For my blog post this week, I explored the Inventing Abstraction network on MoMA.org. This exhibition was made to celebrate the work of some of the earliest abstract artists in Europe from the early 20th century and follow the modernization of abstraction as a form of art over some years. This project was very fun to play around with and look at all the different connections as someone who is not very artistically inclined.
Inventing Abstraction shows a large network of a variety of abstraction artists (the nodes) and connects them seemingly by the countries in which they worked (the edges). I loved that this program allows users to click on different artists to not only see their works, birthplace, places worked, and interests but also interact with the works in the side panel that pops up! You can see the names of the works (which they kindly translate for you) and information such as the dimensions, location, and materials used! I find it fun to click through a couple of them and see what information they provide and learn more about these artists that frankly, I had never heard of.
Being able to see the connections of who worked in the same parts of the world, and maybe even together through this network, along with pictures of the artists’ works, allows us to compare the artworks of different regions to find where artists may have used similar techniques or drawn inspiration from the same sources, or even each other. The way art has been presented to me in a historical context often feels incredibly individualistic and isolated, but this network supported the idea that there is no such thing as an isolated history. Although only one person in the long list of credits that go into a work of art is often recognized, there are often many unseen hands that helped said person along the way, some more directly than others, but I find that those people aren’t always recognized.
