100 Years of Abstract Art: Theory and Practice
International Conference

Concept and Organization: Prof. Dr. Isabel Wünsche

It was one hundred years ago that the public for the first time was
confronted with non-objective painting. The artists, including Wassily
Kandinsky, František Kupka, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian, are
today widely known, and abstract art, in the broadest sense, is (still)
one of the most viable artistic idioms of the twentieth-century in the
Western world; it not only changed our understanding of the production,
meaning, and reception of art in aesthetics and art history, it also
found its way into the discourses in fields such as philosophy,
psychology, history, cultural and media studies, and even politics.

The early pioneers of this non-objective art form recognized that art,
far from being a means to merely reproduce visible reality, could be an
expression of the absolute, a medium to advance human creative
evolution and initiate spiritual renewal. The interwar period saw a
secularization of such early abstractionist concerns; abstract art soon
became the trademark of a modernist Zeitgeist, one shaped by
urbanization, industrialization, rapid social change, major advances in
science and technology, new modes of transportation, and global
communication. Then, with the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany,
the doctrine of Socialist realism in the Soviet Union, and the growth
of Regionalism in the United States in the 1930s, abstract art found
itself increasingly at the center of heated political debates that
extended well into the Cold War era. The post-war period saw the
emergence of Abstract Expressionism in the United States and the Art
Informel movement in Europe; gradually, due to the efforts of art
critics such as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg and art
historian Werner Haftmann, abstract art began to gain mainstream
acceptance in the 1950s. The various movements of the 1960s and 1970s
took abstract art beyond the medium of conventional painting, opening
up a wide range of new artistic possibilities. Most recently, the use
of digital media by artists and the application of new methods of
visualization in the life sciences, medical research, and
nanotechnology in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century,
have moved the question of abstraction in art beyond the realm of art
history and into the emerging field of visual studies.

The conference will examine the role that abstract art has played in
visual art and culture of the last one hundred years with a particular
focus on the following aspects of abstract art:
- Origins and concepts
- As style or process and concepts of creativity
- Metaphysical thought and modern science
- Art instruction and reform education
- Anthropology and concepts of interculturality
- Twentieth-century ideological battles
- Today and beyond (21st century)

We invite paper proposals to the sessions specified above from a
variety of fields, including art history, philosophy, cultural history,
visual culture, media studies, and practicing artists. Please submit
an abstract (300 words) plus a brief CV (300 words) along with your
contact information in one single Word or PDF file by March 31, 2012,
to abstractionjacobs-university.de