Length: if written as a prose essay it should be roughly 350-500 words. If written as a script, about the same, but it might be a little bit longer.
You are a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. You’ve been tasked with leading a tour through the exhibition Inventing Abstraction: 1910-1925. How will you explain abstraction to this group? (Consider that the individuals in your group are of different ages, different backgrounds, etc. Some love art and really want to understand, others are grumpy and suspicious of almost everything you say – they might say to you, “my kid could do that!” or “Why is that art? It’s ugly!” or “There’s nothing there but red squares and some lines.”
• https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/
• Use at least three works from the exhibition by different artists and in different styles of abstraction so you have different ideas of abstraction to work with. (Hilma af Klint was NOT included in the exhibition, so you cannot write about her work.)
• Use the lecture, descriptions of artists and their works as well as the readings assigned for this unit to help you. You must put ideas in your own words. Do not simply copy from the readings or the website.
• You can write this as an essay (first-person is fine), or you can write it up as a script (if you write in script form it will be longer – it doesn’t have to be more words, but a script takes up more space on a page). Be sure to identify who is speaking, which work of art is being discussed; be creative, but respectful with the questions asked by members of your group.
DeStijl & Abstraction
Assignment 4 opens on Tuesday, 21 December, but it is not due until after the winter holiday break on Saturday, 1 Jan by 11:55pm (12-hour grace period = Sun, 2 Jan by 11:55pm)
• Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow (Smarthistory)
• Mondrian, Composition in Grown and Grey, 1913 (Khan Academy)
• Mondrian, Composition No. II with Red and Blue, 1918 (Smarthistory)
• Inventing Abstraction. 1910-1925 (MoMA, NYC, Dec 2012 – Apr 2013)
◦ http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/
Abstraction: We’ll be thinking about abstraction in the work of some artists we’ve already looked at (Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian), but we’ll also consider the work of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, who had an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (October 2018-April 2019). Klint’s work kind of turned the art history world inside-out and upside-down in really exciting ways by disrupting the long-accepted history of abstraction and the idea of the autonomy of art.
Read the articles linked below:
"Who created the first abstract artwork?" (Smarthistory)
"Abstract Art and Theosophy" (Smarthistory)
Jillian Steinhauer, "The Universe According to Hilma af Klint," The New Republic, March 11, 2019.
Ben Davis, "Why Hilma af Klint’s Occult Spirituality Makes Her the Perfect Artist for Our Technologically Disrupted Time," Artnet, October 23, 2018.
Roberta Smith, "’Hilma Who?’ No More," The New York Times, October 11, 2018.
Artnet – images of Hilma af Klint’s work, including her realistic work that Ben Davis mentions
Hilma af Klint, Painting the Unseen (video)
This is NOT required, but if you’re interested, here’s a beautiful documentary on Hilma af Klint that’s available on Kanopy – Milner’s streaming service (link).
I’ve also attached two longer essays (below) if you want to read something more academic about af Klint’s work; the first is about af Klint, the second discusses her work in the context of the the early twentieth-century avant-garde (these are not required). You might also be interested in reading what the Guggenheim has posted about the exhibition and her work, and I’ve provide a link to this page, too, and you can explore.
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