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In relation to painting, abstraction references the distillation
of the visual world and emotions to representative symbols, colors,
and forms. Abstraction was applied to portraits, landscapes, and
still-lifes by artists such as Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso,
who used color and form in ways that ceased to mirror the physical
world in traditional ways. Eventually, this act of separating color
and form from the things they represent, left only color and form
and no referent. In the most extreme manifestation of abstraction,
only the physical characteristics of the painting or sculpture –
its surface, color, shape, and support – matter, creating a
completely optical experience devoid of references to anything beyond
the work itself. In contrast, much of the “abstraction”
created in the last fifteen years has ventured in the opposite direction.
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