Abstract Art

Nonrepresentational or nonobjective art is not an invention of the twentieth century. A number of cultures, like the Islamic and Jewish, have developed over the centuries a high standard of decorative or non-figurative art forms. Today, abstract art is generally understood to be the form of art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colors in a nonrepresentational or subjective way.

According to art experts, in its purest form in Western art, an abstract art is one without a recognizable subject, one which does not relate to something external. This type of ornamental art, without figurative representation occurs today in many cultures. As the modern abstract movement in sculpture and paining emerged in Europe and North America between 1910 and 1920, two approaches have been generally accepted to produce different abstract styles: images that have been “abstracted” from nature to the point where they no longer reflect a conventional reality, and nonobjective, or “pure” art forms, which do not share any reference to reality. A further distinction tends to be made between abstract art which is geometric, such...