and plastic arts from
architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass. This philosophy had grown from the
ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement in England and the Deutscher Werkbund. Among the
teachers were Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Theo
van Doesburg and Lszl Moholy-Nagy. In 1925 the school was moved to Dessau and, as the
Nazi party gained control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an exhibition of
degenerate art, 'Entartete Kunst' contained all types of avant-garde art disapproved of by the
Nazi party. Then the exodus began: not just from the Bauhaus but from Europe in general; to

Paris, London and America. Paul Klee went to Switzerland but many of the artists at the
Bauhaus went to America.
Abstraction in Paris and London

Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and
other European countries affected by the rise of totalitarianism. Sophie Tauber and Jean Arp
collaborated on paintings and sculpture using organic/geometric forms. The Polish Katarzyna
Kobro applied mathematically based ideas to sculpture. The many types of abstraction now in
close proximity led to attempts by artists to analyse the various conceptual and aesthetic
groupings. An exhibition by forty-six members of the Cercle et Carr group organised by
Joaquin Torres-Garcia[25] assisted by Michel Seuphor[26] contained work by the Neo-Plasticists
as well as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner and Kurt Schwitters.
Criticised by Theo van Doesburg to be too indefinite a collection he published the journal Art
Concret setting out a manifesto defining an abstract art in which the line, color and surface
only, are the concrete reality.[27] Abstraction-Cration founded in 1931 as a more open group,
provided a point of reference for abstract artists, as the political situation worsened in 1935,
and artists again regrouped, many in London. The first exhibition of British abstract art was
held in England in 1935. The following year the more international Abstract and Concrete
exhibition was organised by Nicolete Gray including work by Piet Mondrian, Joan Mir,
Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson and Gabo moved to the St. Ives
group in Cornwall to continue their 'constructivist' work.[28]
America: mid-century
Main articles: Modernism, Late modernism, American Modernism and Surrealism

The above is a 193942 oil on canvas painting by Mondrian titled "Composition No. 10".
Responding to it, fellow De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg suggested a link between nonrepresentational works of art and ideals of peace and spirituality.[29]
During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists fled Europe to the United States. By
the early 1940s the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction,
surrealism, and dada were represented in New York: Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Lger, Piet
Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, Andr Masson, Max Ernst, Andr Breton, were just a few of the
exiled Europeans who arrived in New York.[30] The rich cultural influences brought by the
European artists were distilled and built upon by local New York painters. The climate of
freedom in New York allowed all of these influences to flourish. The art galleries that
primarily had focused on European art began to notice the local art community and the work
of younger American artists who had begun to mature. Certain of these artists became
distinctly abstract in their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrian's painting
Composition No. 10, 19391942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black
grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to the rectangle and abstract art in
general. Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as Georgia O'Keeffe who,
while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure maverick in that she painted highly abstract
forms while not joining any specific group of the period. Eventually American artists who
were working in a great diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic groups.
The best known group of American artists became known as the Abstract expressionists and
the New York School. In New York City there was an atmosphere which encouraged
discussion and there was new opportunity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers John
D. Graham and Hans Hofmann became important bridge figures between the newly arrived
European Modernists and the younger American artists coming of age. Mark Rothko, born in
Russia, began with strongly surrealist imagery which later dissolved into his powerful color
compositions of the early 1950s. The expressionistic gesture and the act of painting itself,
became of primary importance to Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. While during the 1940s
Arshile Gorky's and Willem de Kooning's figurative work evolved into abstraction by the end
of the decade. New York City became the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards it;
from other places in America as well.[31]
Abstraction in the 21st century
Main articles: Abstract expressionism, Color field, Lyrical abstraction, Post-painterly
abstraction, Sculpture and Minimal art

A commonly held idea is that pluralism characterizes art at the beginning of the 21st century.
There is no consensus, nor need there be, as to a representative style of the age. There is an
anything goes attitude that prevails; an "everything going on", and consequently "nothing
going on" syndrome; this creates an aesthetic traffic jam with no firm and clear direction and
with every lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. Consequently magnificent and
important works of art continue to be made albeit in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic
temperaments, the marketplace being left to judge merit.
Digital art, computer art, internet art, hard-edge painting, geometric abstraction,
appropriation, hyperrealism, photorealism, expressionism, minimalism, lyrical abstraction,
pop art, op art, abstract expressionism, color field painting, monochrome painting, neoexpressionism, collage, decollage, intermedia, assemblage, digital painting, postmodern art,
neo-Dada painting, shaped canvas painting, environmental mural painting, graffiti, figure
painting, landscape painting, portrait painting, are a few continuing and current directions at
the beginning of the 21st century.
Into the 21st century abstraction remains very much in view, its main themes: the
transcendental, the contemplative and the timeless are exempified by Barnett Newman, John
McLaughlin, and Agnes Martin as well as younger living artists. Art as Object as seen in the
Minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank Stella are still seen today in
newer permutations. The poetic, Lyrical Abstraction and the sensuous use of color seen in the
work of painters as diverse as Robert Motherwell, Patrick Heron, Kenneth Noland, Sam
Francis, Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, among
others.
There was a resurgence after the war and into the 1950s of the figurative, as neo-Dada,
fluxus, happening, conceptual art, neo-expressionism, installation art, performance art, video
art and pop art have come to signify the age of consumerism. The distinction between
abstract and figurative art has, over the last twenty years, become less defined leaving a wider
range of ideas for all artists.
Causation
One socio-historical explanation that has been offered for the growing prevalence of the
abstract in modern art an explanation linked to the name of Theodor W. Adorno is that
such abstraction is a response to, and a reflection of, the growing abstraction of social
relations in industrial society.[32]
Frederic Jameson similarly sees modernist abstraction as a function of the abstract power of
money, equating all things equally as exchange-values.[33] The social content of abstract art is
then precisely the abstract nature of social existence legal formalities, bureaucratic
impersonalisation, information/power in the world of late modernity.[34]
Post-Jungians by contrast would see the quantum theories with their disintegration of
conventional ideas of form and matter as underlying the divorce of the concrete and the
abstract in modern art.[35]