Magazine

The Week in Abstract Art – Together Here in the Future Past

Is there such a thing as history if the story is incomplete? What’s the point of compiling a timeline if some events and accomplishments are edited out? And how can we make sure our names don’t ge...

What is A Painting ?

In 1890, French painter Maurice Denis famously said that “a painting –before being a warhorse, a naked woman, or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembl...

Artists Peter Soriano and Harald Kröner Featured at Drawing Now Paris

If you’re wondering about the status of contemporary drawing look to Drawing Now Paris, the world’s foremost contemporary drawing fair. This prestigious annual event returns on 30 March, again hig...

How Monochrome Paintings of Yves Klein Shifted the Focus in Art

Labels are relative. When a painter paints perfect likenesses of trees and boats and mountains, most people call those paintings representational, because they supposedly represent reality. When a...

AAA Stands for American Abstract Artists - Heralds of Abstract Expressionism

If you highly regard Rothko, appreciate Pollock, are crazy for de Kooning, frankly love Frankenthaler or are mad about Martin, get your party hat out. This year marks the 80th birthday of American...

Contemporary Abstract Artists to Watch - Part II

Last week, we brought you profiles of ten contemporary abstract artists that have caught our eyes while attending art fairs, biennials, gallery openings, museum exhibitions and auctions recently. ...

How to hang abstract art

There is so much beauty out in the world that it's hardly surprising we want to capture a little of it and bring it into our homes by hanging art. But not everything in the world is clear; there i...

There Are No Bubbles in Art

Although there has been a number of economic crashes (from the Great Depression back in 1929, throughout the Dot-com bubble in the 1990s, and onto the Housing bubble in 2008), the one that made a ...

The Week in Abstract Art – Interchanging Connections

This week is about changing perceptions: a French conceptual artist partners with a global corporation to make something beautiful; a Dutch abstractionist reveals his romantic side; a Western-cent...

Tenesh Webber Work on Display at Schema Projects

For Schema Projects’ current exhibition Passing Through, curator Jeanne Heifetz assembled 12 artists who work with thread, “whether as dimensional line, to embody time, or to map the world's hidde...

How Action Painters Changed the Idea of Painting

What is a painting? Some would say a defined, two-dimensional surface on which a painter applies medium in order to create recognizable imagery. But many painters find that definition limiting, an...

What is Conceptual Painting?

Every work of art was once just an idea in somebody’s head. That’s a funny thought considering how fleeting ideas can be, and how difficult it can be to turn even the best ideas into reality. Conc...

Contemporary Abstract Artists to Watch - Part I

As the global art world becomes more intimately connected, the number of captivating contemporary abstract artists entering the market continues to increase. It can seem overwhelming to keep track...

The Week in Abstract Art – Adventures in Ink

There’s an old saying about the importance of writing things down: “Faded ink is better than a sharp mind.” Thanks to the generosity of the Zentrum Paul Klee (ZPK), anyone with an Internet connect...

Toronto’s Division Gallery Presents New John Monteith Exhibition

The minimal, sleek, yet industrial façade of Toronto’s Division Gallery speaks John Monteith's language. It’s a contemporary architectural language of paradox; layered; rough yet intentional; raw ...

The Far-Reaching Influence of Momentous Modern Abstract Paintings

Modern is tricky. If I say I want a modern apartment I mean one suited toward today’s lifestyle: one that’s wired, green, open and light-filled. If I say I love modern abstract paintings, I mean o...

How to Paint Abstract Art? Become a Master.

Before we get started, let’s just make sure everyone’s in the right place. This is a master’s guide on how to paint abstract art. We’ll be skipping the basics like brush techniques, color theory, ...

Color and Form in Abstract Watercolor Paintings

When an abstract painter has an idea, certain choices must be made before it can manifest as a painting. Foremost is what kind of paint to use. Each medium possesses unique qualities that affect c...

The Week in Abstract Art – Give it Away Now

The best thing about collecting art is living each day surrounded by the artwork you love. The second best thing about collecting art is giving it all away! This week, we look at some great people...

if ART Gallery Presents Expressive Geometric Abstraction of Ashlynn Browning for the Fourth Time

The straightforward sincerity in Browning’s work is echoed in the way she speaks about her process. “My goal is to strike a balance of structure and accident,” Browning says. Part of her process i...

How Colorist Painters Speak With Hues

What a colorist gives us isn’t a yellow that says, “Yellow,” or even a yellow that says, “Mountain,” or “Tree,” but rather a yellow that says, “Eternity,” or “Fierceness,” or “Kindness,” or “Power...

The Story of the Abstract Landscape in Art

Abstraction is art’s Eminem. It came to challenge our perceptions. Consider what abstraction did for landscape painting. For centuries landscapes ranked pitifully low (just above animal paintings)...

Joanne Freeman Interview

Elegant white canvases embellished with only a few carefully designed loops of different colors, exuding a certain rhythm of peacefulness and harmony. The less-is-more principle is evident in the ...

Poetic Charge of an Abstract Print

At an opening of your favorite abstract painter’s work, you’re immediately drawn to a painting, like a happy moon being pulled toward a welcoming star. You know you want it. Then you see something...

The Week in Abstract Art – What Do You See in Me?

Call Webster’s! We invented a word! While browsing Christie’s online print auction this week, we paused to Google image search a Frank Stella print. That unexpectedly turned up images of the DeSti...

Abstract Painters that Marked the 20th Century

Every painter knows there is no such thing as “the best painter”. Someone would oppose this claim, but it’s true – art is about aesthetical perception, and it’s impossible that all human beings ha...

Early Abstract Art as the Visual Embodiment of an Idea

One of the ironies of early abstract art is that so many people suspected it of being haphazard, random or meaningless. Viewers conditioned to accept only objective representations of the material...

Today's Artists Inspired by Rothko's Color Field Painting Style

Silence is so accurate.-Mark Rothko As we seek out today’s inheritors of Mark Rothko’s iconic color field painting style, we can’t only search for work that looks similar to his. We must also purs...

Abstract Art as a Style of Choice

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”-William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun The word contemporary refers to the now. But can we have multiple contemporaneties? Thanks to the legacy of artist...

The Week in Abstract Art - Pollock, De Kooning and New Trends

This week we contemplate the status of the 2016 art market. We also take a moment to celebrate abstract art on many different levels, from a show in Zürich of the sublime work of IdeelArt’s own Da...

Famous Abstract Paintings That Changed The Way We Perceive Art

“What images we can have, one might say, depends on who is doing the imagining.” - John Hospers, from An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis We depend on visionaries to open up hidden doors, ...

Defining Moments in the History of Abstract Art

Words can be so controversial. We just want to discuss the history of abstract art. But that sentence is rife with conceptual peril. (Whose history? What is art? What does it mean to be abstract?)...

Joanne Freeman at Kathryn Markel Fine Art - By IdeelArt

We are pleased to announce that Joanne Freeman who has recently joined IdeelArt will be featured in a solo exhibition Recent Paintings and Drawingsat Kathryn Markel Fine Art, NYC. Joanne Freeman: ...

Spontaneous, Ecstatic and Free: A Primer on Lyrical Abstraction

Before discussing what Lyrical Abstraction is, and what it means to art lovers and collectors, we should give due respect to the most persnickety among us by stating that the origin of the term is...

New York's Finest: Sideshow Nation IV, Thru the Rabbit Hole

Richard Timperio's Sideshow Gallery is one of Brooklyn's cornerstone visual art institutions. For the past 15 years, in addition to providing solo shows for many artists, including Dana Gordon, Jo...

Drawn In: The Use of Line in Abstract Painting

Some painters profess that when it comes to the use of drawing in their work, there are only two traditions to follow: that of Matisse or that of Cézanne. Matisse’s lines define and often contain ...

A Dynamic New Look at the Sonnabend Collection

During her life of nearly 93 years, art dealer and collector Ileana Sonnabend had a profound impact on European and American art. A passionate advocate of Minimalism, Pop Art, Arte Povera, Abstrac...

What is a Blue Chip Artist?

The term “Blue Chip” comes to the art world from the stock market. In 1900, after arriving in New York from England, a young man named Oliver Gingold was offered an entry-level position at the pub...

Who's Afraid of Jackson Pollock?

I dont paint nature. I am nature. - Jackson Pollock One way to judge an artwork’s power is to measure how many people rage against it. Hate, disgust, confusion and anger are primal emotions. To ev...

Miró on Miró: A Glimpse Inside an Artist's Mind

This week a major exhibition of the work of Joan Miró is ending, just as a fascinating glimpse at his process begins. Since October of last year, The Kunsthaus Zürich has been hosting a retrospect...

London Art Fair 2016

This week the global art fair season officially kicks off with the London Art Fair, which runs from 20 - 24 January 2016. Returning for its 28th year, the fair is once again being held at the Busi...

Remembering Gottfried Honegger

Before the Bauhaus there was Constructivism, a philosophical movement in the arts that contended that art should have some practical social purpose, or at least contribute to one. Constructivist i...

Abstraction and Collage: "The Precarious" at The Menil

Collage is a form of artistic expression that has been around for hundreds of years. The concept is one of assemblage. An artist curates an assortment of pre-existing images and assembles them int...

What's On? Winter 2015 Issue

A quarterly calendar of the best abstract art events around the world. Frank Stella: A Retrospective Open through 7 February 2016Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York 100...

Abstract Art Top Sales Results, Fourth Quarter 2015 - By IdeelArt

Overall, 2015 was a great year for public art sales. Most of the records that fell did so in the first half of the year. But there were plenty of impressive performances in the fourth quarter of t...

An Art Buyer's Practical Guide to Color Theory

Color is to art is like flavor is to cuisine. The range of possible manifestations of both qualities is so vast it seems infinite. We can only describe colors and flavors in terms of our experienc...

Genius and Innocence: Rediscovering Karel Appel

IdeelArt recently had the opportunity to visit the Karel Appel exhibition currently on display at the George Pompidou Center in Paris. This was a great chance for us to rediscover the work of th...

Benefitting (From) the Arts

Art is not an allegory. When a work of art, or a particular artist's oeuvre, seems to be trying to make some metaphorical point it can be a bit of a turn off. It somehow reduces the experience of ...