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What Exactly is Abstract Art?

Abstract art occasionally finds itself as the vagabond of artistic glossary terms; highly indefinable because of the broadness of its interpretational horizons. Certain artistic venues uncommonly viewed as abstract in fact are. Consider a broader context than fine art.

Music, for example, often carries a denotation of concert hall placement. However, music is pure sound and, consequently, the most abstract art form. The basic visual elements of sound architecture and its complementary garden are form, line, color and texture; all are characteristics of abstract art and a part of aesthetic enjoyment. A person observing these things outdoors is unlikely to ask, "What does it mean?" as people often do examining abstract art in a museum. Why?

Thank the ancient Greeks. Though they used geometric abstraction in their ceramic art, their more familiar classical period (480-323 B.C.) insisted that art should imitate life, reflecting the objectives of their worldly philosophy. In short, the word is mimesis, connoting imitative representation. The modern western world inherited that bias, though in truth, Greek art is primarily idealism, not realism.

For the Classical Greeks, nothing but imitation of reality emerged, a sustained philosophy into the early nineteenth century when photography fulfilled the purpose. At the beginning of the last century, artists began to ask, "If art can only represent the external world, what future does painting and sculpture have in this new age of photography?" In a colossal part, photography was the key component instigating a questionable future for the purpose of art. Theorists supplied that like music, visual art must henceforth express the feeling of life as equally as it figuratively represented it. For art to have a future, it must exude the vigor of pure thought and emotion in an increasingly complex world. Art must look to its essential characteristicsform, line, color and textureto remain relevant to its time. Art must answer the new question of how the world feels, as opposed to what it looks like; a question pertinent to any musical piece, architectural structure, or garden layout. Regardless of style, art humanizes universally, because it draws attention to the symmetrical and asymmetrical rhythm and balance of space and color. This is the true purpose of art, abstract or not: to enrich lives by sensitizing them to the visual richness of the world.

Learn more about this author, Alizah Grace.
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