It is often said that the term “abstract art"
is not very well chosen, and replacements such as “non-objective” or
“figurative” are more appropriate. However, what matters is the work of
art and not its tag. It maybe that Kandinsky’s first experiments at
colour music were not a complete success, but it is understandable the
interest they aroused. Even so, it is unlikely that “abstract art” could have become a movement through Expressionism alone.
To understand its success and the whole transformation of the
artistic scene in the years before the First World War, we must turn to
Paris. For it was Paris that Cubism originated and where abstract art
has its modern roots. This was a movement which led to much more
radical departures from the Western tradition of painting than even
Kandinskys Expressionist colour chords.
Yet Cubism did not set out to abolish representation, only to reform
it. The Feeling of uneasiness created by the brilliant messiness of
Impressionist “snapshots” of fleeing sights, the longing for more
order, structure and pattern that had animated the illustrators of Art
Nouveau with their emphasis on “decorative” simplification no less than
such masters as Seurat and Cezanne.
So, as the ideas grew out of expressionism and aimed at a kind of
painting that would rival music in expressiveness. The interest in
structure aroused by Cubism raised the question among painters in
Paris, in Russia and soon also in Holland whether painting could not be
turned 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 and
discipline that somehow reflected the objective laws of the universe.
For Mondrian, like Kandinsky and Klee, was something of a mystic and
wanted his art to reveal immutable realties behind the ever-changing
forms of subjective appearance.
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
