mill
Well-known member
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Here is an article that was well received when it appeared in a Monthly Newsletter I contribute to:
ABSTRACT ART
I feel I must write to disagree with much of the current opinion held by those now writing about Abstract Art. Mostly it seems to be by people with Fine Art degrees who love dissertations. I am convinced that they see paintings as put into two separate categories. Abstract Art in which they cannot immediately discern a subject as opposed to Figurative Art where they can’t.
Oh how the Universities, or for that matter the whole direction of our present culture, is influenced by the commonly held belief that all human experience may be classified in order allocate an order of merit to each.
When an artist sees a subject he likes, the first stage is usually to draw it. This abstracts what is seen from one point of view and at first is a defining of contour from this one view. What follows is a drawing of shades to fix the form made by light falling on the objects from one viewpoint on one single occasion. It is shaped to bring to mind the similarity to the visual experience of those viewing it.
The transition to the painting itself the objects are shown in an arrangement that is the personal choice of the artist as are the colours arbitrarily matched to their visual appearance and varying as a result.
It would be impossible to show every leaf in a landscape or every hair on an animal so a certain amount of abstraction is necessary to indicate foliage and detail shown meticulously in a close up photograph, perfectionist amateurs could take lifetime over one landscape, some even try.
The fact of the matter is that the translation of three-dimensional reality into two-dimensional expression is always in itself an abstraction and it will always be an interpretation of reality.
At present the confusion today is complicated by the prevalence of photographic pictures widespread by the mobile phone and the internet. This in turn prejudices the public into a belief that the nearer a picture is to photographic detail, the better the quality. In this capitalistic society most of the pictures describe objects for sale therefore there are far more that are just illustrations of objects. This trend is most obvious when it is displayed in the work of many untrained painters, predominantly centrally placed single subjects in painful photographically detail with plain or formless backgrounds. In effect they are illustrations.
John
ABSTRACT ART
I feel I must write to disagree with much of the current opinion held by those now writing about Abstract Art. Mostly it seems to be by people with Fine Art degrees who love dissertations. I am convinced that they see paintings as put into two separate categories. Abstract Art in which they cannot immediately discern a subject as opposed to Figurative Art where they can’t.
Oh how the Universities, or for that matter the whole direction of our present culture, is influenced by the commonly held belief that all human experience may be classified in order allocate an order of merit to each.
When an artist sees a subject he likes, the first stage is usually to draw it. This abstracts what is seen from one point of view and at first is a defining of contour from this one view. What follows is a drawing of shades to fix the form made by light falling on the objects from one viewpoint on one single occasion. It is shaped to bring to mind the similarity to the visual experience of those viewing it.
The transition to the painting itself the objects are shown in an arrangement that is the personal choice of the artist as are the colours arbitrarily matched to their visual appearance and varying as a result.
It would be impossible to show every leaf in a landscape or every hair on an animal so a certain amount of abstraction is necessary to indicate foliage and detail shown meticulously in a close up photograph, perfectionist amateurs could take lifetime over one landscape, some even try.
The fact of the matter is that the translation of three-dimensional reality into two-dimensional expression is always in itself an abstraction and it will always be an interpretation of reality.
At present the confusion today is complicated by the prevalence of photographic pictures widespread by the mobile phone and the internet. This in turn prejudices the public into a belief that the nearer a picture is to photographic detail, the better the quality. In this capitalistic society most of the pictures describe objects for sale therefore there are far more that are just illustrations of objects. This trend is most obvious when it is displayed in the work of many untrained painters, predominantly centrally placed single subjects in painful photographically detail with plain or formless backgrounds. In effect they are illustrations.
John