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Evaluating Abstract Art
“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.”
Jackson Pollock
Evaluating Abstract Art
Most students experience the arts…sheltered and isolated from the real world by their accession to museums…see modern art as the butt of jokes –distorted by feelings and emotions…Discussions of contemporary art are couched in the arcane or esoteric terminology of the elite, which bear no apparent relevance to the lived experience of the learner.
Art and CognitionIntegrating the visual arts in the curriculumArthur D. EflandTeachers College Press, New York2002ISBN 0 80774218 X
Evaluating Abstract Art
“The modern artist…is working and expressing an inner world – in other words – expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.”
Jackson Pollock
Helen Frankenthaler
Evaluating Abstract Art
It means something to the artist who created it because the image appeals to them in some way, but the viewer does not have this personal relationship to the work. The viewer comes in "cold" and lacks any handle to grasp. To have a good appreciation of the artwork the viewer needs to have some idea of what the artist was trying to do. A totally abstract work of art provides little clue as to what the artist was thinking. It does not make it easy for us to know what its meaning was for its creator. By contrast, representational art deals in familiar shapes, which evoke familiar responses in each viewer.
http://soler7.com/IFAQ/Abstraction.htm
Helen Frankenthaler
Yves Klein, 1928-1962IKB 124, 1960Sold for €688 132, 3 April 2007
New York critics of Klein's time classify him as neo-Dada, as a postmodernist.
Exhibition: 'Proposte Monochrome, Epoca Blu' (Proposition Monochrome; Blue Epoch) (1957), featured 11 identical blue canvases, using ultramarine pigment suspended in a synthetic resin 'Rhodopas'. Discovered with help, the effect was to retain the brilliance of the pigment which tended to become dull when suspended in linseed oil. Klein later patented this recipe to maintain the "authenticity of the pure idea.“ This colour, reminiscent of the lapis lazuli used to paint the Madonna's robes in medieval paintings.It become famous as 'International Klein Blue' (IKB). The paintings were attached to poles placed 20 cm away from the walls to increase their spatial ambiguities.The show was a critical and commercial success. At the Parisian exhibition 1001 blue balloons were released to mark the opening, blue postcards were sent out using IKB stamps that Klein had bribed the postal service to accept as legitimate.
Evaluating Abstract Art
“It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while you may like it or you may not.”
Jackson Pollock
“…generally speaking, color is a power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul….It is evident therefore that color harmony must rest only on a corresponding vibration in the human soul; and this is one of the guiding principles of the inner need (impulse for spiritual expression/ actual expression).”Kandinsky
Evaluating Abstract ArtIn a painting devoid of easily recognizable subject matter colour is the most emotional element.
Colour compositions include:analogous colour scheme -all the colors are related and harmonious. Producing a unified, cohesive, tranquil painting. Everything fits together and belongs.
Complementary colour scheme -makes use of opposites, red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple. Produce a lot of visual vibrations in the eye and convey tension, excitement, contrast. Some will like this visual excitement for its power and variety.
‘No 1 Untitled Royal Red and Blue’ by Mark Rothko
“...the fact that one usually begins with drawing is already academic. We start with color.“ Rothko
Evaluating Abstract Art
Things to consider what works (or doesn’t) and why:ColoursDo they oppose or compliment?Do they create energy / movement? Or are they flat/dull?Harmonious?
Now consider:Texture, Pattern, composition/use of space,Lines –busy, leading the eye?
Is there a focal point?Emphasis- where and why?