I definitely don’t know a lot about abstract artists, but the Inventing Abstraction visualization tool still proved to be captivating in its interactivity and design.
The network was developed through a collaboration between the curatorial and design team at the Museum of Modern Art and professionals in fields such as business, art history, and archaeology. The goal of this network is to display how different abstract artists were related through acquainting with one another, despite working in places far away from each other. Each node represents an artist that contributed works to the discipline of abstract art and the edges help to link artists to other artists, with some having many more connections than others. Furthermore, in clicking on a node, it describes an artist’s work, life, and interactions with other artists mentioned in the network.
The project is overall quite engaging as there are a lot of artists to explore in the network itself who’ve worked on different aspects of abstract art. It seems to be a digital addition to an actual exhibit shown about ten years ago at the museum, leading there to be more information on the works these artists made and about the museum and its collaborators. The network does a good job of highlighting artists with a lot of connections (highlighting the names in orange) and giving those artists in-depth descriptions, but for some lesser-known artists there isn’t much information listed other than name, birthplace, and pictures of some of their art. That’s one thing I would try and change, getting access to more data on those artists and creating descriptions, though I know that isn’t possible in some cases if there is little to no documentation on them.
Other than that, I think that this visualization is quite interesting and serves as a great resource for historians and those interested in abstract art and the people who helped make it so influential.
