Which Artist Produced the First Truly Nonrepresentational Work of Art

Abstract art — also called "non-representational" or "non-objective" — has long been considered a central achievement of modernism. Several early-twentieth century artists claimed to be the first to brand a completely abstruse artwork, and although it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to fully settle the question, we will consider some of the main contenders below.

Defining the terms

Muhammad ibn Aibak ibn-Abdallah, Folio from a not-illustrated manuscript, 1306-7, ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on newspaper, 43.2 x 35.two cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This 14th-century manuscript painting pre-dates the modern contenders for the commencement abstract piece of work by over six hundred years. Information technology is one instance from a long Islamic tradition of not-representational art. Works like this are generally ignored in discussions about who made the beginning abstract painting, which reveals that the contend is, in fact, quite limited in its focus. We really mean, "Who in Western civilisation created the first abstruse work?" Like Columbus "discovering" America, it turns out that at that place were actually a lot of people already there.

Henri van de Velde, Tropon Poster, from the periodical Pan, vol. Iv no. ane (April-May-June 1898), lithograph, 31.1 x 19.9 cm (MoMA)

Van de Velde's poster advertising the protein extract Tropon displays an abstract design of stylized, vaguely organic shapes. Why is this likewise not generally considered a viable contender for the first abstract work? We find that nosotros need to limit the question again: the first abstruse piece of work must have been made equally "fine art." Decorative art and commercial design don't count. This stardom can seem very arbitrary, since many mod artists worked equally commercial designers at times, and modern design is too often nerveless by art museums.

What we are really looking for, then, is not truly "the outset" abstract artwork. Instead, we are seeking the first abstract artwork that was intentionally created in the context of the post-Renaissance Western art world, when fine art was expected to be representational.

A De Stijl contender

Piet Mondrian, Tableau No. 3 or Composition in Oval, 1913 (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam).

Piet Mondrian wrote all-encompassing justifications of abstract art, demonstrating a clear awareness of how radical he felt the move to abstraction was for fine art. Over the course of the 1910s he produced several serial of works through a procedure that he explicitly chosen "brainchild," etymologically defined as "pulling away" elements of natural appearances from observed objects until eventually they bore no resemblance to those objects.

The work above is part of his series of abstracted copse: perchance the ii parallel vertical lines in the lower center are a trunk, and the oval frame defines the crown of the tree. However, if we approached the work in a museum without that information, it would exist easy to run into it as abstruse in the sense of entirely non-representational. The gradual nature of Mondrian's evolution makes it very difficult to state when he showtime created a fully abstract work.

The titling of works can further complicate the issue: this work was titled "Tableau" or "Composition" by Mondrian, asking us to see it as just a limerick of lines, shapes, and colors. An equally abstract-seeming work from the same year is called "The Tree A," which asks us to see a tree where otherwise nosotros might not. Should determining whether a work is abstract depend on its championship or other extrinsic information?

Kandinsky'south spiritual vision

Vasily Kandinsky, Untitled (Study for Composition Seven, outset abstraction), 1913, watercolor (Middle Pompidou).

Vasily Kandinsky backdated this work to 1910 (in the signature at the lower right), probably in order to claim that he was the showtime abstract artist — nigh art historians believe it dates to 1913. His 1909 text On the Spiritual in Art justifies brainchild in fine art as more spiritual than representation. However he, like Mondrian, approached abstraction very gradually. Even this painting is ambiguously abstract. Information technology is function of a group of works based on imagery of the apocalypse, and, like Mondrian, Kandinsky "abstracted" that imagery to reduce fabric references.

In many paintings the imagery is very difficult to recognize, but it is nevertheless in that location. Kandinsky famously described seeing i of his own paintings as "only form and colors . . . . whose content was incomprehensible," but this was only because the work was on its side. Viewing it from the proper angle he saw the painting'due south apocalyptic imagery.[1]

Both Mondrian and Kandinsky somewhen went on to create unequivocally not-representational artwork, only where is the line between representation and abstraction when the bathetic forms are derived from representational images that just a few people, if whatsoever, can recognize? Is brainchild in the eye of the beholder?

Appreciating color and music

František Kupka, Amorpha, Fugue in Two Colours, 1912, oil, canvass, 211 × 220 cm (National Gallery, Prague)

In the early on twentieth century many people (including Kandinsky) justified abstruse painting by comparing it to music. When we mind to instrumental music we practise not by and large compare it to real earth sounds; we just bask being moved past the melody, harmony, rhythm, etc., in themselves. Why should visual art be different? Why not just appreciate how nosotros are moved by colors, shapes, and textures?

A group of artists chosen the Orphists, including Robert and Sonia Delaunay and František Kupka, took this route. The title of Kupka'south Fugue in Two Colors declares the painting to be the visual equivalent of a type of musical composition in which a short melody is repeated and developed in multi-part counterpoint. The looping, swelling, intertwining curves of red and blue in Kupka's painting are understandable as visualizations of the flowing aural interweaving of the musical voices in a fugue. Once more, however, there was a naturalistic source for the painting: a drawing of a daughter dancing with a ball in her hand that Kupka progressively abstracted.

Malevich's Suprematism

Kasimir Malevich, The Last Futurist Exhibition 0.ten, photograph, 1915

Kasimir Malevich is unusual in making the leap to pure abstraction very rapidly, rather than through a long process of abstracting natural objects. Malevich's works in The Last Futurist Exhibition are geometric abstractions, although some of them have titles that propose existent-world references, such equally Aeroplane Flight. Malevich claimed that he first painted a pure abstract work, Black Square, in 1913. Yet, in that location is no evidence to back up this other than some loosely-related theater designs, and as we have noted, abstraction in design occurred earlier than that. This photograph of the exhibition dates to 1915, and Malevich wrote a theoretical justification of non-representational Suprematist painting the same twelvemonth, making 1915 a solid terminus dues quem for the first abstract painting.

A new contender

Some other artist who has recently been brought forward every bit a candidate for painting the first abstract artwork is Hilma af Klint. Between 1906 and 1915 Klint made a serial of works called Paintings for the Temple that were generated from visions she had as a spiritual medium (in fact, all of the artists considered hither apart from van de Velde were motivated to create abstract art for spiritual reasons). Some of Klint'south works have recognizable natural imagery, but many others are pure geometric or biomorphic abstractions.

In terms of chronology Klint is a serious contender to be the offset abstract painter, and it may be gratifying to think that it is a woman who has that distinction, despite the jockeying of her male contemporaries. Unfortunately, yet, Klint'south abstract works were created completely exterior the context of the modern art world. In fact, she stipulated that they not be exhibited until twenty years after her death, and every bit a consequence they were unknown outside of her circle of friends, and had no influence on the debates concerning the viability of brainchild in art until the question was already settled.

An unanswerable question?

In the end, it may non be possible to answer the question of who created the first abstract artwork, merely even this brief survey of the master contenders raises an arguably more interesting question. Although there were common themes and some directly contacts between the artists considered here, they were largely independent, working in unlike countries (Sweden, Russian federation, Federal republic of germany, French republic, and The Netherlands), ending upward with very different-looking works, and developing substantially different rationales for practicing brainchild. For whatever reason, in the years effectually 1910-15 all across Europe, the time was right for abstruse art to (re-)enter the Western fine art earth.

Notes:

1.  Vasily Kandinsky, "Reminiscences" (1913), as translated in Robert 50. Herbert, ed., Modernistic Artists on Art (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2000), p. 29.

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Boosted resources:

Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim Musem

Henri van de Velde"s fine art at the Cooper Hewitt Museum

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Source: https://smarthistory.org/who-created-the-first-abstract-artwork/