I do
not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals and
pictures... but understand me to mean straight lines and circles,
and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by
turning lathes and rulers and measures of angles; for these I
affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, like other things,
but eternally and absolutely beautiful.
Plato, Philebus, c. 350 BC
painting
is interesting only in virtue of line and colour
Charles Baudelaire, 1846
Remember that a picture-before being a war
horse or a nude woman or an anecdote-is essentially a flat surface
covered with colours assembled in a certain order.
Maurice Denis, 1890
...a new abstract art, an art that should deal
with colours as music does with sound...
George Santayana, 1896. [1]
In art 'Abstraction' has commonly referred to a particular period
of western art history, and particularly to modernist painters and
sculptors of the early twentieth century such as Kandinsky, Mondrian
and Brancusi, or later on, figures such as Jackson Pollock. Yet
'Abstract' or 'abstraction' are words with rich etymologies, with
meanings ranging across art, philosophy, psychology, chemistry,
mathematics and computer science. In thinking about the naming of
this early twenty-first century art exhibition - 'abstractions'
- it is worth considering some of these meanings.
In general, the word Abstraction has the sense of withdrawing or
removing something. Included within this may be a sense of secrecy,
or even dishonesty.[2] In computing abstraction
denotes 'the principle of ignoring those aspects of a subject that
are not relevant to
the current purpose in order to concentrate on those that are'.[3] This
seems to have the sense of simplifying - removing extraneous things
to reveal fundamentals. (It is interesting that in chemistry
abstraction may sometimes be used synonymously with distillation.)
However, in computer programing procedural abstraction implies
not
so much a stripping away of details, as a hierarchical grouping
of operations so that a myriad of lower level operations which
make
up a higher level operation may be ignored, or hidden. The higher
level is simply considered as a single entity.[4] Abstraction
may work
to both hide and reveal. 'Abstract' art which works with highly
developed iconographic systems reflects this combination of tendencies:
a distillation and a layering of form and meaning.
Long before computer programing however, philosophy approached
the same ideas. The idea of abstraction contains a range of distinctions
of particular importance to western philosophy: the substance of
things versus their attributes, or the physical versus the cognitive,
sense versus intellect, body as opposed to mind. In philosophical
terms abstraction is a process of cognitive ordering or generalisation,
the forming of an idea by abstracting out what is common to a variety
of instances, or the grouping of a set of similar ideas by leaving
out those characteristics peculiar to each.[5] The
process of abstraction implies a separation between the senses,
or experience, and intellect
- it is a way of presenting something to the mind, divorced from
the full range of properties it may have in the world, as is done
in the production of taxonomies or classifications of the world's
animals and plants. For some philosophers the ability to formulate
abstract ideas, and therefore use language (itself an example of
abstraction) is fundamental to being human. However, taken to extremes,
the notion of abstraction leads to the idea of something which
has
no independent existence in the world, something which exists only
in idea, something visionary.[6] Another
variation on this idea of disembodiment or distance is reflected
in the notion of an abstracted
mood - the absent-minded or preoccupied person has temporarily
left
their body and the present moment.
In the fine arts abstraction refers to art which lacks representational
qualities, which does not depict recognisable scenes or objects,
which instead works expressively with forms, line, colour for their
own sake. Expressed another way, it is art in which form may be
understood as independent of content. Historically it refers to
a rejection, in the early twentieth century, of the conventional
European idea of art as the imitation of nature.[7] However,
this distancing from things in the world may be a matter of degree.
Abstraction
sometimes refers to a manipulation or distillation of the appearances
of real objects, in other words it has it's basis or starting point
in the external world: 'the artist selects a form and then simplifies
it until the image bears only stylised similarities to the original,
or is changed almost entirely beyond recognition. This tendency
has been evident in the art of many cultures throughout history...'.[8] In
this sense all art involves abstraction. Whether a complete dissociation
of form and subject matter or meaning is possible is a matter for
philosophy, or linguistics which also works with this relationship
between representation and the represented, or sign and meaning.
The distinctions integral to the etymology of the word 'abstraction'
- between the physical (form) and the cognitive (meaning) - have
helped suggest that the production of abstract art is either a
highly
cerebral activity (e.g. Robert Delaunay's early twentieth century
experiments based on colour theory), or an apparent plunge into
the sensuous and personal (as may be suggested by the late paintings
of Jackson Pollock). This is how particular strands of abstract
art have sometimes been represented in art history. An early version
of this division contrasted the work of Malevich (intellectual,
structural, architectonic, dependent on logic and calculation)
and
Kandinsky (intuitional, emotional, organic, curvilinear).[9] These
distinctions may obscure a more comprehensive understanding of
the
art, in which form and meaning are more closely linked.
The emphasis on form or aesthetics,
over meaning or subject matter, represented by modernist abstract
art and its commentators has tended to be reversed in another disciplinary
approach. The anthropology of art has concentrate instead on meaning
in art, understood in social and cultural context. This has been
the case even as the formal qualities of non-European art systems,
that have been the usual subject of anthropology, may resemble
abstract
art. An alternative to both emphases is to reject a sharp distinction
between abstract and representational art, in the understanding
that 'meaning (may be) relatively independent of form but form
is
necessary to convey meaning'.[10]
<abstractions>: this exhibition
This exhibition explores the idea of abstraction in art in varying
contexts, including cross-culturally. Art emerging from varied
cultural
backgrounds and times, created for widely varying purposes, and
motivated by a range of personal intentions and understandings
may
resemble modernist abstraction. How meaningful are these similarities
in form or manner? Or to ask a slightly different question, what
do these similarities mean? What do they indicate about the practice
of art? What are the intentions of the artists? Such confluences
may be coincidental, serendipitous, imitative, ironically imitative,
conscious, unconscious, politically motivated, meaningful, meaningless.
Whatever the artist's intent, the audience for the images will
also
bring their own kaleidoscope of understandings, knowledge of art
traditions, personal wishes, imaginings, psychologies and contemporary
political climate to seeing the art. Modernist abstraction may
have
provided, for example, a context for the apprehension and consumption
of Aboriginal art in some contexts, but as Howard Morphy and Nigel
Lendon point out, some curators now suggest that the complexity
of meaning conveyed by a simplicity of form found in some Aboriginal
art has 'actually helped people come to terms with Western abstraction.'[11] If
all art involves abstraction, then cross-culturally, or across
time and the art practice of individual
artists, there are multiple
'abstractions'. This exhibition invited people to consider these
varied meanings of abstraction by collecting together the work
of
eight artists, each with their own connection with abstraction.
Beyond these varied and individual expressions, however, the exhibition
asked the broader question 'is there a wider (or generalisable)
concept of Abstraction as it might apply to a diverse range of
artistic practices cross-culturally.'[12]
Karen Westmacott
References:
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