Traditional art is based on conventions of resemblance between the work and that which it is a representation "of". Abstract art, in contrast, either adopts alternative modes of visual representation or reconfigures mimetic convention. This book explores the relation of abstract art to nature (taking nature in the broadest sense—the world of recognisable objects, creatures, organisms, processes, and states of affairs).
Abstract art takes many different forms, but there are shared key structural features centered on two basic relations to nature. The first abstracts from nature, to give selected aspects of it a new and extremely unfamiliar appearance. The second affirms a natural creativity that issues in new, autonomous forms that are not constrained by mimetic conventions. (Such creativity is often attributed to the power of the unconscious.)
The book covers three categories: classical modernism (Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, Arp, early American abstraction); post-war abstraction (Pollock, Still, Newman, Smithson, Noguchi, Arte Povera, Michaux, postmodern developments); and the broader historical and philosophical scope.
Selected Contents:
1. Life into Art: Nature Philosophy, the Life
Sciences, and Abstract Art Isabel Wünsche
2. Mondrians First Diamond
Composition: Spatial Totality and the Plane of the Starry Sky Marek Wieczorek
3. Man, Space and the Zero of Form: Kazimir Malevichs Suprematism and the
Natural World Christina Lodder
4. The Role of Mathematical Structure, Natural
Form and Pattern in the Art Theory of Wassily Kandinsky: The Quest for Order
and Unity Christopher Short
5. "We want to produce like a plant that produces
a fruit": Hans Arp and the "Nature Principle" Astrid von Asten
6. Natural
Forces and Phenomena as Inspiration and Meaning in Early American Abstraction
Herbert R. Hartel, Jr.
7. Jackson Pollock: The Sin of Images Elizabeth
Langhorne
8. Clyfford Stills Regionalist Shamanism Stephen Polcari
9. "Man
is Present": Barnett Newmans Search for the Experience of the Self Eva
Ehninger
10. Nature, Entropy, and Robert Smithsons Utopian Vision of a
Culture of Decay John G. Hatch
11. Embodied Nature: Isamu Noguchis Intetra
Fountain Dominika Glogowski
12. The Arte Povera Experience: Nature
Re-Presented Laura Petican
13. Natures Hand: Writing Abstraction in the Work
of Henri Michaux Birgit Mersmann
14. Abstract Art and Techno-Nature: The
Postmodern Dimension Paul Crowther
15. Art, Beauty, and the Sacred: Four Ways
to Abstraction Karsten Harries
16. The Complexities of "Abstracting" from
Nature Andrew Inkpin 17.Meaning in Abstract Art: From Ur-Nature to the
Transperceptual Paul Crowther
Paul Crowther is Chair of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway
Isabel Wünsche is Professor of Art and Art History at Jacobs University, Bremen
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