The Art Story: Comparison: Abstract vs. Figurative Art

ART DEFINITION FIGURATIVE ART Almost all art is abstract art, if we take abstraction to be a process of drawing inspiration from the shape, color and texture of objects. Artists have "abstracted" from the world around them since prehistoric times. But it was not until the early twentieth century that abstraction began to be explored as an end in itself. Abstract art tends to rely on the associations of form to suggest meaning, rather than employing recognizable motifs to point to particular themes and content. It ranges from the easily comprehensible, quasi-figurative, landscape-based imagery of Kandinsky, to the obscure, mystical monochromes of Malevich. Imitation, or realistic representation, has been one of the goals of visual art since the earliest times the ancients called it mimesis. During some periods artists have striven to create the effect of an illusion, with images that seem to extend the real, 3D space of the viewer. At other times they have striven for realism an impression of social reality. In the twentieth century, the opposite of abstraction is best thought of in the widest sense, as "figuration," though some Abstract Expressionists considered any residual presence of the figure (such as is seen in Miró, or early Rothko), no matter how abstracted, to constitute figuration.art tends to rely on the associations of form to suggest meaning, rather than employing recognizable motifs to point to particular themes and content. It ranges from the easily comprehensible, quasi-figurative, landscape-based imagery of Kandinsky, to the obscure, mystical monochromes of Malevich. Imitation, or realistic representation, has been one of the goals of visual art since the earliest times the ancients called it mimesis. During some periods artists have striven to create the effect of an illusion, with images that seem to extend the real, 3D space of the viewer. At other times they have striven for realism an impression of social reality. In the twentieth century, the opposite of abstraction is best thought of in the widest sense, as "figuration," though some Abstract Expressionists considered any residual presence of the figure (such as is seen in Miró, or early Rothko), no matter how abstracted, to constitute figuration. ABSTRACT ART EXAMPLES FIGURATIVE ARTART EXAMPLES FIGURATIVE ART Composition No.1