Abstraction.

Very few paintings are abstract. In fact, depending on your perspective, Egyptian hieroglyphs are more abstract than Jackson Pollack's paintings. Jackson Pollack is not abstract.

Realism has been given an unspoken and unnecessary requirement. To be identifiable or commonly seen. It has been the case for most of known history that paintings or 2 dimensional (2D) art represents something. Painting has been given the task to inform the viewer about something you could see. Even the supernatural is handled as if you "could" see it. We represent objects and people with auras. We know that the aura wasn't a realistic rendering but more a concept. The idea of energy imbued within but rendered as if the natural eye might see it.

So, we have this language in 2D art which describes that which is not seen but understood in the mind. This is very much like a mathematical equation. Egyptians took a series of little pictures and assigned meaning and arrangements. These groups of images carried more meaning than what was simply drawn on the art. The sum of those meanings occurred in the viewers mind and not really in the depiction. This is abstract.

ab·stract

adj [áb stràkt, ab strákt]
1. not concrete: not relating to concrete objects but expressing something that can only be appreciated intellectually.
2. theoretical: based on general principles or theories rather than on specific instances abstract arguments.

(dictionary lookup MS Works Word Processor)

These are the first 2 and primary definitions of abstract.

2D works represent ideas that carry meaning which is put together in our minds. The art is just a place holder, a character...a icon. Abstract is not a concrete thing like a ball or carrot. Abstract is the idea of a carrot in your mind. You can turn it around or imagine it in the ground growing. The idea of a carrot is not concrete.

If an idea is abstract and supported in your mind. You can look at Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and you know its not a woman. It is a painting of a woman. The painting is a big ICON made of many smaller icons of information. You try to determine if she is smiling? If so what does that mean? What is going on in the background? Are there symbols there to inform us of who she is. What jewelry is on her? Everything in the painting is an illusion of icons rendered to accurately carry ideas to the viewer. All these icons are processed in your mind, abstractly reasoned to conclusions.

Now look at a Jackson Pollack "Drip" series or Robert Motherwell paintings. They are not painting strictly rendered icons which carry information to the viewer. The painting is not abstract. IT IS REALISM. It is meant to be seen as an object in front of you. Think about that.

Now. Monet vs. Pollack

Monet's Water Lilies series are great to compare to Pollack’s Drip series.

At a point in Monet's later works, he starts to paint floating forms in water. The forms are on top of water. They are breaking thru reflections on the surface. The effect is that Monet is meditating on a vision. He represents his whole field of vision as a fractured and almost nonsensical rendering. This means he isn't obeying a requirement that 2D art must represent forms as identifiable icons. There is almost no meaning. The only responsibility of these forms is to convey color, value and texture. Aesthetic? Beauty? They are being harmony seen for its own sake. He isn’t representing a math equation or moral narrative. He is giving us Eye candy to view.

And Pollack.

Pollack fills our whole view with these large canvases as did Monet. He doesn’t put a single representation on the piece. There are no notations or mathematical symbols. We don’t get a single rendering of a worldly form. We are forced to look at paint. Our mind might wander and find illusions of depth. These illusions are simply the visual interplay of the forms the paint takes on. The only responsibility of these forms is to convey color, value and texture. Aesthetic? Beauty?..............

The painting is no longer of something not in front of you. It is no longer a man or an apple. It is far simpler than an illusion of a thing. It is paint. You are asked to look at paint for its own sake.

After Picasso and the cubists there came a series of painters who explored this work and it got a label. The label was related to the insult to the common people that there was no cute little story in the picture. No more metaphor. No moral. No flowers. No thing is represented specifically so the thing was called ABSTRACT. It required thought to realize that we left representational work in the dust and the label "Abstract" says more that it won't give you something simple to see. It required a paradigm shift. It required abstract reasoning to realize there was no abstract idea to see. No Icon.

This really is a fleeting moment in the history of 2D art because other artists took this to something else again. They started doing nonrepresentational work but it occurred as space and form. There was no requirement to paint an egg so just look into the paint and make flights of fantasy. The surrealists weren’t on this exact point of the abstractionists but the to merged. See Dakooning , Matta or Sam Francis. Robert Motherwell is doing huge works evoking space without recognizable objects.

So a lot can be said but basically my point is that there really isn’t much abstract art as defined in the genre called abstraction. It all is a visual/physical rendering of the minds image for us to see.

Close your eyes and watch the pretty shapes and colors pass before your mind on the inside of your eyelids.