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I do not
intend at all to teach lessons. I only want to raise a question:
How has the idea of beauty evolved along the 20th century?
The different avant-garde movements and the artistic experimentalism
propose the beauty of provocation: from futurism to cubism, expressionism
and surrealism, from Picasso to the masters of informal art and
others. Every avant-garde wave breaks the former rules of beauty.
The new images should raise the same pleasure provided to its contemporaries
by a picture of Giotto or of Rafael. Art is no longer a translation
of natural realities. It doesn't intend to create beauty through
the calm contemplation of harmonic forms. Quite the opposite. It
intends to reach a fresh look over the world by different means:
return to archaic or exotic models, the world of dreams, the fantasies
of mental sickness, visions induced by drugs, rediscovery of the
materials, use of familiar everyday objects in improbable contexts
(see new object, dada, etc), the drives of the unconscious mind…
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Abstract
contemporary art has recovered an idea of geometric harmony that
may recall us the old time esthetics of the proportion. Rejecting
the dependence on nature and visible reality, abstract art proposes
a world based on pure form, from Mondrian's geometries to the large
monochrome fabrics of Klein, Rothko or Manzoni.
In every abstract art exhibition you han hear some habitual questions:
“What does it mean?” and
“But, is this art? ”. So, this return to the esthetics
of proportions and pure forms does not always fit with the common
perception of beauty.
How to explain abstract art?
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