Everything or nothing — abstract genesis of art

Abstract

In this paper I present the specific issues of contemporary abstract art, which negated the classic mimetic categories of resemblance and original (originary), but nevertheless does not lack any reference (Goodman). I focus on the questions of the beginning, history and evolution as well as the contemporary genres of abstract art (Kandinsky, Malevich, Reinhardt and others), trying to show that the answers to the questions very often take form of panaesthetic and universal statements (“everything”) or exclusionary negations (“nothing”). Describing the contemporary abstract art I base on two — characteristic to it — concepts of anti-purism (a critic of so called “pure art”) and the strategy of object oversizing (“size matters”).