How would you explain the meaning of “abstract” to a first grader?

You know how people color inside the lines in coloring books? Well some people make pictures outside the lines, just whatever they feel like. That’s abstract art.

Abstract is like when you look at clouds in the sky and you decide what you see. One cloud might look like a bunny, another cloud might look like a man with a hat. Sometimes clouds evoke emotions, they can look angry and dark, or happy and fluffy.

The artist has an idea in his head of what the painting represents, but the observer can try to see it through the artists eyes, or the observer can decide what the work means for themselves.

You could ask him what he sees in the painting and tell him what you see. He might not see anything, it might be random to him.

Why not google Rothko or Kandinsky?

It’s like a stick man instead of a picture of a real man.

Oh, and you’re getting a dictionary for your birthday.

The drawing can be interpreted/understood in many ways. And then go on to give some examples of interpretations.

This would be a case where a few pictures pulled up from your phone should suffice.

I would have trouble explaining abstraction as it relates to art. I don’t know if a first grader can fully understand the concept. I checked the Wikipedia article on it. The definition is not that straightforward.

The general abstraction process is easier to describe. You might start looking at a particular insect and notice that it is a bee, because it has characteristics similar to other bees. Then you can combine all bees with similar types of animals and refer to insects. Insects would be included with animals, which can be distinguished from plants. How this relates to abstract art is not particularly clear. All art is abstract in the sense that it moves us to look beyond the particular work of art and relate it to more general concepts.

“You know that kind of art that looks like you could’ve painted it?”

No, but I could start by talking about realistic art that’s meant to look like something you know, whereas abstract art isn’t meant to look like anything, it’s about the colors and the design. It would be most effective to show him clear examples of the two and how they differ. It would be difficult to explain to a first grader that abstract art is about the formal qualities of art as opposed to the representative qualities, but I’m sure he could note the difference between art as representation and art as form using visual aids.

As a side note, one of my favorite artists is Rothko (his art is much like my grandfather’s) and there is a play called Red about Rothko’s life. I like the play very much. Over and over again in the play Rothko asks, “what do you see?” My grandfather used to ask my sister and I the same thing about his own art. There was one painting I remember that I told him it looked like a pot with something burning inside of it on the stove. He told me it was looking at the land from above; green grass and dirt in varying rectangular shapes like when you fly over farm land.

Here is a wikipedia about the play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_(play). Maybe it is available online?

I wonder if my grandparents knew Rothko? I found out after my grandmother’s death that they knew some people in the art world that I did not realize. Rothko would have been a little older than my grandparents.