Magazine

Young Abstract Artists to Keep an Eye On

As an introduction to these profiles of ten emerging abstract artists we think deserve your attention, my editor asked me to comment a bit on the state of contemporary abstract art. This seemingly...

The Allure of Lynda Benglis’ Biomorphic Forms

In the early 1980s, Lynda Benglis submitted a design for a fountain to an art competition for the Louisiana World Exposition, scheduled for the summer of 1984. A Louisiana native herself, Benglis ...

Redefining Photography - The Mediums of Kate Steciw

If we were conducting an investigation into the term Post Internet Art, Kate Steciw might appear at first to be an excellent Artist of Interest. Steciw makes abstract, three-dimensional objects us...

The Important Legacy of Saloua Raouda Choucair

Years ago on a visit to Beirut, Dia Art Foundation Director and former Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan saw some work in a gallery by an artist she did not recognize. She inquired about it and w...

The Abstract in the Design of Ron Arad

Since his professional career began in the 1980s, Ron Arad has primarily been recognized as an industrial designer. That is because most things Arad makes are useful in everyday life and can easil...

The Lyrical Legacy of Magdalena Abakanowicz

In the heart of downtown Chicago, 106 massive, headless, iron figures occupy a grassy field at the south end of Grant Park, two blocks from the lakeshore. The figures seem to be walking in all dir...

Drawing Line in Space - The Art of Gego

Gego, otherwise known as Gertrud Goldschmidt, is one of those rare artists who devoted all her energies toward exploring the expressive potential of a single aesthetic element. In her case, the el...

The Most Beautiful Examples from the Illy Coffee Cups Art Collection

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Illy coffee cups: those iconic, elegant, white ceramic demitasses with the perfectly circular handles. Italian architect and designer Matteo Thus, one of th...

Can We Consider Andreas Gursky an.. Abstract Photographer?

The physical world often seems like a vast and indifferent place; a fact German photographer Andreas Gursky will not let us forget. Some call Gursky a documentary photographer because of the reali...

Was Hilma af Klint the Mother of Abstraction?

The first time most people heard the name Hilma af Klint was in 1986, when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art included her work in an exhibition titled The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 18...

How Natalia Goncharova Shaped Russian Futurism

Natalia Goncharova has not yet gotten her due. As a young painter she was a monumental force in the Russian avant-garde, working and exhibiting alongside some of the most important names in early ...

Reflections in the Water - Barbara Vaughn Photography

One measure of the success of an abstract photograph is how easily it allows viewers to look beyond evidence of objectivity, and to open themselves up to connections with the unknown. By such a me...

The Art and Life of Clyfford Still

In 1936, the portrait painter Worth Griffin invited Clyfford Still to join him on a summer excursion to northern Washington to paint the portraits of tribal leaders at the Colville Indian Reservat...

Peter Shire - A Star of the American Ceramics Art

The work of Peter Shire looks like what might have come about had students at the Bauhaus been given recess. It is functional and abstract, decorative and fun. Its visual language, full of vivid c...

The Curious Sculptures of Sarah Braman

The objects Sarah Braman creates are uncanny. Assembled from a range of found consumer products, industrial materials and traditional art mediums, they are instantly familiar, but also somehow ali...

A Fine Relationship between Calligraphy and Abstraction

Calligraphy is where symbol and gesture meet. At its core, calligraphy is writing. It utilizes the traditional tools of the writer: pen and ink, or brush and paint. But the objective of writing is...

The Abstract Landscapes of Franco Fontana

“The purpose of art,” says Franco Fontana, “is to make visible the invisible.” This could seem like a strange thing for a photographer to say since the essential purpose of the camera is to captur...

How Photogram Introduced the Non-Representational to Photography

A photogram is a cameraless photograph: an image burned onto a photosensitive surface without the use of a machine. Photograms predate photographs. The earliest photographic images of reality capt...

The Abstraction Shining in Neon Art

Zdenek Pesanek was the first to make neon art. Pesanek was a kinetic artist known previously as the inventor of the Spectrophone, or color piano. His earliest neon works were abstract sculptures, ...

The Power of Steel in the Sculptures of the Late Alf Lechner

When he died on 27 February 2017, Alf Lechner was one of the most prolific sculptors in the world. Yet he was not widely known outside his native Germany. The reason for his relatively low profile...

Justice to Pissarro by Dana Gordon

For over a century, the painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) has been considered the father of modern art. His ascendancy, which began around 1894, had a tidal influence on the development of the avan...

When William Klein Turned to Abstraction in Photography

William Klein is considered one of the most influential photographers of the past century. His reputation comes largely from his work as a street photographer, a genre he all but invented in the 1...

What's in The Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art ?

The Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art may be the most important collection of abstract art you never heard of. Ten years after its inception it changed its name to the Tremaine Collection,...

The Legacy of Sir Howard Hodgkin

The renowned British abstract painter and printmaker Howard Hodgkin was among the most decorated artists of his generation. He represented Britain in the 1984 Venice Biennale and won the Turner Pr...

The Story of Abstract Textile Design

Abstract textile design is not new. If fact, few elements of human culture are older. It is hard to say exactly how long textiles have existed, since unlike pottery or stone tools woven cloth disi...

The Assembled Art of Barbara Kasten

At first glance the art of Barbara Kasten may not seem subversive. Kasten builds architectonic sculptural compositions in her studio then lights and photographs them, transforming temporary, three...

Fernand Leger, Between Abstraction and Cubism

Because of the brightly colored, flat paintings of everyday objects he painted beginning in the 1930s, Fernand Léger is considered one of the forefathers of Pop Art. But Léger first became known f...

When Georgia O'Keeffe Created Abstract Art

It is a challenge when interacting with art to ignore the clichés, allegories and judgments heaped upon it by others, and to simply come at it with an open mind. This is particularly difficult wit...

The Infinite Art of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is timeless. At nearly 90 years old, this visionary artist still works in her studio every day from nine in the morning until six in the evening. When she finishes each night she retu...

Virtual Reality in Art - A Powerful New Game-Changer

Virtual Reality art is nothing new. In the 1960s, Morton Heilig invented the Sensorama, considered by some to have been the first Virtual Reality artwork. Heilig described his invention, which imm...

Willem de Kooning - The Man of Many Contradictions

Willem de Kooning is easy to love and easy to hate. De Kooning is an epic figure in the story of 20th Century abstract art, partly because of his work and partly because of his personality. Born i...

Why the Grid Paintings of Stanley Whitney Matter

The recent paintings by American abstract painter Stanley Whitney have a distinct grid-like quality. They are architectonic stacks of colors, evocative of Neo-Plasticist television color bars. And...

Mary Abbott - One of the Most Important Artists of Abstract Expressionism

Many people first encountered the paintings of Mary Abbott in 2016, when she was one of a dozen painters included in the exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum. To pre...

The Many Shades and Mediums of Jeremy Blake

Scores of articles have been written about Jeremy Blake. But strangely, precious few of them talk in depth about his art. A multimedia artist who came to prominence in the early 2000s, Blake worke...

The Abstract and the Obscure in the Art of Niki de Saint Phalle

More than a decade after her death Niki de Saint Phalle remains an icon of courage. It is an act of bravery for an artist to make honest, personal work. Inviting the rest of humanity along as you ...

How Aaron Siskind Found Abstraction on the Streets

Aaron Siskind was one of the most influential photographers of his generation. In part, that influence manifested through the various teaching positions Siskind held at some of the most prestigiou...

How Wolfgang Tillmans Used Technique to Reach Abstraction in Photography

Nothing can be fully appreciated without understanding its opposite. We appreciate warmth when we freeze. We love light when trapped in darkness. So it is no surprise that Wolfgang Tillmans, who f...

Female Abstract Artists You Should Know

There is a gender bias in art. But important female abstract artists are not in short supply. The problem is market demand. In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote an influential article on gender bias in ar...

Abstraction within the Postmodernism of David Salle

In the introduction to her 2011 interview with the artist David Salle, writer Emily Nathan labeled Salle, “just about the last Postmodernist Painter.” Although that description is itself a bit of ...

The Trickiest Op Art Pattern Examples

Op Art is an anomaly. Victor Vasarely pioneered the movement in the 1930s as a serious aesthetic investigation. But today we are as likely to see an Op Art pattern on a painting in a museum as on ...

Why the Art Of Georg Baselitz Is Essentially Abstract ?

The art of Georg Baselitz has been called shocking, controversial and grotesque. It has also been called epic, and among the most internationally influential German art of the past 50 years. His p...

Combining the Abstract and the Figurative - Art of Albert Oehlen

At first glance many of the paintings of Albert Oehlen look complicated, like the visual equivalent of noise. They combine figurative elements with elements that are purely abstract. They incorpor...

Oscar Murillo - A Pioneer of Visceral Contemporary Abstraction

It may be impossible to say what secret forces conspire in the creation of a good abstract painting. But Colombian-born, London-based artist Oscar Murillo harnesses these forces regularly in his s...

Finding Abstraction within the Neo-Expressionism

The study of Neo-Expressionism can lead one down a rabbit hole. Innumerable elucidations of this late-20th Century art movement exist. Each seems to differ in its perspective, in often-contradicto...

Turbulent Life and Art of Martin Kippenberger

This year will mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Martin Kippenberger. A leader in a revolutionary generation of German artists to emerge in the 1970s, Kippenberger died on 7 March 1997 at ...

The Miro-esque in the Work of Christian Rosa

It is a blessing and a curse for a young artist to be compared to a master. Consider Christian Rosa. Born in 1982, he received his first major solo gallery exhibition in 2014. Now he is already be...

From Abstract to Figuration - The Path of Richard Diebenkorn

When Richard Diebenkorn died in 1993 he left behind a body of work that defended the importance of painting. Despite rubbing elbows with some of the most influential artists of his generation he r...

The Importance of Texture in Abstract Art

Broadly speaking there are two categories of texture in art, just as in life: rough and smooth. Both can be hard or soft, wet or dry, organic or synthetic, etc. And infinite gradations of roughnes...