It is said, that Pablo Picasso once found himself in the erudite company of a certain high society lady (the term Page 3 wasn't coined by then) who had an accusation to make. “Senor Picasso,” she asked, “why don't you paint something more wholesome and more realistic, instead of all these incomprehensible abstracts?” Picasso smiled politely and asked her, “Ma'am, do you know Chinese?” “What? Well, I suppose not.” She tried her best to camouflage the surprise by indignation. “Then do you think there has been no great work of literature in Chinese, just because you can't read it?” Picasso pressed on, “Abstract art is also a language, ma'am, you have to learn it to appreciate it.”
The lady was speechless, and so I hope, gentle reader, you would be, when you finish reading my arguments in defense of abstract art.
Defining abstract art proves to be as elusive as appreciating it. In short, any art is abstract which shows a marked departure from any real visual reference. It can be as abstract as a bunch of geometric figures and a riot of colours. It can be a deliberate distortion of realistic imagery. It can also be a seemingly incoherent collection of realistic imagery. Or all of the above.
Why are the artists so hell bent on reinventing the wheel, you might ask, when they can just paint pretty pictures of gorgeous landscapes, busty babes, impossibly good looking men and blood curdling monsters?
Simply because the human mind loves classifying things and getting stuck in a rut. The moment one sees something, in order to comprehend it, compares it to something known, classifies it in a cubbyhole in the mind and promptly forgets about it.
Abstract art urges you to do something entirely opposite. Cutting it loose from all the known visual references, it gives the viewer a fresh opportunity to interpret it freely and make it his own. It can give rise to emotions you have never felt before or revive a simple joy of childhood you have almost forgotten or remind you of that depressing darkness you feel during your daily commute but can never express in any other form than impotent rage.
A piece of good abstract art is not what the artist meant it to be, but what you make out of it. While representation art stops at your conscious mind, abstract art delves into your subconscious. The painting is started in the artist's subconscious and ends in yours.
And speaking of reinventing the wheel, appreciating abstract art is nothing but that. The most ancient form of art: signs and marks on pottery, textiles and inscriptions and paintings on rocks and cave paintings were simple, geometric and linear forms, in short, abstract art. It is at this level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates. One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese or Islamic calligraphy without being able to read it.
Slowly, as the draughtmanship of humans improved art became more and more realistic. And people became more and more accustomed to realistic art. But after the invention of photography realism lost its lustre to the artists. Chronicling turned into a photographer's job. And at the turn of nineteenth century, as the world increasingly became more complex, the artists needed a more complex form to express themselves. So, in short, we have to unlearn the language of pretty pictures and re-learn the language of the instinctive. Your job is to clear your conscious mind of preconceptions in order to truly appreciate the painting. You must be willing to let yourself go, and let the artist take you wherever he wants.
A good analogy to understanding an abstract painting is instrumental music. Just like an arrangement of silences and musical notes make a beautiful musical piece, a seemingly random assortment of colours and shapes make for superlative abstract art. But don't expect the result to be as pretty as Swan Lake. Most celebrated abstract paintings are not very pleasing to the eye. Not surprisingly, many of the celebrated abstract artists like Wassily Kandinsky were also accomplished musicians. The instrumental music often fills your mind with fantastic imagery. Look at the Fantasia clip listed at the end of the page to appreciate what Beethoven's music did to Walt Disney's mind. And if you hear music next time you look at a gorgeous abstract painting, you need not fix up an appointment with your neighbourhood psychiatrist.
None can deny that no work of art is timeless and to truly understand a piece of art, we need to know the cultural milieu in which the artist lived and worked. But we would rather not get trapped in the menagerie of terms like Pre-impressionism, Post-impressionism, Fauvism, Orphism and Dadaism (we have the dear old Wikipedia for that) and keep it simple.
We will view the history of painting as a long evolution, starting with the slow, laboured development of tools and techniques. Eventually, after centuries of representational art, the artists began to shake off the long-standing restrictions, and arrived at abstract art.
And to sugarcoat the pill of art history, here is a fun little exercise. Find below listed some of the greatest works of abstract art with their identities. Have a look at them first and write down the first word that comes to your mind. Then read up on that specific painting in the internet and see whether your appreciation of the work has changed in any way. You can do it at your leisure or you can do it here and post your comments for everyone else to see, your choice.
The most common disdainful whisper one hears in an art gallery displaying abstract art is : “It's all a racket. My kid could paint that.” But could a kid really? This doubt is perhaps best captured by 'My kid Could paint That' - a celebrated 2007 documentary about a child genius, Marla Olmstead, whose abstract paintings went on to be greatly appreciated by major art critics and were sold at exorbitant prices. But suddenly a nosy journalist discovered that the kid's dad was an amateur painter himself and might be offering her more in the way of help than just her artistic genes. It became then a great question of genius vs manipulation, which only viewing the film can answer. (Find the trailer at the bottom of the page).
But whether Marla really painted those paintings or not, one thing is for sure, the celebrated abstract artists resorted to splatters, squiggles and squares not because they could not draw a decent nude but they have drawn enough of representational art and had evolved beyond that.
Lord knows, there are enough godawful paintings trying to pass themselves off as high abstract art. So how do you differentiate between good abstract art and the ones which your child could paint? Unfortunately, there is no magic pill. Only years of experience, coupled with artistic instincts could make you so sensitive to good abstract art that when you see one, it will stop you in your track. Just like this dinosaur enamoured with Edgar Degas.
Pictures courtesy: CartoonBank.com
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