Abstract art

Introduction

African art is a very broad and flexible term commonly used to describe art made in the sub-Saharan region. Although traditional African art and aesthetics vary greatly from one country to another, there are elements shared across the continent. Visual abstraction is one of the most important features of African art. Most traditional African artworks are abstract. The African tendency towards abstraction is rooted in the artist's need to express an idea rather than simply depict a subject. Instead of depicting animals and people realistically, African artists distort, reshape and creatively interpret their figures. Since most traditional African artworks have moral or religious abstraction, these abstract animal and human figures often present various ideas such as spirits, mythical gods, their powers, moral values, superstitions, etc. Being deeply metaphorical, African art emits deeper meanings and lessons that go far beyond ideas of beauty and pure aesthetics. For example, oversized heads on human figures are a common feature in African art. The symbolism is obvious. A large head means an intelligent and wise person, which is why it is often used in depictions of kings and tribal leaders. African abstraction does not arise from the demands of the medium or the artist's lack of skills. Rather, it is a conscious choice of the artist used to convey the message. This is particularly visible in representations of female beauty where instead of naturalistic figurative representations, African artists usually choose to highlight the concept of beauty that dominates their culture (depicting, for example, small mouths, knitted hair or ringed neck). When it comes to fully representing women's bodies, ideas of large breasts or a swollen belly are common as they emphasize fertility and the female role as nurturers. Instead of personalizing their portraits, artists resort to what is known as the general physiognomy. Most of the time, when an artist learns to make a head, (eye, mouth, chin, etc.) he will continue to make the same type of head for each artwork. This one general type of head is then replicated continuously, rather than individualizing each face. Apart from the obvious reasons (the fact that it is easier to make the same face over and over again), it is believed that African artists avoided making realistic faces, for fear that someone might use the figures as voodoo dolls to control, depict people and cause them harm. The ideal of self-composure is also prominent in African art. It is believed that those who are composed behave rationally and proudly. The ideal human representation is that of serenity, uncontaminated by emotions. That is why human subjects in African paintings and sculptures usually have a restrained expression without smiles or frown marks (‘Understanding African Art’).

History

At the beginning of the 20th century, the discovery by modern painters in Europe of highly abstract forms in African art spurred the development of abstract painting. Surprisingly, this new visual language hardly gained ground in Africa itself. The most prominent contemporary painters from the continent, such as Ben Enwonwu in Nigeria, Valente Malangatana Ngwenya in Mozambique, and Irma Stern and Gerard Sekoto in South Africa, all worked in a figurative idiom, as did almost all of their lesser-known peers. At the most basic level, this can be explained by the fact that, in the 20th century, African sociopolitical reality absorbed energy that might otherwise be directed to aesthetic debates about abstraction (STEVENSON).

Arts

Traditional African art is impressive in its presentation and goals. Once despised, the world is now rediscovering the beauty of this art form, as evidenced by the growing number of recipients of notable art objects, which exhibit the cultural values of different African regions. Every work of art, to be appreciated, must be understood in the context of its cultural origins and culturally cherished values. You can't see a work of art regardless of its origin. In fact, it would be appropriate to say that sometimes culture speaks through art, and art helps us better understand a particular culture, in whatever form it may be. Ancient traditional African art, long regarded by the Western world as primitive and undeveloped, is now hailed as aesthetic and essential. Part of the paradigm shift is due to the efforts of contemporary African artists and the diaspora, who have tried to combine the traditional with the modern, using new creative means to express the ideas behind these antique works. Traditional African art forms mainly include masks, sculptures, heads, sculptures, dolls, cooking bowls, and jewelry. Most of it was made of wood, as wood was available in abundance (from trees in West and Central Africa) and was used a lot in everyday life. Traditional African art, in general, was more practical than decorative, in the sense that objects were primarily intended to serve practical purposes, not decorative ones. In addition, the arts were a medium to reflect beliefs, construction, and situation (the more complex the task, the higher the situation). For example, a mask (of an ancestor or god) would be worn as part of a rite of passage by a young boy entering adulthood or during a war, when the wearer could draw courage and strength from the mask. Similarly, bowls intended for cooking were artistically crafted to weave some cultural or social value into it. Much of the meaning attributed to art was symbolic. Earlier, Westerners underestimated African art. However, once they realized that this was not just a random art form to adorn walls, but had a deeper meaning embedded within it, their perspective towards it changed. Artists such as Picasso, Matisse, etc. were greatly influenced and inspired by the geometric and abstract qualities of this simple yet complex art form. African art depicts the relationships between humans and invisible forces. It strives to achieve greater understanding and knowledge of the world by combining the visible with the invisible (mlblevins). In African culture, colors are inherently symbolic in a variety of areas, including the rich and vibrant colors used in African fabrics and clothing. Colors can represent a variety of emotions, traditions and victories after races. For centuries, Africa has experienced turmoil followed by liberation, and this is reflected in the colors inherent in African life. For example, the flags of various African nations are some of the most colorful of any continent. The combination of red, black, green, white and blue commonly found on the flags of African countries each has its own symbolic significance that is vital for the citizens of each respective country. In the fashion industry, the symbolism of color is no less effective. African designers often use a range of colors and patterns to represent various states of energy and emotions that the wearer may experience. Colors have greatly influenced African clothing and both traditional and modern African fashion industries, as color concepts have gradually evolved throughout history to create the rainbow of designs offered today. When you understand the true meanings behind the variety of African colors, you can choose the ideal fabrics, patterns and color combinations that will suit any specific occasion. Warm colors can make beautiful African clothes. They incorporate reds, oranges, purples and yellows and are extremely bright and vibrant. African color combinations often involve these colors to make amazing clothes. The use of oranges, reds and purples in dresses may not only seem incredible, but they also have deep meaning behind them. Warm colors often used in West Africa, such as with Berber, Bogolan and Aso Oke fabrics (Pig). Of all the other works of art, Africa's arts are included in being the most diverse due to the variety of materials, elements, and representations they use. They were often referred to as creepy or strange objects. Virtual abstraction is a word that can describe the most notable in African artworks. This is evidenced by the majority of African arts found, which are most often found in the abstract art form versus naturalistic representation. Although wood is the best-known material used in African sculpture, many other materials are also used, including iron, ivory, terracotta, non-combustible clay, and occasionally stone. Jewelry is also a popular African art because it is used to signify class or appear as an aesthetic and is made of various materials such as gold, silver, copper, coconut shells, stone, ebony wood, and brass. In addition, other arts such as accessories and traditional dresses worn in Africa can be made using beads that are made of bone in glass that is part of African culture (Morales).

African Art has many characteristics, some of which include creative expressionism over realism, the prevalence of images and sculpture of the human figure, a greater focus on sculpture than painting, abstract themes and representations, a fusion of visual and performing arts (as in the case of masks), and nonlinear scaling. Ancient African art dates back at least 6000 years to rock art found in the Sahara. The whole of Africa was influenced by art depicting nature, both real and abstract, created from its many cultures by Egyptians in the North and artisans in the South over the millennia (‘African Art Definition, Paintings, Sculptures Artists and Artworks’). African art is both simple and complex. It is based on 5 basic elements, which are like common strands running through different artworks in different regions of the continent. It aims to help people understand their cultural, religious and social beliefs through their unique projects. It reflected the belief systems, ideas and values held by various African communities and encouraged younger generations to adopt them through various art forms. These items include the following. African art is a work of art created not only to please the eye but also to support religious values, which is why the "human figure" is given primary importance. This art deals with the spiritual and moral aspects of human life. African artists considered the human figure to have high aesthetic and religious value and associated it with true beauty. Through human figures, artists did not want to depict a certain set of people. Rather, they aimed at transmitting ideas related to the reality of life. Spiritual beliefs, morals, and principles of life were conveyed through these depictions. Artists even used animal figurines to present their ideas. African figure sculptures have smooth finishes and shiny, well-polished looks. According to African belief, a rough and irregular surface shows ill-intentioned, unattractive, gruesome and morally tarnished images. Thus, the artists made sure that their sculptures were polished well, without irregularities on the surface, so that they were bright. Human sculptures are also loaded with jewelry to enhance their beauty. Sometimes, intricate designs are also made on artistic pieces. Interestingly, in many of the African languages, there is only one word to describe both "beautiful" and "good." Obviously, then, what is good is beautiful, and vice versa is also true. African sculptures generally have a calm, cool and composed appearance. They are designed in such a way that they seem to be in control of themselves. Dignity, self-respect, elegance and self-esteem radiate from them. These qualities tell us that artists wanted their artistic creations to be kind, rational and reasonable, with straight and upright postures. Emotional outbursts and expressions were not entertained. The days of youth were considered the first days of one's life, and therefore artists included this aspect in their art. Since youth symbolized energy, strength, activity, fertility and immense vigor, artists incorporated these characteristics into their creations. They didn't want to portray negative vibes and tried solely to promote positive attitudes and traits. Symmetry and balance. This element is the only one that has some resemblance to Western or other art forms. This refers to the materials used in balance and proportion to create artistic pieces, while the aforementioned elements focused on culture, religion, morals and aesthetic values. African artworks include a wide range of objects, namely animal art, body art, masks, jewelry, ceramics, textiles, weapons, sculptures, baskets, coin, and beaded works. These amazing objects are sought after nowadays and adorn the homes and offices of connoisseurs around the world. So the next time you come across any work of African art, stop to think about the idea that went behind making it. Find out what reality of life African artists were trying to portray through their artworks. Identify the elements involved in the unique pieces and try to appreciate their aesthetics (mlblevins).

Music

There is a surprising difference between music and the visual arts—painting in particular—in their attitudes toward representation and abstraction. It can easily be seen that music is natural, usually abstract, while painting is natural, normally representational. Representational images are part of almost every culture. In music, abstraction receives the highest honors (although musical—instrumental, "absolute" music—probably developed largely from speech, through poetry, and then song). Blatant program music is often seen as silly or childish.3 Musical depictions of trains, galloping horses, and the sounds of battle, though not incomprehensible, have the status of experiments, oddities outside the mainstream of "serious" music—the more "realistic" they are—while more serious mainstream painters have worked obsessively to develop and improve realistic perspectives and modeling techniques. There are, of course, programmatic elements to "serious" music (Haydn's birds, tonal painting in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony), but they are usually considered irrelevant to its value as music, something the listener can safely ignore by focusing on the "musical" meaning of sounds (Walton). When someone says that a piece of music sounds abstract, often what they mean is that the music sounds modern, strange, or unfamiliar. But in reality, music without words is already abstract: we cannot say for sure what it is about, even if the sounds are familiar, as in a melody of Mozart or Bach. So, if someone says that a piece of music is "abstract", what we could mean is that the melody leaves behind certain traditional characteristics, such as a key to the house, or predictable rhythms and meter, and uses more non-traditional techniques, such as atonal melody, unpredictable rhythms, and excessive characteristics such as range, articulation, and timbre. In the early 20th century, composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg were interested in these new techniques, in part because they felt they could better express new feelings and ideas about the human experience that people were thinking at the time. Freud's psychology is an example, but other new ideas, such as Einstein's theories of the universe—not to mention the effects of industrialization and World War I violence—radically changed the ways people thought about themselves and the world. As a result, artists and composers everywhere were creating new techniques to more vividly express their deepest thoughts and feelings about the ever-changing world (‘Making Music Abstract’). Absolute music (sometimes abstract music) is music that is not explicitly "about" anything. Unlike program music, it is not representational. The idea of absolute music was developed in the late 18th century in the writings of writers of early German romanticism, but the term was not coined until 1846, when it was first used by Richard Wagner in a program for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The aesthetic ideas underlying absolute music stem from debates about the relative value of what was known in the early years of aesthetic theory as the fine arts. Kant, in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, dismissed music as "more enjoyment than culture" due to its lack of conceptual content, thus taking as negative the very characteristic of music that others celebrated. Johann Gottfried Herder, by contrast, regarded music as the highest of the arts because of its spirituality, which Herder associated with the obscurity of sound. The disagreements that followed between musicians, composers, music historians and critics, in fact, never stopped (Abstract Music – HiSoUR – Hi So You Are). absolute music, abstract music, pure music - Absolute music (abstract music, pure music) is music for its sake - concerned only with structure, melody, harmony and rhythm (‘Abstract Music’). Absolute music (sometimes abstract music) is music that is not explicitly "about" anything. Unlike program music, it is not representational. The aesthetic ideas underlying absolute music stem from debates about the relative value of what was known in the early years of aesthetic theory as the fine arts. Kant, in his Critique of Judgment, dismissed music as "more a matter of pleasure than culture" and "less worthy in the judgment of reason than any of the other fine arts" because of its lack of conceptual content, thus treating as a deficit the very characteristic of music that others celebrated. Johann Gottfried Herder, by contrast, regarded music as the highest of the arts because of its spirituality, which Herder attributed to the obscurity of sound. The disagreements that followed between musicians, composers, music historians and critics continue today (‘Absolute Music’).

Notable Compositions 

Ninth Symphony – Beethoven (chronology, duration)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjHhS5MtvA 

Ludwig van Beethoven [n 1] (17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. His works rank among the most performed in the classical music repertoire and cover the transition from the classical period to the romantic era to classical music ('Ludwig van Beethoven'). Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op. 125, is a choral symphony, Ludwig van Beethoven's last complete symphony, composed between 1822 and 1824. It was first presented in Vienna on 7 May 1824. The symphony is considered by many critics and musicologists to be Beethoven's greatest work and one of the supreme achievements in music history. One of the best-known works in common practice music, it stands as one of the most frequently performed symphonies in the world (‘Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)’)

The Book of the Hanging Gardens – Arnold Schoenberg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rGUov3Adlk 

Arnold Schoenberg or Schoenberg (/ˈʃɜːrnbɜːrɡ/, USA also /ˈʃoʊn-/; German: [ˈʃøːnbɛɐ̯k] (listen); September 13, 1874 – July 13, 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art and was a leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works degenerate music and banned their publication. [1] [2] He immigrated to the United States in 1933 and became an American citizen in 1941 ('Arnold Schoenberg'). The Book of Hanging Gardens (German: Das Buch der hängenden Gärten), Op. 15, is a fifteen-part song cycle composed by Arnold Schoenberg between 1908 and 1909, setting poems by Stefan George to music. George's poems, also with the same title, record the failed love affair of two young teenagers in a garden, culminating in the departure of the woman and the dissolution of the garden. The song cycle is set for solo voice and piano. The Book of Hanging Gardens breaks away from the conventional musical order through the use of atonality. The work was premiered by Austrian singer Martha Winternitz-Dorda and pianist Etta Werndorf on January 14, 1910, in Vienna (‘The Book of the Hanging Gardens’).

passacaglia for orchestra - Anton Webern 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLW1w675NHY 

Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern[a] (German: [ˈantoːn ˈveːbɐn] (listen)), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of her entourage in sheer prudence, even aphorism, and constant embrace of the then new atonal and twelve-tone techniques. With his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was at the core of those within the wider circle of the Second Viennese School (‘Anton Webern’). Passacaglia for orchestra, Opus 1, from 1908, is the first published composition by twentieth-century Austrian composer Anton Webern. [1] It is based on the musical form of the 17th century, the passacaglia. Usually a dance in triple meter, Webern's Passacaglia is neither a dance nor a triple meter. Structurally, it is based on an eight-note phrase forming a bass line, with twenty-three variations grouped into three sections. Unlike Webern's later work, this piece is in a late romantic style. It has echoes of Brahms' 4th Symphony (‘Passacaglia for Orchestra (Webern)’).

Three Pieces for Orchestra - Alban Berg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6U8AqRNyU8 

Alban Maria Johannes Berg (/bɛərɡ/ BAIRG,[1] German: [ˈalbaːn ˈbɛʁk]; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined romantic lyricism with twelve-tone technique. [2] Although he left a relatively small work, he is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century for his expressive style that includes "whole worlds of emotions and structure" ('Alban Berg'). Alban Berg composed Three Pieces for Orchestra (German: Drei Orchesterstücke), Op. 6, between 1913 and 1915. [1] They are dedicated to his teacher Arnold Schoenberg. A revised version of the score was published in 1929 by Universal Edition. [2] While the composer made a first performance of only the first two movements in 1923, the complete work was presented in the revised edition in Oldenburg in 1930, under the baton of Johannes Schuler (‘Three Pieces for Orchestra (Berg)’).

Sophisticated music- Gyorgy Ligeti 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZMFFcReUgs 

György Ligeti (28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-American composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers of the second half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among the progressive figures of his time." ('György Ligeti'). extended the dense textures created by Central African polyphonic techniques, designing acoustically produced "intrinsic rhythms" in the context of Western musical instruments (Scherzinger). The Musica ricercata is a set of eleven piano pieces by Giorgi Ligeti. The work was written from 1951 to 1953,[1] shortly after the composer began teaching at the Budapest Academy of Music. [2] The play premiered on 18 November 1969 in Sundsvall, Sweden. Although ricercata (or ricercar) is an established contrapuntal style (and the final move of the work is in this form), Ligeti's title should probably be interpreted literally as "researched music" or "sought out music". This work captures the essence of Ligeti's quest to construct his own synthetic style ex nihilo,[3] and therefore foreshadows many of the more radical directions Ligeti would take in the future (‘Sought-after music’).

MAWU ENA - Ephraim Kɔku Amu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9XAaR263nE 

Ephraim Kɔku Amu (September 13, 1899 – January 2, 1995) was a Ghanaian composer, musicologist and teacher. Amu is particularly known for his use of atenteben, a traditional Ghanaian bamboo flute. He promoted and spread the instrument throughout the country and composed music for it ('Ephraim Amu').

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