Much of twentieth-century art centers on a deliberate move away from traditional representation of the visual world. This shift gained momentum in the 1910s, and by mid-century, abstraction had become the dominant visual language of serious modern art with the rise of Abstract Expressionism in New York. This lecture will trace the arc of abstraction through the early twentieth century, providing a historic backdrop for Jonathan Lasker: Drawings and Studies, on view at the Frye through August 2026, which demonstrates how one contemporary artist takes abstraction in a new direction.

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