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HERE’S WHY LACROIX IS SO ADDICTIVE

HERE’S WHY LACROIX IS SO ADDICTIVE

I HAD MY first LaCroix right after grad school, when I desperately needed the fizzy satisfaction of a soda but was avoiding soda in an effort to lose the stress-induced, cheeseburger-fueled weight I’d gained over the last few years. My roommate brought home a case of the grapefruit—ahem, Pamplemousse—flavor, which judging by the look of the pink-orange-teal-purple cans, seemed like something Richard Simmons would have chugged after Jazzercise class. The internet was going crazy for this stuff and soon, so were we. It quickly took up more space in our fridge than actual food and filled our recycling bins to the top, even after we crushed them one by one. At some point, I started to wonder: What’s actually in this stuff? And why is it so incredibly addicting? Part of the problem is that there’s actually no way to know for sure what gives this very subtly flavored drink its ambiguous “essence.” Look at a LaCroix can and you’ll see it has no artificial sweeteners, no calories, no sodium, no nothing. The only two ingredients are carbonated water and natural flavor, which means almost nothing. Carbonated water is water with CO2 in it. Sure, it creates a little carbonic acid in the drink, which some folks have said could harm your teeth, but so long as you’re healthy your saliva easily neutralizes those acids. It’s the second ingredient—natural flavor—that holds the key to LaCroix’s allure. According to the FDA, natural flavor can be anything that adds flavor to a product so long as it comes directly from a plant or animal source. That’s a pretty wide range, but it’s further muddled by the fact that natural flavors can be made up of more than one ingredient—including artificial ingredients that help preserve the flavor or help it mix well with the other ingredients. “You see ‘natural flavor’ on a label and it’s really a black box of secrecy in terms of what’s being added to that product,” says David Andrews, a chemist from the Environmental Working Group.

Just like their artificial counterparts, natural flavors are complex chemical formulas invented by food companies and a small handful of flavor houses around the world. The FDA lets companies call these formulas natural even if they have synthetic solvents or preservatives because it classifies those filler ingredients as “incidental additives,” which usually come in trace amounts and get a pass from ingredient disclosure laws.

Before you start panic-counting the gallons of LaCroix you’ve consumed in the last two days alone, know that National Beverage, the obscure Florida-based company that owns LaCroix, claims that it doesn’t add anything artificial to its flavors. Instead, they use “natural essence oils … extracted from the named fruit used in each of our LaCroix flavors,” a company spokeswoman said in an email.

Which makes sense, because LaCroix doesn’t taste sweet. It doesn’t really taste like anything, actually—its appeal is in its bubbly, trustworthy blandness. The simplicity of its parts is what’s made LaCroix the darling of the internet, where health-conscious food bloggers and Instagrammers have formed an army of free advertising for National Beverage—even if some of that advertising gets a little weird at times.

Still, “there is no legal requirement to disclose what’s in the natural flavor,” says Andrews. So customers have no choice but to believe companies when they say they don’t use artificial additives in their flavors. The biggest comfort is that natural flavors are typically used in really low concentrations, says Andrews, so even if they do contain artificial ingredients, it’s unlikely that there’d be enough of anything to cause you any real harm. Also, just because a particular ingredient is classified as artificial doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something to inherently fear—it just means it was made in a lab. In fact, some naturally-derived flavors are considered artificial simply because they’re used in a way that you wouldn’t expect, like if someone used natural strawberry flavor to give a little extra oomph to a blueberry muffin. 

More to the point, though, is that added flavors of any kind are meticulously designed in labs and guarded from competitors because they’re what keep customers coming back. It’s LaCroix’s endless and unique flavors that separate it from other brands like Perrier or Dasani. “The use of these flavors is to make foods more desirable,” says Andrews. “They want you to purchase more of these products at the end of the day.” Incidental additives or not, it’s the precision science of flavor that keeps you crushing down those ugly cans of gas-infused water.

Dan Lam's drippy sculptures ooze a curvaceous anatomy of spikey neon matter

dan lam's drippy sculptures ooze a curvaceous anatomy of spikey neon matter
apr 18, 2016

dan lam’s drippy sculptures ooze a curvaceous anatomy of spikey neon matter 
all images courtesy of dan lam



artist dan lam has formed a series of vibrant, free-standing ‘drippy sculptures’ that resemble exotic organic matter seemingly sourced from another planet. placed on shelves or mounted on walls, the neon-hued artworks form elongated, stretched shapes that ooze off the edges of these surfaces. the sculptural blobs are covered in skin of hard spikes — gradating in color and size — that wrap around the curvaceous anatomy of each object.

from her studio in dallas, lam begins by sculpting polyurethane foam on top of a metal framework. these first compositions are informed by motifs and geometries found throughout the human body, flesh, foods and nature. while lam begins with a loose idea of the sculpture’s physical structure, the unpredictable nature of the foam generates unexpected outcomes guided by gravity, causing the material to form drippy deposits as it settles. the artist then adds many layers of acrylic paint and occasionally resin, depending on the desired finish — matte or gloss.
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‘thigh gap’



while these seductive objects are just begging to be touched, held, and closely examined, their uneasy spikes form a dual sensation that both invites and repels viewers at the same time. see the ‘drippy sculptures’ below, and documentation detailing the making-of ‘thigh gap’ in the gallery at the bottom of the page. 
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‘pretty but awkward’
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‘you’re a spring’
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‘suggestions’
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‘power red’
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‘thunder thighs’
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‘knobby knee’
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‘dainty’
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‘getting hot’ 
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‘just try it’
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‘just in’
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‘kinda manly’
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‘the natural look’
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‘subtle hint’

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Abstract Art


Robert Delaunay, 1912–13, Le Premier Disque, 134 cm (52.7 in.), Private collection.
Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.[1] Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time.[2]
Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning.
Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational (or realistic) art often contains partial abstraction.
Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art movements that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism in which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism, which blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities depicted.[3][4]

History[edit]

Main articles: History of painting and Western painting

Abstraction in early art and many cultures[edit]

Main articles: Prehistoric art and Eastern art history
Much of the art of earlier cultures – signs and marks on pottery, textiles, and inscriptions and paintings on rock – was simple, geometric and linear forms which might have had a symbolic or decorative purpose.[5] It is at this level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates.[citation needed] One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy or Islamic calligraphy without being able to read it.[6]

19th century[edit]

Three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were RomanticismImpressionism and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was advanced during the 19th century. Patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists.[citation needed]
James McNeill WhistlerNocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket(1874), Detroit Institute of Arts. A near abstraction, in 1877 Whistler sued the art critic John Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned this painting. Ruskin accused Whistler of "ask[ing] two hundred guineas for throwing a pot of paint in the public's face."[7][8]
Early intimations of a new art had been made by James McNeill Whistler who, in his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The falling Rocket, (1872), placed greater emphasis on visual sensation than the depiction of objects. An objective interest in what is seen, can be discerned from the paintings of John ConstableJ M W TurnerCamille Corot and from them to the Impressionists who continued the plein air painting of the Barbizon schoolPaul Cézanne had begun as an Impressionist but his aim – to make a logical construction of reality based on a view from a single point,[9] with modulated colour in flat areas – became the basis of a new visual art, later to be developed into Cubism by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Expressionist painters explored the bold use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and intense color. Expressionists produced emotionally charged paintings that were reactions to and perceptions of contemporary experience; and reactions to Impressionism and other more conservative directions of late 19th-century painting. The Expressionists drastically changed the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of psychological states of being. Although artists like Edvard Munch and James Ensor drew influences principally from the work of the Post-Impressionists they were instrumental to the advent of abstraction in the 20th century.
Henri MatisseThe Yellow Curtain, 1915. With his Fauvist color and drawing Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction.
Additionally in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe mysticism and early modernistreligious philosophy as expressed by theosophist Mme. Blavatsky had a profound impact on pioneer geometric artists like Wassily Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint. The mystical teaching of Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky also had an important influence on the early formations of the geometric abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the early 20th century.[10]

20th century[edit]

Main articles: Western paintingFauvism, and Cubism
Post Impressionism as practiced by Paul GauguinGeorges SeuratVincent van Goghand Paul Cézanne had an enormous impact on 20th-century art and led to the advent of 20th-century abstraction. The heritage of painters like Van GoghCézanneGauguin, and Seurat was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges BraqueAndré DerainRaoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. With his expressive use of color and his free and imaginative drawing Henri Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction in French Window at Collioure (1914), View of Notre-Dame (1914), and The Yellow Curtainfrom 1915. The raw language of color as developed by the Fauves directly influenced another pioneer of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky (see illustration).
Although Cubism ultimately depends upon subject matter, it became, along with Fauvism, the art movement that directly opened the door to abstraction in the 20th century. Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cubesphere and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubistinventions. Analytic cubism was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by Synthetic cubism, practiced by Braque, Picasso, Fernand LégerJuan GrisAlbert GleizesMarcel Duchamp and others into the 1920s. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter. The collage artists like Kurt Schwitters and Man Ray and others taking the clue from Cubism were instrumental to the development of the movement called Dada.
František KupkaAmorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912, oil on canvas, 210 x 200 cm, Narodni Galerie, Prague. Published in Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants" 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris.
Robert Delaunay, 1912, Windows Open Simultaneously (First Part, Third Motif), oil on canvas, 45.7 x 37.5 cm, Tate Modern
The Italian poet Marinetti published 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' in 1909, which inspired artists such as Carlo Carra in Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells and Umberto Boccioni Train in Motion, 1911, to a further stage of abstraction and profoundly influenced art movements throughout Europe.[11]
During the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or the poet Guillaume Apollinaire named the work of several artists including Robert and Sonia DelaunayOrphism.[12] He defined it as, the art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art.[13]
Since the turn of the century, cultural connections between artists of the major European and American cities had become extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal to the high aspirations of modernism. Ideas were able to cross-fertilize by means of artist's books, exhibitions and manifestos so that many sources were open to experimentation and discussion, and formed a basis for a diversity of modes of abstraction. The following extract from,'The World Backwards', gives some impression of the inter-connectedness of culture at the time: 'David Burliuk's knowledge of modern art movements must have been extremely up-to-date, for the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition, held in January 1912 (in Moscow) included not only paintings sent from Munich, but some members of the German Die Brücke group, while from Paris came work by Robert DelaunayHenri Matisse and Fernand Léger, as well as Picasso. During the Spring David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned a polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was to finance. He went abroad in May and came back determined to rival the almanac Der Blaue Reiter which had emerged from the printers while he was in Germany'.
From 1909 to 1913 many experimental works in the search for this 'pure art' had been created: Francis Picabia painted Caoutchouc, 1909,[14] The Spring, 1912,[15]Dances at the Spring[16] and The Procession, Seville, 1912;[17] Wassily Kandinsky painted Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor), 1910,[18] Improvisation 21A, the Impression series, and Picture with a Circle (1911);[19] František Kupka had painted the Orphist works, Discs of Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colors), 1912[20] and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912; Robert Delaunay painted a series entitled Simultaneous Windows and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2(1912–13);[21] Léopold Survage created Colored Rhythm (Study for the film), 1913;[22] Piet Mondrian, painted Tableau No. 1 and Composition No. 11, 1913.[23]
Wassily KandinskyOn White 2, 1923
And the search continued: The Rayist (Luchizm) drawings of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, used lines like rays of light to make a construction. Kasimir Malevich completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist, 'Black Square', in 1915. Another of the Suprematist group' Liubov Popova, created the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions between 1916 and 1921. Piet Mondrian was evolving his abstract language, of horizontal and vertical lines with rectangles of color, between 1915 and 1919, Neo-Plasticism was the aesthetic which Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and other in the group De Stijl intended to reshape the environment of the future.

Music[edit]

As visual art becomes more abstract, it develops some characteristics of music: an art form which uses the abstract elements of sound and divisions of time. Wassily Kandinsky, himself a musician, was inspired by the possibility of marks and associative color resounding in the soul. The idea had been put forward by Charles Baudelaire, that all our senses respond to various stimuli but the senses are connected at a deeper aesthetic level.
Closely related to this, is the idea that art has The spiritual dimension and can transcend 'every-day' experience, reaching a spiritual plane. The Theosophical Society popularized the ancient wisdom of the sacred books of India and China in the early years of the century. It was in this context that Piet MondrianWassily KandinskyHilma af Klint and other artists working towards an 'objectless state' became interested in the occult as a way of creating an 'inner' object. The universal and timeless shapes found in geometry: the circle, square and triangle become the spatial elements in abstract art; they are, like color, fundamental systems underlying visible reality.

Russian avant-garde[edit]

Kazimir MalevichBlack Square, 1923, The Russian Museum
Main articles: Russian avant-garde and Futurism (art)
Many of the abstract artists in Russia became Constructivists believing that art was no longer something remote, but life itself. The artist must become a technician, learning to use the tools and materials of modern production. Art into life! was Vladimir Tatlin's slogan, and that of all the future Constructivists. Varvara Stepanova and Alexandre Exter and others abandoned easel painting and diverted their energies to theatre design and graphic works. On the other side stood Kazimir MalevichAnton Pevsner and Naum Gabo. They argued that art was essentially a spiritual activity; to create the individual's place in the world, not to organize life in a practical, materialistic sense. Many of those who were hostile to the materialist production idea of art left Russia. Anton Pevsner went to France, Gabo went first to Berlin, then to England and finally to America. Kandinsky studied in Moscow then left for the Bauhaus. By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to 1921) when artists had been free to experiment was over; and by the 1930s only socialist realism was allowed.[24]

The Bauhaus[edit]

The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius.[25] The philosophy underlying the teaching program was unity of all the visual and plastic arts from architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass. This philosophy had grown from the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement in England and the Deutscher Werkbund. Among the teachers were Paul KleeWassily KandinskyJohannes IttenJosef AlbersAnni AlbersTheo van Doesburg and László Moholy-Nagy. In 1925 the school was moved to Dessau and, as the Nazi party gained control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an exhibition of degenerate art, 'Entartete Kunst' contained all types of avant-garde art disapproved of by the Nazi party. Then the exodus began: not just from the Bauhaus but from Europe in general; to Paris, London and America. Paul Klee went to Switzerland but many of the artists at the Bauhaus went to America.

Abstraction in Paris and London[edit]

Kurt SchwittersDas Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries affected by the rise of totalitarianismSophie Tauber and Jean Arp collaborated on paintings and sculpture using organic/geometric forms. The Polish Katarzyna Kobro applied mathematically based ideas to sculpture. The many types of abstraction now in close proximity led to attempts by artists to analyse the various conceptual and aesthetic groupings. An exhibition by forty-six members of the Cercle et Carré group organised by Joaquin Torres-Garcia[26] assisted by Michel Seuphor[27] contained work by the Neo-Plasticists as well as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner and Kurt Schwitters. Criticised by Theo van Doesburg to be too indefinite a collection he published the journal Art Concret setting out a manifesto defining an abstract art in which the line, color and surface only, are the concrete reality.[28] Abstraction-Création founded in 1931 as a more open group, provided a point of reference for abstract artists, as the political situation worsened in 1935, and artists again regrouped, many in London. The first exhibition of British abstract art was held in England in 1935. The following year the more international Abstract and Concrete exhibition was organised by Nicolete Gray including work by Piet MondrianJoan MiróBarbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson and Gabo moved to the St. Ives group in Cornwall to continue their 'constructivist' work.[29]

America: mid-century[edit]

The above is a 1939–42 oil on canvas painting by Mondrian titled "Composition No. 10". Responding to it, fellow De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburgsuggested a link between non-representational works of art and ideals of peace and spirituality.[30]
During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists fled Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction, surrealism, and dada were represented in New York: Marcel DuchampFernand LégerPiet MondrianJacques LipchitzAndré MassonMax ErnstAndré Breton, were just a few of the exiled Europeans who arrived in New York.[31] The rich cultural influences brought by the European artists were distilled and built upon by local New York painters. The climate of freedom in New York allowed all of these influences to flourish. The art galleries that primarily had focused on European art began to notice the local art community and the work of younger American artists who had begun to mature. Certain artists at this time became distinctly abstract in their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrian's painting Composition No. 10, 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to the rectangle and abstract art in general. Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as Georgia O'Keeffe who, while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure maverick in that she painted highly abstract forms while not joining any specific group of the period.
Eventually American artists who were working in a great diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic groups. The best known group of American artists became known as the Abstract expressionists and the New York School. In New York City there was an atmosphere which encouraged discussion and there was new opportunity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers John D. Graham and Hans Hofmann became important bridge figures between the newly arrived European Modernists and the younger American artists coming of age. Mark Rothko, born in Russia, began with strongly surrealist imagery which later dissolved into his powerful color compositions of the early 1950s. The expressionistic gesture and the act of painting itself, became of primary importance to Jackson PollockRobert Motherwell, and Franz Kline. While during the 1940s Arshile Gorky's and Willem de Kooning's figurative work evolved into abstraction by the end of the decade. New York City became the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards it; from other places in America as well.[32]

Abstraction in the 21st century[edit]

A commonly held idea is that pluralism characterizes art at the beginning of the 21st century. There is no consensus, nor need there be, as to a representative style of the age. There is an anything goes attitude that prevails; an "everything going on", and consequently "nothing going on" syndrome; this creates an aesthetic traffic jam with no firm and clear direction and with every lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. Consequently, magnificent and important works of art continue to be made albeit in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments, the marketplace being left to judge merit.[citation needed]
Digital artcomputer artinternet arthard-edge paintinggeometric abstractionappropriationhyperrealismphotorealismexpressionismminimalismlyrical abstraction, pop art, op art, abstract expressionism, color field painting, monochrome paintingneo-expressionismcollagedecollageintermediaassemblagedigital paintingpostmodern art, neo-Dada painting, shaped canvas painting, environmental mural paintinggraffitifigure paintinglandscape paintingportrait painting, are a few continuing and current directions at the beginning of the 21st century.
Into the 21st century abstraction remains very much in view, its main themes: the transcendentalthe contemplative and the timeless are exemplified by Barnett NewmanJohn McLaughlin, and Agnes Martin as well as younger living artists. Art as Object as seen in the Minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank Stella are still seen today in newer permutations. The poetic, Lyrical Abstraction and the sensuous use of color seen in the work of painters as diverse as Robert MotherwellPatrick HeronKenneth NolandSam FrancisCy TwomblyRichard DiebenkornHelen FrankenthalerJoan Mitchell, among others.
There was a resurgence after the war and into the 1950s of the figurative, as neo-Dadafluxushappeningconceptual artneo-expressionisminstallation artperformance artvideo art and pop art have come to signify the age of consumerism. The distinction between abstract and figurative art has, over the last twenty years, become less defined leaving a wider range of ideas for all artists.

Causation[edit]

One socio-historical explanation that has been offered for the growing prevalence of the abstract in modern art – an explanation linked to the name of Theodor W. Adorno – is that such abstraction is a response to, and a reflection of, the growing abstraction of social relations in industrial society.[33]
Frederic Jameson similarly sees modernist abstraction as a function of the abstract power of money, equating all things equally as exchange-values.[34] The social content of abstract art is then precisely the abstract nature of social existence – legal formalities, bureaucratic impersonalization, information/power – in the world of late modernity.[35]
Post-Jungians by contrast would see the quantum theories with their disintegration of conventional ideas of form and matter as underlying the divorce of the concrete and the abstract in modern art.[36]

Gallery[edit]

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