The Expressionists drastically changed the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of psychological states of being. 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. Even earlier than that, with her 'spirit' drawings, Georgiana Houghton's choice to work with abstract shapes correlate with the unnatural nature of her subject, in a time when abstraction” isn’t yet a concept (she organized an exhibit in 1871).Įxpressionist painters explored the bold use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and intense color. Ruskin accused Whistler of "ask two hundred guineas for throwing a pot of paint in the public's face." Įarly 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. A near abstraction, in 1877 Whistler sued the art critic John Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned this painting. James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874), Detroit Institute of Arts. Prominent examples include Spanish Mudéjar art and Venetian Gothic architecture. These elements can be found in all Islamic applied arts, including architecture, rugmaking, pottery, glassmaking, and metalwork, as well as decorating the borders of otherwise figurative paintings.Īs a result of the extensive dialogue between the Christian and Islamic world brought about by the Crusades, Islamic abstract patterns would also come to be applied to European decorative arts, especially in Italy and Spain. Islamic art traditionally revolves around calligraphy, tessellating geometric patterns, and vegetal motifs called arabesques. Therefore, only some Islamic art may be considered abstract. While Islamic art may have reservations about painting humans and animals, it does not, however, feel the same about plants and inanimate objects, which are allowed by even the strictest of jurists. Abstract Islamic art is nearly as old as Islam itself, and some of the oldest examples of it can be found on such early buildings as the Dome of the Rock. Islam’s sometimes negative view of figurative art has led to the proliferation of complex abstract artistic expression across the Islamic world. Ī hilya, a decorated description of Muhammad’s physical appearance, dating to the 19th century.
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 alters the forms of the real life entities depicted. But figurative and representational (or realistic) art often contain partial abstraction.īoth geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable.
Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract.
Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is impossible. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning.Ībstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. Ībstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and non-representational art, are closely related terms. 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. 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. 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.
Robert Delaunay, 1912–13, Le Premier Disque, 134 cm (52.7 in.), private collectionĪbstract art uses 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.