ABSTRACT ART

Pure abstract art is art where there are no figures that look the way people and objects look to the human eye. Until the invention of the camera in the 19th Century, art was the only way that people could copy reality as we see it. Advances in art over time improved on this depiction of reality from the 2 dimensional drawings that existed from the time of cave drawings through most of the Middle Ages. With the coming of the Renaissance, artists developed the technique of drawing lines and varying sizes to give paintings depth. Sculpture was always 3 dimensional but achieved a maximum of realism with Roman sculpture which was later revived during the Renaissance. With the invention of the camera, it was no longer necessary for art to be realistic, because photography did that. This resulted in Impressionism in which paintings still depicted people and objects, but the artist was free to add his own feelings to the picture, not just what his eye saw. Colors were often more vivid than the actual colors in real life. Pictures improved on reality. Then in the early 20th Century, this freedom from realism developed various degrees of abstraction, culminating in art that was completely abstract where there were no recognizable figures and colors represented the artists feelings or perceptions like sound and touch that in the past were not represented in visual art. Some of the earliest abstract artists were Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Abstraction has influenced new art including functional art for the past century.

There are abstract influences in modern jewelry design as you can see in the design of the silver foil strip on the cuff bracelet pictured above pictured above. It can be found in the Beadshaper Gallery at BRASS AND SILVER CUFF BRACELET (beadshaper.com)