Research - Abstraction and Process art

The term can be applied to art that is based on an object, figure or landscape, where forms have been simplified or schematic. It is also applied to art that uses forms, such as geometric shapes or gestural marks, which have no source at all in an external visual reality. Some artists of this abstraction movement have preferred terms such as non-objective art, but in practice, the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is not always obvious.

It is the art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead uses shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effects.

Abstract art became a well-known art form in the 20th century as it started to evolve in the 19th Century. It originally started in 1844 with the artistic industrial revolution. The Industrial Revolution brought great advances in engineering, which included the mechanisation of factories and the invention of the steam engine.

JMW Turner was a ground-breaking painter whose work captured some changes within England. The style of painting came to place on the appearance of light and verged towards abstraction. For example, his 1844 painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway offers little detail of the landscape, its dramatic viewpoint manages to both create an atmosphere and give an impression of rapid movement.

Abstract art has evolved to the point that simplistic shapes can be considered art, such as Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow by Piet Mondrian created in 1930. It consists of thick, black brushwork, defining the borders of coloured rectangles. As the title suggests, the only colours used in it besides black and white are red, blue, and yellow oil paints on canvas. The piece is very similar to Mondrian's 1930 Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow.

Both artists' styles contrast against each other due to the time of the art revolution, JMW Turner's art is more detailed than Piet's. His paintings show details so the viewer can gain an idea of what these abstracted shapes are supposed to be, while some of Piet's are the opposite. The viewer can interpret what this art could represent, rather than Turner's who is what it shows.

Both artists pieces of art are abstract to start with as they are in the process of creation, but as time goes on and they become more detailed, they are still abstract pieces of art.

(JMW Turner - Vesuvius in Eruption, 1817-20, Watercolour, gum, and scraping out on paper)

(Piet Mondrian - Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Oil on canvas)

"This canvas presents the viewer with the culmination of Mondrian's life-long pursuit of conveying the order that underlies the natural world through purely abstract forms on a flat picture plane. Broadening the use of his basic pictorial vocabulary of lines, squares and primary colours, the black grid has been replaced by lines of colour interspersed with blocks of solid colour. This, and his other late abstract paintings, show a new, revitalized energy that was directly inspired by the vitality of New York City and the tempo of jazz music. The asymmetrical distribution of the brightly coloured squares within the yellow lines echoes the varied pace of life in the bustling metropolis, one can almost see the people hurrying down the sidewalk as taxi cabs hustle from stop-light to stop-light. Broadway Boogie-Woogie not only alludes to life within the city but also heralds New York's developing role as the new centre of modern art after World War II. Mondrian's last complete painting demonstrates his continued stylistic innovation while remaining true to his theories and format."

- The Artstory.