Abstract painting explained – Part 5

Abstract art is phenomenally difficult to fully understand. This same property is alluring to some, and rejected by others. Several times in recent years, young children under the age of ten have created nice, but unremarkable, abstract paintings – and their parents have marketed them as professional abstract art. The paintings sold for hundreds, even thousands of dollars, before the public learned the truth behind the illusions.

A painting that even a child can create can sell for so much money because people, and their wallets, get caught up in the pretense of the art world. The direct personal dialogue between artist and viewer is forgotten. The successful sale of children’s artwork does not demonstrate that abstract art itself is a phony scam taking over the world of professional art; rather, it shows that some of the people involved don’t know much about what makes good abstract art.

Whether any abstract art should be worth thousands or millions is up for debate: in the end, what matters is what the art is worth to the collector. He’s the one paying. In abstract art more than any other form, it’s all about subjective, nonverbal expression, and this makes it very personal.

At the same time, an abstract painting should not be a random assemblage of shapes and splatters lacking intention, nor should it be a repeated formula with easy rules and little variation. The key to making an abstract painting is to communicate artistic intention while straying away from conventional means – to be spontaneous but not lazy; to be emotionally articulate; to be your true self. Doing this effectively is immensely difficult, but when it is done properly, a new language of form, shape, texture, contrast and color is created. A good abstract painting changes the perspective of the honest and open viewer in a way the viewer can sense, but can’t perfectly define.

Abstract art is not surrealist art. Surrealism, as is notoriously demonstrated by Salvador Dali’s melting clocks, involves arranging familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts, reminiscent of a dream. Few people dream in total visual abstraction: the dreaming process is usually about rearranging the information already in the mind, in somewhat large chunks.

Abstraction breaks it down further than this. An abstract artist strives to make the nonvisual visual, rather than reproduce what we already see. Imagine painting a song, painting a feeling, or even painting a social tendency. How would a single note