Abstract Art


by Keith McGregor - Date: 2007-12-23 - Word Count: 226 Share This!

To understand its success and the whole transformation of theartistic scene in the years before the First World War, we must turn toParis. For it was Paris that Cubism originated and where abstract arthas its modern roots. This was a movement which led to much moreradical departures from the Western tradition of painting than evenKandinskys Expressionist colour chords.

Yet Cubism did not set out to abolish representation, only to reformit. The Feeling of uneasiness created by the brilliant messiness ofImpressionist "snapshots" of fleeing sights, the longing for moreorder, structure and pattern that had animated the illustrators of ArtNouveau with their emphasis on "decorative" simplification no less thansuch masters as Seurat and Cezanne.

So, as the ideas grew out of expressionism and aimed at a kind ofpainting that would rival music in expressiveness. The interest instructure aroused by Cubism raised the question among painters inParis, in Russia and soon also in Holland whether painting could not beturned into a kind of construction like architecture. The Dutchman,Piet Mondrian wanted to build up his pictures out of simplest elements:straight lines and pure colours. He longed for an art of clarity anddiscipline that somehow reflected the objective laws of the universe.For Mondrian, like Kandinsky and Klee, was something of a mystic andwanted his art to reveal immutable realties behind the ever-changingforms of subjective appearance.

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Keith McGregor is a partner of Strawberrysoup, a web design agency with offices in Chichester and Bournemouth. Strawberrysoup specialise in creative web design, content managed websites, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and graphic design. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

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