Recent decades have seen a renewed interest in the phenomenon of abstract art, particularly regarding its ability to speak to the political, social, and cultural conditions of our times. This collection of essays, which looks at historical examples of artistic practice from the early pioneers of abstraction to late modernism, investigates the ambivalent role that abstraction has played in the visual arts and cultures of the last hundred years. In addition, it explores various theoretical and critical narratives that seek to articulate new perspectives on its legacy in the visual arts. From metaphysical considerations and philosophical reflections to debates on interculturality and global perspectives, the contributors examine and reconsider abstraction in the visual arts from a contemporary point of view that acknowledges the many social, economic, cultural, and political aspects of artistic practice. As such, the volume progressively expands the boundaries of thinking about abstract art by engaging it in its increasingly diverse cultural environment.
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ix | |
| Introduction |
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1 | (10) |
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PART ONE THE POLITICS OF ABSTRACT ART: BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE UNIVERSAL |
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Chapter One Wassily Kandinsky and Frantisek Kupka: Between Metaphysics and Psychophysics |
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11 | (20) |
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Chapter Two Creating the Ideal: Frantisek Kupka's Social Reform and Anarchist Abstraction |
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31 | (22) |
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Chapter Three Kandinsky, Anarchism, and the Narrative of Modernism |
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53 | (16) |
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Chapter Four Producing a Grammar of Painting: Color and Form in the Manuscripts of Ivan Kliun |
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69 | (26) |
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Chapter Five Barcelona---Paris---"New Cusco"---Montevideo: The Routes to Roots of Joaquin Torres-Garcia's South American Abstraction |
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95 | (22) |
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Chapter Six Congdon's Abstract Art and the Metaphysics of Immediacy |
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117 | (22) |
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Chapter Seven The Abstraction of Behavior |
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139 | (20) |
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Chapter Eight Digital Abstraction: Modeling Intersensory Perception in Electronic Art |
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159 | (20) |
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PART TWO THE INTERCULTURALITY OF ABSTRACT ART: BETWEEN CO-OPTATION AND APPROPRIATION |
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Chapter Nine Ernst Wilhelm Nay: Vom Gestaltwert der Farbe---Artistic Concepts and Cultural Policy in Postwar Germany |
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179 | (16) |
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Chapter Ten Free Art in Free Berlin: German-American Support for Berlin Art in the 1950s |
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195 | (12) |
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Chapter Eleven The Russian Boom: Abstract Art as a Means for Cultural Diplomacy between The Soviet Union and West Germany (1970--1990) |
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207 | (18) |
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Chapter Twelve Abstract Art in South Africa: Then and Now |
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225 | (24) |
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Chapter Thirteen What is the Role of Abstraction within the Concerns of Visual Art Language Contemporaneously? |
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249 | (18) |
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Chapter Fourteen The Appropriation of "Abstraction" beyond the Aesthetic |
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267 | (18) |
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Chapter Fifteen Refresh Abstraction! Day Glo Neo Geo |
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285 | (14) |
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| Contributors |
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299 | |
Isabel Wünsche is Professor of Art and Art History at Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany. She specializes in European modernism, the avant-garde movements, and abstract art. Her publications include Galka E. Scheyer and The Blue Four: Correspondence, 19241945 (2006), Biocentrism and Modernism (with Oliver A.I. Botar, 2011), Meanings of Abstract Art: Between Nature and Theory (with Paul Crowther, 2012) and The Organic School of the Russian Avant-Garde (2015).Wiebke Gronemeyer is a curator and researcher based in Hamburg, Germany. In 2015, she received her PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a thesis titled "The Curatorial Complex: Social Dimensions of Knowledge Production." She is also a Research Associate at Jacobs University, Bremen. Information about her research and curatorial practice can be found at www.wiebkegronemeyer.de.
