Abstract art

The abstract art is a form of art which does not try to represent the sensitive world. Painting can do without model and is freed from fidelity to visual reality.

Introduction

Today, one uses this term to indicate an artistic practice not representing subjects or objects of the natural, real or imaginary world, but only of the forms and colors for themselves that the Contemporary art will push with its paroxysm, one half-century later.

The painter Wassily Kandinsky is the founder of the abstract art. He painted his first abstract Aquarelle Without title in 1910. According to the philosopher Michel Henry, “Kandinsky calls abstract the contents which painting must express, that is to say this invisible life which we are. ” ( See the invisible one, on Kandinsky )

At the beginning of the 20th century, this term included also the Cubisme or the Futurisme, kinds in which there is will well to represent the real-world, without imitating it or copying it but rather by showing intrinsic qualities. One represents what one rather knows of an object than what one sees.

At the origins of the abstraction

In the years preceding the First World War, several varieties of art Abstrait emerged in various contexts. Although the town of Paris is often recognized like the capital of the Occidental culture at the time, and that Robert Delaunay exposed his works prismatic Cubistes to it. But it is quite as important to look at elsewhere, for example: in Germany and Russia, artists created tables which varied much, not only in their aspect but also in the intentions.

The influence of the development of science and technology clean to painting, on the evolution of the visual art is well established.

However, of the fields apparently extremely far away from painting also brought modifications in the position of the artists.

Thus, in second half of the 19th century, the physiological optics made of important progress under the impulse of the German Von Helmholz (1821-1894). It distinguishes two stages in the vision: on the level of the eye, the luminous rays produce a “impression” and then the nerves of the Rétine transmit them to the brain where they appear in the form of “feelings”.

Certain artists are influenced by this new knowledge. The “impressionists”, them, had already tried to return the “impression” (the first stage) that made them nature. Other painters will recognize that it is vain to try to restore nature on a fabric with a total objectivity. Because the “feelings” (the second phase) come “to disturb” the creative process and they appear extremely complex. They are not a simple passive recording of information of forms and colors, but imply neurological mechanisms bringing of other results. It more will be a question of returning the results of introspection to more or less accurately copy the effects of nature.

Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), pioneer of the abstraction in painting, quickly seized the impact of this new design of the vision on the purpose of art, hitherto perceived like an imitation of nature. The “feelings” of the painter are registered now in priority in its vision. Kupka is interested in the psychophysical aspect of the colors: “it thus seems more convenient to us to consider and question the feelings of light, of different nature and value, as them cause in us states of heart”. One will speak about “the solar eye”.

The projections in another scientific discipline, that of the comprehension of undulatory nature, at the same time of the Light and the its, also open new prospects. It brings the settling by researchers, instruments of projection of coloured light. Those are used with musical accompaniment. One of the inventors of this “color music” (chromatic music, which would be currently called “its and light”), Wallace Rimington, written in 1895: “ In painting, the color was only used like one of the elements of the image. We did not have yet images in which there is neither form, nor subject, but only the pure color ” It also writes: “… In fact, it there forever have pure art of the color dealing only with the color alone and trusting only all the subtle and marvellous changes, as with the combinations of which the color is able as a means of its own expression. ”. At that time, its concerts of “color music” had success. It is not thus astonishing to find an article published in 1908 carrying the title “the laws of harmony of Painting and of the Music are same” the (Henri Rovel), Its contents, in the spirit of the chromatic music, will have a great influence on the painters Kandinsky (1866-1944), Larionov (1881-1964) and again Kupka. In another article, Rovel confirms “the life is characterized by the vibration. Without vibration, there is no life. The whole world is subjected to this law. ”

Developments

It is at the same time, in 1911, as the Russian type-setter Scriabine (1872-1915), which had probably known Rimington, presents his symphony “Prométhée, the Poem of fire” whose execution requires the presence of a keyboard with colors in the orchestra. Scriabine wanted to address to all the directions its listeners to give them the perception of a world in constant vibration.

Let us return to painting. While adopting this new vision of the world, the artist any more will not try to reproduce it by imitating it. He especially will take as a starting point his feelings, visual and acoustic, to give an interior vision in conformity of it with the new scientific data. It is necessary to bring art closer to the vibratory continuum of nature. Kandinsky will write “Think of the musical share that will take from now on the color in modern painting. The color which is vibration just as the music is capable to reach as there is of more general and on the basis of vaguer in nature: its interior force. ” the accent is thus put on an emotional function of the color identical to the emotional function of the music. It will be “the musical eye”.

In the same vein, other researchers succeeded in transposing in graphic inscriptions the sound vibrations. The stereotypes that they drew some were published and certain will be used by the artists allured by these new prospects. The stakes of abstract painting are thus placed.

How did the abstraction develop on the pictorial level? Jean-Louis Ferrier (large critic and author of “the Adventure of Art at the XX Century” defined three founders in equal shares:

Wassily Kandinsky, true precursor, which writes in 1910 in its work the Spiritual one in Art, and Painting in particular , which the idea of the uselessness of the representation to him puffed up by one of its tables was posed by error on a side,
Piet Mondrian, which obtained its abstract structures geometrical by progressive derivation of one of its paintings of an oyster bed in back-light of the sea,
and Kasimir Malevitch, which sought extreme simplification leading to famous “the Black Square on White Zone”.

For these three founders the passage of the figuration to the abstraction took place rather slowly between 1910 and 1917. But the kind will have been well prepared by the general pictorial evolution of the time, which will have also founded the cubism, the rayonnism, futurism, etc, and even the objet trouv3e (1913!) : the abstraction was not an isolated revelation, it belongs to an extraordinarily creative total context in all arts. In particular the impressionist artists had already produced quasi-abstract fabrics, all devoted to the light (for example in certain tables of Bonnard, the characters are almost invisible).

Among these various evolutions, today still, the abstraction remains most badly accepted by the public not expert, because such a table " représente" nothing, which sometimes shocks the taste, the practices, formation; an abstract work must indeed land in a spirit different from figurative works.

Art and the transcendantal

Wassily Kandinsky is one of the artists who could be regarded as initiators of the abstract art. Its works of the beginning of the year 1910, in Munich, employ a range impressing of colors and pictorial techniques. In the writings of Kandinsky, this one clearly announces to have given up appearances outsides in the hope to be able more directly to communicate the feelings with the Spectateur. Kandinsky considered that the Couleurs and the forms could communicate spiritual truths, hidden behind daily appearances and who are difficult to describe by the words. He saw even a Similitude between the Musique and painting, in 1912 he wrote: " The color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The heart is the piano, with these many cords. The artist is the hand which resolutely makes vibrate the heart by means of such or such touche."

In Russia, at the same time, Kasimir Malevitch painted arrangements of abstract forms which seem suspended in the space. But rigid geometry of a table such as " Black rectangle suprématiste" contrast clearly with the slackened aspect of works of Kandinsky, is the index which it has faith in technological advance rather than in a world evoking nature. The work of Malevitch evolved/moved while deviating from the cubism and the Futurisme. Melevitch, Kandinsky, regarded the colors as feelings and painted them floating through white surfaces which, for him, represented the " vide". Its squares and its rectangles were new symbols, in rupture with the pictorial tools of the past. But these symbols were emblematic of a new spiritual reality.

Malevitch described as suprematist his type of painting, which means " supreme leader or absolu". Kandinsky and shared to him a great faith in the value of an art nouveau and independent, shared also an interest for mystical philosophies and aspired to discover universal truths.

Ends and beginnings

Malevitch claimed to have painted its first " square noir" since 1913. It would be comprehensible to interpret this radical rejection of the representation like the end of painting, and yet, for the artist, it was a new beginning. In fact, its art was a radical art in one time of radical change in Russia, and of many other painters turned to the abstraction at that time. The Révolution of 1917 had dramatic consequences on almost all the aspects of the Russian company, including the attitudes towards the Culture. Art, such as it was included/understood in the Western capitalist companies, was called in question and the artists, traditionally considered as geniuses different from the remainder of the company, represented themselves now like " travailleurs". Art could not be any more one good of luxury intended for the rich person, but was to be useful, play a role integrated in the construction of the Soviet news Russia .

The Russian Alexandre Rodchenko would undoubtedly have been unhappy to see his " Table not objectif" qualified d'" work of art". This was not conceived like an esthetic object of contemplation but like an exploration of the line and space which could have other applications, for example in Design or Architecture.

Artists

Internal bonds

External bonds

'' Abstract art '', by Leon Gard

abstract
France: Abstract painting
the abstraction
Of or comes the abstraction
biography from Kandinsky
On Kandinsky
On Malevitch
biography of Malevitch

References

Random links: