Is Abstract Art relevant today?

Catalog for the current exhibit: Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976

The use of abstract art in healthcare is controversial. But where does abstract art fit in the larger art world; beyond the walls of hospitals? The exhibit: "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976" has me ruminating on the history of abstract art and it's place today.

My conclusion: Abstract art is now a minor player in the confusing jumble of contemporary art.

Richard Kalina wrote in the September issue of Art in America:

Does...abstraction have anything to tell us about today? In what ways ... does this relate to the problems we face in a much larger and more complex artworld? Art now seems to have no boundaries, literally and figuratively. Art is made and displayed virtually anywhere in an exponentially expanding art world of art fairs, biennials ... the Internet...essentially in any form conceivable.

On the one hand this is liberating, on the other it is confusing.

It is confusing! It would be so much easier if there was truth in art like the time period covered by this exhibit (1940-1976). During that era Art critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenburg wrote convincing essays about right and wrong. They believed there was one right truth about art. Many artists and art connoisseurs believed them.

Today that is all gone and abstract art is now merely one of a thousand possible answers for what art can be. I miss that era of certainty!

The book of the exhibit is available from Amazon.com, click here

Information on the exhibit at the Jewish Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo can be found by clicking here

Comments

[Bill Knight]

Henry thanks for making me think!

What's better:

A flock of birds that looks like a flock of birds or a flock of birds that looks like a stave of notes?

If a pair of pliers looks to me like an open-mouthed sea creature, what's abstract?

Natural, or representation imagery has always had enormous abstract potential. It's a duality. The ab-ex-ists insistence on one pole of the duality now seems heavy-handed. Abstraction is what makes the most representational of images exciting, and vice-versa, representation is what makes the most abstract of images exciting.

True? That it's the going back and forth that's the fun part. The best image is at once the most abstract and the most recognizable.

[Henry Domke]

"Natural, or representation imagery has always had enormous abstract potential."
I could not agree more. That is something I try to achieve with the macro shots I do. You can see the same thing in the art of Daniel Sroka (www.danielsroka.com)

This exhibit however deals with a particular flavor of abstraction; abstract expressionism. That has nothing to do with the abstract potential of the natural.

Abstract Expressionism must have been the high point for abstraction. Then came minimalism, then Pop, then... the PostModern world we live in today where it makes no sense.

[Bill Knight]

Two thoughts.

Does "abstract art" really mean anything other than art since the beginning of the twentieth century? Since then, even if one practices "representational art" one really can't be unaware of the ironies in doing so, because the world has been changed by the advent of abstraction and we really can't undo it. Everything now takes place in a context of abstraction.

Second, I tend to think of the word "abstract" as having some meaning in the philosophical sense, as in "ideal" and not "real". I think this may be a bad habit, because it really doesn't work very well. Philosophically the opposite of abstract is concrete. In art "abstract" happens to be very much about the concrete presence of materials, so much so that the term "abstract" can't have much meaning in the philosophic sense.

What are you left with then? At this point I'm trying on the notion that it's really a term of chronology, more than anything designating an era. This is a provocative stance because it challenges my idea of what representational art. The idea that representational art is simply anything that has a recognizable object in it really isn't of much use anyway. Can any artist working today who isn't entirely naive avoid considering her work though a lens of abstraction? I don't think so.

Henry, you for instance talk about getting your work to "sing". I think that way of looking at things is drenched in early twentieth century ideas of abstraction of representing sound through color. You are working on matters that are very likely not much to do with recognition but rather with feel.

I've said too much, but one more thing. I think the Ab-exists are Ab-fab and I will be fascinated by them forever. I went to an Ab-ex school. I was taught by them, and I am one at heart. De Kooning, you might know, will claim a sort of representional bent to his work, which he spoke as a journal of his days movements.

'When asked to explain his Abstract Expressionist images (De Kooning) said that he was most fascinated by the quick glimpses of things as he moved about the city and when back in the studio he found he would slip back into those fleeting images. He said “If you want to describe my work, call me a slipping glimpser.”' (Alan Peterson)

[Bill Knight]

Sorry, just to finish, De Kooning clearly was not interested in a Platonic ideal, and he may have had a keener interest in representation than most contemporary nature photographers, who are generally interested "abstract" qualities of in light, tone and rhythm.

[kudzu fire]

health or illness is reminiscent of the zeros and ones of computer science. you either have it or you don't. the very fact that people argue about abstract art probably indicates there can be no object contribution of abstract art to health. it is easier to see the contribution of say animals to health. Some people are frightened of velvet clown paintings. Some are disgusted, and heaven help us, some people buy velvet clown paintings as "art?"

[John]

Abstract art designs always amazed me... Love this one!!