Our recent class project was to recreate a piece of work from the
centennial anniversary of abstract art exhibition, Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925. I chose to recreate Theo Van Doesburg's piece, Study for Composition (The Cow). The piece was done using oil and charcoal on paper. At the time of the piece, Van Doesburg was working on cow studies, and his original figurative picture changed into geometric shapes. The study, to change all of the curved parts of the animal into groups of rectangles, allows this piece to become a form of abstract art, even though the shape can be very clearly distinguished as a cow.The piece looks fairly simple but interesting. The piece seems simple because it is not realistic looking. The very nature of abstraction seems to be to break reality up into simple parts. The Cow, though it has difficult and time consuming shapes to program, has many more localized and separate, simple parts when compared to a photo of a cow. I find the piece interesting because of it's small use of colors. There are few colors, but I think they are effectively used to bring the focus of the picture to the head of the animal. It is almost as if the colored parts, have a special meaning. For example, the brain of the animal may be the most important part, therefore, it is a large colored square. The mouth may also be fairly important, and therefore, is a smaller, yet still colorful square. Without further ado, I would like to present the lovely Study for Composition (The Cow) by Theo Van Doesburg...
