Some people say that the beginning of abstract art is accidental, but was it? There is also evidence that art is slowly making the transition to abstraction. That's both sides of the story.
Once the abstract painting started by accident, I heard a story. Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian artist from the early 20th century, walks into his studio at dusk one day and sees a painting he is working on from a new perspective. The light at this time of the day, combined with his approach angle, made his paintings look like a motley array of patches that he thought were stunning and beautiful. This made him realize that only color can arouse people's emotions, and no specific content is needed. Some people say this is the beginning of abstract art, maybe the beginning of a really, unrepresentative abstract painting, but there are a lot of things in the art world that are leading the way.
The transition from representational art (specific, identifiable objects) to abstract art is slow. Some artists who are by no means abstract artists have played a role in this transformation. The original use and meaning of abstract painting were different from that of today. Primitive abstract art depicts objects drawn from the natural world. It doesn't look entirely realistic, and you can easily identify the subject, but it's not a direct representation of the subject either.
Some of the first artists to paint in this way would be acceptable to almost everyone. They would be impressionists (dating from 1860), such as Monet, Renoir, and Paul Cézanne. These artists are particularly interested in using light, color, and motion to capture sensory impressions. They like to paint outdoors and capture the changing light. The colors used by the impressionists are lighter, brighter, and more vivid than the traditional ones, with a lower degree of fusion, which can make the shadows even. This form, as well as the play of light and motion, made the impressionists out of the traditional view.
Soon after the impressionist movement, the new impressionists came under the influence of the impressionists. However, they are not concerned with light, color, and movement, but are more interested in the technical aspects of design and color and in the preparation and planning of canvases. The strongest feature of neo-impressionism is a sense of stillness. The new impressionists used different techniques, but one popular form was the Pointillism, which used tiny dots of color to paint pictures on canvas. The tranquility evoked in these paintings, as well as the lack of precise detail, predisposes them to abstraction.
After trying light for 20 years, some artists got bored and moved on to post-impressionism. Some famous post-impressionists include Van Gogh and Gauguin. One of the defining features of post-impressionism is that at the heart of abstract painting is the artist's emphasis on evoking feelings and emotions rather than painting images. Although the subject matter of these paintings is still recognizable, many of them have clear abstract properties.
This subtle change in the purpose of painting gave many artists more room to explore, and soon after, Wassily Kandinsky began painting what is considered the first abstract painting canvas. Kandinsky was an influential artist's psychology paper, and the ideas behind abstract art began to spread rapidly, followed by many abstract movements.
