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.

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

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.

Art history: Understanding abstract expressionism

If someone was to ask you to paint your soul, what would it look like? How would you begin? Is there any painting out there that reminds you of everything you want to say, be or feel? There is for me. It is the wonderful 1950 abstract expressionist painting of Jackson Pollack.

Abstract expressionism was an American painting movement which began in the late 1940s. The world had just emerged from two world wars alive, but terribly scarred and battle worn. Loving parents had lost their sons, wives their husbands and children, their fathers. Men had revealed to the world how terribly ugly human nature could be and the sight of that ugliness made mankind sick. So when it came to art, the beautiful dreamy Impressionist scenes of Pierre Auguste Renoir’s life portraits, the tranquilly peaceful landscapes of Claude Monet and the twirling ballerinas of Edgar Degas just couldn’t stir hearts like they used to. In a way, the world’s innocence and naivety had been violently stripped away, like a maiden ravished in an open field. Fauvism, with its deep, bold colors was too strong, too aggressive. And Cubism was simply not soothing enough. The world needed art that summed up all its fears and emotions without forcing it to vividly relive the horrors of the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific. Abstract Expressionism answered that need.

Abstract Expressionism is a style of painting wherein the painter is free to burst free of reality as we see it everyday before our eyes. The painter allows his or herself to transcend this world, this reality, and float away into another world where anything is possible. It is this infinite possibility that enables both the painter and his audience to express everything that they want to express but are unable to find the words or actions. The beauty of abstract expressionist painting is that one can see both everything and nothing at the same time, feel everything and nothing at the same time. It draws its audience in, mesmerizing them, giving them a chance to exhale, to breathe a sigh of relief. Abstract expressionist art wraps its audience in a soft, white blanket of cool emotion and says, “It’s okay. You can relax and be calm.”

Abstract expressionist paintings allowed grieving mothers and fathers, wives and other relations to reach out and connect with their deceased loved ones, something only possible in the abstract world. It allowed people to say everything they so desperately needed to say. It allowed them to take all those jumbled up emotions and come face to face with them on the surface of a canvas. It allowed people, the world, to heal.

Today, when I look at Jackson Pollack’s Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), I see myself . I see my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, my past, my present and my future. I see all the tears I’ve ever cried, all the times I’ve laughed hysterically and every moment I’ve passed in quiet reflection. I see everything in a way that’s otherwise impossible. I can’t explain it. But somehow, I see all of me.

Abstract Art and Your Soul

Abstract painting explained – Part 12

To create his abstract masterpieces, Jackson Pollack put a large canvas on the floor and splashed buckets of wet paint on it. Andy Warhol traced photos of soup cans and celebrities, then reduced the images to flat patterns, slightly separated (out of register) the images in different colors and printed many copies of each of them by silk screen process. Roy Lichtenstein projected images of comic strip characters on a large, wall-mounted canvas. He then traced them exactly, including the type “balloons” of the characters speaking, and filled in the colored areas with dot patterns.

Their resulting abstract “paintings” now hang in major museums, and also sell for multimillions to private collectors. The so-called skill or supposed talent of producing such masterpieces is in no way comparable to the traditional, realistic paintings of Rembrandt, Rafael, Da Vinci, Ingres, David or Vermeer. The artists who create abstract paintings, while often clever marketers, substitute skill and beauty with outrageousness, anger, political agendas and just plain flim-flam.

Why is abstract art so popular and lucrative if the artist is lucky enough and lives long enough to cash in on them? And why does some of its worst examples command enormous sums of money? I believe the entire business is trumped up by the mentality of the puffed-up marketing hype we see today in sports and entertainment. The same too-wealthy people who are willing to spend several thousand bucks for two hours to be seen sitting in a ringside seat, don’t question the multi-million-dollar price on a distorted piece of show-off art peddled by a rip-off marketer.

The same questions may be asked of rap stars who make millions by chanting ungrammatical curses to an annoying drum beat that have no relationship to music. Why does a movie star with very limited talent except to look sexy with Botox and bosom enhancement command millions of dollars to feign acting for several hours a day over a six-week schedule? Why do seven-foot athletes get millions for standing on tippy-toes and shoving a ball into a basket? And why does a steriod-inflated baseball player sign a ten-year contract at ten million a year because his enhanced muscles and bat can hit a ball 400 feet? By comparison to those examples of abstract skills, the artistic rip-off talent exhibited by oil company executives to earn them their millions seems almost fair.

I know I sound like an angry old man, which is perfectly true, but many

A Wonderful Gift: the Plum Tree Painting