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Nonrepresentational Art

Art
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Art that does not depict recognizable objects or scenes. In poetry, it can describe language organized through sound, pattern, and abstraction rather than direct reference.

Detailed Definition
Nonrepresentational art avoids portraying identifiable people, places, or objects, concentrating instead on color, line, form, texture, and spatial relation. In poetry, a comparable practice may foreground sound, visual arrangement, repetition, or associative movement without building a stable narrative world. Such writing can challenge readers to experience language materially and musically, while still producing emotion or thought through pattern, rhythm, tension, and the unexpected relations among words.
Example
Example in poetry:
A nonrepresentational poem may avoid describing recognizable objects and instead build meaning through sound, color, rhythm, and repeated syllables; Gertrude Stein's experiments with repetition can help students see how language may become less representational and more pattern-based; A lyric made of phrases such as "red turning, hollow bright, pulse after pulse" can resemble nonrepresentational art without depicting a scene; A poet may arrange fragmented words across the page so that the composition matters as much as any literal statement
Additional Notes
Abstract poetry may prioritize sound, rhythm, visual pattern, and association over clear narrative reference.
Also Known As
Abstract Art Nonobjective Art Nonfigurative Art
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