As the history of European paintings, since the photographs came out, the role of Aristotle which imitated something, collapsed. Where there abstract paintings came out too. In other words, modern artists began to explore expressions that could be made in the paintings only -- that did not imitate something. When World War2 was over, a lot of Western painters went to America. The main people of the abstract painting also moved there, especially then Mondrian's thought was the simplest method in the abstract painting (that is, the most painterly painting). He was a man who arrived at the modern basic, but that Mondrian died in New York. After that, in the United States a lot of abstract paintings were born to be called abstract expressionism.
In almost the same era, US was a country with common people, so there was a campaign called Pop Art -- to recollect vulgar advertisements and comics as art.
Although many contemporary artists are also making their pieces with techniques like imitating cartoons, or they ride these pop art movements (include the superflat concept by Murakami), and deny abstract paintings more or less. What I would like to say is next that, this tradition of abstract paintings is more better. It is an orthodox expression inherits the original picture tradition. Because manga or advertisement, these like containing elements such as photographic elements, and imitation of something in reality by drawing, are not the true abstract painting. That is, it is not a true picture too.
The painter, is in a position to take over the tradition, the universal painting history. And they have to show the way in the next generations. The original role of painting is to have an ideal. Because the role of imitating reality graphically already has done in the photograph. The ideal must be to paint the idea directly, as to tell something for people via expressing it visually. We have to show some prospects by pure painterly elements, that is to say, color surfaces what do not imitate anything. Color itself, or light itself on the display. It must be something I draw. In other words, it is a vision of a future city, a piece of beauty that can be caught only as mental scenery in reality, such as strengthening the cognitive abilities of happiness, a viewpoint to review the world aesthetically, or something else.
