Methods of Abstraction from 1919-1995: Case Studies Across Modernist History

The concept of abstraction in the emergence of modernism looked different across geographic boundaries. French painters' subjects in the first half of the 20th century were generally less emotionally charged, exploring still life, while the Italians embraced futurism, displaying animosity towards classicism and the Renaissance. Russia was similarly progressive, and in the Netherlands, abstraction took the form of strict architectural grids and techniques. In England, methods of futurism and cubism were blended, while American painters were more influenced by the French, and in South America, the influence of an Eastern European constructivism took form. Academics in Art History often mark the distinctive beginning of modernism with the emergence of Cubism, obviously pioneered by Picasso, who in his early days, still displayed a degree of realism. His earliest works, made in 1905, bounce between figuration and abstraction, but within a matter of a few years, his style became harsher, more extreme and expressive, launching his career to new heights as he painted sliced and collaged subjects. By 1920, abstraction was highly popularised, yet still contrived and subversive to the institutional standards of mainstream, representational art. In this entry I want to explore works from the early era of abstraction to the 1990s; how did these artists employ representation within abstraction? What were their methods?

“Georgia O’Keefe - Hands and Thimble” by Alfred Stieglitz, 1919

This photograph by Alfred Stiegletz depicts the hands of Georgia O’Keefe above a large sheet of fabric, with a thimble on the middle finger of one hand and a needle in the other. The index finger and thumb of her left hand are pressed together as she inserts the needle into the fabric, which is crumpled and ruched with the assistance of the other hand, which lays slightly flat on top of the fabric. The vertical orientation of the photograph creates a slight visual illusion, as her left hand is depicted at the bottom of the frame and her right hand creeps down the top of the frame. Thinking deeper about how Georgia O’Keefe may have been actually positioned to create this visual composition, it is clear to me that the fabric must have been laid out in front of her while her two hands came together to sew one point of the fabric. Stiegletz would have had to have been positioned above her shoulders and head, either oriented behind/above her and taking a horizontal photograph from her perspective, and later shifting the photograph’s horizontal orientation to vertical, or he would have had to be positioned 90 degrees to her left, taking the original photograph in a vertical position. Either way, the compositional choice to have one hand at the bottom of the frame and the other at the top creates a confusing yet alluring illusion for the viewer. It also invites the viewer to question O’Keefe and Stieglitz' positioning to create such a composition. While the photograph does not abstract the subject matter, which is to say the what of the work is not necessarily up to interpretation, Stieglitz's surrealist method of representation asks his audience to question how the camera captured this moment in time.

“The Kiss” by Man Ray, 1922

In Man Ray’s “The Kiss” of 1922, we see the two subjects’ lips connect at the center of the photograph, and two outstretched hands are overlaid over the figure’s heads. Because the figures are slightly abstracted, that is to say, we only see the outline of their heads, there are therefore no identifying factors which would lead viewers to know who these people are. The audience does not know their age, gender, or identity, which depersonalizes the work slightly. The work, which resembles an x-ray due to a photographic editing process, also depicts two rectangular figures which are mirrored over an off-set horizontal gap which stretches along the image. While these two rectangles are slightly ambiguous, to me they represent the corners of a pillow. Man Ray uses these three separate images to lay on top of each other, and because each photograph was taken at a different moment in time, he is able to create his own narrative during the editing process. The work takes on a new meaning in this process; the subjects kissing now hold each others’ heads in an intimate way as they lay on top of two pillows. This x-ray effect also mimics a night vision camera, giving the illusion that this was taken in a dark room in the depths of night. Because of all of these factors, Ray’s method of representation not only creates a narrative, but a feeling of intense intimacy, and a feeling among viewers that we are witnessing a private, physical act between two people that we would not normally have access to. However, we are only privy to the x-ray outlines of these figures and images, which disconnects them. The juxtaposition of abstracted depersonalization and intimacy between the figures is highly effective in creating a thought-provoking and compositionally interesting work.

“Le Simulateur - Simulation of the Pretender” by Dora Maar, 1936

Dora Maar, a groundbreaking figure in the surrealist movement, created this work in 1936 by heavily editing and manipulating a series of photographs to create a surrealist reality. The work depicts a twisted and manipulated brick chamber with two boarded up windows and one small, oval window in the backdrop, from which light seeps through the chamber. Directly next to the open window is a man who is bending backwards, almost in agony. The final work is clearly surreal, mainly due to the orientation of the floor in the foreground, which bends to the right, and because of this, there is a definitive line between reality and the work she has created through a process of photographic editing. However, in contrast to Man Ray’s work, in which the scene is fragmented and abstracted because of its x-ray/night vision camera editing, Maar has been successful in utilizing highly realistic imagery to create a scene that is obviously dreamlike. By taking images and only manipulating their orientation, rather than their figuration, she tells a clearer narrative that is in some ways, more believable. For example, there is a clear view of a realistically photographed man in the background, who is responding to the photographic manipulation of his surroundings. As the foreground twists as a result of this manipulation, the man bends backwards, creating the illusion that the surrealist composition of a real photograph is capable of creating consequences for the realist figure in the background. Maar’s methods of representation create a believable yet dreamlike scene of realistic figures who are photographically manipulated, instead of abstracting the figures completely as Man Ray does.

“Fifth Station” by Barnett Newman, 1962, as a part of his “Stations of the Cross” Series

In 1966, abstract expressionist Barnett Newman finished a series of paintings called “Stations of the Cross/Lema Sabachthani,” in which he displayed fourteen simplistic black and white paintings next to one another. While I have chosen to focus on the fifth painting in the series, they all share similar qualities, and are arranged in such a way that the viewer must take each painting, or “station” in order from left to right. In the “Fifth Station,” Barnett employs a masking-tape technique to create an ultra-thin black line on the right side of the canvas and against a creamy white backdrop. On the left side, there is another vertical black line, yet much thicker than the right one. Because this black form exists all the way to the left side of the canvas, there is a built-in stick-straight edge, but the opposite edge is obstructed and slightly messy. These two lines, one thin and graceful, and the other framing the work with a hard edge yet spilling onto the cream background creates a simplistic yet compositionally pleasing painting. Going deeper into Newman’s work, however, the “Fifth Station,” in conjunction with the whole “Stations” series, is an abstract representation of an allegorical concept, each painting representing the fourteen step process of Catholic devotion to Jesus and his death on the Cross. In most allegorical art, the subject is clear and unobstructed with the end goal of expressing the moral findings within allegorical narratives. In Newman’s “Stations of the Cross,” he shaves the subjects down to a composition of a few straight lines. Yet, these works are emotionally charged because of their compositional simplicity and overt and heavy subject matter. In representing this biblical story through lines and negative spaces, the specificity of the Stations themselves dissolves. Because Newman does not employ a realistic visual representation of Jesus on the Cross, and zooms out, conceptually speaking, to the story’s visual essence, the work becomes about the essential moral and spiritual teachings of the Stations of the Cross, key themes including death and suffering.

“Ambulance Disaster” by Andy Warhol, 1963

In “Ambulance Disaster” by Andy Warhol, created in 1963 during a wave of Pop Art proliferation, Warhol takes an existing press photograph of a devastating car wreck and utilizes photographic manipulation via silk screen to create the final work. The original image depicts a man laying out of the window of a car with his arms outstretched and lifeless. His head hangs towards the road, and his chest is upturned toward the sky in a highly vulnerable way. The car he lays out of is stagnant next to another car, which is partially obstructed by the man’s figure. Warhol has taken this original image, and through the silk screen process, has manipulated the color and figuration. Assuming the original image was taken in black and white, Warhol takes both ends of the color spectrum of the original image and heightens them both. The blacks of the original image are blacker, and the whites become almost pinkish and highly oversaturated. Warhol also uses a pinkish-white brushstroke along the top and bottom left hand corners to create a subtle framing effect around the main subject. Through these techniques of manipulation, the figuration becomes slightly abstracted, and the added color contrast makes the original image more difficult to decipher. This abstraction adds a level of emotional complexity and darkness to Warhol’s work, as an already emotionally heavy photograph is now darkened, obscured, and defaced. Through this method of obstruction, manipulation, and defacement, he is giving new representational meaning to a highly proliferated press image, and taking advantage of its heavy subject matter to inform his editing/manipulation process.

“Non Objective II” by Roy Lichtenstein, 1964

In the early days of Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein came on to the scene with an interesting gimmick: he set out to reproduce famous works which he admired from past artists. In his career, he reproduced specific works by Picasso, de Kooning, Monet, Matisse, and engaged in a process of replicating a specific style, such as Cubism or Futurism, to create something new. In “Non Objective II,” made in 1995, Lichtenstein mimics Piet Mondrian’s signature style of breaking up colored blocks and arranging them in different orientations to create a compositionally pleasing work. Mondrian worked mainly with primary colors broken up by thin black bands. Lichtenstein copied this style to create “Non Objective II,” but adds his own stylistic signature as well: his tiny, tedious dots, which proliferate every inch of the painting to give a comic book look to his work. Through this practice, Lichtenstein is creating a precursor to Pop Art, which dominated the art scene due to its ironic mass-replication of signs and symbols related to popular culture. Lichtenstein is engaging in a similar process in “Non Objective II.” He takes a highly iconized and signature style, created by one of the most famous artists within the modern cannon, and replicates it. Lichtenstein is not making a claim that he was the original creator of Mondrian’s block-like style, but rather reproducing it, as art, and consumer products are bound to fall victim to in American capitalism. Not only does he replicate this style, but he adds his own signature comic book dots, which reference the mass production of comic books and their quintessentially American action figures such as Superman, as well as the mass-consumption of these books and characters.

“Sugar” by Ralph Goings, 1995

Ralph Goings was known in the 1970s for his highly realistic paintings of quintessentially American spaces, such as diners and gas stations. In 1995, he created this work, “Sugar,” which is a painted portrayal of a mundane, minute detail at an American diner. The main subject of the painting is a small glass stuffed to the brim with sugar packets of assorted brands and colors, but the packet of most importance has navy signage across it, with the painfully simple label: “Sugar.” To the left of the sugar packets are an almost-empty pepper shaker, and to the right of the pepper and sugar is a label-less bottle of ketchup, as well as a translucent, glassy amber ashtray. The ketchup bottle and ashtray are cut off by the boundaries of the paining, which focuses the viewers attention on the sugar packet in the forefront of the scene. Goings, as a photorealist painter, took photographs of mundane scenes, and spent months meticulously copying those photographs and creating them into large-scale works of art. The beauty of Goings’ representational methods lie in the fact that the subject of the work, while completely realistic, is inconsequential - he is not painting the object, but rather the photograph of the object. The mundane-ness of what is represented is not the point, but rather his method of doing the representing. Goings’ work is highly ironic because of the aggregation of detail in his work, which is based off of a photograph which may have taken fifteen to thirty seconds to capture. Yet, he spent months copying its composition onto canvas, transferring his mediums. Goings’ work was a process of reproduction, and in this practice, viewers are enlightened to his realistic method of depiction and representation.