In the light of the current interest in abstraction within the field of contemporary art it might be relevant to reconsider the relationship between abstraction and representation. Historically speaking abstract art has by many of its practitioners been viewed as a means to metaphysical insights or alternatively, as a trace of the inherently human and emotional gestures that produced it. This underlines the fact that abstraction admits of degrees. Moreover, it gives support to the view that the distinction between abstraction and representation is based on a difference in degree. It´s not based on a difference in kind.
By the end of 2008 a major exhibition of the works of Paul Klee was held at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The exhibition illustrated in a very nice and straightforward way how abstraction and representation is interrelated in the works of Paul Klee. As an artist Klee drew no sharp line between the abstract and the representative. On the contrary, he excellently oscillated in the very same picture between the abstract and the representative in a way that profoundly blurred the distinction.
Anyway, the linking of the abstract with the representative might point towards an interesting field, also for current artistic explorations of the dynamics of abstraction. Unless we go for a blurred distinction between the abstract and the representative, we might at the end of the day be left with the illusions of a pure abstraction resulting in a focus solely upon the physicality of art.
