Is Abstract Art on a Come Back Trail?

(Painting by Wassily Kandinsky)

Upon observing the stylistic features followed and practiced by many a student and young artist in the colleges and in the private studios in India, my student at the MSU, Baroda, Oorja Garg asks me why many are inclining towards an ‘abstract’ style these days. She wonders whether this is a global trend based on market success. As a part of the question she also clarifies that she does not have any problem with the ‘abstract style’ as such but somehow she fears that this trending could be a result of a lack of mastery over figurative painting. I think the question deserves a detailed answer, hence this blog.

Abstract Art, according to me is the art of the essential or rather the art of the essence. Abstraction has been understood all over the world in two specific ways; first of all, abstraction is a way of idealizing an artistic subject/object, eliminating/erasing the specific characteristics/particularities so that an ‘ideal’ art object/form is created which could be understood universally within the given context and frame of reference. Early Buddhist and Hindu sculptures that are generally hailed as Indian Sculptures belong to this genre of abstraction. Bringing out the essentials and idealizing them for the sake of universal relevance and prevalence anticipates, as already said, universal nature of the art object. This universalism overwrites the art object’s regional or local characteristics, at the same time leaving the entry points open so that the observer could make intellectual inroads in comprehending them fully.

(Painting by Paul Cezanne)

The second kind of abstraction is the one that we often connect with ‘modern art’. If traditional abstraction was the artists’ effort to idealize the subject/object, modern abstraction was a deliberate rejection of the figurative art that had just preceded it. Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian artist who could be called the father of Modern Abstract art chose to ‘deconstruct’ the figurative art that he, his contemporaries and his predecessors were practicing in the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century. The cataclysmic global occurrences that had resulted into the Russian Revolution and the First World War should be one of the reasons for the collapse of the integrated and unified image of the divine/human beings both in social and artistic spheres, which TS Eliot, the British Poet had qualified in his path breaking poem, ‘The Wasteland’ as ‘a heap of broken images’.

Breaking of up of images was already started since Impressionism. When Cezanne deliberated that he could conceive the objects into geometrical forms, he was in a way paving the way for further breakdown of figurative art. This collapse of the unified image of the triumphant human being (this being was ironically promoted heavily by the Russian authorities since the Revolution) had manifested in the Cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque. By the time we reach Duchamp, the collapse of the human image (therefore the collapse of all kinds of European aesthetical ideals prevalent since the Classical Greco-Roman period to the Neo-Classical period, finding its peak in the Renaissance period) take a different turn and he after his cubistic interventions replaces the possible human presence with industrially made and replicable objects. Kandinsky’s abstraction runs parallel to this though he stresses not on the collapse of the human image but art’s ability to move from the mundane and attain the abstraction of music.

(Sculpture by Henri Moore)

So, we see two different kinds of abstraction already established by the early 20^th century. In the first one, once again for clarity, we see the essence of figuration manifesting as abstraction. Here we do not find any denial of figuration. In the second kind of abstraction, it comes as a rebellion against the dominant figurative art. Sooner than later, right from the Cubistic experience we come to know that abstraction is not just denial of figuration but a search for the possibility of making art through non-figurative modes, which interestingly could be looking for the essence or embedded qualities. Early 20^th century sculptures by artists like Henry Moore, Constantine Brancusi, Barbara Hepworth, Alexander Calder, David Smith, Alberto Giocometti and many more present the possibility of a non-figurative art strictly still retaining the essence of the figurative art. While in painting, this search for essence could have been an avoidable feature because the two dimensional surface had given the artists more freedom than the sculptors who had to deal with volume and a seeming ‘figuration’ was essential to even emphasis the desired abstraction. But painters like Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian could absolutely do away with the illusionary third dimension of the painting which the masters of the yester years had striven hard to achieve.

In this sense abstract art was a pivotal intellectual movement in the beginning of the 20^th century, which necessitated different critical approaches in order to historicize their relevance. With no materialistic terms to qualify such an art (when one discards the materiality of the object forms and shapes naturally the language that critically explains such art forms too undergoes changes), it was important for the critics to talk more in esoteric and spiritual terms, which was an entirely novel parlance in the art historical discourses for over four hundred years. With no materiality, a mental existence had to be attributed to this newly established abstract or non-figurative art, which naturally led to the borrowing of terms and concepts of spiritual/yogic/meditative/Zen practices from the Oriental countries including India. Throughout the first half of the 20^th century, with the ‘modern art’ discourse ruling art history, there have been efforts to ‘deconstruct’ human form in various ways and one could say that even Surrealism, apparently a strongly figurative art movement, made efforts to dissolve human figure and anything around it. Surrealism drew its sustenance from dream realities and the human sub-conscious realm which naturally would hold non-materialistic images or images altered by mental interventions.

(Painting by Jackson Pollock)

Seen against this backdrop, the first half of the 20^th century witnessed an implosion of conflict of the abstract art with its own foundational philosophies. Abstract Art had to depend on the mental plane and the other non-materialistic arts like music still it needed a virtual linguistic structure which could be manifested only by concrete articulation and this conflict (conflict arose between the erasure of figures and the essential nature of verbal language with concrete images) took abstract art into different directions and one of the streams often found its escape route in definitely figurative art but through heavy distortions as in the case of Expressionism which brought back the artists like El Greco into discourse. Once again it took another World War, the Second in order to bring abstract art to the fore.

Post World War II America was once again facing a collapse in philosophy and economics. The collapse in faith caused by unprecedented wastage of human lives in the war/s made the artists to look Eastwards for solace and Zen practices, its meditation techniques, its universal philosophy of considering everything as the part of the whole, and the intuitive knowledge gave the artists a lot of hope and sustenance. The Eastern Zen philosophy does not differentiate between thoughts and deeds; it is one and the same. Deeds are the manifestations of thoughts. Jackson Pollock’s Action Painting has to be seen against this historical backdrop. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Roschenberg were working overtime to attribute spiritual tendencies to this art. America was on its way to become an economic power despite its humungous economic failure post-War years. The US promoted World Trade Fairs to gain global economic supremacy and along with trade products, they promoted the Action Painting and other contemporary abstract art which came to be known by an umbrella terms International Abstract Expressionism.

(Painting by Biren De)

World speaks the master’s language. As an emerging Super Power, the US could influence the world not only with its industrial prowess but also with the soft power called culture and the package included the Abstract Expressionism movement. If you look at the former colonial countries which had been just trying to stand on their feet after the war and the independence resulted by it, this art language was the most trending kind and the ongoing national debate between indigenous modern and the global modernism, it was easy for the latter to win as the post-War scenario had opened up a new internationalism, and the artists as cultural van guards went all out for this new internationalism; and obviously abstract expressionism was the choice. As we know by our art historical experience, not many had fallen for Pollock though he was aesthetically and philosophically influential. He along with Yves Klein had even inspired the latter Performance artists! But the artists all over the world started looking for something that reflected the international abstraction which could make them at once national and international.

Paul Klee, the abstract and semi-figurative artist comes handy at this juncture. For many who were striving for a visual language which should have abstraction but less American, Klee became a savior. He could provide the regionalism and the abstraction at once; those were abstract works in the non-figurative sense and essentially provincial and subjective in content. Also came artists like Barnett Newman, William De Kooning and so on handy for the Indian artists. However, there was always this question of national/regional against the international. For the nationalists, going for the Hindu abstraction was much easier and jumping over the latter part of Buddhist and Hindu art, they went for the Vedic symbolism of yoga. Hence in North India we find artists like Biren De and G.R.Santosh deriving their visual language from Yogic and the later Tantric symbolism. I would however call these experiments bit crude and superficial, as the perfection of this visual language with more scientific and emotional spirit could be seen in the works of S.H.Raza. J.Swaminathan, moved towards a pop-kind of abstraction as he evolved through his early experiments with the indigenous tribal art of India.

(Painting by KCS Panicker)

The real international abstraction however was started in India by KCS Panicker, who headed the Madras College of Art after DP Roy Chowdhury’s tenure as the Principal of it. History says that KCS Panicker is influence by Paul Klee. There are evidences that Panicker during his traveling abroad had seen the works of the international abstract artists. This had triggered Panicker’s imagination and without depending completely on the early Hindu or Vedic symbolism to create abstract art, he created a semi-cryptogrammic and semi-figurative style which was meditative and at the same time action oriented. This was/is a perfect abstract language which in fact had created many fine abstract artists in India like Akkitham Narayanan, Paris Viswanathan, KV Haridasan, Reddappa Naidu, J.Sultan Ali and so on. There was a different modern international abstract art school developed in the west side of India which also came as a rebellion against the strongly academic figurative art of the JJ School. Prabhakar Kolte is one of the exponents of this abstract school. Also we saw fine abstract artists like V.S.Gaitonde, Prabhakar Barwe, Mehli Gobhai, Bose Krishnamachari and so on. By the time, the color field abstraction created by Mark Rothko had earned mythical and religious status. Also in due course of time the Western Art had gone through a sea change taking it to strong naturalism and realism once again.

(Painting by SH Raza)

The Indian artists mentioned in this article had their reasons to be abstract artists. However, by 1980s with the advent and flourish of the strongly figurative movement called Baroda Narrative movement, once again it became imperative for a non-figurative rebellion against it as the figurative movement had ‘man’ as the central figure of the events narrated visually. While the West-Indian abstraction was in its peak, there came the post-Swaminathan abstraction from Bhopal’s Bharat Bhavan and the artists related to this establishment. Their torch bearer SH Raza had already earned success locally and internationally with a sort of convincing abstraction which had all the indigenous, national and international elements. Many artists in Bhopal took the route of Raza in essence but they all had to create different kinds of abstract styles to keep themselves afloat in the art market. A series of experiments with surfaces, forms and textures followed almost establishing a false notion that non-figurative art is ‘the’ modern art and figurative art was simply the ‘revival’ of old schools and masters. This historical falsehood spread like a virus and many thought experimenting with texture and colors was all about abstract art therefore making of modern art.

(Painting by J Swaminathan)

Today, if abstract art is on a coming back trail, then its reasons should be found in two different areas; first of all it could be a reaction against the mediatic realism art or photorealism art which had almost gobbled up rest of the artistic experiments from mid 1990s to around 2014. Mediatic Realism flourished in India as the most happening art and also it argued its own case that the artists who practiced mediatic realism would not let ‘painterly’ practices to die out. So it was not just an artistic style but a historical struggle against a new enemy in the forms of installation art, video art, conceptual art, performance art and ephemeral art. As the style was palatable to all with easily comprehensible images it could stay there for almost two decades. Today, mediatic realism is considered to be a done to death style. In this context, abstract art comes back as a painterly art because it is at once a rebellion and a TINA factor (there is no alternative). It is a TINA factor phenomenon because paintings can be, fundamentally speaking, either figurative or abstract. To create figuration and abstraction one could use any methods and materials. While figurative art needs craft and skill, absolute discipline and training besides constant practice, abstract art needs only cleverness and the ability to stick to experimenting with surface and texture, and once achieved a certain recognizable style the ability to stick to it. The fall out is that this has brought many false prophets into abstract art. Many self-schooled artists today paint abstract art because it is easy and it is modern as well as international! If more youngsters are practicing abstract art, seen against the historical backdrop, they must be fed up with the strict figuration that has been ruling the art scene. The market, which means the collectors’ consortiums, that decides the value of art must be now taking a fancy on the abstract art, therefore it must be trending the market. It is bound to happen and along with that many genuine abstract artists you will have countless imposters.