The Shock of Abstraction: Changing the Future of Art

Register for this Fall 2023 course on the new NYU SPS Academy of Lifelong Learning website .
More than 100 years ago, avant-garde artists revolutionized art by moving away from figurative art and depicting the visible world which was until then the only known form of artistic creation in the western hemisphere. The idea of an abstract picture without subject matter was radical around 1910 and brought a watershed moment in art. What initially motivated Hilma af Klint, Wassily Kandinsky, Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, Frantisek Kupka, Sonia Delaunay, artists in different countries, to walk the extraordinary path into abstraction? Fin de siècle concepts found their way into Wassily Kandinsky’s treatise On the Spiritual in Art, which was translated into different languages. This new creative paradigm quickly spread in Europe and the USA as more and more artists became interested in absolute or pure art. Movements in abstraction included Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley in the USA; Futurism in Italy; Constructivism in Russia; and many more. After the horrors of World War II, abstract art seemed to be the only possible way forward. We will also look at some of the postwar movements like Abstract Expressionism and more contemporary expressions of abstraction in painting and sculpture. Fall 2023 tuition is $849.
Registering at least three weeks prior to the course start date is highly recommended.

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