Very good question. My personal feeling is that his artistic power came from the abstract, while his (eventual) broad success came from his forcing the art close enough to naturalism that people are not too turned off by the unfamiliar. (They were in his own lifetime though, since abstract art did not yet exist, hardly.)
But I haven't yet heard any very satisfying definition of "abstract art".
_-_The_Olive_Trees_(1889).jpg)
4 comments:
"But I haven't yet heard any very satisfying definition of "abstract art"."
How bold (or possibly disingenuous) to use the term anyway.
Van Gogh would have understood that true abstraction makes it impossible to convey ideas or emotions. Certainly photorealism doesn't do that either, so I am not sayin git "has to look like something" but if you take it too far the viewer has no reference point. The only reason abstract art got off the ground was because after guys like Van Gogh no one knew where to take it. They wanted to take it further, but couldn't. Something like this has no meaning and conveys nothing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Square.jpg
Something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theo_van_Doesburg_Counter-CompositionV_%281924%29.jpg
is just like the kindf o thing someone might do who is smart enough to know there is something more, some further step, but not smart enough to know what that is. Maybe it doesn't exist. Some people attribute a significance and power to art that it doesn't have.
The Theo van Doesburg painting does speak to me, but I recognize it does not to most people.
For you.
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