Understanding Abstract Art 

This one of BEST video synopses I've seen/heard to help high school art students will little to no background understand ABSTRACTION in art! So affirming and helpful for me, someone who has been teaching ART & ART HISTORY for @ least 3 decades (plus)! It moved along, was never boring, was clearly explained and the right length to hold on'e attention! Thanks so MUCH! I'm grateful and thrilled! I'll be showing it this week to my beginning high school art students!

This has been really helpful, as an abstract painter it’s good to have clarity and a better understanding of what it is and the history. Thank you.

This is great. Learned, entertaining, down to earth, informative with lots of examples. I would have never thought of the Justinian the Great mosaic as abstract!

Recent discussion with a very skilled artisan about judge choices in a community art show and how our works were relegated into categories which seemed unrelated to each other! Your short but informative presentation showed the way toward understanding of how non-realistic art forms dictated the “winning” art pieces! I struggled to explain the concepts but you have done an amazing job of teaching us!

Thank you for this - I had no idea there was such a long history of abstract art. I just assumed the bulk of it began around the impressionist era, but evidently I was centuries out.

I enjoyed your presentation. One way I like to think of it. Successful abstraction allows people to read many associations to reality, and successful realism always provokes us to look for an underlying abstract structure underneath it. Just like our tendency to read 3 dimensions on a flat surface. What's important in work that represents 3 dimensions is how it resolves on the flat plane, the flatness of depth, and the best 2d work implies layers of space or implied depth, the depth of flatness.

Thanks a lot for taking up this subject, very well explained many thanks.

Sitting here in the studio trying to figure out what the heck am I doing............and this pops up. This was absolutely fantastic. Well-timed soul food. And many thanks. More, please. :)

Wow! This was superb! And clarified many things. It also explains why I love abstract expressionism and don’t quite know why! 😀

Someone who doesn't understand abstract art, just say "Have you ever had a dream where you know that you had it but can't remember what it's about? That's abstract art".

Comprehensive and insightful. This video captures the meaning and all the dimensions of abstract art in a consummate manner. i am enlightened. Thanks.

Fantastic video, thank you!

Brilliantly explained, thank you Susan!

I have a question. I used to watch a show on PBS, with a nun who showed us different styles each week. I was younger then and didn’t understand paintings that just looked like they had paint flung on them from a distance, etc., so I was excited to see the program about abstract art. I still didn’t understand. The one painting that I remember from this whole series looked EXACTLY like this: the artist took a very large canvas and painted it solid beige. He then took a paint roller, dipped it in brown paint, and made one solid, clean, roller-width, horizontal stripe across the middle of the canvas. That’s it! And it was hanging in some office space at a price of about $10k! I could have done that in my sleep, just about, but no one would have given me 10 grand for it. I do now find I like a lot of paintings for the shapes and color combinations, even if they don’t resemble anything real. But the one I just described broke my brain, I think, and I cannot get anyone to explain why someone would paint it, never mind buy it. Any thoughts?

I love this explanation!

Kenneth F. Bates book 'Basic Design; Principles And Practice, 1960, describes five ways of rendering a subject that I think would be useful for a student to explore, especially as a sequence. These renderings of a subject are as follows: Realistic, Stylized, Conventional, Geometric and Abstract. Whereas 'realistic' and 'abstract' represent the extreme opposites in this sequence, 'stylized, conventional and geometric' seem to operate as formative transitions. 'Stylized', the subject begins to be reduced to more defined shapes and areas of color while still being fully discernable. Details are lessened and or confined due to definition of more solid shapes. The outline of the subject begins to take on a stronger, more defined lineation as well. 'Conventional', the subject in my opinion starts to take on a 'cartoonish' simplification of shape, form and color areas, not unlike a Looney Tunes character or that of a cereal box character. 'Geometric', the subject is reduced to geometrical shapes of solid colors. The subject relies on geometric forms to convey it's essence, it's movement and life while being somewhat or entirely void of defining or extraneous details.

This is wonderful. Great explanation and footages! Thank you

Thank you for this lecture Professor! I understand abstraction a bit better.

You are amazing 🌟😃 packing in so much. Really good 📯👑📯

All art, like all knowledge is mere convention. Just do it.

Thank you.

Thank you for making this difficult concept understandable.. I think that any image that is not a clear photograph or hyper-realistic painting etc, is, indeed abstract. I've been in the habit of using the term Non -Representational art rather than Non-Objective art. But they mean the same thing. However.... I would like to point out that the artist's name is more correctly pronounced Mon-A rather than Moe-Nay. If we speak the name using French pronunciation rules, we don't say Monette, do we? So, the first syllable should also be pronounced in the French manner. MON should sound like " Mon Ami " Mohn-A

It must be good, it has a great intro music ! !

Awesome thx for sharing informative 🙌

Thank you simplifying a challenging subject

Excellent explanations. I have often compared art to music. I focus on the relationship of man made and natural forms but not in a realistic way. Just enjoy it...or don't.

I went to all of your work and saw that you never did anything in reference to African American art I think that would be really cool would you please help thank you in advance

An essay or thesis abstract is a different area to that of art abstraction. Abstraction is the ability to absorb information from our senses and make connections to the wider world through the arts. Abstract concepts in art aren’t directly tied to concrete physical objects and experiences.

Who feels abstract today ??? 🖼 💳

Abstracts hallucinations 🔎

If you need an explanation for abstract art it's probably not true art. No explanation needed for artists such as John Singer Sargent.

All art is an abstraction of human awareness. A portrait close up is still a collection of daubs of paint. Realism is a measure of how realistic something is if that was the intention. Most impressionist still life paintings are not realistic. The only paintings that are realistic as opposed to simply recognizable are hyperealistic paintings. This is realistic but not artistic. Artistic expression is artistic. Beethovens music is abstract. It doesn't "sound" like anything in real life. Noone says it should sound "realistic". Art is about intent and expression. Not realism. Like wise dancing is also not real. Abstract movements set to abstract music. Ballet hip hop ballroom. All man made and abstract. Even your eyes only process limited information and your brain fills in the rest. So even sight is an abstraction. This video is correct.

The music is distracting & jarring. Would be so much nicer & present to just hear your voice. Meant with respect.

100% false information ...NOTHING TO DO WITH REAL ART !!!! NOTHING AT ALL)))just don't understand ,why do these people lie to people ,what's the reason of saying such big lies???

Baderdash (trying to be tactful). So- called abstract art is not art. It is pseudo art or decorative art at best. True art relates to the human element.

'Understanding abstract art'. Such a dumb title

Vermeer and the dutch were not using perspective, they were using the camera obsura model. Renaissance and cartesian perspective was introduced in art as an incorporation of mathematics in daily life.

This is my imaginary painting--------------------👉 👈

Ten minutes extremely well spent - I'm just getting to grips with UK abstract painter Jeremy Moon - and this excellent video has been of enormous help - many thanks indeed.

Thankyou so much love from India 🇮🇳❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

Thank you very much. Can't wait to have my own Art Gallery here in Jamaica.

I just discoverd your site. Wow ! What a joy and fresh approach to break down the vast art world to easily digestible and understandable parts. Thank you! Four videos in and I have already learned so much and now hunger for more.

Beautiful thx

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Great job

🙏very Fine art historical talk. I loved it and indeed I always find that any action, and any experience always also is related to a given event/ moment in different ways …. Such as e.g. the emotional end feeling experience of the lived now, the awareness ( sharp or open focus) , ways of being present. I agree very much with the final statement that everything can be experienced like a composition of Music …..felt as a vibrational, rhytmic, colored event 🎵💜🎶🦄

Fabulous explanation of "Abstract' in contextual nature.., a written/spoken expression a representation.....

.needless to say that young children are "natural" abstract artists..

Very impressed with your channel ..thanks 👏

This was so good.☺️