The History of
Abstract Concepts in Art
How abstract ideas are
personified and made visual by art
(Renaissance to present)
“There is only one great thing in art: the thing you cannot
explain.”
–Georges Braque
“If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to
paint.”
–Edward Hopper
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I
couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for.”
-Georgia O'Keeffe
“Great art picks up where nature ends.”
– Marc Chagall
(Artquotes.net)
There has always existed a gap between the idea and
the image. A concept can be conceived, presented, and
perceived.
A concept that exists in nature and can be physically
located in time and space is a concrete concept. Because
they are things that can be seen, touched, and physically
experienced, they can easily be expressed and recognized
in words or an image (Schumann).
Art tries to represent the world and provides some sort
of historical record (Haskell 1). However, “images were first
made to conjure up the appearances of something that was
absent” (Berger 10). Abstract concepts are ideas not
physically found in nature. They are intangible realities that
art attempts to represent as often as it does the physical
world itself (Sayre 43).
Throughout the history of art, artists have tried to
visualize these abstract ideas and express them with a
concrete medium—paint, marble, clay, or something else.
They attempt subjectively to make intangible realities
tangible through artwork. The concepts, however, are still
abstract, and different viewers see and understand the
images in different ways (Berger 11).
Presented here are various masterpieces from the
Renaissance to present that express abstract ideas. They
are organized by concept, and are subject to the subjective
scrutiny of the individual viewer.
What are some examples of concrete concepts?
How about abstract concepts?
Love
Human emotion is probably the most commonly
recognized and universal abstract idea. Love cannot be
seen, heard, or physically touched, making it harder to
express in concrete terms (Brown 44).
Artists have created art about different types of love
throughout history.
Auguste Rodin, The Kiss,
1886, Marble, Musee Rodin,
Paris
Constantin Brancusi, The
Kiss, 1907-8, Limestone,
Muzeul de Arta, Craiova,
Romania
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907-1908, oil on canvas, Austrian Gallery,
Vienna
Titian, Venus and Adonis, c. 1560, oil on canvas, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C., Widener Collection
Edvard Munch, Separation, 1896, oil on canvas, Munch-museet,
Oslo, Norway
Dieric Bouts, Virgin and Child, c.
1475, Oil on panel, The Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco,
Roscoe and Margaret Oaks
Collection
Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child,
c. 1890, oil on canvas, Wichita Art
Museum, Kansas, The Roland P.
Murdock Collection
Anguish, Horror
War and death can be experienced; however, the
horror and anguish described by them are abstract
emotional situations.
Artists have depicted throughout the ages visual
images that attempt to explain anguish or horror.
Augustin Preault, Slaughter, c. 1834, bronze, Musee des Beaux-Arts,
Chartres, France
Edvard Munch, The Scream,
1893, Tempera and casein on
cardboard, Munch-musee,
Oslo, Norway
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith
Beheading Holofernes, oil on
canvas, Museo e Gallerie
Nazionali di Capodimonte,
Naples
Henri Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781. oil on canvas, The Detroit Institute of
the Arts
Eugene Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus, 1828, oil on canvas, Musee du
Louvre, Paris
Vincent van Gogh, The Night Café, 1888, oil on canvas, Yale University Art Collection,
New Haven, Conneticut
Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1820, oil on canvas,
Louvre, Paris
Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring
One of His Sons, 1820-1822, fresco,
transferred to canvas, Museo del
Prado, Madrid
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas, Centro de Arte Reina
Sofia, Madrid
Awe
There are sublime occurrences that inspire awe.
Awe is a human reaction that is does not exist
physically in nature, but ironically is often evoked by
nature.
There is much artwork spanning history that both
describes awe and is awe-inspiring. Artists, along with
movements such as Romanticism, describe sublime
experiences in artwork—many employ the sublimity of
nature.
John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath, 1851-53, oil on canvas, Tate Gallery, London,
purchased 1945
Jacob van Ruisdael, The Jewish Cemetery, 1655-60, oil on canvas, The Detroit
Institute of Arts
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, The Wave, 1889, oil on canvas,
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg
Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, Great
Basin Desert, Utah, 1973-1976
Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, 1809-1810, oil on canvas,
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin
Socioeconomic Status, Class
Another abstract concept is a social one—that of
status, how we relate to one another by wealth and
lifestyle. Artists present this using indicators of
someone’s class, such as clothes, possessions, or the
environment they exist in. As with other abstract ideas,
we can perceive them, but they cannot be physically
located in nature.
Considered here are images created throughout the
past several centuries dealing with status.
Jean-Auguste-DominiqueIngres, Napoleon Enthroned,
1806, Musee de l’Armee, Paris
Titian, Isabella d’Este, 15341536, oil on canvas,
unsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV,
1701, oil on canvas, Louvre,
Paris
Limbourg Brothers, October,
from Les Tres Riches Heures
du Duc de Berry, 1413-1416,
ink on vellum, Musee Conde,
Chantilly
Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, oil on canvas, formerly at
Gemalde-galerie, Dresden (destroyed in 1945)
Honore Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1862, oil on canvas,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Edgar Degas, The Glass of
Absinthe, 1876, oil on canvas,
Musee d’Orsay, Paris
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris: A Rainy Day, 1877, oil on canvas,
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Classical Antiquity, Ideal Civilization
Classical Greece (along with Rome) has served as the
model civilization for most of western history. Our ideals of
civility, reason, and logic stem from the Greeks. They were
arguably the first champions of democracy, proportion, and
the arts. Because of this, western artists across time have
referenced the Classical Age (Aghion 5). Art has referenced
the “ideal civilization” by reusing its narratives, mythological
figures, and ideas of perfection, rationalism, and proportion.
The concept of the “ideal civilization” is conceptual and
intangible.
These references are dominant forces in the
Renaissance, and Neoclassicism.
Antonio Canova, Pauline Borghese as Venus,1808, Marble, Galleria Borghese,
Rome
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer, 1827, oil on canvas,
Louvre, Paris
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1482, tempera on canvas,
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Michelangelo, David, 15011504, marble, Galleria dell’
Accademia, Florence
Angelica Kauffmann, Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures, ca.
1785, oil on canvas, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia
Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, oil on canvas, Musee du
Louvre, Paris
Religion, Spirituality, God
Humans have long experienced spirituality and religion.
This is a very universal abstract idea. Its various types and
forms appear in historically significant artwork.
Many artists have dealt with the spiritual visually. There
is a wide variety of ways this has been done. The frescoes of
Roman Catholic Italy illustrate religious concepts in a way
very different from that of the inner–spiritual wanderings of
Wassily Kandinsky, for example.
Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Assumption of the Virgin, 1526-1530,
dome fresco of Parma Cathedral, Parma, Italy
William Blake, Ancient of
Days, frontispiece of Europe:
A Prophecy, 1794, metal relief
etching, hand colored, The
Whitworth Art Gallery,
University of Manchester
Paul Gauguin, The Vision After the Sermon, 1888, oil on canvas,
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Jan van Eyck, God, panel from the
Ghent Altarpiece, c 1432, St. Bavo’s,
Ghent
Titian, Assumption and
Consecration of the Virgin, c.
1516-1518, oil on wood, Santa
Maria Gloriosa del Frari,
Venice
Gianlorenzo Bernini, The
Ecstasy of Saint Theresa,
1645-1652, marble,
Cornaro Chapel, Santa
Maria della Vittoria, Rome
Giotto and his pupils,
St Francis
Renouncing His
Earthly Possessions,
c. 1295-1330, fresco
Wassily Kandinsky, Black Lines, December 1913, oil on canvas, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
Velocity, Speed
Another abstract concept presented in art may seem
physical, but cannot be physically located in time and
space: speed. Artists have touched on this idea in a
great deal of art.
Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase, No.
2, 1912, oil on canvas,
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Eadweard Muybridge, Annie G. Cantered, Saddled, 1887, collotype
print, Philadelphia Museum of Art
J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed, 1844, oil on canvas,
Tate Gallery, London
Jackson Pollock, No. 29, 1950, oil, expanded steel, glass and pebbles on
glass, private collection
Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, oil on canvas,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Giacomo Balla, Street Lamp,
1909, oil on canvas, Museum of
Modern Art, New York
Abstract concepts are abundant in art. They are
conceptualized, presented, and perceived subjectively
by human eyes in artwork. Abstract ideas exist in art—
this is true for artwork dating from the Renaissance to
present.
Bibliography
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Sayre, Henry M. A World of Art. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2000.
Schuman, Bruce. “Universal Hierarchy of Abstraction”. Origin Research.
http://originresearch.com/sd/sd1.cfm March 17 2007.
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