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Flatness (art)


In art criticism of the 1960s and 1970s, flatness described the smoothness and absence of curvature or surface detail of a two-dimensional work of art. Critic Clement Greenberg believed that flatness, or two-dimensional, was an essential and desirable quality in painting, a criterion which implies rejection of painterliness and impasto. The valorization of flatness led to a number of art movements, including minimalism and post-painterly abstractionism.

Modernism of the arts happened during the second half of the 19th century and extended into most of the 20th. This period of art is identified by art forms consisting of an image on a flat two-dimensional surface. This art evolution began in the 1860s and culminated 50 years later. By this time almost all three-dimensional works had been eliminated. This new approach to painting was to create a visual appearance of realism. Looking at a surface with only two-dimensions our perception of depth is an illusion. The reduction of depth in painting was the consequence of investigation. This new essence of self-analysis attempted to establish an experience or effect from the viewer of the painting.

The term flatness can be used to describe much of the popular American art work of the 1950s and 1960s. The art of this period had a basic yet colorful design that held a degree of two dimensional form. Thus the term flatness is used to describe this medium. The ground work idea for Minimalism began in Russia in 1913 when Kazimir Malevich placed a black square on a white background claiming that: “Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object as such, and believes that it can exist in and for itself without things.”

One of the first Minimalism artworks was created in 1964 by Dan Flavin. He produced a neon sculpture titled Monument for V. Tatlin. This work was a simplistic assembly of neon tubes that were not carved or constructed in any way. The idea was that they were not supposed to symbolize anything but to just merely exist. The Minimalist approach to art was to conceive by the mind before execution. Traditional modes of art composition were looked away from in favor of improvisation, spontaneity and automatism. This new expressionist style consisted of improvised pattern making where every stroke of the brush was viewed as expression and subjective freedom.


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