Magazine

Goodbye Shirley Jaffe - The Painter of Flat Abstractions

The abstract art community lost a lovely and inventive painter this week. Shirley Jaffe was born in New Jersey and studied art in New York, at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and A...

Keepers of the Artistic Vision - Dia:Beacon Museum

Without shadows how could we understand the value of light? In the 1890s, Beacon, New York was an industrial powerhouse known as the Hat Making Capital of America. By the 1990s it was in shadow, w...

The Week in Abstract Art – Relationship Building

Artists and athletes are notorious for not understanding each other. But happily there are some among us actively working to reverse that cliché. Last week the city of Sacramento, California, unve...

Abstract Expressionism - Art Exhibition at the Royal Academy

Few Modernist art movements have proved, over time, to be as popular and influential as Abstract Expressionism. Art critic Robert Coates coined the term Abstract Expressionism in 1946 to describe ...

Anni Albers and the Abstraction in Textile Art

When the Bauhaus was established in Germany in 1919, it was a relatively forward-thinking academy. It synthesized the study of art and design in pursuit of a total approach to both, and it opened ...

The Art of František Kupka - From Figuration to Orphism

What is color? What is its purpose? What are its capabilities? It may sound strange, but there is much we do not know about the underlying phenomena that cause us to experience color. For example,...

What is the Most Expensive Painting of Abstract Art Ever Sold?

While we love exploring the less tangible qualities of abstract art, we are also keenly aware that it can be a wonderful financial investment. To date, the most expensive painting ever sold is an ...

The Week in Abstract Art – Structural Utterances

If you happen to be in New York this week you might see something rare: traveling architecture. A recreation of the Monumental Arch of Palmyra is on display outside of City Hall. Standing 25 feet ...

How Ad Reinhardt Taught Us to Look at Modern Art

What does it mean to be a purist? Is it like being close-minded? Or is the quest for purity inherently noble, like the pursuit of perfection? To the American abstract artist Ad Reinhardt, purity w...

Abstract Approaches of Modern Italian Art

Most people who study the history of Italian art learn about the classical masters from the High Renaissance and Baroque periods, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio. F...

IdeelArt Gathering in Brooklyn

IdeelArt recently had the pleasure of getting together for a few hours with more than thirty American abstract artists in a bar in Brooklyn. The experience was unique and powerful. We often meet o...

The Evolution of Style in Piet Mondrian Artwork

Many artists strive to express what is universal. But what does that mean, universal? To Piet Mondrian it meant spiritual: but not dogmatic, or religious. Rather, Mondrian used the word spiritual ...

Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight

Cosmologists say that when we look into outer space we look back in time. The galaxies we see through telescopes may not even exist any more. But does that matter to the light? It is here now to h...

Peter Soriano: 3 Murals and Related Drawings

Meaning is everything. We search for meaning in our experiences. We assign meaning to every relationship we develop, whether with creatures, places or objects. Somewhere in every interaction betwe...

The Week in Abstract Art - Site Specifics

Late summer is the best time to visit New York! Then again early summer is pretty great. And winter is nice, too; ice skating at 30 Rock and snacking on roasted chestnuts in Central Park. Maybe th...

How Arshile Gorky Discovered Abstraction

Where would we be without camouflage? It helped the Allies win World War II and has since become ubiquitous in military strategy. And there are other types of camouflage besides those used in war....

Mel Bochner and The Different Side of Language

Words are a precious resource. They are a storehouse of meaning. They enable societies to develop cultures. They help us express feelings, explain the past and make future plans. And yet words can...

Cutting the Canvas - The Story of Lucio Fontana

Abstract art creates questions, not answers. Thus it invites attack. Not everyone likes questions. People often desire from art only comfort and beauty. But many abstract artists are not decorator...

The Week in Abstract Art – Fall Formalism

Formalist traditions help define us. But they are also like prisons. We recently read a story highlighting events that seem to put some of the formalist traditions of abstract art at risk. The Jud...

Vladimir Tatlin and The Monument to the Third International

Intentions are vital to abstract art. Conversations about intent help viewers connect with artists and contextualize their work. Unlike in politics, business or other utilitarian fields, in abstra...

How Karel Appel Broke the Rules Through an Experiment

We take it for granted today that art is a creative field. But what does that mean? For something to be created, it must not have previously existed. Creativity demands originality. Artists, there...

Defining Abstract Photography

When you read the words abstract photography how do you react? Do you perk up, fascinated to discover more about this topic? Or do you recoil, annoyed at the very thought of it? Or are you ambival...

Jean Dubuffet and the Return to the Essence

What is art? Where can we find it? How do we recognize it? What is the origin of the creative impulse? What is the purpose of making art? It was with questions such as these in mind that the Frenc...

The Week in Abstract Art – Concepts and Machinations

We have a question for contemporary artists: “What is the difference between a concept and a machination?” Britain’s BBC4 has announced a new fall season of programming celebrating conceptual arti...

Richard Deacon and the Anatomy of Public Art

Public art is a force of nature. When a new public artwork appears it is like a new life form has sprung up in the ecosystem. The existing inhabitants must adapt to the interloper, interact with i...

Giorgio de Chirico and the Paintings Which Cannot be Seen

Are experiences concrete? Can feelings manifest? What beyond the observable universe exists? In 1911, when Giorgio de Chirico painted the first examples of Pittura Metafisica, or Metaphysical Pain...

Louise Bourgeois Art and the Reduction of Form

To those who see abstract art as a path toward a more introspective and fulfilling life, Louis Bourgeois was the embodiment of an ideal. But not because of her honors or awards, or the celebrity s...

The Week in Abstract Art – Relations Between the Masses

Do space aliens make art? Next year is the 40th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In that movie, aliens communicate with humanity through its artists, usin...

Developing the Optical Abstraction or How Victor Vasarely Found His Own Style

It is sometimes assumed that when we talk about “arts and sciences” we are talking about distinctly different things. Science is about studying things, after all, whereas art is about creating thi...

Dan Flavin and the Abstract Light Installations

An atmosphere of spirituality often accompanies abstract art. Mysticism thrives where beauty is abundant and meaning ambiguous. But some abstract artists deny that their work contains profundities...

Theo van Doesburg as De Stijl Ambassador

Some people believe in an ancient wisdom that predates, and will outlast humanity. Theosophists study such wisdom, searching for its manifestations and seeking ways of connecting it with their liv...

How Action Painting Changed Art

If the phrase “action painting” sounds confusing, that could be because it seems to contain a redundancy. Painting implies action. Can there be inaction paintings? But neither the fact that painti...

The Abstract in Jasper Johns Artwork

Jasper Johns artwork can be understood as being abstract, although his approach is usually descibed as representational. The artist is usually associated with the The Walker Art Center in Minneapo...

The Full and the Empty in Henry Moore Sculptures

A human body is more than a single mass; it is an accumulation of smaller masses. And each body is also part of a larger mass: that of humanity. And humanity is part of some larger mass still: tha...

The Week in Abstract Art - Group Dynamics

Often when the future first presents itself it is unrecognizable. We stare it right in the face and have no idea what it is or what it means. In the art world, we have a name for those among us wh...

Georgiana Houghton at The Courtauld Institute

History nearly forgot Georgiana Houghton. She was an anomaly: an Impressionist-era painter creating purely abstract works of art 50 years before Wassily Kandinsky claimed to have pioneered the ide...

Abstract Moments in Charles Demuth Artworks

To say something is American doesn’t mean it is only American. America is like a metaphysical blacksmith’s workshop where humanity comes to shape things. It is where people and ideas from around t...

Daniel Göttin - Group exhibition "SAITAMA TRIENNALE 2016"

IdeelArt is pleased to announce Daniel Göttin’s participation atSAITAMA TRIENNALE 2016, taking place in the city of Saitama, Japan. The festival will bring together artists from all around the wor...

A Brief History of Gouache in Abstract Art

Can paint speak? In 1964, Canadian philosopher Herbert Marshall McLuhan coined the now-famous phrase, “The medium is the message.” If McLuhan was correct, that means that whatever is communicated ...

Robert Delaunay and His Approach to Color

What does it mean to say a painting is “realistic?” Reality is a contested subject. It is purely subjective, after all. What one considers real is based on a combination of what one perceives, wha...

The Week in Abstract Art - Person to Person

Some people say art is meaningless. Others insist it is the storehouse of all meaning. We find the debate moot. We are not interested in what one painting, or even all the paintings mean. We are j...

Etel Adnan and the Poetry of Her Abstract Landscapes

Something about the paintings of Etel Adnan and those of Agnes Martin feels similar. It has nothing to do with appearance, for the two artists’ work looks almost nothing alike. Rather it has to do...

Carlo Carrà and His Futuristic Abstractions

When he died in 1966 at age 85, the Italian artist Carlo Carrà was known as a master of figurative painting. He was a respected teacher and a prolific art writer who influenced generations of real...

Alberto Burri and the Transformation of Materials

If we say a work of art has meaning that implies we believe meaning exists. But if meaning exists, shouldn’t life itself be the most meaningful thing? After all, it’s only because we’re alive that...

The Week in Abstract Art – Revisit, Reassess, Revise

We all invest in myths. We learn our histories as children then build on what we believe are our roots. Some myths are so strong it takes heroic effort just to get enough perspective to analyze th...

6 Cubism Facts You Must Know

Today, Cubism is widely considered as an innovative and intellectually stimulating art movement. We admire Cubist works for their uniqueness and beauty. But the Cubism facts tell a different story...

Abstract Elements of Marcel Broodthaers Oeuvre

It makes sense when a poet becomes interested in abstract art. Both methods of expression are intentionally, joyfully indirect. Poets and abstract artists both challenge the obvious and the mundan...

What We Learned from Constantin Brancusi ?

When you visualize an abstract sculptor, what comes to mind? Someone in rugged work clothes, covered in splotches of plaster? Someone serious, inquisitive, and obsessed with perfection? Someone vi...