Pictures of Nothing: In Defense of the Abstract
Why Abstract Art Matters
It’s been 71 years since Jackson Pollock created his work “Lavender Mist” and many people still can’t bring themselves to call it art; “My kid could do that” is a common refrain. Can you blame them? In a world that has produced sculptures such as Michelangelo’s “David” and the realistic American landscape paintings of Thomas Cole, you would be hard-pressed to explain why streaks of paint poured on a canvas in a seemingly random manner should be considered art.
Viewing art which depicts the natural world or the human form is familiar and relatable and an easy way for us to feel the shared experiences of living on this earth. Yet here we find ourselves steeped in the 100+ years of modern art, of abstraction, which too many still feels alien, silly, even pretentious. As an artist who partakes in the tradition of creating abstract art, I would like to attempt to explain why pictures of nothing matter.
Kirk Varnedoe, an art historian and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, sought to answer this question of the validity of abstraction. He did this in a series of lectures titled “Pictures of Nothing,” the phrase coming from an early critique of abstract art. Varnedoe offers some key points as to why we should care about abstract art. Throughout this post I will highlight and discuss some of his points that stood out to me personally.
Abstraction Offers a New Way of Interpretation
It is often argued that the history of art is the history of humanity trying to recreate reality. Our art is directly relatable to us, to our human stories and experiences, to the world around us. We see it, we name it, we interpret it. Abstraction subverts that order of interpretation, forcing us to see differently.
When we encounter, for example, a painting like Pollock’s “Lavender Mist,” we may see it, attempt to name it, but then we are forced to interpret it for simply what it is; the artwork stands alone. On this topic Varnedoe states that, “interpretation does not demand recognition or resemblance and may in fact profit from its absence… abstract art absorbs projection and generates meaning ahead of naming, establishing the forms of things unknown”.
I highly value and respect representational art, though I choose to create most often in abstraction, choosing to create instead of re-create. I believe the separation of abstract art from immediate references in the world allows the art to engage with the viewer as opposed to the viewer engaging with the art. This backward way of interpretation causes the piece to have agency; instead of depicting an object, it is the object—and the subject.
Read: Training Our Attention: Why We All Need Poetry Now
Abstract Art as an Avenue for Exploration
If the current art age is one in which anything goes, I believe this is largely due to abstractions’ ability to push forward into the unknown. When abstract art first began to grow in popularity, many saw it as the end of classical representation; the traditions of the past were no more. Yet abstract art continues on more than a hundred years later, can be found standing hand-in-hand with traditional and representational art, and has blended into the art world in seemingly every way.
As an example of abstraction informing representational art, Varnedoe highlights how artists have utilized mirrors in their works. Varnedoe states that what began with abstract artists, like Robert Smithson, first placing mirrors in nature then in galleries accompanied by other objects, eventually led to this motif showing up in the mirrored finish of a stainless steel rabbit by Jeff Koons, a more representational piece.
Varnedoe argues that, as opposed to destroying representation, as many believe abstract art to do, it instead “steadily expands its possibilities." He states that “one tradition’s killer virus becomes another tradition’s seed” and believes those who learn abstract art are able to “make something out of apparent nothing.”
Traditional art depicting the natural world is unable to move beyond what we can see. Abstraction is constantly moving, changing, forcing the bounds of what we know and experience. This expanse of possibilities in abstraction affects the whole of the art world. Those who saw the end of classical art in their response to abstract art saw it as a means of destruction whereas I, instead, believe it is and should be viewed as a tool to problem solve and explore.
Mystery in Tension with Reality
I see abstraction as the necessary and mysterious counterpoint to realism’s objective declaration of what life is like. On our journey to understand the world and ourselves, we bump into these abstract works of art that stand up on their own. If we let them, perhaps they will take us a little further, past what we are able to observe, and into the unknown. Furthermore, abstraction, though at times intended to destroy the world of realistic art, has now combined with it and exploded into our current pluralistic world of art. From blank white paintings to hyperrealistic portraits and everything in between, abstraction and realism hang in tension, creating a constant movement between reality and mystery.
Abstraction steps outside reality and encourages us to do the same, to explore the unknown. Our experiences influence what and how we learn from these mysterious objects, and thus abstract art enhances our lived experiences.
Throughout history, institutions gave us traditions as foundations that offered, and expected, structure. Our institutional leaders give us structure, wanting order; but then we hear a strange voice, a voice crying out from the wilderness, from the uninhabited desert, pointing to something new. This new way upends everything but ultimately leads to order, better order, established once again. I see this tension in history similar to the tension seen within art. Realism, with the stories it tells, connects us all, but time and again must be ambushed by abstraction and the unknown so we can see, understand, and experience more. Through this ambush, the paradigm shifts, helping us question what we know, expanding our horizons. But the hope is that balance may once again be achieved, having created a newly informed reality using these pictures of nothing, which really do matter.