Water Based Oil Paints
What is Non-objective Art?
Visual art that does not represent
a subject
 Not a picture of something
 Colors and forms compose the image
 The subject of non-objective art may be:
- the process
- the color
- the pigment itself

How Non-objective art began
Modern period was in search of the new
 It was thought that anything beyond
materials and the mind of the maker
were irrelevant
 Subjective, expressive
 Led to the dismantling of subject matter
 Need for representation diminished

Wassily Kandinsky
Composition VII," 1913
•
Considered the first
Non-objective artist
• An
accomplished musician
“Color is the keyboard, the
eyes are the harmonies, the
soul is the piano with many
strings. The artist is the hand
that plays, touching one key
or another, to cause
vibrations in the soul.”
•
•
The concept that color and
musical harmony are linked
Q: What do you see? How does this painting make you feel?
Q: What type of music do
you think Kandinsky was
listening to when he
created this painting?
Wassily Kandinsky
Composition VI," 1911
Kandinsky used color in a highly theoretical way:
• tone with timbre (the sound's character)
• hue with pitch
• saturation with the volume of sound
He even claimed that when he saw color he heard music
De Stijl
Dutch for "The Style", also known as
neoplasticism
 Body of work from 1917 to 1931
founded in the Netherlands
 Neoplasticism — the new plastic art
 Group included painters and architects

Elements of De Stijl
Wanted to express a new utopian ideal
of spiritual harmony and order
 They advocated pure abstraction and
universality
 Reduce to the essentials of:
-form and color
- visual compositions of vertical and
horizontal direction
- used only primary colors, black and
white

Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
was a Dutch Abstract painter
of the first half of the 20th
Century.
 Disciple of the famous
cubists Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque
 Challenged the definition of
art itself
 Simple lines, right angles,
correct geometric figures and
pure, primary colors

Theo van Doesburg
Discovered Piet
Mondrian’s work, which
convinced van
Doesburg to paint
geometric abstractions
of subjects from nature

Architecture
The De Stijl influence on
architecture remained
considerable long after 1931
 Between 1923 and 1924,
Rietveld designed the
Rietveld Schröder House,
 Only building to have been
created completely according
to De Stijl principles.

Color Field Painters




Concentrated largely on:
- relationships between elements of color
- nature of the surface: its size, shape and texture
Artists were interested in the lyrical or atmospheric
effects of vast expanses of color
Color filled the canvas, and by suggestion, beyond
it to infinity.
Most color-field paintings are large — meant to be
seen up close so that the viewer is immersed in a
color environment.
Mark Rothko
Solid areas of color
covering the entire canvas

"...abstract
art does not
employ subject matter
that is obvious as either
the anecdote or familiar
objects, yet it must appeal
to our experience in some
way. Instead of appealing
to our sense of the
familiar, it simply functions
in another category."
- Color-field Artist Mark Rothko,
in his book The Artist's Reality:
Philosophies of Art, p80.
Minimalists




Minimalism is an attempt to boil art and
creativity down to the most basic level.
Explores the simplest modes of expression:
color and shape
Artists may not need the steadiest hand to
paint in the minimalism style, but creative
vision is required.
The kind of art based on an idea rather than
on an object is called conceptual art
Exposed Painting: Cadmium Orange on White, 1997
Callum Innes
1980s
 Minimalist treatment of
surface through the
application of monochrome
layers of paint
 As the title suggests, the
working process is
completely 'exposed‘
 A broad band of orange
paint has been laid across
the pristine white surface,
and then a section of the
band, while still wet, has
been washed downwards

Master Works
Here are a few works of art you will recognize
1
2
3
Hmmm, let’s look at these again
Now do you
recognize it?
1
How about
this one?
2
Last but
not least
3
Cropping
Cropping refers to removing unwanted
areas from an image
 Power of cropping
 View finder

Assignment Time