ABSTRACT
Visually, it is easy to identify the art, architecture and gardens of the twentieth century. But the adjective ‘modern’, used to describe this work, has an inherently limited shelflife1 and in my view the year 2000 was the expiry date. A replacement is due and in this chapter ‘abstract’ will be tried as an alternative. It pinpoints a key feature of twentiethcentury gardens: the abstraction of universal principles from the everyday world. Artists and designers, admiring the way scientists abstracted the laws of nature and applied them as technology, sought an analogous design procedure. Painting, architecture, gardens, furniture and fashion design thus became characterised by analytically clean lines, freedom from ornament, simple colours and geometrical elegance.
