Die Abstraktion in der modernen Kunst – Bild-„Motiv“ oder künstlerische Strategie?

• Authors: Śnieciński Marek

Title variants

EN

Abstraction in contemporary art – ‘motif’ in picture or artistic strategy?

• Languages of publication: DE

Abstracts

EN

At the beginning of the twentieth century, artists interested in abstract art had to make, in a sense, an ideological choice – abstraction was one of the important strategic projects of modernism. The goal of abstract artists was to produce abstract paintings which were not connected with historic tradition of imaging; i.e. the paintings, which did not match the mimetic nature of art. As the result of their attitudes, which still prevailed in a few decades after World War II, slowly lost its momentum; disputes and debates about abstract painting became less and less loud. In postmodernist era, abstraction was no longer connected with choosing ideas or ideology (or artistic trend); it is not an artistic acknowledgement of faith. Abstract art is one of many possible trends which artists may follow. A good example of changing attitudes are so called abstract paintings by G. Richter, an eminent painter, who is mostly interested in figurative art. For Richter, the connection between the reality and pictures is of secondary importance. He said: My paintings include no objects, they themselves are the objects. The analysis of his works and a number of his statements shows that there is no fundamental difference between the figurative and abstract painting. Richter reaches for abstraction as if reaching for another motif, which is well-established among other classical motifs. Abstract painting already played its ideological deconstructive role and it doesn’t function today as universal idea or artistic strategy; only in connection with the medium of photography, abstraction seems to still play that role. Lambert Wiesing, a German philosopher who writes on the theories of images, analyzes artistic strategies associated with abstraction in photography and theoretical assumptions on which they are based. He writes about abstracts images directly connected with ‘photographic production process’, which primarily belongs to the history of photography (photograms). Also, he writes about ‘abstraction in the photographic product’. Here, he indicates three possible (and the most important from his point of view) artistic strategies, which still remain valid: abstraction of the way of seeing, abstraction of visilibity and abstraction in object’s art. He believes that in all the cases artists’ intentions play the key role and that artists have certain ideas that guide them, so they want to reveal them in their work.

• Publisher: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych im. Eugeniusza Gepperta we Wrocławiu
• Journal: DYSKURS: Pismo Naukowo-Artystyczne ASP we Wrocławiu
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 18
• Pages: 112-131

Contributors

author

Śnieciński Marek

References

• Mieczysław Wallis, Wybór pism estetycznych/Auswahl ästhetischer Schriften, Krakau 2004, S. 297.
• Paul Klee, Schöpferische Konfession, ”Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit”, Bd. XIII, Berlin 1920.
• Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon. Logik der Sensation, aus dem Französischen von Joseph Vogel, München 1995, S. 39.
• Gerhard Richter, Text 1961 bis 2007, Schriften, Interviews, Briefe, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln 2008, Text für Katalog documenta 7, 1982, S. 121.
• Jean-Francois Lyotard, Postmodernizm dla dzieci /Postmoderne für Kinder/ Warschau 1998, S. 27.
• Lambert Wiesing, Was könnte ”Abstrakte Fotografie” sein? Denkmöglichkeiten [in] Martin Roman Deppner, Gottfried Jäger (Hg.), Denkprozesse der Fotografie. Beiträge zur Bildtheorie, Bielefeld 2010, S. 301.
• Floris M. Neusüss, Fotogramme 1918 bisheute, Kassel – Köln 1987, S. 2.
• Willfried Baatz, Geschichte der Fotografie, Köln 1997, S. 146.
• Vgl. dazu z.B. Rupert Pfab, Studien zur Düsseldorfer Photographie, Weimar 2001, S. 81–84.