An Open Knowledge Foundation Site
logo Planet Open Knowledge

You are browsing the archive for abstract art.

August Strindberg’s Celestographs (1893–4)

- April 24, 2019 in abstract art, August Strindberg, Celestographs, cosmos, early photography, experimental photography, Photography, universe

In the village of Dornach in Austria, during the winter of 1893-4, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg laid out a series of photographic plates on the ground. Removing the “middle-man” of a camera, using the light-sensitive plates directly, he was attempting to capture images of the night sky above. He named the technique “celestography”, literally […]

Comments Off on August Strindberg’s Celestographs (1893–4)

On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

- October 24, 2017 in abstract, abstract art, geology, rock

Images depicting ferruginous variation from a 19th-century geological paper, at times like some kind of geological precursor to the 50s experiments of Abstract Expressionism.

Comments Off on On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

- September 19, 2017 in abstract, abstract art, geology, rock

Images depicting ferruginous variation from a 19th-century geological paper, at times like some kind of geological precursor to the 50s experiments of Abstract Expressionism.

Comments Off on On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

- September 19, 2017 in abstract, abstract art, geology, rock

Images depicting ferruginous variation from a 19th-century geological paper, at times like some kind of geological precursor to the 50s experiments of Abstract Expressionism.

Comments Off on On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

- September 19, 2017 in abstract, abstract art, geology, rock

Images depicting ferruginous variation from a 19th-century geological paper, at times like some kind of geological precursor to the 50s experiments of Abstract Expressionism.

Comments Off on On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868)

Victorian Occultism and the Art of Synesthesia

- March 19, 2014 in abstract art, annie besant, Art & Illustrations, Books, charles leadbeater, Featured Articles, kandinsky, madame blatavsky, modernism, occult, Painting, Philosophy, theosophy, victorian

Grounded in the theory that ideas, emotions, and even events, can manifest as visible auras, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater’s Thought-Forms (1901) is an odd and intriguing work. Benjamin Breen explores these “synesthetic” abstractions and asks to what extent they, and the Victorian mysticism of which they were born, influenced the Modernist movement that flourished in the following decades.

Comments Off on Victorian Occultism and the Art of Synesthesia