Abstract art is a bad name for the art that doesn’t look like anything, because it makes it sound as though there is something it must be abstracted from. And in fact, that’s part of what abstract art is about.

It was inspired by a discovery made in 1901 by Picasso and Braque: that you could take the same motifs, apples or pears or wine bottles, and treat them as though they were parts of a single shape instead of separate objects. It was too radical an idea to wrap your mind around all at once; you had to see objects becoming shapes over and over again before you could accept it.

But once you did accept it, you had a new way of seeing. You could look at the world around you and see how the same themes and ideas repeat themselves over and over again. This does not mean that everything is connected to everything else; only that there are connections. Or if not connections, then at least resonances –the echoes of old thoughts and feelings in new situations.

What makes this kind of art difficult is not getting the idea that things can become shapes, but accepting that they do. So here is another way of thinking about abstract art: it’s not just different from representational art; it

Abstract art is hard to understand. There are many different kinds of abstract art. Some of it is hard to understand because it is a new kind of art; and some because it isn’t really any kind of art at all.

The easy kind of abstract art to understand is the most difficult kind to make. The paintings are simple, but the ideas behind them are very complex. The artists who made this kind of abstract art were trying to do something that had never been done before; they were trying to make pictures that did not look like anything in the world we can see. Making this kind of abstract art requires a lot of skill; and a lot of imagination, and even then there is no guarantee that it will work.

Trying something new is always risky. But when you succeed, people think it was easy. It looks easy afterward, when you know how it was done. But while you’re doing it, you don’t know if you’ll succeed or fail.

Abstract art is more than the sum of its brushstrokes.

Abstract art explores the limits of human perception. The shapes, colors, textures and lines that make up an abstract painting can trigger powerful reactions in the viewer – reactions that are often stronger than those elicited by representational art.

A skilled abstract artist can convey a complex set of ideas with a single work, simply by manipulating elements of composition and color. Combining creativity with technical mastery, abstract artists explore new artistic territory while also providing us with a fresh perspective on the world around us.

Abstract art is not just for hipsters with ironic mustaches, or for people who like to hang maps on their walls. It’s a legitimate artistic style that has been practiced by some of the most influential painters in history, including Van Gogh, Picasso and Kandinsky.

Yet despite its long history, it continues to draw criticism from many corners of the art world. Some critics argue that abstract art is too subjective to be great art; others claim it lacks emotion or meaning. But as we’ll see in this course, these criticisms are misguided: abstract paintings have both meaning and emotion – you just have to look at them in the right way.

Abstract art is art that makes use of a visual language of form and color in order to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. In Western art, abstract art was preceded by figurative art, both in Ancient Egyptian art, and Minoan art.

Examples of figurative prehistoric art include cave paintings, Shamanistic art, portrait art, and animistic art. Abstract Art was the first form to emerge from the Western tradition. The distinction between “figurative” and “non-figurative” has been used since the mid-19th century to define styles like Symbolism and Expressionism. It became more sharply defined after non-representational painting was introduced as a style by modernist painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian at the beginning of the 20th century. Abstraction provides an opportunity to convey social messages and ideas.

Abstract art conveys meaning through shape, form, color and line quality without reference to recognizable subject matter. Western (European) abstract art is generally understood as originating in two movements: Cubism (early 20th century), and Futurism (1910s).

Abstract art is not a new thing. It goes back to the earliest days of European art. The point of abstract art is not just to make things look abstract, like an empty canvas or a pile of bricks.

The point is to make the viewer see abstractly. To look at things in new ways, making connections between apparently unrelated things. To see how seemingly random events might actually be connected.

Abstract artists are trying to do what scientists do, but using paint and canvas instead of equations and experiments. If you’re getting tired of staring at the same old Mona Lisa, maybe it’s time to give modern art a try.

Abstract art is a misnomer. The aim of abstract art is not to express the inexpressible but to make people feel something. Abstract art is a reaction against academic realism, which it sees as a mechanical, lifeless rendering of reality.

So what do we know about the reaction? First, that it was designed by artists for artists. And second, that it was motivated by the idea that paintings should communicate feelings, not information — feelings that would be triggered in the viewer by the shapes and colors on the canvas, rather than by a story told in the picture. In other words, an abstract painting should trigger those feelings in anyone who looks at it — regardless of whether they have seen any other paintings before or whether they understand what they are being shown or told.

More than 50 years after this movement was launched in 1910 by Wassily Kandinsky’s “Improvisation” and Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square,” abstract art has now been adopted as a legitimate form by many museums, galleries and collectors worldwide. Yet much of the vocal public remains highly skeptical about its value as serious art. That’s because there are plenty of examples of bad abstract art.

Abstract art is art that uses a visual language of form, color, and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. At first, “abstract” was used to refer to any painting that did not depict a subject from the natural world (a landscape or portrait); however, “abstract” is also frequently used today to refer to all modern art, as opposed to traditional realism.[1]

Artists abstracting reality representational or non-representational have existed since prehistory; however some modern artists had no intention to create abstract work, but rather were in rebellion against naturalism; preferring what they felt was more visionary and personal artistic expression which some claimed was closer to human emotions. The support for such an attitude came from various sources –