Painting I / The Pictorial Language
Practice question · Select all that apply

Which of these are accurate about the disputed beginnings of abstraction?

Hints
  1. Three are documented; one invents a shared exhibition.
  2. Ask whether being first is the same as being influential.
Show the answer
  • A. The date usually given for Kandinsky's first abstract watercolour is contested and may be later
  • B. Because that work was withheld, priority and influence come apart completely in this case
  • D. Its maker left instructions that the sealed work not be shown for twenty years after her death
Why

The fourth is a fabrication of convenience. The third is the useful one: work nobody could see cannot have influenced anyone, so being first and being consequential come apart entirely here, which is why priority disputes in this period are arguments about two different things at once.

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