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Tag Archives: Definitions
Art – What IS Art Anyway
It’s an old question. Many people think that abstract art isn’t art. Some people think that when I draw people it isn’t art. Everyone seems to have an opinion of what is NOT art.
Art, painting, drawing, or CREATING, is basically anything someone thinks of as art. There doesn’t have to be universal agreement. If we needed everyone to agree on what is art, NOTHING would be art.
I found the idea of Art as The Machine We created to be a most interesting creative concept. Here we find that art is sculpted into something useful. We don’t think of it as art when we do it. It’s just a machine. But with time, it becomes art. It’s a lot to think about.
Art Definitions
Some Movements & Styles in Plain English by C. Pagani
Impressionism & Abstract Impressionism
A movement which began in the 1940s, Abstract Expressionism is a style of painting in which the emotional, non-objective qualities of an object are given preeminence, taking all of the brakes off of the flow of human consciousness and creativity. In abstract expressionism the painter shows his personality through spontaneity. This being the case, most abstract expressionist art does not consist of painting an object or image, but is instead a study in color and interplay of paint and canvas. Nonrepresentational art, also called New York School. For further reading, see Abstract Expressionism Examples and Varieties.
Non-representational or non-objective art – that is, the artist does not attempt to capture an exact likeness from nature. Instead, the subject of abstract painting is the painting itself. "Paint is paint and canvas is canvas – they should not pretend to be otherwise." For further reading, see Abstract Expressionism Examples and Varieties, C. Pagani abstract expressionist paintings. (click on post titles to see paintings).
Abstract Impressionism
A term coined by Elaine de Kooning: Today we generally mean the creation of impactful impressionist paintings utilizing simplified abstract shapes and colors. This movement should not be confused with abstract expressionism, which does not possess any representational characteristics. Philip Guston, Canadian/American Abstract Expressionist Painter, 1913-1980, is considered by some to be the progenitor of this movement when he began adding recognizable objects to his abstract paintings. His works were far more abstract, however, than later proponents such as Domenic DiStefano and Chriss Pagani. Others name Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) as the father of the movement. In any case, this has created a dichotomy in the movement as readily recognizable figures and objects, even highly abstracted Cubist ones, may be considered quot;abstract impressionism" by some, while others insist that the overall feel of a work must be that of an impressionist painting and that the abstract characteristics must be noticeable only upon closer examination. From either side of this debate, however, abstract impressionists believe that a painting should always look like a painting, not a photograph. This distinguishes them from other contemporary realists. This movement does not have the same broad recognition as some other movements. See also Abstract Impressionism, examples.
Abstract Impressionists
A practitioner of abstract impressionism (Defined: Abstract Impressionism), a style of painting in which real life objects are represented through simplified, abstract shapes. The degree of abstraction varies with the practitioner. Abstract impressionists tend to believe strongly in freedom of expression and individuality, preferring to emphasize the artist’s own style over pure representation. The movement has been divided into those who insist on tangible representation and those who do not. Practitioners the more abstract school include Mark Rothko, while those who lean toward the representational side include Dominic DeStefano and Chriss Pagani.
Expressionism
Sometimes using unusual colors or exaggerated shapes and images, this 20th-century European art movement stresses the expression of emotion and the inner vision of the artist rather than the exact representation of nature. The artist uses distorted lines and colors for emotional impact in an attempt to convey some of the non-material aspects of the subject at hand, in affect turning the represented object "inside out." Vincent Van Gogh is regarded as the precursor of this movement, along with Gauguin and Edvard Munch.
Impressionism is an art and music movement that developed in 19th-century France in reaction to the formalism and sentimentality that characterized academic art of the time. The impressionist movement is considered the beginning of the modern art period. Impressionists are more concerned with conveying the emotional impression or experience of the subject of a painting than exact depiction of form. Foremost impressionists include Claude Monet & Camille Pissarro (the earliest leaders in this movement), Edgar Degas, and Pierre Auguste Renoir.
Contemporary impressionists continue the tradition started by these masters, as well as adding elements of their own as a kind of modern renaissance, and the movement has branched out to fill the gaps between representational and non-representational art through abstract impressionism.
Abstract Art Explained
- Abstract Art
- Art in which objects, people, and/or places are depicted in simplified arrangements of shapes, lines, textures, and/or colors. Abstract art may or may not bear a resemblance to its subject. "Paint is paint and canvas is canvas, they should not pretend to be otherwise." The cleverness in abstraction lies in the fact that the human mind attempts to interpret the abstraction, finding patterns and images that aren’t really there. As a result, a good abstract painting will appear differently in the minds of individual viewers.
Interpretation of abstract art has both an academic and a popular side. Academically, we look at abstraction for the use of color fields, symmetry and apparent planes. For the fan, however, interpretation is a lot more fun and involves finding the shapes created by ones own mind from the material provided by the artist.
- Abstract Expressionism
- Expressionism is a style of painting
in which the emotional, non-objective qualities of an object are given preeminence. Abstract Expressionism takes all of the brakes off of the flow of human consciousness and creativity. In abstract expressionism the painter
shows his personality through the use of color and shapes. This being the case, abstract expressionist art does not consist of painting
an object or image, but is instead a study in color and interplay of paint and canvas. See also: Art Definitions.
Abstract Expressionism is generally divided into two major types:
(1) Action Painting strives to show paint texture
and the movement of the artists. Jackson Pollock is an example of an Action Painter. He dripped
and poured his paint to create his work.
(2) Color Field Painting is concerned only with shape and color and tries new and creative ways to express these basic elements. Among
practitioners of this school, Mark Rothko stands out through his use of rectangles and colors in his paintings.
Willem de Kooning and Jean Debuffet experimented in both sub-styles, and today 
we have Tracy Emin who primarily works in installations and
Chriss Pagani who works in a subset the artist invented called object-oriented or perceptual puzzle abstraction.
Abstract Paintings : The Reality of Abstract Art Philosophy
We’ve all heard the criticisms: “People paint abstracts because they can’t draw,” and “My four year old could have done that.” I even heard the art-nazi host of Oregon Art Beat, K C Cowan, make the former statement and she should know better than this! Of course, the fact that she hosts a show about art doesn’t mean she knows jack about art, does it? No, it’s just public television. Obviously she has no understanding of abstraction whatsoever, and that is truly pathetic.
I am not exclusively an abstract painter, but my abstract work is far and away the most difficult and challenging of my painting projects. Creating the exact work of my vision can be frustrating in the extreme, and anyone who says that I must do these difficult works because I can’t draw is an idiot – or at least knows nothing of my body of work.
Drawing is an entirely separate skill; what is required for abstraction is a new way of thinking. As for the halfwit who might say their kid could do it, I say, bring it on! People make statements like this can’t produce, because while anyone including your no-talent kid can slather some color on paper, it still doesn’t meet the criteria of good art until it is arranged and juxtaposed so as to produce an appropriate mind effect.
Now this is the key: If – and only if -abstraction is done very well, we have in abstract painting the purest and truest interface between visual arts and human consciousness. It is the bleeding-edge of art and science melded together. Most people don’t understand this: They may assume that if they don’t understand a work of art, there must be something wrong with it. But my knowledge of the workings of the human mind has led me to envision the interactive nature of visual input in the form of matrices of colors and shapes, with the brain – and thus human consciousness. You see, it isn’t what the painting “represents” that is important – unlike impressionism -but what it does.
Up until now, you didn’t know how or why abstract art occasionally induced strong emotional reactions. You may have dismissed this effect because you didn’t understand it. Now you are beginning to see the truth: Good abstract art forces the brain to create new neural pathways to try to fathom the unfathomable. To brain wave patterns emerge. The colors, the lines, and the patterns – all from seemingly beyond the world as it is understood – cause the activation of new neural pathways by the millions.
This is the fourth generation of art theory: a schema of intuitive action and juxtapositions of concrete patterns in a holistic approach resulting in a convergence of brain science and art – of architectures and spatial relationships with neurons and dopamine. It isn’t just art, it is mind programming. And that is what makes abstract art the most powerful force that the creative mind can unleash.
This is my unique discovery, unheard of in the world of art OR psychology — until now. When you hear this information someday from some inflated ego with a sheepskin diploma who tries to tell you he just figured this out, you’ll know from whence this information really came.
You can find further in-depth discussions about abstraction and my new theory elsewhere on this site, starting with the Abstract Paintings page.
THIS …is art.
– Chriss Pagani
