There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Pablo Picasso
About This Quote

Abstract artist and music composer Igor Stravinsky once said: “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” He was saying that if you want to create an abstract piece of art, you must first create a work of recognizable art. For example, if you try to paint a blank canvas, it comes out as a blank canvas.

If you paint flowers, it would be flowers. If you try to paint a plain wall, it will look like a wall because it is now recognizable as such. The same goes for music.

If you attempt to write a piece of music without any notes or specific melody that people recognize, the music will sound like noise and not like music at all. It is impossible to write an abstract piece of music; we all know how it sounds when we hear it and we know exactly what we are listening to – there is no way around this fact. So, the trick is once again to start with something recognizable for your audience and then remove all traces of reality from it.

You can still make the object recognizable later; the trick is how much you do so and how far away from perception you can take your audience with your work.

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