There used to be a great deal of debate surrounding the legitimacy of certain forms of "Modern" art, particularly the reductionistic/deconstructionistic sort. In sort of a neo-renaissance, artists and architects alike reacted to Victorianism in a way similar to the proponents of realism reacted to the idealism of ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics. This debate was brought back to my mind when I walked into my oldest son, Jeffrey's room and asked him what he was up to. The response I got was unexpected, "I'm doing abstract art, Dad". Some involved in the debate over the legitimacy of abstract art (for the purpose of this article I will limit the term art to mean 2 dimensional expression) charged those artists with a lack of talent because the realistic rendering of figure was not present. I for one would not make the same claim, but I will say this, forms of abstract art display the artist's talent for composition, harmony, positive versus negative space, and other fundamentals taught in "2D" classes. But those same artists don't display in their abstract works, the same degree of talent in realism, even if they are capable of it. On the other hand, the those artists involved in realistic portraiture or landscape rendering, assuming the posses the same handle on the fundamentals, display in their expressions of realism, the talent of realism in addition to a talent for the fundamentals.
Jeffrey's Art
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