The Abstraction
Developing in parallel to cubism and futurism, expressionism and Dada, and surrealism as well, receiving inflows of them revolutionary, a new aesthetic situation is defined, between 1910 and 1917, in Western art that dominate long, sooner or later : the abstraction.
Mental attitude and sensitivity whose roots lie in the Neolithic as the Romanesque art of the steppes and in the western Irish twists of the illuminations of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance rhythmic concerns, under Pythagorean lesson, she realizes that a spirit of abstraction to figuration spirit offers compensation, but the historical alternation, responding to cultural and indexes at the beginning of the nineteenth century erupted in mutation, in favor of an extreme evolution of contemporary aesthetic discourse - and already we've seen of Impressionism in the divide, but deny themselves fundamentally naturalism figurative earlier.
Reflection on the colors of Goethe (Zur Farbenlehre, 1810) unwelcome at the time, its psychological effect against the physical theories of Newton, the theory of pure visuality K. Fiedler (who died in 1895, with only collected writings in 1914: Shriften uber Kunst) adopted H. Hilderbrand (Problem der Form, 1893), with recovery of the sense "formal" non-free of classic criterion, and the thesis W. Worringer on Abstraktion und Einfühlung, prepared in German cultural circles in Munich especially (but not the French, who ignored such works), an awareness of the problems posed by an artistic creation "tautogoric" (Schlegel) - only to itself, contrary to due diligence "allegorical" of all figurative formulation. Or an awareness of the infinite as opposed to a finite implies that the naturalistic representation. The abstraction would thus be an "antifiguration" (C. P. Brue, 1955) that is sufficient in itself without external boundaries.
The aesthetic and philosophical speculations such must be added, in Germany, too, in the context of theorizing psychologistic call school in Berlin, around 1912, the influence of "Gestaltheorie" (theory of form, structure) with works of M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka and W. Kohler (Gestaltpsychology, published in the United States in 1929) that, opposed to analytical psychology, define the behavior of the set, in correspondence organized and interdependent components, which are just formal expression and formalizing in the field of aesthetics.
If Cézanne, in 1904, reported in the treatment codable geometric models of nature, and M. Denis, already in 1890, remembered that a framework is a priority, "a flat surface covered with colors" on it pointing to the fundamental situation of abstract painting to Worringer, the "abstraction" reflected the desire of separating hostile nature, and not "communion" in an anguished isolation or changed, that intellectual and sensitively, defended himself, as alien to the everyday world, but it also tended to "access to the underlying archetypal forms that random variations introduced the world today (H. Read, 1955 ), imparting a sense of this, through a pedagogical action. The demand thus rendered metaphysics leads, finally, amid a crisis mythology of the Western world, an "ultramitologie" (J.-A. France, 1959) of perfect geometric expression by one of two major ways in which art abstract was stabilized.
The other is located in, exacerbation of feelings - and its root expressionist (or surrealistic) Cubist corresponds to the root (or cube-futurist) of the first.
The names, descriptive or controversy, which received the abstraction, sometimes reflect their own rootedness, now a timing of steps walked or aesthetics than formulated. The "abstract expressionism" or "lyrical abstraction" marking the first situation to the borders of "informality" (M. Tapio, 1951) or "action painting" ("action painting" or "gestural") and "gesturalism "H. Rosenberg, 1952) or "tachisme" (from tache, "spot, C. Estienne, 1954). But theoretical situations or particularistic movements of geometric abstraction rooted in Cubist, are the names of Russian constructivism "and" Suprematism, "or the Dutch" neoplasticism "and" elementarism "- but they joined a new concept of Concrete "(TV Doesbourg, 1951), which sought to oppose the abstraction, considering it" over the period of research and experience speculative.” For G. Mathieu (1951), these situations (also known as "cold abstraction" as opposed to the expressionistic embellishments) fit into the generic term "aformalism. Later, around 1960, an art-based optical effects will take the name of American "op'art" while investigations led to the mechanical "kinetic art", and another in a geometric framework or formalistic.
The classification of "non-figurative" rather vague, sought to oppose the type geometric abstraction, ignoring the "figures" of this geometry and only thinking about the nature of what we thought were not well founded their own experiences. In the immediate postwar period, however, a new school of Paris "has adopted this name, rooting on her accepting an impressionist, retained by the emotion of the original natural subject. "No goal", for its part, label was proposed by H. Rebay, the United States in 40 years, a recovery that had not fortune.
In the two trunks herd of abstraction we thus define themselves both situations, a sentimental expression and expression of mental or other geometric, with that priority, immediately taken up in 1910 and 1920 by Kandinsky, after long experience figurative expressionist, while the second is exemplified in Malevich and Mondrian in 1913-14, in 1917 - both coming from Cubism to Suprematism or the neoplasticism, respectively.
The larger or more charismatic historical importance of Mondrian is the exemplary logic of his diligence as much of their persistence, one possible action that cannot benefit Malevich in the Stalin Soviet Union s. The forwarding logic of both objected to the accident that lies at the base of the abstraction of Kandinsky, unable to read figuratively a "Meda" Monet in 1895, and, surprised by a suddenly seen his own composition instead, leaning against a wall of his studio in 1908.
But beyond the current two or more channels of abstraction, it should be noted, with a focus on time (although other relations of reading should be made in various artists), the interpretation of a musical inspiration in visual terms of a universe of sounds, rhythmic affinity. In 1942 the Czech F. Kupka (1871-1957) exhibited in Paris (where he installed in 1895) a screen titled "Disks of Newton" with, by caption, "Amorphous, escape in two colors" (Prague), probably 1910. Then the painter traveled a long way to Fauvism and symbolism to expressionism, influenced by bright, dynamic, having illustrator acerbic humor ("L'Assiette au Beurre") and also attended the group's "Golden Section". The series of their "vertical planes" in 1912-13 (MAM, Paris, etc...), also represents a planned museum already detectable in "piano keys – the "lake of 1909 (Prague) with its vertical listing “planes of color." In the '30s, Kupka inspire would jazz ("Jazz-hot No. 1, 1935, MAM, Paris), a work illegally in many curiosities that changed the cosmic sciences such as music and led the test Creations dans les arts plastiques (1923), in a situation of isolated pioneer. In a similar musical inspiration can subscribe to the Lithuanian painter and composer M. K. Ciurhouris, who died in 1911, working in S. Petersburg since 1906, abstract compositions that mark since 1904, with arabesques of geometric shapes in the "Sonatas of stars, allegro and andante" (1908, Kaunas, Lithuania) took a diluted symbolic figuration, mentioned above. The Russian S. Charchouse, in turn, come and experience "given", he also drew on Bach or Beethoven, to compositions of fine monocronism, a painting so that the symbolism lurks.
