Rational Abstract Art

         Drawings Part Two           Lyrical Drawing Please look at the lyrical drawing called Destination by Margaret Neill.  Notice the gentle toning of the background.  Some of the drawn curves are heavier and start to look like cables.   The work seems to indicate gesture, intuition, and exercise of judgement while drawing.  That spirit is reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings.  In fact a drip trail of paint is rather like a drawing stroke. What do you think as you look at it?  Is it a jumble?  Is anything dominant?  If you think in 3D, what is in the foreground, middle ground, and background?  Would it look better upside down? Or without the toned background?  Then it would be a purer drawing with no toned areas.  Good?  Bad?                 A Reserved Drawing In Drawing P...

          Drawings Part One Attempting to define a term in the art world is problematical because vocal influential people resist restrictions imposed by a definition.  So, instead of a definition, we will discuss usual expectations of a drawing.  A stroking tool is used such as pencil, pen, chalk, crayon, oil stick, gouge, or scratch.  Each of these make a trail of consistent width.        Kinds of Marks Drawing strokes can be line segments, dots, checks, curves or curly cues.  Often there is unworked space on the sheet, which is usually paper.  See the van Gogh drawing ‒ The Sower ‒ with a wide variety of marks.  How many different kinds can you identify?  How many colors of ink?  Note, the ink can also shift color with age.                 Contrary to many artists who make a preliminary drawing, van Gogh finished a painting then m...

                                                  Conceptual Large-scale Works                                                         Construction According to a Rule Another decidedly different use of the word conceptualism refers to constructing an artwork based on a rule.  A popular quote describing constructive conceptualism by Sol LeWitt goes as follows. “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair...

                            Invitations, Posters, Book Covers Our subject of interest turns to abstract art on flyers, posters, announcements, invitations, and book covers.  These are rewarding and pertinent since they bring people together, but quality abstract designs are not common.   Please look at the invitation to a series of seasonal events at the National Gallery of art in Washington DC.  In late Spring and early Fall the gallery is open after hours on a series of Thursday nights and it features live music, dance performances, talks by gallery educators, and hands-on art making.  The invitation to the event series can exist in multiple forms ‒ hand-out flyers and displayed posters.                            ...

                                                             Tensegrity Please look at the object, called four strut tensegrity, made of  metal rods and cables.  It looks impossible at first.  In building upward, we expect one solid object to be placed on another solid object. This tensegrity construction is composed of stout rods and cables.  To start to understand it, think of how you could balance a rod upright on a cable if you could just prevent the top of the rod from falling to the side.   With that in mind, look at the longest and tallest rod.  It is a bit hard to see, but notice it is slung on three cables at the bottom, one clearly from the left, one harder to see fro...