Some people still (wrongly!) accuse art of being a boring subject but even they will realize just how wrong they are when they stumble upon a work of art they're eager to discuss. That is what art does to people - it amuses and engages our minds. There's no escaping it. And abstract art is the most engaging of them all. Why? Because it makes you finish it in your head, for starters. And it makes you wonder... But let's get back to basics.
The basic idea
What is abstract art really? How can it be defined?
How to explain the term to somebody who has never heard of it?
If you look it up in a dictionary, something like this might come up:
Abstract art (noun):
Art that makes no attempt to depict external, recognizable reality but aims to represent artist's internal world by using different forms, shapes and colors.
OK, that makes the whole thing a bit clearer, and anyone would be able to recognize an abstract painting based on that nice, short explanation from a dictionary, but there's still more to learn about the topic now that the basic human curiosity is scratched. One question inevitably comes to mind: whoever thought of it first? The idea of pouring whatever's in your artistic soul onto the canvass seems so free and liberating and rebellious and easy at the same time that it must be nothing less than a stroke of a genius.
The rest is history
If we are to talk about the immediate origins of contemporary abstract art, we'll search no further than the 19th century. That is the point in time when three significant movements - Romanticism, Expressionism and Impressionism sort of merged together and created the potent sublimation of all their most liberal features, thereby qualifying for future parents to the abstract art that was to be born a little bit later. Among the influential representatives of those three movements, the names (and works!) of Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Munch and Wassily Kandinsky surely sound familiar to most people even now, almost two centuries later. At the beginning of the 20th century, Henry Matisse, George Braque and other young artists made a real revolution with their bold experiments and the critics of the time called it Fauvism. At the same time, Pablo Picasso was playing with cubic elements and shapes on his canvas and when George Braque joined him that was enough for a new art label - Cubism. Back then, it was all Futurism when you come to think of it now. Russia had its Constructivists and Germany had the famous Bauhaus back in those days, Kandinsky and Klee were teachers there. But sometimes in the thirties, majority of these artists ended up in Paris and that is where the cradle of abstract art was rocked most intensely.
Still going strong
And nowadays, abstract art is everywhere. You see it on the walls of tall city buildings, in the variety of digital options for personalizing your profile on any social network or blog, it's on your clothes and fashion accessories. If you like it, you can hang it on your wall or you can have the entire wall painted in your favorite abstract motif. Every pattern can be incorporated into the abstract artwork. Just like long, long time ago, when our ancestors drew shapes on the walls of their caves, trying to articulate a prayer for the sun to come or the rain to fall or the hunt to bring enough meat for every member of the tribe. Abstract art is with human race since the very beginnings and its power still resonates within us. You feel it every time you find yourself standing in front of a painting that is communicating with you although you might not be quite able to put it into words.
