Lap Two A: Abstract Art

I decided to continue the sequential alphabet organization to the blog, so it’s back to A for lap two. I spent a couple of hours last week with my friend and recusant artist Greg Vandevisser (http://www.vandevisser.com/) in his studio. This field trip was much-needed. Greg is focusing on a change in his work, which is primarily abstract. He has some amazing canvases and assemblages.

According to the website http://paintings.name/ , “Although native cultures have always produced arts containing abstract elements, today's perception of abstract art dates back to 1910, when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented cubism, which within half a decade, led to the pure abstract art created by Piet Mondrian and Russian styles such as constructivism and suprematism.” Just imagining the mind-set it took to “invent” cubism in that time and place is boggling to the mind. While visiting several exhibits of significant works of this genre, you can’t help but be amazed at the pure risk these artists were taking.

I think it was less significant a break for Mondrian and Kandinsky than for Picasso and Braque. Their work is an extension and development of the initial work. But the first efforts really took a leap of faith to achieve. Then there’s the whole Dada thing and Surrealism. We’ll save that for another time.

Daughter Alexis and I differed on our feelings about “Les Demoisselles d'Avignon” when we had the opportunity to stand together in front of this mammoth work (both size and impact). I still think that it looks like Picasso was going somewhere with the painting and messed up one of the faces. But that’s just me. I am a big fan of Guernica (who isn’t?) and like his bulls. The Partridge Family bus ruined Mondrian for me. Just kidding. His work is another one that makes a much greater impact in person than in pictures.

If we realize that every representation of visual art is an abstraction by its nature of not actually being the thing represented, then this category is really all art. That aside, abstract art and modernism has created a dilemma for the post modern era—what is our current identity?

I have included my own latest abstraction “Ignition.”