Christoph Niemann: Illustration

This week, I watched the first episode of a documentary named 'Abstract: The art of design' on Netflix. I was surprised to find out how much I could learn from this and I highly recommend it to all lovers of art!

The man who starred in this episode was Christoph Niemann who is an illustrator that has created many books and also designs covers for The New Yorker. When watching the documentary, I realised how downplayed abstract art is and how I never quite understood it until now. When Christoph described the concepts behind his works, It becomes something quite simple to something genius and thoughtful. Its the meaning behind the reasons and methods which makes the art so interesting.
Some of his New Yorker covers which I found interesting:

To any New Yorker, I can imagine these would be familiar every day sights through their eyes but in an abstract setting. In the programme, Christoph spoke a lot about familiarity and how nothing is really new but created differently to make it seem new. An example he used was that love songs have been around for around 500 years but pop music is all about making it different and new to make it feel like its never been done in that way before.

When it comes to abstract art, the meanings of real life become distorted. What I mean by this is that I think it can create an ugly real life scene look beautiful. Christoph created an illustration which basically described this theory and this is how I realised the great intelligence behind abstract art.

This abstract-o-meter shows how a real heart is ugly and quite disgusting. This to us doesn't seem like love. on the 'Too abstract' side a red square doesn't make sense and doesn't read as love, just a red box. But when we look at the 'just right' in the middle, a simple red abstract shape is more beautiful and less simple which is the perfect mid-ground between realistic and too abstract. This diagram helped me understand the reason I feel is behind abstract art. It almost hides the imperfections of real life and perfects the pixels of extreme abstract.