COBRA or Cobra , often stylized as CoBrA , was a European avant-garde art group active from 1948 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont from the initials of the members' home countries' capital cities: Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br), Amsterdam (A).
66-472: During the time of occupation of World War II, the Netherlands had been disconnected from the art world beyond its borders. CoBrA was formed shortly thereafter. This international movement of artists who worked experimentally evolved from the criticisms of Western society and a common desire to break away from existing art movements, including "detested" naturalism and "sterile" abstraction . Experimentation
132-406: A synonym for abstract art in general. Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world —it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate
198-714: A child" Karel Appel insisted. As part of the Western Left, they were built upon the fusion of Art and Life through experiment in order to unite form and expression. They exhibited mainly in Holland, but also Paris and other countries in Europe. The first major exhibition was held at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in November 1949 under the title "International Experimental Art". Else Alfelt , one of
264-743: A concept of that feature. The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and the problem of universals . It has also recently become popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction . Another philosophical tool for the discussion of abstraction is thought space. John Locke defined abstraction in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding : 'So words are used to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, which are taken from particular things; but if every particular idea that we take in had its own special name, there would be no end to names. To prevent this,
330-467: A decorative input from their children and graffiti . One of the new approaches that united the CoBrA artists was their unrestrained use of strong colors, along with violent handwritings and figuration which can be either frightening or humorous. Their art was alive with subhuman figures in order to mirror the terror and weakness of our time unlike the dehumanized art of Abstraction . This spontaneous method
396-453: A detective or philosopher/scientist/engineer might seek to learn about something, at progressively deeper levels of detail, to solve a crime or a puzzle. In philosophical terminology , abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects . But an idea can be symbolized . Typically, abstraction is used in the arts as a synonym for abstract art in general. Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with
462-659: A few women involved in the movement, participated in this first exhibition. The museum's director and curator Willem Sandberg was interested in bringing experimentalism and abstraction to The Netherlands, and had also been an active member of the Dutch Resistance during the war. He was deeply involved with the CoBrA group and maintained direct contacts between the artists and the Stedelijk Museum. The architect Aldo van Eyck , who would later become known for his architecture of playgrounds as cultural critique,
528-565: A framework (categorical concepts related to computing problems) from specific instances which implement details. This means that the program code can be written so that code does not have to depend on the specific details of supporting applications, operating system software, or hardware, but on a categorical concept of the solution. A solution to the problem can then be integrated into the system framework with minimal additional work. This allows programmers to take advantage of another programmer's work, while requiring only an abstract understanding of
594-472: A general name that is applicable to any existing thing that fits that abstract idea.' (2.11.9) Carl Jung 's definition of abstraction broadened its scope beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mutually exclusive, different complementary psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Together they form a structural totality of the differentiating abstraction process. Abstraction operates in one of these functions when it excludes
660-448: A material process. Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1899–1990) asked: "Can there be abstraction other than by thought?" He used the example of commodity abstraction to show that abstraction occurs in practice as people create systems of abstract exchange that extend beyond the immediate physicality of the object and yet have real and immediate consequences. This work was extended through the 'Constitutive Abstraction' approach of writers associated with
726-412: A milestone in the development of Tachisme and European abstract expressionism . CoBrA was perhaps the last avant-garde movement of the twentieth century. According to Nathalie Aubert the group only lasted officially for three years (1948 to 1951). After that period each artist in the group developed their own individual paths. The manifesto, entitled, " La cause était entendue " (The Case Was Settled)
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#1732794294365792-496: A particular place and time. However, in the secondary sense of the term 'abstraction', this physical object can carry materially abstracting processes. For example, record-keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in containers. According to Schmandt-Besserat 1981 , these clay containers contained tokens,
858-551: A particular property (e.g., good ). Questions about the properties of things are then propositions about predicates, which propositions remain to be evaluated by the investigator. In the graph 1 below , the graphical relationships like the arrows joining boxes and ellipses might denote predicates. Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous referents . For example, " happiness " can mean experiencing various positive emotions, but can also refer to life satisfaction and subjective well-being . Likewise, " architecture " refers not only to
924-441: A particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, excluding but not eliminating the other phenomenal and cognitive characteristics of that particular ball. In a type–token distinction , a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball'). Abstraction in its secondary use
990-433: A recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory. Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs and shapes. In music,
1056-439: A specific cat, to semantic abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT, to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as " object " as opposed to "action". Non-existent things in any particular place and time are often seen as abstract. By contrast, instances, or members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many different places and times. Those abstract things are then said to be multiply instantiated , in
1122-477: A unifying doctrine of complete freedom of colour and form, as well as antipathy towards Surrealism , the artists also shared an interest in Marxism as well as modernism. Their working method was based on spontaneity and experiment, and they drew their inspiration in particular from children's drawings, from primitive art forms and from the work of Paul Klee and Joan Miró . Coming together as an amalgamation of
1188-530: Is a material process , discussed in the themes below . Thinking in abstractions is considered by anthropologists , archaeologists , and sociologists to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour , which is believed to have developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language , which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking. Abstraction involves induction of ideas or
1254-554: Is an elementary methodological tool in several disciplines of social science. These disciplines have definite and different concepts of "man" that highlight those aspects of man and his behaviour by idealization that are relevant for the given human science . For example, homo sociologicus is the man as sociology abstracts and idealizes it, depicting man as a social being. Moreover, we could talk about homo cyber sapiens (the man who can extend his biologically determined intelligence thanks to new technologies), or homo creativus (who
1320-469: Is now constitutively and materially more abstract than at the time when princes ruled as the embodiment of extended power'. The way that physical objects, like rocks and trees, have being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being, for example the way the concrete , particular , individuals pictured in picture 1 exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1 exist. That difference accounts for
1386-426: Is simply creative). Abstraction (combined with Weberian idealization ) plays a crucial role in economics - hence abstractions such as "the market" and the generalized concept of " business ". Breaking away from directly experienced reality was a common trend in 19th-century sciences (especially physics ), and this was the effort which fundamentally determined the way economics tried (and still tries) to approach
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#17327942943651452-471: Is that highly abstract concepts are more difficult to learn, and might require a degree of mathematical maturity and experience before they can be assimilated. In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality . Atonal music has no key signature, and is characterized by the exploration of internal numeric relationships. A recent meta-analysis suggests that
1518-439: Is the ultimate and common feature of all bodies. Neoclassical economists created the indefinitely abstract notion of homo economicus by following the same procedure. Economists abstract from all individual and personal qualities in order to get to those characteristics that embody the essence of economic activity. Eventually, it is the substance of the economic man that they try to grasp. Any characteristic beyond it only disturbs
1584-465: The agent and CAT:Elsie depicts an example of an is-a relationship, as does the arrow between the location and the MAT . The arrows between the gerund / present participle SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the diagram 's basic relationship; "agent is SITTING on location" ; Elsie is an instance of CAT . Although the description sitting-on (graph 1) is more abstract than
1650-408: The commodity abstraction recognizes a parallel process. The state (polity) as both concept and material practice exemplifies the two sides of this process of abstraction. Conceptually, 'the current concept of the state is an abstraction from the much more concrete early-modern use as the standing or status of the prince, his visible estates'. At the same time, materially, the 'practice of statehood
1716-407: The human brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres differ in their handling of abstraction. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage. Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in concept formation of recognizing some set of common features in individuals , and on that basis forming
1782-409: The ontological usefulness of the word "abstract". The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times. A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a particular individual that occupies
1848-725: The Dutch group Reflex, the Danish group Høst and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealist Group, the group only lasted a few years but managed to achieve a number of objectives in that time: the periodical Cobra , a series of collaborations between various members called Peintures-Mot and two large-scale exhibitions. The first of these was held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, November 1949,
1914-841: The Journal Arena . Two books that have taken this theme of the abstraction of social relations as an organizing process in human history are Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract Community (1996) and an associated volume published in 2006, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In . These books argue that a nation is an abstract community bringing together strangers who will never meet as such; thus constituting materially real and substantial, but abstracted and mediated relations. The books suggest that contemporary processes of globalization and mediatization have contributed to materially abstracting relations between people, with major consequences for how humans live their lives . One can readily argue that abstraction
1980-628: The SMA"). The CoBrA artists are considered scribblers and con artists . Newspapers spoke of offensive art and provocation on the part of the artists, and one evening for experimental poetry at the Stedelijk was the occasion for a public brawl. The last CoBrA exhibit was located in Liège , Belgium, in 1951. Shortly after this exhibit, the group dissolved. The show was organised by Pierre Alechinsky , an artist from Belgium. The Dutch architect, Van Eyck designed
2046-412: The abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient. This is true for all verbal/abstract communication. For example, many different things can be red . Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1 , to the right). The property of redness and the relation sitting-on are therefore abstractions of those objects. Specifically,
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2112-572: The approach of abstraction (going from particular facts collected into one general idea). Newton (1642–1727) derived the motion of the planets from Copernicus ' (1473–1543) simplification, that the Sun is the center of the Solar System ; Kepler (1571–1630) compressed thousands of measurements into one expression to finally conclude that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit about the Sun; Galileo (1564–1642) repeated one hundred specific experiments into
2178-427: The color red . That definition, however, suffers from the difficulty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which things exist in reality). For example, it is difficult to agree to whether concepts like God , the number three , and goodness are real, abstract, or both. An approach to resolving such difficulty is to use predicates as a general term for whether things are variously real, abstract, concrete, or of
2244-561: The concept "cat" or the concept "telephone". Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are abstractions , they are not abstract in the sense of the objects in graph 1 below . We might look at other graphs, in a progression from cat to mammal to animal , and see that animal is more abstract than mammal ; but on the other hand mammal is a harder idea to express, certainly in relation to marsupial or monotreme . Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars —e.g.,
2310-414: The conceptual diagram graph 1 identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their five labels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph. Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram. For example, the arrow between
2376-574: The current place of the avant-garde movement. The name of the manifesto was also a play on words from an earlier document signed by Belgian and French Revolutionary Surrealists in July 1947, entitled "La cause est entendue" (The Case Is Settled). The European artists were different from their American counterparts (the Abstract expressionists ) for they preferred the process over the product and introduced primitive, mythical, and folkloric elements along with
2442-456: The design of safe, functional buildings, but also to elements of creation and innovation which aim at elegant solutions to construction problems, to the use of space, and to the attempt to evoke an emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers and users of the building. Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in
2508-442: The distinction between "abstract" and " concrete ". In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects, and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is itself an object ). Chains of abstractions can be construed , moving from neural impulses arising from sensory perception to basic abstractions such as color or shape , to experiential abstractions such as
2574-452: The economic aspects of social life. It is abstraction we meet in the case of both Newton's physics and the neoclassical theory, since the goal was to grasp the unchangeable and timeless essence of phenomena. For example, Newton created the concept of the material point by following the abstraction method so that he abstracted from the dimension and shape of any perceptible object, preserving only inertial and translational motion. Material point
2640-468: The exhibition layout, just as he had for the 1949 CoBrA exhibition in Stedelijk. The innovations of this exhibit were that the composition for the wall was in a grid formation. In addition, the sculptures, which were featured in this show were on coal beds from the Liège area itself. This show was not specific to only CoBrA artists, and also, major artists of the CoBrA movement were not in this exhibit due to
2706-631: The existing conflict within the group that eventually led to the collapse of CoBrA shortly after in the same year. Notable artists who had contact with, and/or were influenced by CoBrA: There is a Cobra Museum in Amstelveen , Netherlands, displaying works by Karel Appel and other international avant-garde artists. The NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida , is known for its large assemblage of works of CoBrA art. The museum displays works by Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, and Asger Jorn,
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2772-642: The graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (picture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vagueness is characteristic of abstraction. Thus something as simple as a newspaper might be specified to six levels, as in Douglas Hofstadter 's illustration of that ambiguity, with a progression from abstract to concrete in Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979): An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels of detail with no loss of generality . But perhaps
2838-579: The implementation of another's work, apart from the problem that it solves. Abstractions and levels of abstraction play an important role in the theory of general semantics originated by Alfred Korzybski . Anatol Rapoport wrote "Abstracting is a mechanism by which an infinite variety of experiences can be mapped on short noises (words)." Francis Fukuyama defines history as "a deliberate attempt of abstraction in which we separate out important from unimportant events". Researchers in linguistics frequently apply abstraction so as to allow an analysis of
2904-427: The law of falling bodies. An abstraction can be seen as a compression process, mapping multiple different pieces of constituent data to a single piece of abstract data; based on similarities in the constituent data, for example, many different physical cats map to the abstraction "CAT". This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from
2970-577: The literal depiction of things from the visible world—it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory. Later still, abstraction
3036-432: The mind makes particular ideas received from particular things become general; which it does by considering them as they are in the mind—mental appearances—separate from all other existences, and from the circumstances of real existence, such as time, place, and so on. This procedure is called abstraction. In it, an idea taken from a particular thing becomes a general representative of all of the same kind, and its name becomes
3102-520: The movement's leading exponents. Auctioneers Bruun Rasmussen held an auction of CoBrA artists on April 3, 2006 in Copenhagen. It set records for the highest price for an Asger Jorn painting (6.4 million DKK for Tristesse Blanche ) and for the highest amount raised in a single auction in Denmark (30 million DKK in total). Abstraction (art) Typically, abstraction is used in the arts as
3168-580: The other at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Liège in 1951. The group is notable for having a Black artist member, Ernest Mancoba , who was married to Sonja Ferlov Mancoba , a Danish sculptor who was one of a few active women in the movement. In November 1949 the group officially changed its name to Internationale des Artistes Expérimentaux with membership having spread across Europe and the United States, although this name has never stuck. The movement
3234-426: The particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular . This is similar to qualia and sumbebekos . Still retaining the primary meaning of ' abstrere ' or 'to draw away from', the abstraction of money, for example, works by drawing away from the particular value of things allowing completely incommensurate objects to be compared (see the section on 'Physicality' below). Karl Marx 's writing on
3300-503: The phenomena of language at the desired level of detail. A commonly used abstraction, the phoneme , abstracts speech sounds in such a way as to neglect details that cannot serve to differentiate meaning. Other analogous kinds of abstractions (sometimes called " emic units ") considered by linguists include morphemes , graphemes , and lexemes . Abstraction also arises in the relation between syntax , semantics , and pragmatics . Pragmatics involves considerations that make reference to
3366-423: The rational, logical qualities ... Abstract feeling does the same with ... its feeling-values. ... I put abstract feelings on the same level as abstract thoughts. ... Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as opposed to sensuous sensation and abstract intuition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic intuition . (Jung, [1921] (1971): par. 678). Social theorists deal with abstraction both as an ideational and as
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#17327942943653432-411: The sense of picture 1 , picture 2 , etc., shown below . It is not sufficient, however, to define abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define abstraction as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the concepts "cat" and "telephone" abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of
3498-502: The simultaneous influence of the other functions and other irrelevancies, such as emotion. Abstraction requires selective use of this structural split of abilities in the psyche. The opposite of abstraction is concretism . Abstraction is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types . There is an abstract thinking , just as there is abstract feeling , sensation and intuition . Abstract thinking singles out
3564-542: The synthesis of particular facts into one general theory about something. It is the opposite of specification , which is the analysis or breaking-down of a general idea or abstraction into concrete facts. Abstraction can be illustrated by Francis Bacon 's Novum Organum (1620), a book of modern scientific philosophy written in the late Jacobean era of England to encourage modern thinkers to collect specific facts before making any generalizations. Bacon used and promoted induction as an abstraction tool; it complemented but
3630-459: The term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality . Atonal music has no key signature , and is characterized by the exploration of internal numeric relationships. This art -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from
3696-577: The total of which were the count of objects being transferred. The containers thus served as something of a bill of lading or an accounts book. In order to avoid breaking open the containers for the count, marks were placed on the outside of the containers. These physical marks, in other words, acted as material abstractions of a materially abstract process of accounting, using conceptual abstractions (numbers) to communicate its meaning. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences, like
3762-492: The use and classifying of specific examples, literal ( real or concrete ) signifiers, first principles , or other methods. "An abstraction" is the outcome of this process — a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related concepts as a group , field , or category . Conceptual abstractions may be made by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon , selecting only those aspects which are relevant for
3828-677: The user of the language; semantics considers expressions and what they denote (the designata ) abstracted from the language user; and syntax considers only the expressions themselves, abstracted from the designata. Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying structures, patterns or properties of a mathematical concept or object, removing any dependence on real-world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena. The advantages of abstraction in mathematics are: The main disadvantage of abstraction
3894-424: The verbal system has a greater engagement with abstract concepts when the perceptual system is more engaged in processing concrete concepts. This is because abstract concepts elicit greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus compared to concrete concepts which elicit greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Other research into
3960-674: Was a rejection of Renaissance art, specialization, and 'civilized art', they preferred 'uncivilized' forms of expression which created an interplay between the conscious and the unconscious instead of the Surrealist interest in the unconscious alone. The childlike in their method meant a pleasure in painting, in the materials, forms, and finally the picture itself; this aesthetic notion was called 'desire unbound'. The Dutch Artists in particular within CoBrA (Corneille, Appel, Constant) were interested in Children's art."We Wanted to start again like
4026-534: Was asked to do the interior design of the exhibition. The close relationship between Van Eyck and the artists from the CoBrA, who also drew their inspiration in particular from children's drawings, makes it probable that much of Eyck's early inspiration for the playgrounds may have derived from CoBrA. The Stedelijk Museum exhibition gave rise to furious criticism from press and the public. A critic from Het Vrije Volk (Free People) wrote, "Geklad, geklets en geklodder in het Stedelijk Museum" ("Smirch, twaddle and mess in
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#17327942943654092-462: Was distinct from the ancient deductive -thinking approach that had dominated the intellectual world since the times of Greek philosophers like Thales , Anaximander , and Aristotle . Thales ( c. 624 –546 BCE) believed that everything in the universe comes from one main substance, water. He deduced or specified from a general idea, "everything is water," to the specific forms of water such as ice, snow, fog, and rivers. Modern scientists used
4158-590: Was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs. Computer scientists use abstraction to make models that can be used and re-used without having to re-write all the program code for each new application on every different type of computer. They communicate their solutions with the computer by writing source code in some particular computer language which can be translated into machine code for different types of computers to execute. Abstraction allows program designers to separate
4224-400: Was officially disbanded in 1951, but many of its members remained close, with Dotremont in particular continuing collaborations with many of the leading members of the group. The primary focus of the group consisted of semi-abstract paintings with brilliant color, violent brushwork, and distorted human figures inspired by primitive and folk art and similar to American action painting . CoBrA was
4290-491: Was the symbol of an unfettered freedom, which, according to Constant, was ultimately embodied by children and the expressions of children. CoBrA was formed by Karel Appel , Constant , Corneille , Christian Dotremont , Asger Jorn , and Joseph Noiret on 8 November 1948 in the Café Notre-Dame, Paris, with the signing of a manifesto, "La cause était entendue" ("The Case Was Settled"), drawn up by Dotremont. Formed with
4356-539: Was written by CoBrA member Christian Dotremont and signed by all founding members in Paris in 1948. It was directly speaking to their experience attending the Centre International de Documentation sur l'Art d'Avant-garde in which they felt the atmosphere was sterile and authoritarian. It was a statement of working collaboratively in an organic mode of experimentation in order to develop their work separate from
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