Abstract Painting: What does it mean?

When entering a museum, you notice odd looking paintings that may seem effortlessly painted contrasting from the fine art paintings of portraits and landscapes. Normally, the viewers would receive the impression of the minimal efforts when creating these abstract paintings. Despite its appearance, it contains its equal amount of effort, emotion, meaning, and sometimes, far more aesthetics that tell meanings in depth. While viewing an abstract painting, the viewer may not identify its meaning or story because of its indistinct aesthetics on canvas however, it delivers a form of feeling and emotion. Abstract art has been around over 100 years that included artists such as Jackson Pollock.

Abstract Expressionism began in the 1940’s in New York. The art movement is originally inspired by its legacy, the Surrealism art movement. Its colorful splatters and shapes were not only meant to attract its viewers, but to also feel emotions that the artists felt during the artistic process of producing abstract paintings. Abstract expression focused on the artist’s personal experiences and emotions that were expressed in painting. In result, the artist’s technique consists vigorous arm movements that portrayed anger, sadness, and all sorts of emotions.

Jackson Pollock is one of the most famous American expressionist abstract paintings. He was born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912. He grew up in Arizona and Chico, California. In his early life, he encountered some Native American culture while on trips with his father, whom was a surveyor for the government at the time. Although his art is not particularly inspired by his Native American cultural experiences, he works with memory and early enthusiasms. In 1939, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City established a Picasso exhibition, Picasso: 40 Years of His Art, which contained 344 works of Pablo Picasso and his famous anti-war mural, Guernica. The exhibit led Pollock to recognize the expressive power of European modernism, which he had previously rejected in favor of American art. He began to forge a new style of semi-abstract totemic compositions, refined through obsessive reworking. One of Pollock’s signature painting techniques, the drip and splash, consisted a canvas mounted on the wall or on the floor, having the artist able to aggressively spray paint with consistent movement with his upper body holding the brush. His action painting is known for one of the most well-known pieces produced in historical art movement in the Abstract era.

“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through” – Jackson Pollock

Now that you have an insight of what those odd-looking paintings are, you can acknowledge that abstract painting is far more than the flick of the wrist and meaningless messages. Abstract painting contains the emotion of the painter’s attempt of offering their personal experiences and unveiled expression through bright, dull, and dark colors through splatters, shapes, and overall indistinct images. It not only contains the action of expressing through its artistic processes but, rather abstract images of a building, a bike, or a field of flowers that express its very subject associated to the artist’s deeper perspective of things.