Abstraction/Not Abstraction: Recent Drawing and Painting in Los Angeles I-BEAM GALLERY
For early to mid-20th century artists, the paradigm for abstract art’s development can be expressed concisely by Dutch artist Theo Van Doesburg’s well-known Studies for Composition VIII (The Cow) c.1917, in which a series of images of a cow become progressively more abstract, culminating in the final work, Composition VIII (The Cow), c.1918. That painting, which is ostensibly a completely non-objective artwork if viewed separately from the other works, is still clearly perceptible as an image of a cow when seen in the context of the earlier images.
