Structure and Chaos as Non-objective Realism in Painting:
Is placing images on a planar surface something that comes natural for humans to do?
Is Kandinsky’s Unique Theory of Non-objective Abstraction Still Relevant today?
Howard Neufeld, Artist
The Avant-Garde inventions of Modernism took objects and spaces from our life-world and applied new and different theoretical purposes, formation techniques, and media-manipulations to them. These Avant-Garde inventions were all about “visible form,” the very antithesis of Kandinsky’s Theory of Abstraction which focused on the “invisible, internal Content of the artist’s self.”
Background:
Image-making and Picture-making:
Human beings have been placing images on different surfaces for millennia. Called Image-making, this has been one of our most important human advancements, that is still viable today. Over time, other relevant factors that advanced this human capability included our increasing ability to problem solve, improved skills in observation, and a more creative imagination.
Image-making became Picture-making by including a limited space on the surface where the images were placed. This surface space, called a picture-plane, is where the images are organized into a pictorial composition or picture. However, this provides more than just placing images on a picture plane. It also advances our abilities to think visually, express ourselves visually, and communicate with each other via visual means.
Perspective Cues:
Some pictorial elements found in these compositions include “perspective cues,” ones that create an “illusion” of spatial depth. In actuality they remain two-dimensional images placed on a two-dimensional surface, and yet, when the effects of illusionism are combined with perspective cues, our perception becomes that of three-dimensional forms in three-dimensional space.
Modernism and the Avant-Guard:
Modernism was an era in the 20th century that completely changed the western art world. During that time artists focused on new picture-making inventions called “Avant-Guard.” These revolutionary ideas were regarded as advancements in painting that move in a forward progression. However, after a brief period of time, each of these became overshadowed by even newer Avant-Guard inventions. Some of these were influenced by cultural changes while others were inspired by scientific inventions, most notably in the then new disciplines of Physics and Psychology.
Structure and Chaos as Non-objective Realism:
Structure and Chaos functions on a two-dimensional picture plane. This picture plane not only serves as their motive, but it is also the primary means for what I call, Non-objective Realism.
Here the term Non-objective refers to images that are not from our life-world and Realism is a term used in painting referring to objects that are rendered to look as they appear in real life. However, if an artist uses non-objective, abstract forms, these represent a different kind of reality, one beyond our normal life-world experiences.
Structure and Chaos:
Structure is a system, but not a pre-determined one and Chaos is formed via a Process, but not a per-meditated one. Phi is used to calculate the different dimensions and subdivisions of the Structure as well as form its collective shape, for now being either a square or mandala. We can even find these two superimposed. Phi is also used to create smaller configurations called “space shapes” that are found within the Structures.
These Structures represent the Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics by using Phi and Non-Euclidean geometry associated with curved-space phenomena. The images of Chaos are created within the Structure, where the artist’s own subjective, internal Self is the Content. This allows the images of Chaos to remain independent of the artist’s conscious intent.
These images of Chaos can move laterally as well as advancing and receding spatially from the perceptual point of view. They can also be confined to one of the space-shapes or can extend beyond their borders. Some can also be placed in more open spaces like those referred to in physics as a “field.” For the most part, these images of Chaos are the result of either arbitrary events or with an artist’s intuition having taken place during the painting’s active development.
From Traditional Reality to Quantum Reality:
Traditionally, Nature has been the primary sourse and determinent for our understanding of reality. With the discovery of Quantum reality in the early 20th century, there was a shift away from using the observation of naature to one of definning the processes taking place, using theories and re-difining Reality by way of those theories.
The different Avant-guard innovations that took place during Modernism were all revolutionary, however, some also expressed a new reality inspired by scientific theories. During the first decade of the 20th century, Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (E=mc2), the Forth Dimension, and Neils Bohr’s Theory of the Space-time Continuum, were little known or understood outside of the science community. This changed when these theories were exposed to the general public in Europe and the United States with numerous articles in the public media.
The Forth Dimension:
Cubism was the Avant-garde invention that could successfully adapt the Spatial Forth Dimension in painting, and to a lesser degree, non-Euclidean geometry. Picasso may have been the first artist to use this Spatial Forth Dimension in some of his Cubist works, for example his Portrait of Ambroise Bollard of 1910. Even though some of the other Cubists may have known of these new geometries, visual referrences to Relativity or the Spacce-time Continuum could not be found in their work.
Accorting to Linda Dairymple Henderson in her book, The Forth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, she writes: “For the Cubists then, the most general usage of ‘The Forth Dimension’was to indicate a higher reality, a transcendental truth that was to be discovered individually by each artist…”
Structure and Chaos: Concepts and Definitions:
Structure Using Phi as a Fractal:
Structure is the painting’s physical platform, one that also contains a number of smaller forms called “space-shapes.” All of these have measurements that are calculated using Phi, which is a ratio (1:1.618 or 1:.618), but a very special one; a ratio that is also a fractal. Phi forms a grid-overlay, having its own laws that work somewhat like the systems we find in nature.
Fractals are never-ending patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. And like the fractals in mathematics, Phi is driven by recursion.
Chaos and Illusionism:
Chaos are unpredictable events that materialize as visual forms located within the Structure. In physics this is considered to be so unpredictable as to appear random. More than simply disorder, Chaos explores the transitions between order and disorder which can occur in surprising ways. And because the Process I use is also free of intent, these non-objective illusions are created via “probability” instead of “determinism.”
Illusionism is a visual effect that creates credible images as an “illusion.” This can be applied to objective or non-objective subject-matter alike. For example, the effect of illumination can be created using light and dark value gradations to describe how objects appear when light strikes their surface. Similar techniques and their effects can also be used to create the illusion of shadows or even to give an object the illusion of volume.
Non-objective is a term used to qualify the images in a painting as depicting something not found in our life-world.
Realism is a term that qualifies the images in a painting as looking “realistic” or how they might appear to us in reality. The effect of Realism can also be created in non-objective, abstract forms by applying the same processes and formation techniques used to create convincing illusions in “object-realism.”
*In a completely different context, Kandinsky used the term “realism” as a reference to Content, that being the invisible, internal reality of the artist’s Self.