Pat h s t o

abstraction
18 6 7 – 1917
26 June – 19 September 2010
ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Education kit
Pat h s t o
abstraction
18 6 7 – 1917

We are on the way to a completely new art; it will be related to painting

in the same way that, up until now, music is related to literature.
It will be pure painting in the same way that music is pure literature.
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1912

The exhibition
Curator Terence Maloon has secured representative works In 1890 in Paris, Maurice Denis declared that ‘a picture is
of more than 40 of the leading artists of the late 19th essentially a plane surface covered with colours assembled
and 20th centuries including Whistler, Monet, Cézanne, in a certain order’. By 1917, many artists had abandoned
Matisse, Munch, Gauguin, Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, representation altogether, while some moved freely between
Derain, Denis, Marc, Duchamp, Braque, Bonnard and abstraction and figuration.
Mondrian. These works are from 59 institutions including
the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery
Whistler and his influence
of Art, Washington; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice;
Museu Picasso Barcelona; Centre National d’Art et de In 1867, Whistler began giving his works ‘musical’ titles
Culture Georges Pompidou; Tate Modern; Tate Britain; such as Symphony in white, Harmony in silver and blue
Kunstmuseum Bern; J Paul Getty Museum and Victoria and Arrangement in grey. He intended the titles to draw
& Albert Museum as well as private collections. attention to aspects of painting that were customarily
overlooked: colour, tone, shape and composition. Above
all, Whistler encouraged viewers to look at rather than
Introduction through the painting’s surface.
In the first decades of the 20th century, a radical new Of all his works, his Nocturnes were the most extreme,
approach to art emerged almost simultaneously across the most controversial and, ultimately, the most influential.
Europe and in the United States: abstraction. These landscapes, painted in tones of grey or brown, are
Abstraction was never a ‘movement’, it didn’t originate devoid of any picturesque, anecdotal and illustrative
in one place, and it wasn’t practised by one cohesive content. They are simultaneously empty and full, obscure
group of artists. Instead, it evolved gradually, as artists and luminous, allusive and enigmatic.
experimented with colour, form and materials, calling In Paris, Whistler’s paintings were exhibited alongside
into question some of the traditional functions of art those of the Impressionists. In London, where he spent
– narrative and representation. The final decades of the most of his life, he was a key figure in Aestheticism,
1800s saw a proliferation of artworks in which the figure which emphasised decorative qualities over narrative
or the landscape was – in increasing degrees – abstracted, or representation.
distorted or simplified. The first purely abstract works were
Although Whistler’s work was fiercely criticised, his
exhibited to large public audiences at the Salon d’Automne
reputation became immense. Georges Seurat, Henri
exhibition held in Paris in 1912.
Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian all made
The paths to abstraction were varied and unpredictable. works in a Whistlerian idiom, as did artistically inclined
In 1867, the London-based artist James McNeill Whistler photographers at the turn of the century such as Alvin
began emphasising the ‘musical’ qualities of painting. Langdon Coburn and Edward Steichen in the US.
Monet and Cézanne
French Impressionism – which developed from the Kandinsky was one of many avant-garde artists throughout
1870s – was a significant forerunner to abstract art. Europe who adopted the medium, which became the
The Impressionists deliberately chose unexceptional, ensign of modern art in Norway, Germany, Switzerland
everyday motifs, with the result that their intense and Russia. He produced his first completely abstract
colours and vigorous brushwork gained in prominence. woodcuts in 1911–12. The series of woodcuts illustrating
his book Klänge retraced the stages of his evolution towards
Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne made no effort to disguise
non-objective art. Starting from a primitivist, Gauguinesque
the materiality of their paintings. They wanted to emphasise
symbolism, the prints culminated in purely abstract
the unity and integrity of the entire image over any
images which proposed a completely new visual language.
specifically descriptive detail. In subsequent decades,
the pioneers of abstraction venerated these two artists Easily reproduced and distributed, prints and artists’ books
as exemplars of ‘pure painting’. played an important role in communicating ideas and
overcoming isolation. Far and wide, the primitivist woodcut
When the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky first saw
prepared the ground and spread the seeds of abstraction.
Monet’s Haystacks exhibited in Moscow in 1895, he was
struck by the ‘unsuspected power of the palette’ and the
way in which ‘objects were discredited as an essential The exaltation of colour
element within the picture’. Kandinsky admired the
When Matisse showed his ground-breaking paintings in
exact things that had provoked criticism by Monet’s
the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1906, critics used
contemporaries.
the words ‘abstract’ and ‘abstraction’ to describe them.
Cézanne – who had participated in the first and third of The violent treatment of forms and clashing colour earned
the historic Impressionist exhibitions in 1874 and 1877 – Matisse, and those who shared his style, the name ‘Fauves’
shared with Monet a way of simultaneously building up (wild beasts).
and breaking down images in discrete brushmarks, which
Paintings by Matisse and his friend André Derain from
they called taches. Both artists were identified by their
1905–06, while clearly based on the observation of figures,
admirers and detractors alike as ‘painters of the tache’.
landscapes and interiors, no longer described their motifs
In Cézanne’s hands, the tache became a building block for
consistently or comprehensively.
intricate experiments in composition. His search for the
interconnection of taches (he called them ‘rapports’) was During those years Matisse and Derain developed a
laid bare in his watercolours, where the ground of the close working relationship, which allowed them to flout
paper itself becomes an integral part of the composition. convention and pursue their experiments. In their hands,
the human figure – no less than an interior, landscape or
still life – became the pretext for an independent creation.
Nabis Their liberties of handling shocked their contemporaries.
In 1888, in the company of Gauguin, Paul Sérusier created Many of the earliest abstract painters were vitally
The talisman, a small, vibrant landscape in glowing reds, connected to Fauvism. Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter
greens and blues. The painting caused a sensation when and Alexei von Jawlensky witnessed its debut in Paris.
he showed it to his fellow art students in Paris, inspiring Mondrian went through a Fauve phase, and Robert and
them to entertain the possibility of a new kind of art. They Sonia Delaunay never really deviated from it. All these
called themselves Nabis (the Hebrew word for ‘prophets’). artists endorsed the Fauve’s love of colour: František
The common features of the Nabi style were a frank use Kupka and Kandinsky exploited colour as ‘visual music’,
of non-naturalistic colour, stylisation in drawing and liberating it from its descriptive or imitative role and
design, and emphasis on the picture plane – ‘the pure treating it as an autonomous compositional element.
arabesque’ with ‘as little trompe-l’œil as possible’, in The Delaunays and Kupka rearranged the colours of the
Denis’ words. Shunning the realism and naturalism of spectrum in their paintings, creating new configurations
their contemporaries (including the Impressionists), they of rainbow colour.
promoted an artificial and synthetic concept of art – in Kandinsky acknowledged the attraction of Matisse’s art,
short, they became strongly inclined towards abstraction. but questioned its reliance on distortion. He wondered
Their ideas were applied equally to painting, decorative if a painter could avoid recourse to distortion by
arts and design objects. with naturalism, replacing figurative forms with
There were intersecting sub-groups of the Nabis who abstract ones.
were bonded together by close friendship and ideological
affinity. Denis belonged to a religiously inclined faction,
whereas Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton
shared a worldly outlook that revelled in modernity and
took its bearings from cosmopolitan city life. Both line and colour make us think
From the early 1890s onwards, Vuillard in particular
developed a concision and rigorous formal integration in and dream. The pleasures we
his work that is strikingly abstracted. A similar approach is
evident in early paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky
derive from them differ in nature,
and Mondrian. yet they are perfectly equal and
are absolutely independent of the
Gauguin and the primitivist woodcut
In 1893 Paul Gauguin returned to France from his first,
subject of the picture.
three-year sojourn in Tahiti. He turned his hand to a series Charles Baudelaire, 1868
of woodcut prints, as a way of popularising the imagery
of his Tahitian paintings. In effect, he began a new and
vital tradition in printmaking, reviving one of the most
ancient and direct techniques of graphic reproduction.
His primitivist woodcuts, with their simplified forms and
decorative organisation, ushered in possibilities for an
intensified degree of abstraction.
Cubism 1912–17: the limits of abstraction
Cubism developed out of the creative partnership of Pablo By 1917, the most radical possibilities of abstraction had
Picasso and Georges Braque. They were inseparable already been seized and the newly expanded parameters of
friends, visiting each other’s studios almost daily, with the modern art were set. There were paintings of extraordinary
result that their work became virtually indistinguishable. complexity or unprecedented simplicity, of lyrical
Between 1908 and 1914, neither artist signed or dated his exuberance, intellectual severity and the most whimsical
canvas on the front. As Braque explained: ‘In the early playfulness. There were also works featuring completely
days of Cubism, Pablo Picasso and I were engaged in novel materials and techniques, painstakingly ordered or
what we felt was a search for the anonymous personality. randomly generated.
We were inclined to efface our personalities in order to The year 1917 saw the publication of the Dutch magazine
find originality.’ De Stijl, which made a compelling argument for the
Most historians of Cubism regard Braque’s 1908 paintings integration of abstract painting, sculpture, architecture
done at L’Estaque as a watershed. Features of the Cubist and design.
style came together for the first time: limited colour, In March, the first Dada exhibition, held in Zürich, was
a relatively even tonality, shaded facet-planes, linear notable for the predominance of abstract works: Dada
scaffolding and rich, painterly textures in drifts of subtly (a movement that, internationally, included Hans Arp,
modulated brushstrokes. Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp) and abstraction
By 1910–11 Cubism had reached the brink of abstraction. were initially synonymous.
The paintings and graphic works Picasso produced in In October, the Bolshevik revolution broke out in Russia
Cadaqués in 1910 were notionally figures, landscapes, and, for an extraordinary moment, abstract artists
interiors and still lifes, but these objects were treated including Kasimir Malevich and Iván Kliun helped
in a similar, apparently interchangeable manner. With define the revolution’s ‘advanced’ style.
minimal adjustment, a still life could become a figure, As World War I drew to a close, in France, the Netherlands,
or a landscape a still life. Images had been pared down Switzerland, the United States, Great Britain, Germany,
to a syntax that appeared to be quite independent of Russia, Italy, Portugal and many other countries, abstract
any subject. art was a well-established feature of contemporary
Mondrian (whose early works are much indebted to cultural life.
Cubism) believed that Picasso and Braque had avoided
the logical consequences of the style by not following its
implications all the way through. In response to Cubism,
Mondrian, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Mikhail
Larionov, Robert Delaunay and others were prompted to
take their final steps towards abstraction.

All quotes are sourced from the exhibition ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Websites

catalogue, Paths to Abstraction 1867–1917,
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 2010, Education kit coordinator and K–6 looking and Art Gallery of NSW
except Vallotton’s quote on Cézanne which making activities: Danielle Gullotta, coordinator, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
is from Phillippe Dagen, Pour ou contre le K–6 school and access programs
fauvisme, Somogy, Paris 1996. 7–12 framing questions: Leeanne Carr, The Guggenheim
coordinator, secondary education programs www.guggenheim.org
This printed education kit is also available
online with extended resource material for Additional text: Terence Maloon, J Paul Getty Museum
students with mild to moderate intellectual curator, special exhibitions www.getty.edu/museum
disabilities and gifted and talented students Editor: Kirsten Tilgals
across a range of curriculum areas. Design: Mark Trzopek MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/education/ Production: Cara Hickman www.moma.org
resources
Principal sponsor Museu Picasso Barcelona
Produced by the Public Programs Department Ernst & Young www.museupicasso.bcn.es/en
© Art Gallery of New South Wales 2010
Art Gallery of NSW SELECTED REFERENCES Tate online
Art Gallery Road, The Domain, www.tate.org.uk
Sydney 2000, Australia Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the spiritual in
[email protected] art’ (written 1909, published 1911) in Kandinsky: Victoria & Albert Museum
complete writings on art, eds Kenneth C Lindsay www.vam.ac.uk
Image Credits: & Peter Vergo, Da Capo Press, New York, 1994

Kandinsky, Wassily & Franz Marc (eds).

Cover: Kasimir Malevich House under construction
The Blaue Reiter Almanac, MFA Publications,
1915–16 (detail) oil on canvas, 97 x 44.5 cm
Boston, 2005 (first published 1912)
Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Purchased 1974 Maloon, Terence (ed).
Paths to Abstraction 1867–1917, exhibition
Installation of Suprematist paintings by Malevich catalogue, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2010
as photographed in the 0.10 exhibition
St Petersburg, 1915 Richter, Hans. Dada: art and anti-art,
Thames & Hudson, London, 1965

Shattuck, Roger. The banquet years:

the origins of the avant garde in France, 1885 to
World War I, Vintage Books, New York, 1968
(first published 1958)

Shiff, Richard. Cézanne and the end of

Impressionism, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1986 (first published 1984)

Stangos, Nikos. Concepts of modernism:

Fauvism to postmodernism, Thames & Hudson,
New York, 1994
Whistler and his influence Monet and Cézanne
As the light fades and the shadows deepen all petty A picture by Cézanne is a deliberately conceived object,
and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, isolated, sufficient unto itself, which finds its highest
and I see things as they are in great strong masses: expression within the limits of its own frame.
the buttons are lost, but the garment remains; the Félix Vallotton
garment is lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost,
but the picture remains.
Paul Cézanne
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Banks of the Marne c1888
oil on canvas, 65 x 81.3 cm
Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased 2008 with funds
James Abbott McNeill Whistler provided by the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation, the Art Gallery
Nocturne in grey and silver, the Thames, c1873 Society of New South Wales, and donors to the Masterpiece Fund in joint
oil on canvas, 44.7 x 60.3cm celebration of the Foundation’s 25th anniversary and Edmund Capon AM
Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased 1947 OBE’s 30th anniversary as Director of the Gallery

K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES
Visual Art: Identify the colours you can see. What could VISUAL ARTS: Describe what is in the foreground,
the strokes of white paint be? What time of the day do you middle ground and background of the painting. Note the
think it is? If you were on the bank of the Thames, what reflections in the water. Cézanne painted outdoors ‘from
sounds and smells would you experience? Discuss how nature’. Visualise the weather conditions on the day this
Whistler has simplified this scene. work was started. Invent a weather report.
Whistler was influenced by Japanese art. Find examples of Observe the individual strokes of paint on the surface of
Japanese prints and compare these to Whistler’s paintings. the canvas. Are they applied in a particular direction?
Whistler has blurred and flattened this scene. Use a view Discuss how they add up to create a unity in the painting.
finder to plan a composition for a painting. Experiment Experiment with painting a landscape with a similar
with squinting your eyes to blur your vision. colour palette and brushstrokes.
music: Whistler believed that colour and form could have SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Locate the Marne River
the same effects as music. Listen to different styles of on a map of France. Find out about this region and its
music. Select a piece that complements this painting. climate. Create a graph to show how it changes with
How does this painting and music make you feel? the seasons. Compare the information you have
collected to Cézanne’s painting.
HSIE: Locate the Thames River on a map of London. Find
out how the Thames contributed to the development of Maths: Photocopy an image of Banks of the Marne c1888.
London. Discover the types of transport and industries that Count how many geometric shapes you can find within
occurred on the Thames at the end of the 19th century. this painting.
Do any of them survive today?
7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION
7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION Analyse this painting and discuss its formal qualities. How
The Nocturnes reflect a radical approach to composition does it differ from artworks created a generation before?
and subject matter. Respond to Nocturne in grey and silver, In what way has Cézanne responded to and developed the
the Thames and suggest why Whistler’s approach is radical. ideas of his predecessors? What is the ‘tache’ and how did
Why are these artworks referred to as ‘subjectless’ paintings? this revolutionise the way painters responded to the world?
What role did Cézanne play in the path to abstraction?
Whistler challenged Victorian narrative painting and
French Academic art, suggesting the viewer should look According to curator Terence Maloon, avant-garde artists
at a work of art and observe its effect and composition as of the late 19th century such as Whistler, Cézanne, Monet,
opposed to looking through it, thereby only seeing the Manet and Degas ‘challenged the lowly status of the sketch’
subject. How did this notion affect the way artists painted and ‘harnessed the aesthetics of the sketch to higher
and how did it change the role of the viewer? compositional purposes’. Discuss this idea and consider
how this affected the modern artists of the early 20th century.
In March 1867, Whistler renamed his earlier paintings with
titles that suggested music. Investigate these artworks and Consider Vallotton’s quote above and discuss why he
suggest why Whistler chose to associate music with his describes Cézanne’s art practice in this way. Do you think
paintings. How does the act of renaming affect the viewer’s this is an accurate description of Cézanne’s approach?
response? Discuss how this decision played an important Analyse Banks of the Marne to justify your point of view.
part in the evolution of abstraction.
NABIS Gauguin and the primitivist woodcut
Had the Nabis wanted to make such a bold decision, Wood engraving is by definition stylised and leaves
abstract art could have been invented in 1895. as much to the imagination as it gives us to see; it is
André Chastel an advantageous means of expressing the visionary
character of all perception...
Maurice Godé
Édouard Vuillard
The doors 1894
gouache on cardboard, 50.8 x 41.6 cm Franz Marc
Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Felton Bequest, 1952 © Édouard Vuillard/ADAGP. Tiger 1912
Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney woodcut, 20 x 24.1 cm
Collection: Brooklyn Museum of Art,
Ella C Woodward Memorial Fund

K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES

VISUAL ARTS: List the colours you can see. What is the K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES
mood of this work? How does the colour scheme suggest VISUAL ARTS: Describe the types of lines used in this
this mood? Imagine what the whole room looks like. print. Observe how Marc has stylised the tiger and created
Extend the image and design the rest of the room. Consider the pattern of the fur. Research the process of creating a
the colour scheme you will use. woodcut print. How old is this art practice? What types of
Focus on the figure. What is the figure doing? Why has wood can be used? Discuss the advantages of printmaking.
Vuillard placed the figure in the corner of the composition? Visual Arts: Select an animal that is symbolic to you.
Imagine the events taking place in this scene. Invent a Draw your animal from memory. Use bold lines to simplify
scenario for what happens next. and stylise your animal. Transfer your drawing to scratch
english: This is a view of an interior domestic space. foam board and print a series of prints.
Create a word bank for this painting. Write a story to Drama: Imagine walking through the jungle and
accompany this artwork, including the figure, details encountering this tiger. How would you react? Create
you can see and your list of words. a role-play about this encounter using the print as a
maths: Count how many squares and rectangles you can starting point.
see in this painting. Look around your classroom. Identify
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Compare and contrast the
all the shapes you can see. Create a drawing of your
art of woodblock printing to mechanical reproduction.
classroom based on these shapes.
Explore the advantages and disadvantages of each practice.
7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION Write a procedure for one of the techniques.
Respond to this artwork subjectively. What makes it 7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION
intriguing and unique? How does the artist draw you into
As one of the oldest forms of graphic reproduction, the
the composition? Consider his approach to the subject
woodcut carries a primitivist aesthetic. What makes this
matter. How has he captured a sense of space? Why do
approach appealing to artists exploring a new way of
you think he chose to portray this scene? Discuss your
seeing? What effect are they trying to harness?
observations and interpretation of the work with the class.
Franz Marc was interested in the essence of the subject,
Research the Nabis. Name the artists and outline the
peeling back the layers to expose the spirit within. How
influence they had on abstraction. Discuss the concepts
does the graphic effect of the woodcut suggest this notion?
and theories they employed in their artmaking. Develop a
Consider the artist’s attempt to simplify form, use repeated
painting appropriating the stylistic intentions of this group.
patterns and shapes as well as his treatment of space within
Source Maurice Denis’s ‘The definition of neo-traditionism’ the composition. Develop a critical study of this artwork
from 1890. Discuss why the Nabis renamed their approach to based on your observations and research.
painting and if this is a more appropriate term for this group.
Research the use of the woodcut in other cultures.
How does it differ from and also show similarities to Marc’s
approach? Create your own monotone woodcut based on
a similar theme. How does this process differ from other
art-making you have explored?
The exaltation of colour CUBIsM
…objects harmed my pictures. The Cubist reflection consists essentially of stripping
Wassily Kandinsky back all the proportions and ends up with projective,
primordial forms like the triangle, the rectangle and the
circle.
Wassily Kandinsky
Paul Klee
Study for ‘Painting with white border’ (Moscow) 1913
watercolour, gouache, ink, 39 x 35 cm
Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased 1982 Georges Braque
© Wassily Kandinsky/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
Glass of absinthe 1911
oil on canvas, 37 x 28.7 cm
K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased 1997
© Georges Braque/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
VISUAL ARTS: List the colours you can see. Describe
the variety of marks in the artwork. Reflect on how this
artwork makes you feel. What do you think Kandinsky K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES
meant when he said ‘objects harmed my pictures’? VISUAL ARTS: Describe what you can see in this artwork
Do you think this artwork was created randomly or and the colour range Braque has used. Reflect on the scale
carefully planned? Discuss your response in class. of the work. Would you have the same response if the
Kandinsky wanted to create art that affected the viewer painting was larger? Contemplate how this painting makes
in a similar way as listening to music. Paint a series of you feel.
small watercolour paintings while listening to music in Visual Arts: Set up a still life in class and draw the
class. Use colour expressively and layer your work. arrangement from different angles. Cut up your drawings
Review your paintings then select, title and exhibit the then arrange several pieces in a Cubist composition
paintings you feel are resolved. showing multiple perspectives. Use pencil to work into
your composition and define certain areas.
english: Kandinsky was interested in creating art that
conveyed emotions. Look at this work closely and consider english: Research the life of Georges Braque. Find out
the emotions it presents. Compile a list of adjectives to about the friendship between Braque and Pablo Picasso.
accompany this artwork. Write a poem in response to this Discuss how the artists supported each other’s vision for
artwork using your adjectives. a new type of art. Use the information collected to write
a diary entry for the day Braque created this painting.
Science and Technology: Construct an experiment
Describe the process he took to create this painting.
in class to test how people respond to different colours.
Imagine how Cubism was first viewed by art critics and
Brainstorm a list of questions for the class to use in this
the art world.
research. Graph your results and present these to the class.
maths: Photograph a stil llife from various angles (45, 90,
7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION 180 and 360 degrees) using a digital camera. Print these
Kandinsky’s intention was to detach reality from the photographs and pin them up. Compare what can be seen
recognisable and enhance the concept of the spiritual. from the various angles. Discuss how Cubist artists were
Discuss this notion with the class, drawing references from aiming to show multiple perspectives.
Kandinsky’s body of work. Using Study for ‘Painting with
white border’ (Moscow) 1913 as evidence, argue whether 7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION
Kandinsky has successfully achieved his aim. Analyse this artwork and discuss Braque’s approach to
painting a still life. Consider the structural qualities and the
Research and develop a case study on the Blaue Rieter
significance of the picture plane. What is the artist’s main
group and its significance to abstraction. Consider the
concern and how does this artwork reflect Cubist theory?
origins of this movement and the artists’ attempt to
expand the concept of art. In 1914 Mondrian wrote, ‘Cubism has taken a great stride in
the direction of abstracting, and in this sense belongs both
Describe the differences between Kandinsky’s
to our time and to the future: hence it is modern not in
improvisations, impressions and compositions.
content, but in effect’. What do you think Mondrian is
Find examples of each approach and discuss how
suggesting? Refer to particular Cubist artists and artworks
each has played a significant role in influencing
to support your point of view.
artists of the next generation.
Using myVirtualGallery on the Gallery’s website (www.
artgallery.nsw.gov.au/mvg) create an exhibition with text
panels of ten artists from the collection, including Braque,
using the theme ‘The evolution of painting’. Write a
catalogue essay outlining the reasons for your selection.
1912–17: the limits of abstraction
Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion,
it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners,
it wants to have nothing further to do with the object,
as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself,
without ‘things’.
Kasimir Malevich

Kasimir Malevich
House under construction 1915–16
oil on canvas, 97 x 44.5 cm
Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1974

K–6 LOOKING AND MAKING ACTIVITIES

VISUAL ARTS: Nominate the focal point in this
composition. Observe the strong use of diagonal lines
and how they create a sense of movement. Cut out a
range of coloured geometric shapes and arrange them
into a composition that is pleasing to you.
Look closely at the texture of this painting. Can you see
any brushstrokes? How do you think Malevich created
this painting? Are we looking at an aerial view? Draw
your own home from above, and simplify your drawing
into shapes and lines.
maths: List the shapes you can see. What does this work
remind you of? If this was a tower, do you think it could
stand? Explain why or why not. Rearrange the shapes in
this painting to construct a design for a tower that would
be able to balance upright.
HISE: Research the technological developments that
impacted on society at the beginning of the 20th century.
Focus on changes in architecture and the types of
buildings that have been designed to house a growing Remember that before being
population. a war-horse, a nude woman,
7–12 ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION or some anecdote, a picture
Research Malevich’s art practice. Consider his influences,
concepts and theories as well as his understanding of is essentially a plane surface
the real. How does the quote above suggest his approach
to artmaking? Create a visual diary of his body of work.
covered with colours assembled
Develop a case study on your favourite painting and in a certain order.
discuss your findings with the class.
Suggest how the audience of the time might have reacted Maurice Denis, 1890
to Malevich’s paintings. Would they have embraced or
criticised abstraction? As part of today’s audience, how
do you view Malevich’s practice? Discuss how his body
of work is a reflection of early 20th-century thinking.
Where does abstraction go after the artists of 1917? Create
an art timeline for the 20th century. Suggest how the paths
to abstraction played a significant role in influencing artists
of the mid to late 20th century.