Abstraction is one of the most important developments in twentieth-century art, this course traces the emergence of abstraction in Europe in the early part of the century (Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian) through to the deadpan literalism of American minimalism in the 1960s. Topics to be examined include: spiritual versus literal accounts of abstraction; various languages of abstraction (expressionism, constructivism, concretism); genres of abstract painting (the monochrome, the achrome); and historical movements centering on abstraction (Kinetic Art, Abstract Expressionism, Unism, Spatilism, Brazilian Neo-Concretism, Colour field painting, Minimalism).