Abstraction in Art

Have you ever seen works of art like the one below and heard or thought, "What's so great about this painting?  I could do that!!" 

The answer to that question is, yes, you could do that.  However, these artists were trying something new for their time and is called abstract expressionism.  Their paintings did not try to show objects from real life.  Instead, they used lines, shapes and colors to represent ideas, emotions, sounds, etc in their work.  Their emphasis on lines, shapes and colors makes their work abstract.

The word abstract also has another meaning in art.  Abstract can refer to simplifying real life scenes or objects into lines, shapes, and colors.

Here is an example of what I mean:

This is a photograph of the New York Stock Exchange

There are many details in the photo and the emphasis of the photo is the building, the flag, and the statue in the foreground.  

However, when I ran the photo through a filter, I changed the image to this:

It is still the same photograph but many of the details were eliminated.  It is still a photo of the New York Stock Exchange but now it is also about the shapes and lines in the image.  It is more simple.  It is abstracted.

Here is another example.  

This is a photo of a large Buddha in Thailand.  You are looking up at the statue from the ground.  The photograph isn't so much about the statue (otherwise it would have been taken from the front so you can clearly see the Buddha) but more about the shapes and lines made by the statue at this angle.

Here is one more example.  

The photo below is an image of a knot tied in a yellow scarf on another statue in Thailand.  

I zoomed in and chose a section of the knot that had interesting positive and negative shapes.

Then I ran it through a filter that simplified it again and really just turned it into shapes.

Now the photograph is about shapes, colors, and lines but not about a knot in a piece of cloth.

Get it?

Here is a summary:  

In art, the word abstract can refer to a movement of art (such as abstract expressionism) that only used lines, shapes, and colors to often represent ideas, emotions, sounds, etc.

The word abstract can also refer to taking a real object or scene and simplifying it so that it becomes lines, shapes and colors.

If you are confused, don't be dismayed.  We will be working on abstracting an object in a drawing during our next class.  Be ready.  This is gonna be fun!