Abstract art, often confused with Modern art or Post-Modern art, simply means an artistic creation that is not representative of any natural form, but instead involves an interplay of shapes and images on either a two dimensional or three dimensional plane that create pleasing (or, at times, disturbing) visual representations of the artist’s vision. The low brow response to abstract art is to dismiss it as art about nothing, but if it’s about nothing, it can often be worth a good deal more than that, with the most successful abstract artists creating works that can sometimes sell for hundreds of thousands or even multiple millions of dollars. The abstract art movement really came into its own in the late nineteenth century, when European artists first started experimenting with creating works of art that had no discernible connection to the form and movement of the “real” world.
Abstract art can be as simple as a series of interlocking circles traced on a canvas and as complex as motion-based exhibits that can involve thousands of moving parts and all sorts of accouterments and special touches that go toward the effort of creating something that is, in some ways, unrecognizable. However, the best abstract art (if art can be qualified as best or worst) can elicit a powerful emotional response despite there being little connection between the piece of art created and the physical world inhabited by the viewer. Abstract art is sometimes derided as “art for art’s sake” but this misses the point of the true abstract artist’s aim. The goal in abstract art is not to create simply so that one can say one has created, but instead to formulate and generate a project that, despite its tenuous relationship to the world outside itself, nonetheless manages to reveal some essential truth or mysterious connection between two concepts that could never be rendered so explicitly in “straight” art or through words on a printed page.
Abstract concepts can sometimes take tens of thousands of words to adequately explain, and if the old adage that picture is worth a thousand words still holds, then such concepts could, in theory, be conveyed with just a couple dozen abstract artworks. Abstract art can be expressed across all types of media, most obviously in painting and sculpture, but also through installations, digital compositions, film, video, dance, music, and even poetry. While abstract art took quite a while to gain a significant following, it is now one of the most well-regarded approaches to the endeavor of creating fine art, and is taught in some manner at all of the best and most rigorous art schools.
This article was added on Wednesday 14 April, 2010.
