Abstract painting explained – Part 7

I love art museums. I never get enough time in one. And I am not an artist, by any means. Now, my daughter is an incredible artist, but me, nah. But there are moments in an art museum that drive me berserk. There I am, in the middle on one of those benches just enjoying some work on the wall at an appropriate distance, getting to know it, become comfortable with it, let it soak into me. All of a sudden some biddies come by and, with arms akimbo, one of them states in a grating third-grade grammar teacher voice, “My five-year old can paint better than that.”

Well, let me vociferously and categorically and politely contradict that thought. Your five-year old most certainly could NOT paint anything even remotely close to that. Yes, to you it may appear random and meaningless and senseless, but it is assuredly not. Let me explain.

Abstract art flies in the face of expectation. But it satisfies the goals of art in an almost metaphysical and visceral level. Abstract art is more pure and fundamental than any other kind of art, for it is truly art for arts sake.

There are basically three kinds of painting: decorative, functional and abstract. Decorative art is meant to be pretty. It exists for the purpose of making a beautiful space. It has to have meaning, it is about something. It works because it plays with that part of the mind that connects it to other images and memories. Functional art exists for a purpose. It is didactic, it tells a story that is instructive and moral (in the plain meaning of the word, not its connotation of virtuous). Now abstract art exists because the artist creates. It does not mean anything. It explores, punctuates and even violates standards of beauty. It is not instructive, and it certainly has not gotten to a point. It IS. Now some abstract art is decorative. I think Kandinsky, for instance, often produces things that are quite pretty, and Pollock sometimes creates canvases that are startling. But in general, the abstract artist does not approach the work of creation by thinking of being pretty.

Here’s a definition of art that includes the abstract, and may help you understand what abstract art is attempting to do. A painting is art when it exists in that state that anything added to it, or taken away from it, would result in it being less perfect. A Jackson Pollack painting may appear to be random, but it is not. Anything added to it, even a single additional spittle of cerise would ruin it.