Poetic Abstraction

Almost 110 years have passed since Wassily Kandinsky, the father of abstract art, completed the first abstract work in the 1910s. However, abstract art is still considered an incomprehensible art form by most people for one reason—that the viewer cannot discern any concrete image in the composition. If we pause and contemplate the nature of art, we see it is a mirror to the artist’s mind— one that reflects the creator’s vision, inner world and spiritual dwellings. The truth is that we are often blinded by figurative representation; we forget what is born of the mind and how important it is. That is why the abstract artist Li Lei said, “abstraction speaks right to the heart of visual perception, and the figurative essence is often obscured by representation. The crux of the figurative ‘image’ is what the artist sees with their eyes; the crux of the abstract ‘image’ is what they see in their mind.” When the viewer grasps that this image stems from the mind, they have made a stride in understanding abstract art.