CategoriesStyles and Movements
Abstract versus Figurative Art
Art that sits between abstraction and depiction, and the long modern argument over which of the two painting should pursue.
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Through much of the 20th century abstraction and figuration were treated as rival camps. Critics presented pure abstraction as modern art's natural goal, while totalitarian states demanded legible images of heroes and workers. In practice many artists refused to choose. Kazimir Malevich, whose Black Square (1915) had seemed to cut painting's link with the visible world, returned to peasants and portraits around 1928–33. Umberto Boccioni and the Futurists broke bodies into lines of force without losing them entirely.
After the Second World War the ground in between grew crowded. Willem de Kooning let women emerge from, and sink back into, slashing brushwork; in California David Park abandoned abstraction for figures around 1950. Philip Guston moved from figurative murals to lyrical abstraction in the 1950s, then back to blunt, cartoonish figures around 1970. Jean-Michel Basquiat fused figures, words and raw marks. Look for the point where recognisable forms begin to dissolve.
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