Art History Lecture Series: No, Your Toddler Could Not Have Done That: A Brief History of Abstraction
Details
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.
About the Art History Lecture Series:
The Frye Art Museum presents a new season of lectures by art historian Rebecca Albiani, exploring masterpieces of world art, and offering pivotal context to deepen understanding of works on view at the Frye.
About the Instructor:
Rebecca Albiani has been an arts lecturer at the Frye Art Museum since 1997. A former Graduate Lecturing Fellow at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., and a Fulbright Scholar in Venice, she holds an MA from Stanford University and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Free
Located in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood since 1952, the Frye is the city’s only free art museum. The Founding Collection of primarily late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European art was gifted in perpetuity to the people of Seattle by prominent early-twentieth-century Seattle business leaders and art collectors Charles and Emma Frye. In addition, the museum owns... (Read more)