I know very little – really next to nothing – about abstract art. Sometimes I think that interferes with my appreciation of abstract paintings, sometimes the opposite seems to be true. Same for creating abstract photographic montages. So I figured I take this week to learn something about it and share what I found. Be prepared for a lot of direct quotes – and a lot of digression when other things popped up in my reading.

Here is a quote from Charles Jencks, critic, landscape designer, polemicist and one of the most interesting writers explaining modernism: …”For the founders of the Museum of Modern Art, the canonic story of Modern art led from Neo-Impressionism through Fauvism to Cubism, the Bauhaus and Modern Architecture (capitalized, as the gospel ought to be). This canonic trajectory led directly to Abstract Art, and it determined the arrangement of works in the galleries of MoMA right into the 1980s. This canon also justified a view of history as aiming toward abstraction as its goal, and, at the same time, validated the major bloodline of Modern artists from Picasso through Jackson Pollock…” (MoMa has now changed its exhibition patterns away from historical periods towards subject driven collections – underlining in the quote by me.)

The attached article http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/14/canons-in-crossfire is really about architecture and cycles of creativity – I came across it accidentally because it quoted a book I am interested in  – Creating Minds – An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Ghandi – by Howard Gardner. (Hey, in English! Paperback!) But it got me wondering about what someone who clearly thinks aiming towards abstraction can NOT be the goal, would strive for instead. Turns out Jencks believes the desire to know and relate to the universe, to understand the cosmos, is one of the strongest drives of sentient beings. His landscape art, abstract and yet content driven, is attempting to do just that. Look at his website http://www.charlesjencks.com/#! under projects and you understand what he’s after.  Do I now know more about abstract art? Hm. Not really. Stay tuned.