Non-objective Art Research Articles

Ivan Puni in Berlin: an Emigrant’s View on Russian Art (Based on the Book «Modern Painting»)

The study is devoted to the artistic and critical activity of the Russian avant-garde master I. Puni within the framework of his Berlin period (1920–1923). The material for the analysis was the book «Modern Painting», written by I. Puni, which summarized not only the original texts of Puni’s public lectures, but also his reflection on the critical reaction that was provoked by them. Based on the structural-semiotic analysis, the author found that parallels could be drawn between Puni’s speeches (public lectures, responses to criticism) and his artistic works in the context of time and place (the first post-revolutionary wave of emigration from Russia 1918–1922). During his years of emigration, Puni was among those who formed views on the art of his time. During this period, the critic went from understanding the mechanistic techniques of the composition of Russian non-objective art to the importance of the intuitive principle as the basis of creativity and spectator work in the perception of a work of art, semantically filled and ambiguously readable. On the pages of the book, the artist joins the discussion with E. Lisitsky, V. Tatlin, the largest European artists, justifying his view on the pressure points of modern art.

Leopold Levytskyy painting of the 1930-th as a part of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum of Lviv collection.

Leopold Levytskyy painting of the 1930-th as a part of his painting heritage placed in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum of Lviv collection was the main objective of this study. It was marked that he started his education in Krakiv academy of arts at the department of sculpture, starting the third year studied graphic technics, but finished it as a painter. The analyses of genre structure of the collection revealed that it consists of portraits, landscapes, abstractive and genre compositions. Portraits were painted during his staying in Chortkiv. Special attention that was paid to the remarkable self-portrait dated 1935 was caused by it declarative inside idea. In the process of study it was reveal not only preserved art pieces from the museum collection, but also objects that are known through reminiscences and archive documents. Analyzed landscape compositions exposed deep interest of the artist in creating generalized images of cities, towns or villages. Also it was made conclusion that some paintings have controversial dating, but it was stressed that there is not enough objective information for making changing in dating. The results of analyses of abstractive colorful compositions exposed artist’s great enthusiasm in plastic experiments, that was inspired with his interest in non-objective art. As in the case of portraits also it was studied examples of genre painting which are known only from archive photos and descriptions. Obtain results helped to make a comparison between artists graphic of the 1930-th and art pieces of the next periods and uncover several matters, scenes or narratives and compositional methods that could be treated as typical for creative heritage of the master. Analytical interpretation of combining such scenes as “wood-cutters”, “women with a pail”, “cow with a calf” in the same painting composition as “Working day” allowed to make a conclusion that this art piece is of a program importance in artist’s heritage.

Olga Rozanova: the concept of "transformed color" in non-objective art of the twentieth century

Olga Rozanova: the concept of "transformed color" in non-objective art of the twentieth century

Kazimir Malevich’s Negative Theology and Mystical Suprematism

This article examines Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist art in the context of negative (apophatic) theology, as a crucial tool in analyzing both the artist’s theoretical conclusions and his new visual optics. Our analysis rests on the point that the artist intuitively moved towards recognizing the ineffability of the multidimensional universe and perceiving God as the Spiritual Absolute. In his attempt to see the invisible in the formulas of Emptiness and Nothingness, Malevich turned to the primary forms of geometric abstraction—the square, circle and cross—which he endows with symbolic concepts and meanings. Malevich treats his Suprematism as a method of perceiving the ineffability of the Absolute. With the Black Square seen as a face of God, the patterns of negative theology rise to become the philosophical formula of primary importance. Malevich’s Mystical Suprematism series (1920–1922) confirms the presence of complex metaphysical reflection and apophatic thought in his art. Not only does the series contain icon paraphrases and the Christian symbolism of the cross and mandorla, but it also advances the formulas of the apophatic faith of the modern times, since Suprematism presents primary forms as the universals of “the face of the future” and the energy of the non-objective art.

Review: The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright's Iconoclastic Masterpiece

Review: <i>The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright's Iconoclastic Masterpiece</i>

Признаци на необективност в българската скулптура

The non-objective work of art is unrelated to real-world objects. The essence of non-objective art is that the work completes in the mind of the viewer, and he creates his own interpretation. In this sense, the viewer is involved in the creative process and interacts with the work of art. The expressive means and techniques of nonobjective sculpture are at the heart of some of the most avant-garde art movements, such as minimalism, land-art, site-specific art and environmental art. Some examples of non-objective sculpture flow from symposium sculpture, which later evolves into urban spaces. The first international symposiums, where Bulgarian authors work with their foreign colleagues and get acquainted with various artistic practices, influence the Bulgarian sculpture. The non-objective sculpture has its manifestations in Bulgarian art, though later. The works of some Bulgarian authors play an important role in the changes in the Bulgarian sculpture and in the integration into the world processes.

Skepticism about Modern Art

Abstract From the earliest days of abstract and nonobjective art, there have been no widely accepted criteria by which to judge the value or significance of innovation. Only in the visual arts has radical experimentation become the mainstream of creative endeavor, a condition that makes the vocational education of visual artists problematic. The philosopher’s institutional theory stands to describe this condition, but, because it is not a generative theory, it provides no guidance to the aspiring artist or the art educator. The persistence of largely irrelevant “foundation studies” stands to illustrate the unresolved difficulties in tertiary art education. Against this background, I examine the claims of two influential art museum directors, one of whom seeks to justify the processes by which the modern artist rises to fame, while the other attributes progress in modern art to the achievements of individual artists who are exceptional in breaking the rules of the game of modern art as it played at any given time. I argue that the objectivity of these processes of discovery and critical acclaim in contemporary modern art is compromised to an extent that artworld functionaries do not themselves recognize.

The conceptual sphere of the analysis of abstraction in the fine art as an element of artistic culture

The purpose of the article is to find out the essence and description of the features of abstraction as a form of fine art. The methodology is the general principles of art criticism and cultural science of scientific discourse, which is based on analytical, system-structural, semiotic methods and generalization. Scientific novelty represents a conceptually new view of abstract art as a transhistorical style of fine art, which is based on universal, immutable cultural codes that are constantly reproduced from the past to the present. It is proposed in the scientific use of the notion of “abstract sign” as a concept of semiotic analysis of non-objective art. Conclusions. The basis of the figurative abstraction language is a sign and a symbol-code that has no similarity to a particular subject or concept, but expresses the general nature of the representation and is a universal form in the fine arts from ancient times to the present.

Moscow Merz and Russian Rhythm

Abstract The Erste Russische Kunstausstellung [First Russian Art Exhibition] of 1922 was a remarkable event not only for Berlin’s art lovers at that time, but also for the history of twentieth century art. Held at Galerie van Diemen, the show gave a comprehensive overview of Russia’s artistic achievements from late Tsardom to the Russian Civil War. Of all styles in the exhibition, the non-objective art movements of suprematism and constructivism provoked the greatest sensation among the visitors, many of whom were Western artists. Relating Russia’s variations of non-objectivity with their—assumed—political notions, Western modernists reacted in various ways. This article aims at tracking the long-lasting vestiges of the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung in the personal and artistic developments of two key-figures of Germany’s modern art scene: Kurt Schwitters and Hans Richter. While the role of El Lissitzky, who designed the catalogue’s cover, has already been canonized, this article wants to highlight lesser-regarded aspects.

Blurring the Edges: Ricoeur and Rothko on Metaphorically Figuring the Non-Figural

This essay examines Ricœur’s mimetic and transfigurative perspective on non-objective art and adopts it as an idiom for examining Mark Rothko’s artistic intention in the multiform canvases of his “classical” period from 1949 until his death in 1970. Rothko unequivocally denied being an abstractionist, a colorist, or a formalist, insisting, on the contrary, that he desired to communicate discrete dimensions of experience and emotions to his viewers, specifically, experiences of the sacred and the spiritual. His large canvases, with their blurred edges, force the spectator into an intimacy of experience that opens the potentiality of heterogeneous interpretations. In other words, one might consider his paintings to be metaphors of dense meanings that imitate reality, not through facile representation, but through a Kierkegaardian repetition of worlds that track Ricœur’s own ideas of prefiguration, configuration, and re-figuration. I contend in this essay that Rothko’s “abstract expressionism” adequately illustrates Ricœur’s contention that non-figurative art succeeds far better than representational art in refiguring new worlds of meaning.

The Study on the Costume of Art in the Russian Suprematism - Focused on Kasimir Malevich's Art Works -

purpose of the study is to revaluate the new artistic values of Suprematism that immensely influenced the Russian culture in the beginning of the 20th century. Also through studying the relationship between people and costume within works of Malevich, who wanted to portray humanity through his art works, this study will research on how Suprematism not just stood as Russian Avant-garde art but significantly contributed to art and costume expression. study methods are as follows. First, consider the formative background of Suprematism style of arts. Second, study of the development of Suprematism art through both Suprematism art and Non-objective art. Third, study how Suprematism style of arts is portrayed in art costume through works of Malevich. results of the study are as follows. Russian Suprematism art costume strictly originated from the Russian Suprematism style of arts. Suprematism simplified any reproductive element of fine art with a creative energy, which reflects the statement of Malevich that said, The object does not exist, it only stands as a symbol. In other words, Suprematism abolished ordinary response to basic environment, and created a much more serious reality than the innate reality of the environment. When applied to art costume, such style sought after geometrical simplicity in shape and Neo-Premitivism trait in color. This trend is also expressed in 21st century fashion in new forms of Minimalism or Futurism. In this respect, Suprematism still holds an artistic value in a novel form even after a century since the beginning of 20th century when Malevich first presented Suprematism.

Introducing Alain Robbe-Grillet

I!':TRODUCI!':G ALAI!': ROBBE-GRILLET Ben Stolrzru5 is 1I ProfC'ssor Emcrillls ofFrC'lIch a d Comparati\'C' LileratllrC'. t;l/in'YS;')' o/Ca/i/omia. Ri,'C'rsidC'. All lilerali know that Alain Robbe-Grille! is onc of Francc's le:!ding New Novelists and avant-garde cincmatoh'Taphcrs. that his works have redefined Ihe novel and the cinema as genres. and that his art hilS left an indelible imprint on the twenlieth- century. Less well known. perhaps. is the fact thai he likes to work with other :lr1ists and that he has collaborated with painters. photographers. and musicians such as Paul Dclvau.x. Robert Rauschenberg. Jasper Johns. David Hamihon. Irina Ionesco. and Michel Fano. In 1961. before he himself became a film director. his association with Alain Resnais produced L :-II/I/{;(> derniere Mariellbad. an intemational film success. After the death of Rene Magritte. Robbe-Grillet illustratcd onc of his novels. La Bf!l/e captive (1975). with seventy-seven paintings by the Belgian surrealist painter---paintings from the collection of Georgene Magrittc. his wido\\'. It is most appropriate. therefore. that Robbe-Grillet be the keynote speaker for an interdisciplinary conference on lilerature and the ans entitled Camera 01/ Stylo: A Problematic Dialogue? . One critic. when speaking of Robbe-Grillefs style in La Jalollsie. alluded to the descriptions of things and people in this 1957 novel as Ie srylo-camera. Already_ there is a clear and direct relationship befween image and writing even before Robbe-Grillet became a film director and began collaborating with other artists. Because space and time preclude a detailed presenlation of Robbe-Grillet's oeuvre. I will use La BC'I/C' capli\Y! to illustrate his ongoing dialogue using the written text and its visible counterparts. t\loreovcr. the coming together of Magrine and Robbe- Grillet is arguably not problematic because both men opposc Ihe natural b)' highlighting thc artificial. They both believe that art exists. not to mirror nature. but to mirror itself. For them. art functions as a specular system. and its emphasis is not on the writing or painting of a story. but on the story of writing or painting. Furthermore. the opposition between nature and art engenders a theatricalization of languagc. be it verbal or pictorial. In Ecrirs comp!(!ts (686). Magrine notes aptly that painting is the visible description of thought and. in literature, with reference to Robbe-Grillet. the dramatization of language privileges the signifier over the signified. Such :lrt. insofar as it speaks primarily of itself. devalues mimesis as a rcpresenlational system, However. unlike the nonobjective art of Kandinsky or Mondrian, r l agriue's paintings arc both mimetic and anti·mimctic. Similarly. Robbe-Grillet's fiction is both referential and self-reflexive. In 1985. La BellC' capti\'c (the pictono\'c1. nOI the film by the same name) had been remaindered and you could buy it in a Left Bank bookslore for fifty fmncs. I bought one copy. bUI after leaving the store. and while walking loward the Luxembourg Gardens, I decided that I needed another onc, The salesperson looked at me with a smile of complicity on her lips and SOlid: ··Ah. vous voulez une deuxieme belle caplive! And so I did. which roises the question: what or who is the beautiful captive? Obviously. it's the tille of the book. and the title derives from six pictures of seascapes and landscapes painted by Magrine. all of them entitled La Belle capl;I'C', However. despite the connotation. there is no woman in the paintings. I a

THE LIMITS OF LITERALITY

Expressionists began to approach the theodidact/prophet who speaks directly from the wellspring of all nature. While many artists have interpreted the Bible, these illustrations of narrative episodes are as challenging— being textually dependent—as the non-contingent abstract works of the modern period. In such art we encounter painting (and sometimes sculpture) that consciously or sometimes inadvertently approached Biblical domains of sensation and occasion. Particular sanctions for this art are difficult to find in Torah but are nevertheless incipient, finding the opportunity for their expres sion only in recent times. Imagery does require the structure of representa tionalism. For the most part, New York School painting (despite what we may learn of its autobiographical sources) was unintelligible to its audience. In its non-objectivity Abstract Expressionism was alone. Many sorts of conception are non-symbolic. As a (perhaps doctrinaire) modernist corol lary to representationalism, non-objective art so clearly participates in dialogue with representationalism that it might simply be considered one aspect of it, a response. (That is, non-objective art defines itself as not realist. Likewise, atheism is a strongly held religious belief.) Our standards of quality still derive from representationalism, although, paradoxically, the substrate for those emotions may reside in configurations beneath realist attributes. Schematic imagery represents no continuous visual field but solicits a conceptual understanding non-spatial in origin. Thus, the Tabernacle in the Desert, an architectural form dictated by God, is believed to present some sort of incomprehensible image, divinely projected into this world with human agency to reify it, but without explanation to justify its components. The literal, that is virtual form, is the letteral, which in the arts is the realm of content. It appears that something of this non-discursive, and perforce, mystically holy, power of imagery was either sought or attributed to the New York School. In New York School art we encounter the response to a long history of literality deflected by letterality. The Egyptians inspired the early Greeks with an urbane standard that the Greeks—rude provincials when they encountered the civilization of the Nile—altered to their own tastes. The Romans, forever indebted to, and admiring of, the Greeks, fashioned their material culture within the shell of Greek forms.13 Generation after generation, antiquity expended vast energy and capital on the plastic arts, artifacts whose perfection staggered barbarian or medieval finders and which continue to ehcit our greatest admiration untinged by condescension for the otherwise cruelly primitive peoples who made these sculptures and building.14 When the tide of Roman culture returned to the mother city as the Empire contracted, massive Roman creations remained sprouting from the countryside. Within the former empire's limits, especially in Europe, the huge ruins taunted the native inhabitants to compete in emulating Rome. At first, cathedrals, then the This content downloaded from 157.55.39.99 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 07:17:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 132 THE LIMITS OF LITERALITY whole panoply of renaissance art and architecture, rehearsed ancient forms. These antique forms perdured into the twentieth century when, after being briefly banished by modernism, they were again borrowed for post modernism's accoutrements. The history of western art revives a more-or less limited repertory, a canon of forms. Likewise, the history of western morals is, more-or-less, an ever-renewing revival and examination of Jewish values. Dubbed the Judeo-Christian heritage this letteral system is to Judaism what modem buildings literally are to Greek architecture. In Judaism, the healthy mind in the beautiful body, if individually admir able, are cleft and exist independently, with a distinct accent on a strong mind seeking the ways of righteousness amid complex daily exigency. That is, literal behaviour, virtual action with little discussion of exigency is gov erned by letters, passion. Circumstances vary but moral relativism never arises. The theory of beautiful behaviour at the heart of Jewish life flows as a parallel stream beside the tradition of plastic form, of physical beauty. In such an aesthetic domain absolutes are unknown and all is derived from comparison. Both strivings, toward a superlative of aesthetics and ethics, account for the distinct culture of the west. Under the right conditions of tolerance which arose in the post-war world, Judaism's aesthetic of conduct is also capable of producing visible manifestation of powerful aesthetic effect. That is, virtual forms, the literal arose under the spiritual governance, and as illustrations, of the letteral. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Art and Mathematics in the Thought of El Lissitzky: His Relationship to Suprematism and Constructivism

Lissitzk’s analogies between art and mathematics pertain to two aspects of modernity—namely, non-objectivity and the negation of perspectival space. According to Lissitzky, non-objectivity in art was analogous to the modern concept of number, and the structure of a work of art corresponded to mathematical concepts such as functions and systems. These theories demonstrate Lissitzk’s divergence from both Suprematism and Russian Constructivism. Furthermore, the analogies elucidate the artisf’s insistence on order, his notion of the art-game and the relationship between intuition and intellect in the creative act. An analysis of pictorial space by analogy with real and imaginary numbers and a comparison of art with set theory help clarify the system of the Proun paintings and the theoretical base of Lissitzky’s exhibition spaces. They also expand our understanding of Lissitzky’s relationship to Male-vich’s Suprematism. In conclusion, the analogies provide an alternative theoretical base to nonobjective art, different from the other ‘isms’ of art in the 1920s.

Picasso, Cubism, and Reflexivity

The interpretation of Cubism has a great bearing on the understanding of modernism, and the understanding of modernism plays in turn a central role in most of twentieth-century art to this day. Yet only a narrow range of views regarding precisely how an overall interpretation of Cubism may relate to the art of the last hundred years has emerged. One is that Cubism was the cornerstone of twentieth-century art because it broke with past tradition definitively; established “modernist” flatness, opticality, and involvement with the medium of art; and thus sanctioned a new tradition that would lead to nonobjective art as well as to assemblage and to other “modernist” principles and practices. This essentially formalist view has now been supplemented, but not displaced, by what might be called a linguistic or semiological position, whereby Cubism becomes the first, pioneering exemplar of a “modernist” play of signs, which refer not to the exterior world but to other signs and to other works of art. What both th...

Antecedents of the Pompeian First Style

the First Style does not take into account the two elements of the style which are, to a critic of the present day, its most striking features: color and texture. For example, a typical design at Pompeii, in a cubiculum of the House of the Centaur (pl. 67, figs. 1-2), consists of raised and highly polished rectangles of a soft, light blue-green, large expanses of deep black, a slightly muted but still brilliant yellow-orange, and two different shades of dark purple. Marbled panels alternate with solid colors, introducing a rhythm of painted textures which heightens one's sense of a thoroughly selfconscious performance in what we might call a kind of non-objective art. The clean, hard edges of the relief, hich imitates drafted-margin masonry, adds further emphasi to a surprising contrast between auste e design and flamboyant coloring. Some recently found fragments of a design at Cosa, probably from the interior of a Roman temple of the late third century B.c., together with numerous new finds in other parts of Italy and at Morgantina, in Sicily, should add much to our knowledge of this curiously modernistic style of decoration.3 The Cosa fragments include a number of unique elements. There is, for example, a group of grilles (pl. 68, figs. 3-6)-raised plaster motifs resembling marble openwork balustrades such as those we might expect to see in the intercolumniation of the upper stories of monumental stoai. At Cosa also were found fragments of raised maeanders and stylized floral patterns, in full relief, forming string-courses. Such string course designs, when they appear in Campanian First Style decorations and in houses at Delos, are painted in perspective on the flat surface of the string course, not shown in actual relief. The full relief and the

East-West Correspondence

I have read your article in the December issue criticizing non-objective art [Beauty and Distortion, by V. S. Kemenov; the soviet review, December 1961; translated from Sovetskaya Kultura, Sept. 5, 1961]. Your thoughts interest me because I am both a painter and secondary school instructor in crafts. There are many people in both our cultures who would agree with your premise. I happen to be one who does not and consequently am taking this opportunity to communicate with you.

Spirituality, Mysticism and Non-Objective Art

“Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the out ward rendered expressive of the inward; the soul made incarnate; the body instinct with spirit.” This dictum by Oscar Wilde applies eminently to non-objective art which was able to achieve this unity by making the leap from the canvas to the spirit without the intervening step of subject matter. Non-objective art starts where representational art leaves off. It has the advantage that it does not wrestle with representational elements in addition to spiritual ones, but with spiritual ones alone. Non-objective art, in the hands of its masters, tore the veil from visible nature and presented its animating forces in the process of creation out of chaos or rest.

The Aesthetic Theories of Wassily Kandinsky

AT a time when so much painting is in the non-objective vein, it seems relevant to investigate the aesthetic theories of the artist who was the first champion of non-objective art, or “concrete art,”1 as he preferred to call it. It is possible that non-objective paintings may have been painted prior to Kandinsky's first non-objective watercolor (Fig. I) of 1910 and his more ambitious Impressions, Improvisations, and Compositions of 1911. There are abstractions by Arthur Dove, for example, which are dated 1910. Picabia and Kupka began working in a non-objective idiom not much later,2 and Delaunay painted his non-objective Color Disks in 1912.3 In Germany Adolf Hoelzel ventured into non-objective painting as early as 1910, but whereas for Hoelzel it was merely experiment in additional possibilities, Kandinsky made non-objectivity the very foundation of his pictorial imagery.4

The Information Film in Art

The use of Information films in the teaching of art is being neglected and its status in the methodology of instruction is that of a poor and unwanted relation.Visual-Aids in art education has won acceptance as the most effective medium. That acceptance is based on the whole experience in the documentary field: Information Art Films embody all of the elements of visual contact. They present unlimited Forum possibilities with Film Strips and slides. They provide a stimulating relationship with reproductions for purposes of emphasis. They enlist the support and interest of students who might otherwise be bored with reading abstract words about an abstract subject (i.e., non-objective art).