Abstract Art

by Mel Gooding

book

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Mel^Gooding
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Mel Gooding (b. Ipswich, Suffolk, UK 1941 - d. London 2021) studied English at the University of Sussex (1962-66). He taught at at Furzedown College of Education, in Streatham, West London College, Wandle primary school, in Earlsfield, Rachel McMillan College of Education, in Deptford, and the Sidney Webb College (incorporated into the Polytechnic of Central London) before becoming a freelance writer in the 1980s. He wrote catalogues of artists, including one on Frank Bowling (2011) that was expanded in 2021 and contributed to William Furlong’s Audio Arts ((1973-2007), a magazine produced on cassette. He collaborated with the artist Bruce Mclean (1944) and they published, under Knife Edge Press, the artists' books featuring Mclean's screenprints: Dreamwork (1985), Ladder (1986), A Scone Off a Plate (1990) and Knife Edge Academy: The Prospectus (1992), the first two of which were acquired by the Contemporary Art Society and presented to Southampton City Art Gallery and Chelmsford Museum. In 2013 Knife Edge Press was given a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee. Mel was also senior research fellow at Edinburgh College of Art (1998-2005), and in 2006 was made a professor at Wimbledon College of Art. He also organised exhibitions such as FE McWilliam, Tate Gallery (1989), Ceri Richards: Themes and Variations, National Museum of Wales and touring (2002-03), and Gillian Ayres: Select Retrospective, the Royal West of England Academy (2004).

Reviews

[Servabo · Rating 3 out of 5]

All art is abstract, in the sense that all art engages with the world and abstracts aspects of it in order to present us with an object or an event that enlivens or enlightens our apprehension of it. The progress of art from representation to abstraction in some ways paralleled that quintessential modern quest for a new kind of truth. From the early years of the 20th century painters and sculptors in the European traditions of art, more than at any time since the Renaissance, consciously sought radically new ways to represent their experience of that world. They set out to create an art that would reveal aspects of reality that seemed inaccessible to the techniques and conventions of figurative art.

The great and enduring idea that painting and sculpture could picture the reality of the world by means of an illuminating imitation, or through the illusionistic representation of natural phenomena, was suddenly brought into question. Figurative representation was seen by many artists as a limitation upon their capacity to represent the actualities of experience, including spiritual experience, with the kind of intensity or clarity that would reveal its true nature. Artists felt the need to take account, moreover, of realities newly revealed by science, dynamics newly discovered by mathematics and physics, new ideas in psychology, and post-Darwinian developments in biology, in religion and what used t be called "natural philosophy". They were responsive also to the new politics of social democracy, of Communism and of individual freedom. They were aware of great changes in industrial technology, of the beginnings of manned flight, f the internal combustion engine, and of photography and film. The cities in which they lived were in a state of dynamic transformation. All this entailed the rejection of those old forms of art that sought to imitate the appearance of things, and the invention of new forms that would reveal the hidden relations between things. Objects are objects, they can be pictured; but to represent dynamic relations between objects required an abstract visual language.

Many artists responded to the unprecedented freedom of expression that was a necessary condition of abstraction by extending the expressive possibilities of figurative art. Arbitrary color; vehement brushwork and exaggerated textures; collage and other disruptions of the surface; distortions of the figure and of other natural forms: these were among the diverse devices they adopted. In many cases what had previously been regarded as preliminary techniques, rough workings of materials towards completion and "finish", came to be regarded as valid in their own right, as authentic expressive features of the finished work. One of the many problems that arise in any discussion of abstraction and its histories in modern art is that the term 'abstract' itself has been widely used to describe figurative distortion or exaggeration in painting and sculpture, or formal devices that depart from conventions of naturalistic representation. Works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, and Henry Moore, among other great figurative artists, have often been described as 'abstract'. This common usage of the term was intended to indicate a shift away from the representation of objects or space as perceived in nature, from what things look like', towards a more generalized, simplified, or distorted representation of them.

Abstract art, even more than representational art, demands the actual encounter, the sensation of the thing itself. It depends for its effects, whether they are simple or complex, sensuous or conceptual, upon the presence of the viewer, who brings possibilities of meaning to its presentations of forms and colors, its visible patterns and rhythms, its forms, shapes, and textures. Meanings are created as these concrete actualities impinge, through the senses, upon the receiving imagination. It is in the discourse around art that words come into play: spoken or written, language answers to image, articulating personal responses the tenable the negotiation of shared aspects of meaning.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

great intro to abstraction

[Natalie Buquet · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on what different artists considered to be the way to approach “abstract” art. I found it interesting and enjoyed looking at the photos of different art pieces and reading how different artists attempted to project their emotions into paintings.

[Emylie]

Movements in Modern Art series