Abstract Painting

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Kandinsky 'Composition VII' (1913)

Description

  • Biblical flood, spiritual rebirth as talked about in 'Concerning the Spiritual on Art'
  • Semi circles, twisting lines, bursts of colour, forms evoking violence and choas
  • Contrast of light/dark, strong diagonal, acute angles yellow, right angles red
  • Some recognisable features in boats, waves, sand dunes and ladder = piano keys

Influences

  • Wagner concert 1869 'saw all the colours in my mind...wild almost crazy lines', The Ring
  • Title- music, tries to do visually what music does spiritually, links to Shoenberg
  • Fauvists in use of colour, Surrealists in dreams as subject, Miro in biomorphic forms

Context

  • Blue Rider Expressionist group- linked to spirituality and abstraction, mystical theoscopy
  • Synathesia with linking music and visuals, condition Kandinsky may have had
  • Time of political change- Russian Revolution, WW1, rise of Nazis
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Miro 'Catalan Landscape: The Hunter' (1923)

Description

  • Stick figure of hunter, triangle head, smokes pipe, heart and gentials, holds rabbit and gun
  • Catalan and French flags cros, balanced by Spanish, squiggly poo juxtaposed by triangle
  • Stretched out fish, eats insect, pees as it flies away, everything eats, is eaten or excretes
  • Central eye- source of creative imagery, everything a symbol e.g. tree a circle and leave

Style 

  • Unconcious imaginings, stream of conscience, automatic, child-like and made up
  • Flat, lack of depth, repeated forms, abstract vision rather than realism of Surrealists
  • Emphasis on process- dream painting not a painted dream

Context

  • Jung's origins of symbols, links to Freud, symbols embedded in culture therefore meaningful
  • Microscopic biology, links to scientists, Motherwell: 'breathes eroticism with freedom'
  • Sard = Spanish dance, memories from childhood, links to naive art e.g. Cheval Palais Ideal
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Mondrian 'Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and B

Description

  • Restricted to 3 primary colours, grid of black vertical/ horizontal lines on white background
  • Rectangular planes 'locked' and black 'scaffold', pure and simple, black doesn't always reach
  • Variations of texture and white, not uniform, some tinged with blue and yellow

Context

  • De Stijl group- abstract aesthetic, 1920 Neo-Placticism- expression in abstract form via straight lines/ primary colour, mostly asymmetrical
  • Mondrian interested in theosophy and believed work had quasi-mystic content
  • Art reflecting great, universal truth beyond everyday experience

Symbolism

  • Yellow= sun, blue = sky, red = earth, horizontal = earth and vertical = sun rays
  • Horizontal = male principle, vertical = female
  • Idea that universal dualisms should be balanced, order harmony and equalibrium
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