Benjamin Jaffe Gallery
Chicago, IL
benjamin
Abstract art is artwork that is non representational or uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from figurative references in the world. 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
Plate Ceramic from 'The Dinner Party' by Judy Chicago
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.
Kuba King Mask, Central Africa
Pablo Picasso ushered in the Modern era of art in 1907 with his painting 'Les Damoiselles d'Avignon'.
"In a crowded, dilapidated warren of artists' and writers' studios on the Parisian hill of Montmartre, home to anarchy and cabaret, a 25-year-old Spanish immigrant named Pablo Picasso created the first, and greatest, masterpiece of modern art. He drew his first designs for what became Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the winter of 1906-07. He developed his ideas intensively, in a programme of conscious planning that resembled the great academic projects of Leonardo or Géricault, before finally painting his 8ft square canvas in the early summer. With that painting, the nature of reality was altered as profoundly as it would be by the physics of Picasso's contemporary, Albert Einstein."
-Jonathan Jones (Critic for The Guardian)
J.M.W. Turner was an American landscape painter who developed his own abstracted style of painting that seemed more at home with the French Impressionists or German Expressionists who came about much later in time. He was inspired to paint 'The Slave Ship' (above) in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Although slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire since 1833, Turner and many other abolitionists believed that slavery should be outlawed around the world. Turner thus exhibited his painting during the anti-slavery conference, intending for Prince Albert, who was speaking at the event, to see it and be moved to increase British anti-slavery efforts. Placed next to the painting were lines from Turner's own untitled poem, written in 1812:
"Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying – ne'er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?"
Other artists pushed the envelope of abstraction by expanding its relation to other elements of art. Richard Serra explored the realm of space in his monumental architectural sculptures. What do you think he was imagining as he created the sculpture below?
This sculpture by John Chamberlain was created by crushing car doors. Though it still has qualities from its original function, it takes on a completely different meaning as a bas releif sculpture.
Jackson Pollock is often accredited with creating the first completely abstract images. Though many artists came before him, his paintings were the first to experiment with line and color devoid of representation.
Edward Weston was a fine art photographer who redifined what we look at as a subject. Wether a still life of an artichoke as above, or a detail of a sand dune, he showed us the beauty in abstraction of nature.
Benjamin Jaffe Gallery
Chicago, IL
benjamin