Abstraction in the Twentieth Century

In the same way that manned flight and other technological breakthroughs
embody the intellectual achievement and adventurous outlook of the twentieth
century, so too does abstraction.
With its decisive rejection of recognizable imagery in favor of felt experience,
abstraction, unlike all other styles and movements, has transcended transitory
and local interests, serving as a viable choice to international artists for the past
eighty-five years. It is the defining style of the century as well as a sign of our
place in history. Through its bold and visionary spirit, abstraction also evokes
how art might proceed into the future.
Evolving after photography had proven its ability to capture appearances,
abstract painting and sculpture convey what cannot be viewed through a lens.
Abstractionists have challenged themselves to depict the unseeable rhythms of
nature, the ineffable qualities of life, the heroic capacities of individuals and
society, or the vast if vague regions of the soul. In this sense, these artistic
revolutionaries have neither discarded the desire to communicate content to
the viewer nor rejected the connection of their highly expressive art form to life.
But the nonreferentiality of abstract art requires the viewer to plumb new
emotional reservoirs in order to absorb and to be touched by it. Variously
explosive, serene, intense, or contemplative, abstraction offers kinds of beauty
unimaginable in earlier art. That this exhibition which progresses upward along
the spiral ramp and into the Tower galleries is being presented by the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum is particularly appropriate given its history.
Inaugurated as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in 1939, the institution
exhibited the work of the great pioneers of abstraction in particular that of Vasily
Kandinsky and played a major role in disseminating the new art style in the
United States.
Total Risk, Freedom, Discpline
The Pioneers
Between the Wars
Abstract Expressionism
Monochrome Painting

Minimal Sculpture
Post-Minimal Sculpture
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting
Abstraction in:
Photography
Music
Theater
Architecture
Poetry
Film
Dance