Abstract art work, despite its long history, no longer has the inscrutability it began with. When The New York School renounced representation in the late 1940s, all hell broke loose. Over time abstraction in art has been assimilated. It has lost its shock value though not its mystery.
The philosophy of abstraction in drawing, painting and sculpture began in the studio school of Hans Hoffman in New York. His premise was that with the invention of the camera, there was no longer a need to depict subjects. All that image making, he declared, was dead. What was to be sought was an inner reality.
The use of space, the figure-ground relationship became the subject. Color harmonies reigned. Line was used but to a different purpose than previously. A landscape consisted no longer of water, trees, roads, fields or sky but an amalgamation of shapes that pushed and pulled one another. Eventually the very idea of landscape disappeared. By the 1950s, Hoffman had made his school famous and his ideals respected. The art world rapidly changed its taste.
From a small coterie of artists and writers in New York, a movement came to dominate the art world. America had made the breakthrough the Europeans were moving toward after World War II. Termed non-figurative, non-objective or non representational art, everyone was talking about it. It would prevail for the next decade.
Many famous artists are categorized under the Abstract Expressionist banner: Lee Krasner and her husband, Jackson Pollock. Helen Frankenthaler and her husband, Robert Motherwell, Elaine de Kooning and her husband, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Arshile Gorky are the more prominent names. These were the pioneers of a radical ideal that today is taken for granted.
By the late 1950s, abstract art work was the fashion and other types were ridiculed in some circles. Artists who depicted outer reality soon were marginalized. By the mid to late-1950s, representational art was outdated. Total abstraction has no reference to anything recognizable. This theory dominated until the 1960s. Then Pop Art deviated with a differencing philosophy and it took precedence. Nevertheless, abstraction is alive and well today and not at all shocking.
The philosophy of abstraction in drawing, painting and sculpture began in the studio school of Hans Hoffman in New York. His premise was that with the invention of the camera, there was no longer a need to depict subjects. All that image making, he declared, was dead. What was to be sought was an inner reality.
The use of space, the figure-ground relationship became the subject. Color harmonies reigned. Line was used but to a different purpose than previously. A landscape consisted no longer of water, trees, roads, fields or sky but an amalgamation of shapes that pushed and pulled one another. Eventually the very idea of landscape disappeared. By the 1950s, Hoffman had made his school famous and his ideals respected. The art world rapidly changed its taste.
From a small coterie of artists and writers in New York, a movement came to dominate the art world. America had made the breakthrough the Europeans were moving toward after World War II. Termed non-figurative, non-objective or non representational art, everyone was talking about it. It would prevail for the next decade.
Many famous artists are categorized under the Abstract Expressionist banner: Lee Krasner and her husband, Jackson Pollock. Helen Frankenthaler and her husband, Robert Motherwell, Elaine de Kooning and her husband, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Arshile Gorky are the more prominent names. These were the pioneers of a radical ideal that today is taken for granted.
By the late 1950s, abstract art work was the fashion and other types were ridiculed in some circles. Artists who depicted outer reality soon were marginalized. By the mid to late-1950s, representational art was outdated. Total abstraction has no reference to anything recognizable. This theory dominated until the 1960s. Then Pop Art deviated with a differencing philosophy and it took precedence. Nevertheless, abstraction is alive and well today and not at all shocking.
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