{"id":14215,"date":"2015-01-18T22:38:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T21:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/?p=14215&lang=en"},"modified":"2016-11-17T17:05:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T16:05:39","slug":"essay-the-abstract-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/essay-the-abstract-turn\/","title":{"rendered":"The Abstract Turn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back to Abstraction \u2013 An essay by Noemi Smolik<\/span><\/p>\n

Just before the end of the year, Cologne gallerists Alexander Warhus and Luisa Rittershaus presented a striking exhibition of painting in the former spaces of Galerie Zwirner, today the project space WERTHEIM. The 10-day exhibition showed works by young artists living in the Rhineland, who, alongside the visual formats set by the curators, almost all the same size, had one thing in common: abstraction. But why are young artists today so interested in abstraction? And what fascinates their collectors?<\/p>\n

\"links:

links: Sabrina Fritsch, Stst (acea), 2013, \u00d6l, Acryl auf Rupfen auf Leinwand, 220 x 165 cm, Courtesy VAN HORN; rechts: Chris Succo, I want everything fun always to happy, 2014, \u00d6l und Lack auf Leinen, 230 x 172,5 cm, Courtesy Almine Rech Gallery; Foto: bildpark.net<\/p><\/div>\n

It was surely also due to the historic location that the exhibition was able to assert a spirit of the time with its 17 canvases, each in self-confident formats of around two by two meters. And yet, the artistic styles gathered here couldn\u2019t have been any different from one another: black, nearly monochromatically applied pigments of aluminum by Philip Seibel encountered blue ramifications and struts by Martin Weidemann and the seemingly spontaneous, applied, fragile constructions of Matthias Schaufler. Andreas Breunig\u2019s surreal visual worlds and the fairy-tale striations of Jan-Ole Schiemann opposed the strict pictorial surfaces of Peppi Bottrop, covered with lines, while the inter-linked squares by Stefan M\u00fcller opposed the strips on nettle dissolving in blithe color strips by Ralf Schauff. In contrast, there was hardly anything to be seen on the canvas of David Ostrowski, who presented white paper on white canvas.<\/p>\n

Just as different as the motives are the stories of the pictures\u2019 emergence: while Sabrina Fritsch creates precise, geometric spatial structures, Fabian Herkenk\u00f6rner\u2019s works result from dragging the canvasses across the dirty floor.<\/p>\n

\"von

von links: Martin Weidemann, Zimmer Nr. 4 (Detail), 2014 \u00d6l auf Leinwand, 200 x 170 cm, Courtesy Warhus Rittershaus; Matthias Schaufler, Ohne Titel (K2), 2014, \u00d6l auf Leinwand, 210 x 190 cm, Courtesy Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens; Philip Seibel, Tafel 25 (Flu\u00df und Flo\u00df), 2014, \u00d6l, Pigment und Lack auf Aluminium 220 x 145 cm, Courtesy Berthold Pott; Jan-Ole Schiemann, Fusel, 2014, \u00d6l auf Leinwand 180 x 155 cm, Courtesy the artist; Foto: bildpark.net<\/p><\/div>\n

The Cologne exhibition represents a trend in contemporary art that will continue going strong this year as well. Abstract painting is currently enjoying great popularity. The sums being achieved for works of abstract painting\u2014especially by young American artists at international auctions\u2014are breathtaking. But even the paintings of Cologne-based David Ostrowski, born in 1982, now sell for more than 250,000 dollars, and the paintings of the Columbian artist Oskar Murillo, born in 1986, sell for almost twice the price. Alex Israel from LA, who is just 31, has already broken the million-dollar mark with one of his canvases.<\/p>\n

The museums are also reacting unusually quickly, since the young abstract artists join in the over 100-year-old tradition of organic and geometric formal language. For example, London\u2019s Whitechapel Gallery just opened the exhibition \u201cAbstract Art and Society 1915 -2015,\u201d that reflects on the young stars as heirs of Malevich\u2019s Black Square. MoMA is currently showing \u201cThe Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World\u201d with works by Murillo and Matt Connors\u2019 monochromatic canvases with the title What Is the Third Question?, an allusion to Barnett Newman\u2019s legendary painting Who\u2019s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue<\/em> from 1970.<\/p>\n

Art market experts make things too easy for themselves when they explain the current boom of abstract painting with the emergence of a new group of collectors who buys art to sell it as soon as possible at a profit: \u201cArtflipping,\u201d the new form of profit maximization. Although it\u2019s true: Murillo\u2019s paintings, which today sell at six-number sums, were just two years ago only worth 40,000 dollars. Flatware is still the most lucrative,
\ninvestors know.<\/p>\n

\"von

von links nach rechts: Markus Golz, Alla Prima \/ WBiN 4, 2014, \u00d6l, Acryl und Lack auf Leinwand 180 x 130 cm, Courtesy Warhus Rittershaus; Ralf Schauff, Untitled, 2014, Acryl auf Nessel, 180 x 130 cm, Courtesy the artist; Peppi Bottrop, All nine, 2014 Graphit auf Leinwand 250 x 210 cm, Courtesy Jan Kaps; Foto: bildpark.net<\/p><\/div>\n

But many art critics in contrast are skeptical, and speak of a brief, market-made trend. In the face of the repeated pronunciation of the \u201cdeath of painting,\u201d Walter Robinson calls these abstract artists \u201czombies.\u201d Jerry Saltz blames the \u201cgreedy\u201d market for the \u201ccopycat mediocrity\u201d and himself falls into the trap of always blaming the market.
\nOther critics however, like Andr\u00e9 Rottmann, diagnose a \u201cstriking resilience\u201d in this boom of the painted canvas. But where does this resilience come from? And why of all things abstract painting? Isn\u2019t there enough pop-figurative material on the market that can also satisfy erotic longings?
\nToday\u2019s abstract painting, or so it seems, refers increasingly to the ideals of its classical predecessors and thus distances itself consciously from what since the 1990s has been abbreviated under the term participatory art.<\/p>\n

Abstract painting was considered the climax\u2014some even speak of the culmination\u2014of a development called modernism and whose final branches stretched into the 1970s. In this development, artists were seen as heroes who valiantly took up the struggle with the canvas\u2014and it was almost exclusively the canvas. An individual style that could be judged by aesthetic criteria was the prerequisite of success. The linked burden of individual responsibility was so heavy for some artists that they often sought relief in alcohol, and Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko were even driven to suicide.<\/p>\n

\"links:

links: Fabian Herkenh\u00f6ner, WO111 (Dynamism of a dog on a leash), 2014 Staub auf Leinwand, 200 x 150 cm, Courtesy the artist,; rechts: Jan Pleitner, as yet untitled, 2014, \u00d6l auf Leinwand, 190 x 130 cm, Courtesy Ancient & Modern \/ Natalia Hug Gallery; Foto: bildpark.net<\/p><\/div>\n

These artists truly took a position, by relying on a style all their own subject to their own aesthetic criteria, quite different from today\u2019s artists, who usually enjoy institutional support.
\nIn the belief that it promotes creativity, participative art relies on collective collaboration. It generates situations for the beholder that are intended to promote communication, understanding, a sense of well-being, and even a readiness to help. In judging their social acts\u2014discussions, walks, a joint meal\u2014the artistic characteristics as such are not decisive, but rather the social impact of an action.<\/p>\n

Such an aestheticization of interaction has in the meanwhile reached the institutions, and takes place on the streets; protest movements like \u201cOccupy\u201d or the recent demonstrations in Hong Kong increasingly resemble an artistic performance. Artist, curator, and museum director Peter Weibel coined the fitting term \u201cglobal artivism\u201d for the current entanglement of art, politics, business, communication, and scholarship. In light of these blurred lines separating the aesthetic and the social, art is threatened with losing its critical attitude, as art critic Clair Bishop warned in her 2006 essay \u201cThe Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"von

von links: Andreas Breuning, S-Works: specialized No. 32 , 2014, \u00d6l, Kohle und Graphit auf Leinwand, 210 x 170 x cm, Courtesy Warhus Rittershaus; David Ostrowski, F(3), 2014, Lack und Papier auf Leinwand, Holz 240 x 190 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects; Thomas Arnolds, LUFT 2, 2012, \u00d6l auf Leinwand, 250 x 200 cm, Courtesy Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens; Daniel Schubert, Untitled (aus der Serie \u00b4Lay in a Shimmer`), 2012, Eitempera auf Leinwand, 210 x 150 cm, Courtesy Galerie Gebr. Lehmann; Foto: bildpark.net<\/p><\/div>\n

Current abstract painting resists the imperative of the collective and participation. In a society that is networked, where constant participation, reaction, response, and involvement is demanded, it refuses the terror of never-ending communication in the aesthetic realm. Instead, these young artists invite to take pause and engage in concentration. Their works do not demand connoisseurship, but can be understood by the beholder as formally attractive. In this way, many artists once again emphasize aesthetic distance, without making it all too difficult for us to build up an associative, sensual proximity to these works. This explains why the young artists control the free market, while participative art, with few exceptions, requires the protective hand of institutions. The ideals of modernism are what led to developments of ever more autonomy, creativity, flexibility, readiness to take risks, and to accept responsibility in our post-capitalist society, according to sociologists Luc Boltanski and \u00c8ve Chiapello.
\nAccordingly, the successful homo oeconomicus today, and this means the collectors of abstract art, increasingly appropriate the characteristics of a modernist artist, whose aesthetic expression was abstract painting. Abstract art ultimately represents an individualism that was rejected over the past twenty years of a so-called relational aesthetic.<\/p>\n

\"Schubert_Schr\u00f6der\"

links: Daniel Schubert, Untitled (aus der Serie \u2018Lay in a Shimmer\u2019), 2012 Eitempera auf Leinwand, 210 x 150 cm, Courtesy Galerie Gebr. Lehmann; rechts: Jana Schr\u00f6der, Spontacts CH M5, 2014 \u00d6l auf Leinwand, 210 x 180 cm, Courtesy the artist; Foto: bildpark.net<\/p><\/div>\n

In a networked, interlinked society, distance has become one of our most precious goods. Here, abstract visual language represents currently the greatest distance to everyday life. According to French philosopher Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, \u201cA critical art is an art which knows that its political impact depends upon its aesthetic distance.\u201d In this way, current abstract art not only satisfies a longing for deceleration and contemplation, it represents a critical position in its less obvious political attitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to Abstraction \u2013 An essay by Noemi Smolik<\/span><\/p>\n

Just before the end of the year, Cologne gallerists Alexander Warhus and Luisa Rittershaus presented a striking exhibition of painting in the former spaces of Galerie Zwirner, today the project space WERTHEIM. The 10-day exhibition showed works by young artists living in the Rhineland, who, alongside the visual formats set by the curators, almost all the same size, had one thing in common: abstraction. But weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":12682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1080],"tags":[1088,1087,1077],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}