How to appreciate abstract painting? It is not difficult to understand abstract art.

Speaking of abstract painting, we must all know Picasso. Maybe we don't appreciate his paintings very well, but we still know the labels. Abstract art rose in Europe and America in the 20th century. Perhaps most of us are more receptive to the traditional figurative art. After all, what we draw can be seen at a glance. Otherwise, the painting is not good. However, most people don't know how to appreciate abstract art because there is nothing like it. They don't know what the author wants to express. How should abstract art be appreciated? Here are a few small examples.

I don't know if you have noticed that when we appreciate oil paintings, we will say "Wow, this color scheme is great"; When you appreciate Chinese painting, you will say "this artistic conception is well rendered"; However, when it comes to abstract paintings, we just say "I don't understand".

In fact, the most deadly thing about abstract art is that it is difficult to express, not incomprehensible. Just like the wallpaper on your wall has many patterns, it looks beautiful and harmonious. But if someone asks you why you look good? It's hard for you to describe it clearly. I think abstract art is like this.

Compared with other works, abstract art has little appreciation and no rules, but this is its charm. Today we will talk about this abstract art that we don't understand. Maybe if you encounter abstract works in the future, you can add some talk.

Abstract art is not the name of a single school, but contains many painting schools. These painting schools can be roughly divided into two categories: one is cold abstraction, which can also be called geometric abstraction, represented by mondriaan, Roscoe and Marek; The other is thermal abstraction, which can also be called lyric abstraction, represented by Kandinsky, Pollock and Dekunin.

Mondriaan

Among these people, mondriaan and Kandinsky can be regarded as the originator of "cold abstraction" and "hot abstraction" respectively. Both of them were born in the second half of19th century, with a difference of 6 years. They all got the artistic apocalypse at the age of 40 and died in 1944.

However, Kandinsky and mondriaan had almost no friendship all their lives. One of them was born in Russia and the other in the Netherlands, but they are closely linked by the word abstraction. They happen to coincide and devote themselves to exploring the philosophical significance and spiritual depth of art, but these two seemingly parallel lifelines meet at some moments, leaving an indelible footprint in the history of art.

Kandinsky

1. Kandinsky

Kandinsky, the originator of hot abstraction, is actually not as fanatical as people think. Unlike the stereotype that artists are wild, messy and trendy, Kandinsky looks more like a professor or lawyer.

He wears a pair of exquisite glasses and a straight suit, and the buttons of his coat are always meticulously buttoned neatly. Yes, Kandinsky is a complete gentleman, even a nobleman.

Wassily kandinsky was born in an intellectual family in Moscow on February 4th, 1986. Kandinsky, a middle school student, not only got excellent grades, but also was an excellent amateur cellist and painter. He has been immersed in music, poetry and drama for a long time since he was a child, which makes him have excellent cultivation.

He studied law and economics at Moscow University. Not only did he get a doctorate in law, but he even got a professorship in a university. Perhaps in his bones, Kandinsky is still a scholar and intellectual.

It's just that art attracted him too much. At the age of 30, Kandinsky resolutely gave up his enviable professorship and left his hometown to study painting in Munich, which also reflected his courage and passion hidden under his elegant appearance.

Kandinsky grew rapidly in Munich. He was quickly attracted by the new artistic atmosphere that pervaded the city. On the one hand, he hungrily tried various artistic styles, on the other hand, he was keen on various artistic movements and formed art societies.

Kandinsky is the core figure of the famous German expressionist art society "Green Knight". In fact, young knights are not an art movement, nor a genre, and there is no clear program, just a loose painter organization.

They pay attention to the spiritual world behind art forms and natural phenomena. They advocate painting expression to consolidate human spirit. Facts have proved that the concept of "nature is the fundamental source of the spiritual world" of the Young Knight Club has played a vital role in the development of Kandinsky's abstract style.

2. mondriaan

Compared with Kandinsky, mondriaan seems to have set his artistic ambition early. Peter mondriaan was born in Ames, central Netherlands, on March 7th, 0872, ranking second. His father is a Puritan, a primary school principal, and is keen on art. Environmental conditions have brought mondriaan into contact with art since childhood.

At the age of eight, mondriaan was determined to become a painter, but his family thought that becoming an artist was an unstable job. After many discussions with his parents, mondriaan promised to be an art teacher to support his family, which made his parents promise to let him learn painting.

Judging from the growing environment, the mondriaan family are devout Calvinists. The strict discipline of his parents, mondriaan, made him gradually learn self-restraint, honesty and simple Puritan lifestyle.

In the eyes of some people, mondriaan's traditional character is somewhat incompatible with his future career, but perhaps it is this character that helped him create a "new modeling" painting style which is famous for its rationality and minimalism.

At the age of 39, mondriaan left Holland to become an artist, leaving his fiancee and mature career. In order to express his determination, he abruptly subtracted an "A" from his name "mondriaan" to take the oath of transformation.

Although some art critics described mondriaan as a slightly eccentric celibate, his time in Paris really increased his sense of accomplishment, because mondriaan's art entered an exciting and productive period, which was his dream.

In fact, mondriaan's influence on contemporary abstract art and architectural design is far greater than that of many contemporary artists. He broke the phenomenon that we are used to: painting is always done on the plane. For him, every diagonal line involves the principle of perspective. In mondriaan's view, space is independent of itself on the plane.

Few people know that mondriaan, named after "cold abstraction", is actually a passionate dance fan. He even despises the passionate tango, but he loves jazz, especially the fiery Charles Deng dance. Brushes, paints, phonographs, records and dance steps made up mondriaan's life in the mid-1920s.

They are 40 years old.

For Kandinsky and mondriaan, 1906 and 19 12 are of unusual significance. Similarly, in those two years, they entered their own uncertain years.

1906 is an unusual year for French literary and art circles. That year, Cezanne, a famous French post-impressionist master, died. In the same year, Kandinsky spent a critical period in and around Paris. There, he constantly felt the strong shock from the painting style of Fauvism.

There is a western view that Kandinsky's trip to France prompted him to break away from his early work style-neo-separatism and become a real independent artist with his head held high.

In the following years, Kandinsky successively completed his first important abstract art theory work "On the Spirit of Art" and the first abstract work "Improvisation", founded the Young Knight Society and published the Young Knight Yearbook.

Improvisation 3 1

Its greatness lies in its lack of structure, which is completely different from previous image processing. Because Matisse and Picasso transformed characters, landscapes and still lives, they felt strange and fresh. And this work seems to be unfinished, because it is completely abstract.

Kandinsky's improvisation series later became his masterpiece, adopting the painting language of composition and finally expanding into an epic.

improvise

19 12 is also an important year in the history of western art. In that year, although the traditional norms were not deliberately marginalized or eventually abandoned, the wind of abstraction has quietly blown up. That year was also the second year that mondriaan came to Paris alone.

A year ago, mondriaan was shocked when he saw the cubist works of Picasso and Braque. Cubism pays attention to three-dimensional facts and clarity and objectivity, which is also the goal pursued by mondriaan. But he also knows that cubism is only a harbor in his artistic journey, not the end. Since then, abstract works have matured rapidly.

Mondriaan's works

In 19 1 1, mondriaan painted the Grey Tree of Practice. The tree in the painting is painted with some oval compositions, imitating the cubist style of Picasso and Braque, with many concrete elements.

In the tree series exercise "Grey Tree", it is about the same size as the bxl he created in 19 12. Although the general composition is similar to the Apple Tree among Flowers, it is obviously more abstract and formal, and the picture is pieced together like a fish scale.

Mondriaan's The Grey Tree

4. They are thinkers

If Braque, Picasso, Leger, Delaunay and Matisse are painters first, Kandinsky and mondriaan are painters and thinkers.

For these two artists, what they consider is not only to inject new ideas into painting, but also the living conditions of the whole mankind. They believe that people must improve themselves, and the whole mankind is moving towards a higher stage of material and spiritual development.

In their eyes, artists are the best candidates to actively prepare for the golden age and then announce its arrival. This is why the works created must be consistent with the people who created them. After all, the evolution of art will be impossible without a progressive inner world.

As for the cultivation of inner world, Kandinsky pointedly pointed out in his masterpiece "Apple Tree among Flowers" that spirit, like body, can be enhanced through regular exercise. An artist's natural emotional talent should not be buried in the secular world, but should know how to cultivate his own spirit.

In fact, their artistic concept may also be related to the background of that era. /kloc-in the second half of the 0/9th century, the rapid development of industrialization brought great changes to society. The progress of science and technology, social changes, the disparity between the rich and the poor, various political issues, religious issues and environmental issues have aroused sensitive writers and artists.

In Paris, the capital of art, a large number of pioneers of modern art once gathered and set off a vigorous modern art movement centered on Paris. They want to find a new way for painting to reflect, adapt or escape from the turbulent social reality.

Mondriaan is one of them. In his view, life is simple in essence, and simplicity is the perfect state of people. He believes that art should be fundamentally divorced from the external form of nature, with the purpose of expressing abstract spirit and pursuing the absolute realm of harmony between man and nature.

Yes, as the creator of cold abstraction and the first pioneer to refine painting into several lines and three primary colors, mondriaan's seemingly simple pictures are actually well thought out, which can be seen from his picture making.

His seemingly single color is never the direct extrusion of ready-made pigments, but the effect of fine layering after mixing various pigments; Those seemingly repetitive straight lines and geometric patterns were also carefully drawn by him. He didn't use a ruler, nor did he apply any format to mass production.

He can calmly ask him to wait for an agent to buy the painting. Because the painting is incomplete and imperfect, there is a small piece of blue that needs to be redrawn. This grinding is one year. Behind this calm is an artistic pursuit, which may be a deep spiritual expression.

Kandinsky and mondriaan are "hot" and "cold"; An absolute freedom, an absolute rationality; One represents intense agitation, and the other is full of extreme patience. If Kandinsky used music to build a bridge between architecture and painting, then mondriaan used rational art and thinking to build a bridge between tradition and modernity, and between art and design and architecture.

Although it seems to represent two completely different attitudes, there are many distant encounters inadvertently. They coincide in exploring the philosophical significance and spiritual depth of art, and together they form a parallel and interlaced abstract binary star.