Magazine

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...

The Space of Richard Serra Sculpture

Space is one of our most precious resources. Without it where would we live? But we also define ourselves by exploring space, buying and selling space, decorating space and rearranging space to fi...

Abstract Sculpture - The Language of the Full and the Empty

Since Modernism’s earliest days, questions have been raised about the nature of, and difference between, two and three-dimensional abstract art. In the first decade of the 20th Century, Constantin...

The Week in Abstract Art – Conditional Possibilities

Philosophy and art have a lot in common. For example, unlike math, which deals with probabilities, philosophy and art both deal with possibilities. This week we heard about a new fellowship progra...

Geometric and Vanguard Art of David Bomberg

Enthusiasm is a vital substance in art. Exciting work is something every viewer, collector, gallerist and curator craves. While some rare artworks just inherently possess their own excitement, ent...

The Spiritual and Contemplative Nature of Ross Bleckner Paintings

At its best, abstract art offers more than an aesthetic experience; it offers transcendence. Those who have encountered the work of Ross Bleckner may not know if they were looking at abstraction o...

Jean Arp and the Abstraction Inspired by Nature

Occasionally our human egos convince us that we could save the world, if we just had the authority. Jean Arp, one of Dadaism’s founders, twice faced a world on the brink of annihilation thanks to ...

Umberto Boccioni and the Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

Early Modernist artists were fascinated with movement. Cubists showed movement by painting subjects from multiple simultaneous perspectives. Orphists focused on color’s vibrational qualities. Dyna...

Hans Hartung and the Importance of Gesture

Abstract art is sometimes criticized for being uncommunicative. But on the contrary, to those capable of listening, abstraction often communicates in an even more direct way than representational ...

The Week in Abstract Art – Put Us In Your Place

Call it mojo, juju or simply a vibe, but every place has it’s own special feeling. A place’s energy seeps into every aspect of the culture. It echoes in the hearts of natives and rubs off on every...

Futurism - Art of the Future Past

Abstraction demands imagination, and imagination demands freedom. Beautiful freedom, that which makes honest self-expression possible. Terrible freedom, that which says anything goes. Freedom was ...

IdeelArt at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016

On IdeelArt’s recent visit to the Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition we felt that we had entered an aesthetic whirlwind: throngs of viewers encountering 1000+ works of art exhibited controlled...

The Week in Abstract Art – Adventures in Space

Have you ever caught yourself dreaming about traveling to space then realized you already are in space? To some other beings on some other distant planet we’re the aliens. It’s just a matter of pe...

Paul Klee Artwork at Centre Pompidou Paris - The Retrospective

What can you do with a single day? You can dream, you can laugh, you can fall in love. Or perhaps you can do all three with a visit to Irony at Work, a retrospective exhibition of Paul Klee artwor...

Jeremy Annear Paints Rhythm of the Nature

Like many contemporary painters, Jeremy Annear embraces a post-disciplinary aesthetic. His paintings express diverse influences and stylistic concerns. They speak to something ancient using a cont...

Saving Tottenham Court Road Mosaics by Eduardo Paolozzi

Many people may not associate public transportation with art. But London’s Tottenham Court Road Tube Station may be the most visited art destination in Britain. The station, which accommodates man...

Barbara Hepworth - Among the Sculptures in the Garden

Barbara Hepworth possessed something few of us have but most of us desire: balance. She was a critical thinker with respect for intuition. Her sculptures contain a mix of organic vitality and inte...

The Week in Abstract Art – True Colors

This week, half a world apart from each other, exhibitions open featuring two of Modernism’s greatest masters of color. The first, Henri Matisse: Rhythm and Meaning, opens 13 July and runs through...

Looking at Pictures with Mary Heilmann

Looking at Pictures, a retrospective of the work of Mary Heilmann currently on view at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, is relaxed, playful and profound. Heilmann’s work doesn’t just occupy the space...

Dynamic Sequences of Giacomo Balla - The Abstract in Futurism

The martial artist Bruce Lee used to instruct his students to learn everything, keep what’s useful and then throw away the rest. This is precisely what abstract artists have done with the legacy o...

The Week in Abstract Art – Space Travelers

Last week the world lost visionary artist and architect Zaha Hadid. Born 31 October 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq, and died 31 March 2016 in Miami, Florida, Hadid was 65 years old. She left behind a body ...

How Arman Redefined Assemblage

Nothing is more exciting for an art lover than to hear an artist’s story told in that artist’s own words. The tale of how young Armand Fernandez transformed himself into Arman, one of the 20th Cen...

Franz Kline and His Action Painting Manner

What if all along we weren’t meant to interpret hieroglyphics? What if they weren’t symbols, but were simply aesthetic forms meant to be appreciated as art? They can certainly be appreciated as su...

The Week in Abstract Art - What You Perceive, You Can Believe

Do words matter? Sorry, was that the most rhetorical question ever? We were just wondering, does the word abstract really mean what we think it means? What got us on this train of thought is the s...

The Most Typical Abstract Art Techniques

Prior to the rise of Modernist abstract art, most art techniques were developed with one objective in mind: to help artists more accurately mimic reality in their work. Once the quest for mimicry ...

Josef Albers and The Interaction of Color

Throughout Modernist history an ongoing conversation between artists has endeavored to determine what is the most important element of painting. Some say form. Some say line. Some say surface. Som...

The Abstract Character of Typography Art

Certain illusions must be maintained in order for civilization to continue. For example, modern currency has no intrinsic value. We maintain the illusion of money’s value in order to structure soc...

The Week in Abstract Art – Notable Gestures

Who doesn’t love a good gesture? We love to stare at a Franz Kline painting and think about the profound, yet simple gestures that made those dramatic black marks on that subdued white background....

Frank Stella - the Art of Object

Many bemoan the apparent oncoming death of printed books. But the function of books is to tell stories, and apparently screens and disembodied voices tell stories just as well. Since books as obje...

Richard Caldicott and Luuk de Haan - Group Show “Prime Time” Archetypes of Abstraction in Photography

Photography has given us the ability to perfectly capture images of what’s visible to our eyes. But what exactly is it that our eyes see? We call it reality as though it’s fixed, unquestionable. B...