In this 8-week online lecture class we will explore the various artists and art movements that contributed to the development of non-figurative or abstract painting.
Starting with Cezanne and the other Post-Impressionists, and continuing through Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism and the subsequent and sequential directions that modern painting evolved through from the turn of the century up to the current moment. This will be a compressed overview of contemporary painting and an attempt to give some order to a modern art history that grew in complexity and velocity from it’s birth through it’s many incarnations.
Painting is very simple and very complicated and that contradiction is one of it’s many attractions.When the components of the painting consists primarily of only it’s formal concerns, line, form, color/value and surface, why would the viewer bother to look? Painting is a very human activity and that connection is why it has been a part of human culture since the beginning.
Painting does demand time and attention, both in it’s creation and in it’s contemplation. In our accelerated life these are considered luxuries but also essential for the complete experience of that life.There will be about an hours worth of lecture and introduction, then time allowed for question and answer. Abstraction promotes many questions and does not answer all that is put before it. Just like life.
Please sign up early; class size is limited.
