What is Abstract Art?
Abstract art is a modern art form in world history compared to movements like Romanticism.
Throughout the years of the arts, painting has become much more aesthetic and expressive with the variation of creation. Abstract art is a complex and creative form meant to inspire imagination in the brain using many different textures, colors, forms, and styles.
This type of art is as far from a definitive structure as it can get. It often isn’t supposed to look like anything specific, only to challenge the brain on the standard of aesthetics.
If it does try to look like anything specific, it emphasizes the separation of objective reality. Abstract art can also simplify art pieces that completely reject traditional art at its core.
The six main elements of abstract art are Color, Form, Value, Shape, Line, and Texture.
This modern form of Western art was started in the mid-19th century, becoming the dominant form of art in the 20th century. Artists across the West created this new type of art in response to the advancements in science, art, culture, and information.
Artists developed abstract art over a long time and modernized it during the Renaissance. For example, Joshua Reynolds, an English painter in the 18th century, wrote about the beauty of imperfection and form that could make a painting high quality. Even though this did not represent his paintings, it did show that through the history of art in Europe, these ideas of non-objective aesthetics grew.
A painting of Joshua Reynolds
Abstract art embraces the idea that painting is not about representing an objective message or object, but just representing the qualities, colors, forms, and aesthetics of the objects placed on the canvas, even if the work of art is separated from real life. It’s kind of like Surrealism or Cubism in a way.
This makes art more expressive, freeing, and innovative in a sense. In the 20th century, more artists wanted to expand the creativity and the norms of art, because of this, Pablo Picasso’s Cubism appeared, Surrealism appeared, Futurism appeared, and other styles of art began to take hold in culture.
These art styles took subjective objects, while editing and grouping them to create an aesthetic look that even st