lyrical abstraction
(noun)
A type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s.
Examples of lyrical abstraction in the following topics:
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Color Field Painting
- Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s.
- Inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists.
- Encompassing several decades from the mid-20th century through the early 21st century, the history of Color Field painting can be separated into three separate but related generations of painters, commonly grouped into abstract expressionism, post-painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
- His shaped canvases of the 1960s revolutionized abstract painting.
- Differentiate Color Field painting from other contemporary abstract art such as Abstract Expressionism
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Japanese Art after World War II
- After World War II, Japanese artists became preoccupied with the mechanisms of urban life and moved from abstraction to anime-influenced art.
- After World War II, painters, calligraphers, and printmakers flourished in the big cities—particularly Tokyo—and became preoccupied with the mechanisms of urban life, reflected in the flickering lights, neon colors, and frenetic pace of their abstractions.
- After the abstractions of the 1960s, the 1970s saw a return to realism strongly flavored by the "op" and "pop" art movements, embodied in the 1980s in the explosive works of Ushio Shinohara.
- A number of mono-ha artists turned to painting to recapture traditional nuances in spatial arrangements, color harmonies, and lyricism.
- Shinoda's bold sumi ink abstractions were inspired by traditional calligraphy but were realized as lyrical expressions of modern abstraction.
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The New York School
- The New York School was an informal group of American abstract painters and other artists active in the 1950s and 1960s.
- It represented, and is often synonymous with, the art movement of Abstract Expressionism, such as the work of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning.
- A school of painting that flourished after World War II until the early 1960s, Abstract Expressionism is characterized by the view that art is non-representational and chiefly improvisational.
- Painters, sculptors, and printmakers created art that was termed Action painting, Fluxus, Color Field painting, Hard-edge painting, Pop art, Minimal Art and Lyrical Abstraction, among other styles and movements associated with abstract expressionism.
- The new Bebop and cool jazz musicians in the 1940s and 1950s (such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Gerry Mulligan) coincided with the New York School and abstract expressionism.
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Neo-Expressionism
- Related to American Lyrical Abstraction of the 60s and 70s, the Bay Area Figurative School of the 50s and 60s, the continuation of Abstract Expressionism, New Image Painting, and precedents in Pop painting, Neo-Expressionism developed as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalist art of the 1970s.
- Neo-Expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (though sometimes an abstracted version), in rough and violently emotional ways using vivid colors and color harmonies.
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Painting
- During the 1950s and 1960s, forms of Geometric expression including Hard-edge painting and Frank Stella's work in Geometric abstraction emerged as reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract expressionism.
- Color field painting, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as radical new directions.
- By the early 1960s Minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in geometric abstraction via Malevich, the Bauhaus and Mondrian) which rejected the idea of relational, and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of Action painting.
- The movement is related to American Lyrical Abstraction of the '60s and '70s and the Bay Area Figurative School of the '50s and '60s.
- It's also seen as a continuation of Abstract Expressionism, New Image Painting and precedents in Pop painting.
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Post-Painterly Abstraction
- Embracing clean linearity and open composition, Post-Painterly Abstraction evolved in reaction to Abstract Expressionism in the 50s and 60s.
- This was a movement in painting that followed and evolved in reaction to the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.
- Greenberg perceived that this new style of painting favored openness and clarity as opposed to the dense, painterly surfaces of Abstract Expressionism.
- While the term Post-Painterly Abstraction gained some currency in the 1960s, it was gradually supplanted by Minimalism, Hard-Edge Painting, Lyrical Abstraction and Color-Field Painting.
- His shaped canvases of the 1960s revolutionized abstract painting.
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Figurative and Abstract Art
- Painting and sculpture can be divided into the categories of figurative (or representational) and abstract (or non-representational).
- Artistic independence was advanced during the nineteenth century, resulting in the emergence of abstract art.
- Non-representational art refers to total abstraction, bearing no trace of any reference to anything recognizable.
- In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities.
- Figurative art and total abstraction are nearly mutually exclusive, but figurative or representational art often contains at least one element of abstraction.
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Art Informel in Europe
- Popular in the 1940s and 1950s, Art Informel is often considered to be the European equivalent to American abstract expressionism.
- Popular in the 1940s and 1950s, it is often considered to be the European equivalent to abstract expressionism, although there are stylistic differences (for example, abstract expressionism is often described as being more raw and aggressive than tachisme).
- Abstract expressionism was a school of painting in the United States that flourished after World War II until the early 1960s.
- Tachisme is a specific French style of abstract painting under the greater movement of Art Informel.
- Compare the European postwar movement of Art Informel to American abstract expressionism.
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The Development of Abstract Expressionism
- Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement.
- Abstract expressionism is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus, and Synthetic Cubism.
- Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early 20th century such as Wassily Kandinsky.
- In many instances, abstract art implied expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious, and the mind.
- Although Abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York and California.
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European Postwar Expressionism
- Postwar European artists, unlike American Abstract Expressionists, grappled with the isolated experience of the individual figure.
- One of the biggest contributing factors to this shift was the advent of Abstract Expressionism, a decidedly American movement that is often cited as the first American avant-garde.
- Unlike American Expressionism, which was more abstract, many European painters maintained the primacy of the figure in their work.
- Art Informel, a movement closely related to Tachisme, rejected the geometric, hard-edge style of American abstraction in favor of a more intuitive form of expression.
- Serge Poliakoff painted in the French tachisme style of Art Informel, an abstract movement which is often considered to be the European counterpart to Abstract Expressionism.