Proof That Abstract and Modern Art Is Not Art

Black Brainchild (1927)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
By Georgia O'Keeffe.
A wonderful autobiographical
example of biomorphic brainchild.

Composition With Bluish And Xanthous.
(1932) Piet Mondrian.
Philadelphia Museum Of Art.
Neo-Plasticism/De Stijl.

WHAT IS ART?
For an guide to the aesthetic and
classification issues concerning
fine/decorative/applied arts, see:
Fine art Definition, Significant.

Definition and Meaning

The term 'abstract fine art' - besides chosen "non-objective art", "non-figurative", "non-representational", "geometric abstraction", or "physical art" - is a rather vague umbrella term for whatsoever painting or sculpture which does not portray recognizable objects or scenes. However, every bit nosotros shall run into, there is no clear consensus on the definition, types or aesthetic significance of abstruse art. Picasso thought that in that location was no such thing, while some art critics take the view that all art is abstract - because, for instance, no painting tin hope to exist more than a rough summary (brainchild) of what the painter sees. Fifty-fifty mainstream commentators sometimes disagree over whether a canvas should exist labelled "expressionist" or "abstract" - take for example the watercolour Ship on Fire (1830, Tate), and the oil painting Snowfall Tempest - Steam Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842, Tate), both past JMW Turner (1775-1851). A similar example is Water-Lilies (1916-20, National Gallery, London) past Claude Monet (1840-1926). Also, in that location is a sliding scale of abstraction: from semi-abstract to wholly abstract. So fifty-fifty though the theory is relatively clear - abstract art is detached from reality - the practical task of separating abstract from non-abstract can exist much more problematical.

What is the Idea Backside Abstruse Fine art?

The basic premise of abstraction - incidentally, a cardinal event of aesthetics - is that the formal qualities of a painting (or sculpture) are just as of import (if not more so) than its representational qualities.

Allow'due south showtime with a very simple illustration. A movie may incorporate a very bad cartoon of a homo, only if its colours are very beautiful, it may nevertheless strike us as being a beautiful motion picture. This shows how a formal quality (colour) tin override a representational one (drawing).

On the other hand, a photorealist painting of a terraced house may demonstrate exquisite representationalism, merely the field of study matter, colour scheme and general composition may be totally boring.

The philosophical justification for appreciating the value of a work of art's formal qualities stems from Plato's statement that:

"straight lines and circles are... not only beautiful... but eternally and absolutely beautiful."

In essence, Plato means that non-naturalistic images (circles, squares, triangles and so on) possess an absolute, unchanging beauty. Thus a painting can be appreciated for its line and color alone - it doesn't need to depict a natural object or scene. The French painter, lithographer and art theorist Maurice Denis (1870-1943) was getting at the same thing when he wrote: "Call back that a picture - before beingness a war horse or a nude woman... is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order."

Some abstruse artists explain themselves by saying that they desire to create the visual equivalent of a slice of music, which can be appreciated purely for itself, without having to inquire the question "what is this painting of?" Whistler, for case, used to give some of his paintings musical titles like Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea (1871, Tate Collection). (See also: Art Evaluation: How to Capeesh Art.)

Types of Abstruse Art

To go along things simple, we can divide abstract fine art into 6 basic types:

• Curvilinear
• Colour-Related or Light-Related
• Geometric
• Emotional or Intuitional
• Gestural
• Minimalist

Some of these types are less abstract than others, merely all are concerned with separating art from reality.

Curvilinear Abstract Fine art

This blazon of curvilinear abstraction is strongly associated with Celtic Art, which employed a range of abstract motifs including knots (eight basic types), interlace patterns, and spirals (including the triskele, or the triskelion). These motifs were not original to the Celts - many other early cultures had been utilizing these Celtic designs for centuries: encounter for instance the spiral engravings at the Neolithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange in Co Meath, created some 2000 years before the appearance of the Celts. Nevertheless, it is off-white to say that Celtic designers breathed new life into these patterns, making them much more intricate and sophisticated in the process. These patterns later re-emerged as decorative elements in early illuminated manuscripts (c.600-1000 CE). Later they returned during the 19th century Celtic Revival Motion, and the influential 20th century Art Nouveau move: notably in book-covers, cloth, wallpaper and chintz designs by the likes of William Morris (1834-96) and Arthur Mackmurdo (1851-1942). Curvilinear abstraction is also exemplified by the "infinite pattern", a widespread feature of Islamic Art.

Colour-Related or Light-Related Abstract Art

This type is exemplified in works by Turner and Monet, that use colour (or light) in such a way every bit to disassemble the work of art from reality, as the object dissolves in a swirl of pigment. 2 instances of Turner's fashion of expressive abstraction have already been mentioned, to which nosotros can add his Interior at Petworth (1837, Tate Drove). Other examples include the final sequence of Water Lily paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926), The Talisman (1888, Musee d'Orsay, Paris) by Paul Serusier (1864-1927) leader of Les Nabis, and several Fauvist works of Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Several of Kandinsky'southward expressionist pictures painted during his fourth dimension with Der Blaue Reiter come up very shut to abstraction, equally does Deer in the Forest Ii (1913-14, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karsruhe) by his colleague Franz Marc (1880-1916). The Czech painter Frank Kupka (1871-1957) produced some of the first highly coloured abstruse paintings, which influenced Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) who besides relied on color in his Cubist-inspired manner of Orphism. Color-related abstraction re-emerged in the belatedly 1940s and 50s in the form of Colour Field Painting, developed by Marker Rothko (1903-seventy) and Barnett Newman (1905-lxx). In 1950s France, a parallel type of colour-related abstract painting sprang up, known as Lyrical Abstraction.

Geometric Brainchild

This type of intellectual abstract art emerged from nigh 1908 onwards. An early rudimentary form was Cubism, specifically analytical Cubism - which rejected linear perspective and the illusion of spatial depth in a painting, in order to focus on its ii-D aspects. Geometric Abstraction is likewise known as Concrete Art and Non-Objective Art. Equally yous might expect, information technology is characterized by non-naturalistic imagery, typically geometrical shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, so forth. In a sense - past containing absolutely no reference to, or association with, the natural world - it is the purest grade of abstraction. One might say that physical art is to brainchild, what veganism is to vegetarianism. Geometrical abstraction is exemplified past Blackness Circle (1913, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg) painted by Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) (founder of Suprematism); Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942, MoMA, New York) by Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) (founder of Neo-Plasticism); and Composition VIII (The Cow) (1918, MoMA, New York) by Theo Van Doesburg (1883-1931) (founder of De Stijl and Elementarism). Other examples include the Homage to the Square pictures by Josef Albers (1888-1976), and Op-Art originated by Victor Vasarely (1906-1997).

Emotional or Intuitional Abstract Art

This type of intuitional art embraces a mix of styles, whose mutual theme is a naturalistic tendency. This naturalism is visible in the type of shapes and colours employed. Dissimilar Geometric Abstraction, which is nearly anti-nature, intuitional abstraction oftentimes evokes nature, merely in less representational ways. Two of import sources for this type of abstract fine art are: Organic Abstraction (as well called Biomorphic abstraction) and Surrealism. Arguably, the most historic painter specializing in this blazon of art was the Russian-born Mark Rothko - see: Marker Rothko'south Paintings (1938-70). Other examples include canvases by Kandinsky like Composition No.four (1911, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen), and Limerick VII (1913, Tretyakov Gallery); the typical Teller, Gabel und Nabel (1923, Private Drove) past Jean Arp (1887-1966), Woman (1934, Individual Drove) by Joan Miro (1893-1983), Inscape: Psychological Morphology no 104 (1939, Private Collection) by Matta (1911-2002); and Infinite Divisibility (1942, Allbright-Knox Fine art Gallery, Buffalo) by Yves Tanguy (1900-55). In sculpture, this type of abstraction is exemplified by The Kiss (1907, Kunsthalle, Hamburg) by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957); Mother and Child (1934, Tate) by Barbara Hepworth(1903-1975); Giant Pip (1937, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Eye Georges Pompidou) past Jean Arp; 3 Standing Figures (1953, Guggenheim Museum, Venice) by Henry Moore (1898-1986).

Gestural Abstract Art

This is a form of abstract expressionism, where the process of making the painting becomes more important than usual. Paint may be applied in unusual ways, brushwork is often very loose, and rapid. Famous American exponents of gestural painting include Jackson Pollock (1912-56), the inventor of Action-Painting, and his married woman Lee Krasner (1908-84) who inspired him with her own grade of drip-painting; Willem de Kooning (1904-97), famous for his Woman series of works; and Robert Motherwell (1912-56), noted for his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. In Europe, this form is exemplified by Tachisme, also as by the Cobra Group, notably Karel Appel (1921-2006).

Minimalist Abstruse Art

This type of abstraction was a back-to-basics sort of advanced fine art, stripped of all external references and associations. It is what you see - nix else. It often takes a geometrical grade, and is dominated by sculptors, although it also includes some corking painters. For more information on minimalist art, run across below ("Postmodernist Brainchild").

Origins and History

Stone Age Abstract Paintings

As far as we tin tell, abstract art first began some 70,000 years ago with prehistoric engravings: namely, two pieces of stone engraved with abstract geometric patterns, found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa. This was followed past the abstruse crimson-ochre dots and paw stencils discovered among the El Castillo Cave paintings, dated to 39,000 BCE, the Neanderthal engraving at Gorham'southward Cavern, Gibraltar, and the guild-shaped claviform image among the Altamira Cavern paintings (c.34,000 BCE). Thereafter, abstract symbols became the predominant form of Paleolithic cavern fine art, outnumbering figurative images by 2:1. Come across: Prehistoric Abstract Signs.

From Academic Realism to Abstraction

Up until the late 19th century, most painting and sculpture followed the traditional principles of Classical Realism, as taught in the dandy Academies of Europe. These principles laid down that art's first duty was to provide a recognizable scene or object. However much affected by the demands of way or medium, a work of art had to imitate or represent external reality. However, during the last quarter of the 19th century, things began to modify. Impressionist art demonstrated that the strict bookish mode of naturalistic painting was no longer the only authentic way of doing things. Then, during the period 1900-1930, developments in other areas of modern art provided additional techniques (involving color, a rejection of 3-D perspective, and new shapes), which would be used to further the quest for abstraction.

Artists First To Move Away From Reality

The start of the major modern art movements to subvert the academic style of classical realism was Impressionism (fl.1870-1880), whose palette was often decidedly non-naturalistic, although its art remained firmly and clearly derived from the real globe, fifty-fifty if Claude Monet'due south concluding work on his Water Lilies genre seemed more akin to abstraction. The emergence of abstract art was also influenced past the Fine art Nouveau move (c.1890-1914).

Kandinsky, Expressionism & Fauvism Demonstrate The Power of Colour

The apply of color and shape to move the spectator was paramount in the development of abstract art. Impressionism, including the variants of Neo-Impressionist Pointillism and Postal service-Impressionism, had already fatigued attention to the power of colour, but High german Expressionism fabricated it the cornerstone of painting. One of its leaders, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) published a book entitled 'On The Spirtual In Art' (1911), which became the foundation text of abstract painting.

Kandinsky was convinced by the emotional properties of shape, line and above all, colour in painting. (He had an aberrant sensitivity to color, which he could hear also every bit see, a condition chosen synaesthesia.) He believed a painting should non be analyzed intellectually only allowed to reach those parts of the brain that connect with music.

Even so, he warned that serious fine art must not be lead by the desire for brainchild into condign mere decoration. Most High german Expressionists (eg. Ernst Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Ernst, Alexei Jawlensky, Oskar Kokoschka, Franz Marc, Baronial Macke and Max Beckmann) were non abstract painters, simply their vivid palette - forth with Kandinsky's theoretical writings - alerted other more than abstract-inclined artists to the ability of colour as a means of achieving their goals.

The parallel Parisian advanced style of Fauvism (1905-08) merely underlined the effect of color with works similar Red Studio (1911, MoMA, NY) by Henri Matisse.

Cubism Rejects Perspective and Pictorial Depth

Cubism (1908-14) was a reaction against the decorative prettiness of Impressionism. Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) developed this new style in stages: beginning, proto-type Cubism (see Picasso's semi-abstract Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, MoMA, NY); then Analytical Cubism (see Nude Descending a Staircase No.two, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art) by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968); and then Synthetic Cubism, which was more collage-oriented. Their basic concept was to move away from the pretty but footling fine art of Impressionism, towards a more intellectual form of fine art which explored new methods of portraying reality.

In particular, they rejected the academic method of representing reality through the use of linear perspective (depth) to create the usual 3-dimensional effect in a painting. Instead, they kept everything on a two-dimensional flat plane, upon which they laid out different 'views' of the same object: a process similar to taking photographs of an object from unlike angles, so cutting up the photos and pasting them on a apartment surface. This method of using a flat surface to depict 3-D reality, rocked art to its foundations. Although most Cubist works were all the same derived from objects or scenes in the existent earth, and thus cannot be considered to exist wholly abstract, the movement's rejection of traditional perspective completely undermined natural-realism in art, and thus opened the door to pure abstraction.

Cubist-inspired abstruse sculptors include: Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), who was also influenced by African and Oriental art.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), who used Cubist devices to represent move, and Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973).

For an early 20th century abstract style of painting which attempted to alloy Cubist composition with colour and music, see: Orphism. A British pre-war art move which was strongly influenced by the Cubist idiom, was Vorticism (1913-14), founded by Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

The Italian Futurism motility (1909-xiii), founded past Marinetti (1876-1944) and exemplified by Gino Severini (1883-1966) and Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), was also influenced by Cubism, and in plough inspired numerous painters with its emphasis on movement and technology. In sculpture, Futurism'south greatest upshot was on the development of Kinetic art, influencing abstract sculptors like Naum Gabo (1890-1977) and Alexander Calder (1898-1976) (noted for his mobiles).

NOTE: "Tubism", invented by Fernand Leger (1881-1955), was a course of Cubism which used cylindrical and spherical pieces - rather than Cubism's apartment overlapping pieces - and included numerous machine-similar motifs, reflecting Leger's futuristic organized religion in technology. See, for example, works like: Soldiers Playing at Cards (1917, Kroller-Muller State Museum, Otterlo); The Mechanic (1920, National Gallery of Canada); Three Women (Le Chiliad Dejeuner) (1921, Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Suprematism and De Stijl Introduce New Geometric Shapes

Traditional art painting and sculpture relies on shapes taken from the real world, of which in that location are limitless examples. In contrast, abstract artists are obliged to rely on artificial, not-natural forms. Thus abstract art is typically concerned with the production of various geometric shapes. And the size and character of these shapes, their relationship to each other, too every bit the colours used throughout the work, become the defining motifs of abstraction.

Russian Suprematism

The Russian abstract art movement known as Suprematism, which was named by its leader Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) for its exclamation of the supremacy of sensation in fine art, appeared in 1915. No doubt influenced by Kandinsky who had already begun to produce a range of concretist works, Malevich produced a series of outstanding avant-garde abstract paintings - rectangular blocks of plain colour floating on a white background - which were decades alee of his time. He saw them every bit successors to the traditional icon-imagery of the Russian Orthodox Church in the apartment Byzantine style of Antiquity. In 1927, his Suprematist theory was published in a book entitled Die Gegenstandlose Welt (The Non-Objective World). Lyubov Popova (1889-1924), forth with Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) considered one of the co-founders of the Russian style of Constructivism (a school concerned with space, new materials, 3-D form, as well equally science and social reform) was another important member of the Suprematist movement. Another interesting Russian art movement which introduced new imagery was Rayonism (or Luchism) (1912-14), founded past Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962). Abstruse sculptors who were influenced by Suprematist/Constructivist ideas included Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) and Naum Gabo (1890-1977).

De Stijl

De Stijl was the proper noun of a Dutch blueprint and aesthetics journal and avant-garde art movement, devoted to geometric abstraction (non-objective art), which was founded and led past Theo Van Doesburg (1883-1931). Its leading figure was Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), who is famous for his series of unproblematic rectangular grids, using only black, white and primary colours - a mode he called Neo-Plasticism (Nieuwe Beelding). One of the most influential pioneers of physical fine art during the period 1920-1944, he adult his precise geometric fashion as a counter-statement to the emotional chaos and uncertainty of the first one-half of the twentieth century. Involved with the abstract group Cercle et Carre (1929-31), as well as the Brainchild-Creation Group (1930-6), he moved to New York in 1938, and was allegedly the first painter to work to gramaphone music.

Van Doesburg was less dogmatic, introducing a more relaxed form of Neo-Plasticism, called Elementarism. He was also responsible, in 1930, for coining the term "Concrete Art". Sadly he died in 1931, but his ideas were continued non merely by students of the Bauhaus design school (where he had lectured), but also by the Brainchild-Creation group - led by the Belgian artist Georges Vantongerloo (1886-1965) and the French painters Jean Helion (1904-87) and Auguste Herbin (1882-1960). Other group members included the cream of European abstractionists, such as Jean Arp (1886-1966), Naum Gabo (1890-1977), El Lissitzky (1890-1941), Antoine Pevsner (1886-1962), Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) and Ben Nicholson (1894-1982). The Swiss ex-Bauhaus architect, sculptor and designer Max Neb (1908-94) was some other follower who helped to promote the genre in Switzerland, Italy, Argentina and Brazil.

Surrealist and Organic Abstraction

In parallel with the development of geometric-style concretism, during the 1920s and 1930s, exponents of Surrealism began to produce a range of fantasy-similar, quasi-naturalistic images. The leading exemplars of this style of Biomorphic/Organic Abstraction were Jean Arp and Joan Miro, neither of whom - as their many preparatory sketches confirm - relied on the technique of automatism. Their fellow Surrealist Salvador Dali (1904-89) likewise produced some extraordinary paintings like The Persistence of Memory (1931, MoMA, NY) and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Jean Arp was also an active sculptor who specialized in Organic Abstraction, as did the English sculptors Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). (See: Modern British Sculpture 1930-lxx.) A number of European abstract artists afterward sought sanctuary in America, where they encountered and influenced a new generation of indigenous abstract painters. These influential emigrants included painters similar Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), Max Ernst (1891-1976), Andre Masson (1896-1987), Arshile Gorky (1904-48), Yves Tangy (1900-55) and others. As it happened, despite the controversy surrounding New York'due south Armory Prove in 1913, the city was developing a keen interest in abstraction. The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1929, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later renamed the Samuel R Guggenheim Museum), in 1939.

Note: For two collectors of abstract painting and sculpture of the first one-half of the 20th century, see: Solomon Guggenheim (1861-1949) and Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979).

Annotation: For avant-garde brainchild in Great britain (c.1939-75) delight encounter: St Ives Schoolhouse.

Abstract Expressionism - More Colour, No More than Geometry

Although post-war European artists maintained their interest in abstract fine art through the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in Paris, past 1945 the heart of modern art had shifted to New York, where the advanced was represented by the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. Arising out of the Keen Depression and World War II, this motility, never associated with a coherent programme as such, was led by Jackson Pollock (1912-56), Mark Rothko (1903-70), Willem De Kooning (1904-97), Clyfford All the same (1904-eighty), Barnett Newman (1905-70) and Adolph Gottlieb (1903-74). The next generation included painters such as Robert Motherwell. The name of the movement was coined by Robert Coates, art critic of the New Yorker. Offshoots include Pollock's 'Action Painting' and Rothko'due south 'Colour Field Painting', and the curious 'Abstract Impressionism' of Philip Guston (1913-lxxx).

Abstract Expressionist Painting remains a vague term - oftentimes confusingly practical to artists who are neither truly abstract, nor expressionist - which describes a form of abstract painting (non-figurative, non-naturalistic) in which colour takes precedence over shape; the latter being no longer geometric. Early works in this style typically filled large calibration canvases, whose size was designed to overwhelm spectators and depict them into another world. The preoccupation of abstract expressionists with visual effects, especially the impact of colour, was a reflection of their main goal - to involve and explore bones homo emotions. Thus an abstract expressionist painting is best felt intuitively rather than understood: the question posed being typically: 'what does information technology make you feel?' - rather than, 'what is it maxim?'

It must be emphasized that this was a wide movement, encompassing differing styles, including (equally mentioned) works that were either semi- or non-abstract, too as those characterized by the way paint was practical, such as Jackson Pollock'due south paintings (dripped and poured), and Willem de Kooning's works (gestural brushwork). For ii interesting early works that illustrate the differing styles of these two artists, come across: Seated Woman (1944, Metropolitan Museum of Art) past Willem de Kooning and Pasiphae (1943, Metropolitan) past Jackson Pollock. The fact that it was the showtime major art movement built-in in the USA, gave it added weight and significance: at least in the minds of critics.

Later on, Abstract Expressionism spawned a number of individual styles under the umbrella of Postal service-painterly abstraction, an anti-gesturalist trend. These individual styles included: Hard-Edge Painting, Colour Stain Painting, Washington Colour Move, American Lyrical Abstraction, and Shaped Canvas. Abstract Expressionism also provoked avant-garde responses from several other artists including Cy Twombly (1928-2011), whose calligraphic scribbling is part-cartoon, part-graffiti; and the Californian abstruse sculptor Mark Di Suvero (b.1933) noted for his large scale iron/steel sculptures.

Europe: Fine art Informel, Tachisme & Cobra Grouping Gesturalism

In Europe, a new art movement known every bit Art Informel emerged during the late 1940s. Seen as the European version of abstract expressionism, it was in reality an umbrella movement with a number of sub-variants. These mini-movements included: (1) Tachisme, a style of abstract painting marked by splotches and dabs of color, was promoted every bit the French reply to American Abstract Expressionism. A key influence was the avant-garde American artist Marker Tobey (1890-1976), whose all-over calligraphic painting fashion predictable that of Pollock. Important members included Jean Fautrier (1898-1964), Georges Mathieu (1921-2012), Pierre Soulages (b.1919), and the Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-92) equally well as the American abstruse expressionist Sam Francis (1923-94). (ii) The advanced Cobra Group, which practised the gestural or "activeness painting" style of American Abstract Expressionism. Information technology was founded by painters, sculptors and graphic artists from the Danish group Host, the Dutch group Reflex, and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealist Group, including: Asger Jorn (1914-73), the Belgian author Christian Dotremont (1922-79), Pierre Alechinsky (b.1927), Karel Appel (1921-2006) and Constant (C.A. Nieuwenhuys) (1920-2005). Pol Bury (1922-2005) was also a member, but in 1953 he quit painting to explore kinetic sculpture. (3) Lyrical Abstraction, a quieter, more than harmonious manner of Art Informel. Leading members included: Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) (1913-51), Hans Hartung (1904-89), Jean-Michel Atlan (1913-threescore), Pierre Soulages (b.1919), Georges Mathieu (1921-2012), and Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002). Other sub-groups included Forces Nouvelles, and Art Non Figuratif.

Op-Art: The New Geometric Abstraction

One of the most distinct styles of geometric abstract painting to emerge from the modernist era, was the Op-Art movement (an abbreviation of 'optical fine art') whose hallmark was the engagement of the heart, past means of complex, often monochromatic, geometric patterns, to cause it to see colours and shapes that were not actually there. Leading members included the Hungarian painter and graphic designer Victor Vasarely (1908-97), and the English painter Bridget Riley (b.1931). The movement disappeared by the early 1970s.

Postmodernist Abstraction

Since the first of postmodernism (since the mid-60s) contemporary fine art has tended to fragment into smaller, more than local schools. This is because the prevailing philosophy amid contemporary art movements has been to distrust the k styles of the early 20th century. An exception is the Minimalism schoolhouse, a dorsum-to-nuts style of geometric abstraction exemplified by postmodernist artists like sculptors Donald Judd (1928-94), Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), Robert Morris (b.1931), Walter de Maria (b.1935), and Carl Andre (b.1935). Another important minimalist sculptor is Richard Serra (b.1939) whose abstract works include Tilted Arc (1981, Federal Plaza, New York) and The Matter of Time (2004, Guggenheim Bilbao). Noted abstract painters associated with Minimalism include Ad Reinhardt (1913-67), Frank Stella (b.1936), whose big scale paintings involve interlocking clusters of shape and colours; Sean Scully (b.1945) the Irish-American painter whose rectangular shapes of colour seem to imitate the monumental forms of prehistoric structures; also as Jo Baer (b.1929), Ellsworth Kelly (b.1923), Robert Mangold (b.1937), Brice Marden (b.1938), Agnes Martin (1912-2004), and Robert Ryman (b.1930).

In function a reaction against the austerity of minimalism, Neo-Expressionism was mainly a figurative move which emerged from the early 1980s onwards. However, it likewise included a number of outstanding abstract painters such every bit the Englishman Winner Howard Hodgkin (b.1932), also every bit the German artists Georg Baselitz (b.1938), Anselm Kiefer (b.1945), and others. Among several other internationally acclaimed abstruse artists who accomplished recognition during the 1980s and 1990s, is the British sculptor Anish Kapoor (b.1954), noted for large-calibration works in rough hewn stone, bandage metal and stainless steel. Both Hodgkin and Kapoor are Turner Prize Winners.

Collections of Abstruse Art

Non-representational fine art tin be seen in almost of the best art museums effectually the world. Notable collections are held by the following institutions

• Museum of Modern Fine art (MoMA), New York.
• Samuel R Guggenheim Museum, New York.
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
• Tate Gallery, London.
• Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris.
• Guggenheim Bilbao.
• Guggenheim Venice.
• Kunstmuseum, Basel.

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