Abstract art

Abstract art does not try to duplicate the world exactly. Instead it reduces the world to its essential qualities.

“Visual artists such as painters and sculptors do not always strive to depict persons and objects realistically. Rather than imitate their subject's natural appearance, some artists deliberately change it. They stretch or bend forms, break up shapes, and give objects unlikely textures or colors.

Artists make these transformations in an effort to communicate something they cannot convey through realistic treatment. Works of art that reframe nature for expressive effect are called abstract. Art that derives from but does not represent, a recognizable subject is called nonrepresentational or non-objective abstraction.”

www.nga.gov/education/american/abstract.htm

Please visit this web site sponsored by the National Gallery of Art for more general background information on American Abstractionism.

Funk Art

Funk Art is a term used loosely for art where offensive subject matter is presented in order to offend; sometimes pornographically.

It gained this association in the 1960s, when it was used to refer to such work produced in the San Francisco area. The word “funky”, from which this term was derived, has old, wide-ranging meanings, including:

1. Having a moldy or unwashed odor.
2. Smoky or earthy qualities in music, as in the blues.
3. Self-expressive, original, and modish
4. Unconventional, outlandishly vulgar or eccentric in a humorous or tongue-in-cheek manner.
5. Campy.

Surrealism

These artists took the realistic image one step further in their near-photographic depictions of the American scene.

These artists attempted to liberate the unconscious mind. Imagery in this style can be dreamlike and “super real.”

Synchromism

A style of painting employing pure colors in harmonious abstract arrangement, was developed by painters Morgan Russell (American, 1886–1953) and Stanton MacDonald-Wright (American, 1890–1973). It was first exhibited in Paris in 1913, then at the Armory Show in 1914.
The Synchronist movement represented painting that alternated between abstraction and figurative and expressive and the artist’s interest in relationships between color and form and Oriental art.

Minimal Art

“Minimal Art” is a term that applies to a number of art movements, including Op Art, color Field Painting, Serial Imagery (related works in a series), Hard-Edge painting, and the shaped canvas from the 1960s to the present. It sometimes featured the use of high-tech materials such as neon, plastic, and metals.

Artworks were stripped to the essence, purposely devoid of any “artist's touch.”