Abstract painting explained – Part 10

A young man in well-cut jeans and a freshly-pressed shirt tilts his head and squints. Then, he turns to his partner and asks, “But what is it supposed to be?”

The pair stands before a large abstract acrylic painting in a museum. The man’s confusion is a common reaction to nonobjective art.

The answer to his question will depend on the painting. Some abstracts, like the anguished portraits of Frances Bacon, are expressions of emotion. Others, like the heady compositions of Wassily Kandinsky, portray profound spiritual vision. Still others, like the light and space plays of Robert Irwin, are intellectual constructs that step straight out of the gallery into the viewer’s mind.

Just as music is about pitch, dynamics, rhythm, and tone quality, painting is about light, shape, color, texture, line, and form. All paintings embody the tension between three-dimensional, endless “reality” and its representation on a flat, limited surface. This basic subject matter underlies a Dutch master’s rendering of a bowl of apples as much as it does the wildest abstract expressionist canvas.

Like poems, novels, and films, all paintings seek to bring order and harmony to the seeming chaos of day-to-day experience. Abstract art is more direct in this goal. It strips away the need to copy the surface aspects of “things” and delves down to the next level, where “things” are harder to define.

Some abstract artists accomplish this dissolution of seeming reality by zooming in to focus on intimate details of common things. Others eliminate everything from the painting’s surface but a color, a texture, or an intriguing line.

Many people enjoy abstract paintings because there is more room for the viewer to move into them and participate over time. A mountain scene or a vase of daffodils may bring back memories or evoke longing, but, in the end, it is just a scene or a bunch of flowers. A great abstract painting can be like a rocky beach, where each day’s encounter can offer something fresh and new. Instead of being trapped in a mire of the artist’s limited intent, the viewer is free to explore his own feelings, thoughts, and spiritual experience.

You will know whether a piece of abstract art has been effective when you leave its presence and go out into the wider world. If, for a while, things seem a little different, the painting has worked.