ABSTRACTION
Abstract art uses visual language such as colour and shape to create a work which may exist with a degree of originality from visual references in realism. Western art had been based around the perspective and an illusion of reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. During the 19th centaury many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would show the fundamental changes taking place in technology. The sources from which individual artists drew their inspiration was diverse, and reflected life in all areas of Western culture at that time.
Abstract art, nonfigurative art and nonobjective art are similar, but not of identical meaning.
Abstraction indicates a escape from reality and depiction of imagery in art. Artwork which takes altering (for instance colour 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, you are unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and realistic art often contains partial abstraction. Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Among the art movements that embody partial abstraction like fauvism in which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered to create the effect, and cubism, which blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities depicted.
