mimesis and abstraction a dialectic between organic appearance en geometric essence on the border between art and design

The problem may seem somewhat out-dated, but, judging from the recent hype around Donald Judd, it is still a topical subject. More important, however,is that the development of abstract art - one of the central manifestations of the anti-mimetic rage in the twentieth century - is responsible for the fact that art and mimesis are no longer regarded as synonyms, but rather as irreconcilable opposites. In this essay we will place some question marks around this meanwhile indisputable a priori.

Let us begin our story with a short run-up.


SURROUNDINGS

When man appears, he wants to appear in an appropriate surrounding. This can be an organic environment, as when the cave-dweller appears in the opening of his cave, or when the Buddha meditates under his Bodhi tree. More often, man structures his surroundingsgeometrically, as when the kind is seated against the background of a baldachin - or when the nude exhibits itself within the confines of the for-poster bed in Urbino. The human figure is framed not only in the vertical dimension, but in the horizontal dimension as well. The central figure is always posted in the middle of the space and the other are arranged in geometrical patterns around it: think of the seats in an amphitheatre or the choir stalls in cathedral. Also in the horizontal dimension can the frame be an natural given, like a hill top or Heidegger's 'Lichtung' in the wood. But especially in this dimension does man geometrically organise surrounding space: paradigmatically in a central-dome building or a cross church. The axes radiate into the surrounding environment along roads leading to the central place. Also these can follow the natural properties of the terrain, but, if possible, the are structured according to a geometric logic - think of the axis from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre in Paris by Haussmann, or of Saint Peter's Square by Bernini. Architecture a such is nothing more or nothing less than the structuring of such a frame in three dimensions. Thus, architecture is the appropriate frame for the staging of important events in human life - not to mention Hitler's subordination of the masses on the Zeppelinfeld (Helene Riefenstahl).

SECRET GEOMETRY

The foregoing goes not only for real people in real space, but also for people represented in art: the border of the painted surface or of the sculpture niche function as a frame.  Since the advent of the production for the market, the frame is generalised to what we call the frame in a stricter sense: the frame around a generally rectangular painting.

The frame is often prolonged into the picture itself as the hidden geometric grid in which the figures are arranged. Take Titian's Venus of Urbino. When you transfer the half of the long side of the rectangle to the short side, the golden section of the short side. When you join the two golden sections with a line and trace a vertical line through the half of the upper side, you obtain a double square. Venus' vagina is precisely at the section between the vertical through the half of the upper side and the line joining the two golden section on the lateral sides. In more sophisticated examples, space is also structured in the third dimension. On the central panel of Piero della Francesca's polyptych of the Misericordia, the figures are inscribed in a semicircle on top of a square, while in the horizontal dimension the body of Mary functions as the central axis around which the mantle is unfolded. On the periphery of the bottom circle of the cylinder are arranged the little figures - as if the Madonna was embodying a hidden dome church on her own... It would lead us too far to analyse more complex examples.

A further step towards a hidden organisation of the image is taken when also the figures of the canvas are structured internally, as is the case with da Vinci's 'Vitruvian man':. Also more complex wholes can be structured according to a new internal logic, as with the whirling spiral on Rubens'  'Fall of the angels' (München) Such hidden structuring comes down to a reduction of concrete figures to abstract givens: head, trunk, arms and legs are reduced to 'lengths'; the view into the room in the back becomes a square; the Madonna comes to circumscribe a dome upon a cube; the mass of the damned is dissolving into a spiral...


DIALECTIC BETWEEN HIDDEN GEOMETRY AND MANIFEST FIGURATION

Precisely because the figures on the canvas are inscribed into a geometrical grid can they begin to develop more freely. A dialectic between 'abstracting' uniformity and 'concretising' diversification is set up. Such dialectics lends the artwork a new dynamic élan. Thus, in his 'Last Supper', da Vinci is able to unfold the diversity of gesticulating apostles within the narrow frame of an arrangement of the apostles in four groups of three around the central figure Jesus.

Such heightened tension only strengthens the propensity to look for a hidden structure behind the apparently unstructured diversity. The obsession with the hidden essence behind the superficial appearance induces many to think that the artist is in fact only interested in such hidden geometry. Others go still further and want to free the image of its 'superficial envelope' around the 'true kernel' and bring the hidden geometrical structure of things, their abstract essence unmediated into the image - somewhat like Hermann Nitsch who wants to reduce every drama to the slaughtering of a lamb. That is the case with figures like Mondrian who wants to reduce the basic form of the visible to the opposition between horizontal and vertical, which perfectly fits into the rectangular frame of the canvas. As soon as the artist restricts himself to the 'essence', the layered structure of the work has disappeared and with it the dialectic between hidden geometrical unity and visible organic diversity. A one-dimensional image takes its place. It suffices to compare the Mondrian above with the central panel from Piero della Francesca' Misericordia to become aware of how much the tension between hidden structure and superficial appearance is lost.


NEW DIMENSIONS OF MIMESIS (1)

Until far in the 19th century, the whole pathos of art lay in making visible the very wealth of the visible world. Things changed as soon as photography brought this endeavour to its first apogee about the middle of the century. The painters reacted through walking new paths. The most fertile reaction consisted in no longer so perfectioning the technique of rendering things that it disappeared behind the true-to-life rendering - as in oil painting, mezzotint and photography. Rather, artists were out at making visible the traces of painting itself. Thus, Paul Gauguin in his 'Yellow Christ' resorts to the most primitive technique of painting: filling in colour within an outline. No longer the logic of what is rendered, but rather the logic of rendering is put in the foreground: the natural movement of the hand becomes visible in the outline, and with painters like Vincent Van Gogh also in the way the surface is filled in with brush strokes.  With Munch's 'The scream', it is the movement of the hand that lends an expression to the image that you would search in vain in real clouds or a real bridge. With Judith Schils, the vehemence of the bundles of lines conjures up a kind of energy that is not existing in the real world altogether (click on the icon):

judith schils

It is obvious then, that a new kind of expressiveness can be gained through deviating of 'true-to life' - or photographic - rendering.

And that goes not only for the line, but also for colour. The artist no longer shades his colour in view of the rendering volume. Only unbroken colours are allowed to appear on the canvas, as if it were made of stained glass. The last tie to reality is severed when the painter makes eventually abstraction of true-to-life colour, as does Paul Gauguin when he paints the skin of Jesus yellow and the grass red as in the 'Jacob wrestling with the angel'.

An entirely new world is emerging, where different laws determine space and volume and where abstraction is made of the colours of our familiar world. Just like non-existing beings (centaurs, mermaids, angels, dragons...) can be created by combining different parts of existing beings, just so can new beings in new environments be conceived through lending them new forms and new colours and situating them in new kinds of spaces. And, let there be no doubt: although the beings that are staged here are by no means true to our familiar world, their depiction is no less 'true-to-life' than the depiction of non-existent centaurs and mermaids...

Under the influence of the mimetic taboo, this development is often interpreted as a break with a conception of art as a rendering of reality - a farewell to mimesis. 'Abstraction' was understood as a negation of mimesis, rather than a new variant. In fact, the canvas remained a window on the world, albeit on a world that came to differ increasingly from the familiar world.

There is a grain of truth, however, in this misconception. It seems as if the colour and the line begin to speak in their own right. But that is only half of the truth. For, in the examples above, line and colour borrow their expressiveness above all from the fact that they are not 'true-to-life' - or to be more precise: that the diverge from more familiar versions of reality. When the semicircle above Jesus' eye is no longer an eyebrow, it looses much of its expressiveness; and when the red in 'Jacob wrestling with the angel' is no longer to be seen were grass is to be expected, it loses all its transcendental flavour. We stumble here on a similar dialectic as between hidden geometry and organic diversity.

That becomes apparent as soon as the artists cut the umbilical chord with the real world  altogether and proceed to a pure play with forms and colours that do no longer represent anything, but wholly coincide with themselves. No doubt, such forms and colours are expressive. But the lack the additional tension created through the 'unnaturalness' of the colours.


NEW DIMENSIONS OF MIMESIS (2)

Before the umbilical chord is severed altogether, the artists explore still other possibilit. Up to now, only more complex organisms were to be seen on paintings: plants, animals and men. More elementary forms appeared only in the world of design (think of ceramics, tapestry, architecture...). There, they were either geometric or of a rudimentary vegetative/organic character. From the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, similar elements are introduced in painting.

Initially, the new elements tended to be organic, because they were as it were born from the lines and the strokes of the drawing or painting hand. It is as if the painters began to zoom on the elements with which a figure is built up: the attention shifted from the whole to the hand-made element: line and brush stroke. Already with Vincent Gogh does the effect of the image emanate more from the animated brush stroke than from the expression of the figure - be it face, cypress, landscape or starry night. With Wassily Kandinsky we witness the transition from whole to part before the First World War.
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Such zooming in on the painterly elements is a second way of satisfying the anti-mimetic endeavour: it seemed as if the 'photographical tie' with the reality had been severed. But also here there is no way around it: the painting continues to be a window albeit a window that looks out onto new worlds, peopled with beings that up to now show up in the world of art. For, the new abstract, non-figurative forms are still experienced as animated beings - albeit being that are situated rather on the lower stages of an imaginary evolutionary tree: imaginary anemones or amoebas... And, let there be no doubt: although the beings that are staged here are by no means true to our familiar world, their depiction is no less 'true-to-life' - or 'photographic"- than the depiction of non-existent centaurs and mermaids...

Not always did the movement give birth to unseen 'unidentified painted objects'. With figures like Jackson Pollock, the brush stroke threatens to become a sign that, just like handwriting, tells us something about the state of mind or the character of the maker. Pollock escapes such danger only in that his writing is organised in a figurative whole, that evokes imaginary textures in imaginary spaces.


NEW DIMENSIONS OF MIMESIS (3)

This kind of 'organic' or 'lyric' abstraction was granted only a short life. Under the influence of the anti-mimetic trend all too suggestive figures were avoided. An obvious way out was the resort to purely geometric forms. Already the Cubists began to replace the complex organic structure of the human body with geometric shapes. Not only complex organic figuration was thus negated, but foremost the equally organic movement of the hand. In Russian Constructivism this move went hand in hand with an over refusal of hand-made painting and the resort to 'mechanical' industrial techniques. This lead to the triumph of what came to be called 'geometric abstraction'.

Contrary to what the term suggests, there is no talk here of a break with mimesis - even when, in the eyes of many a philosopher of art the advent of geometric abstraction seals the end of mimesis. The mimetic devil is not so easily driven out of the image. Although the actors are no longer recognisable, they continue to be read as animated beings. To be sure, they no longer belong to the lower branches of an imaginary evolutionary tree, but rather to the higher spheres of an equally imaginary transcendental world. There, not unlike ghosts or angels, they glide weightlessly in immaculate, immaterial bodies. It suffices to have a look in Kandinsky's 'Über das Geistige in der Kunst' to realise how much 'abstract' forms are read as animated beings with an expression of their own: a triangle has a totally different personality than a rectangle or a circle....

And that goes not only for the beings as such, but even more for their interaction - which is far more recognisable. With Lissitzky it still has a name: ''Beat the whites with the Red Wedge'. But in works like that of Frantisek Kupka, the interaction itself is 'abstracted' through a reference to the fugue in music - unjustifiably considered to be an abstract, non-mimetic art (which, by the way, is a contradiction in terms...).

No wonder that the iconoclastic rage finally turns itself against this kind of more complex geometric abstraction. Also the all too recognisable interaction between geometrical forms is banned from the image. No better way to achieve this goal than to replace the interacting forms with self-sufficient single entities - which, precisely through their self-sufficiency, embody the state of divine narcism.

The mimetic taboo can also resort to a more drastic measure: the negation of the image into a referring sign*. Only this step seals the final break with mimesis: only as a symbol does the dark square become the black whole wherein every figuration disappears.

The majority of the so-called 'geometric abstraction' escapes such symbolic pitfall and continues to belong to the realm of mimesis. But it must be granted that, compared with the dynamic that emanates from many a full-fledged figurative work, most abstract works are lacking in internal dynamic because there is no longer question of a dialectic between hidden geometric structure and superficial organic appearance. The works of Mondrian and Malevitch make it clear, with hindsight, how much that is also the case with painters like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin en Edvard Munch. Conversely, it now catches the eye how much geometric abstract works are one-dimensional with respect to colour. There is never an additional tension created by the 'unnaturalness' of the colours. Although there certainly is something like the most becoming colour for a given form, a yellow circle is never experienced as a deviation of a blue circle. More generally: the expressiveness of colours as such is always merely their own - one-dimensional - expressiveness: never is their expressiveness added to what the figures as such have to say. A faint echo of such addition can be heard on a more complex work as Lissitky's 'Beat the whites with the Red Wedge'. A certain proportion between red, white and black has a strong aggressive freight. With Lissitzky, such colour chord adds to the equally aggressive interaction between the red triangle and the white circle. But the effect is the more stronger, the more the subject is more 'figurative'' - concrete. It suffices to compare with Goya's Kronos, even when many an art lover may meanwhile have lost the patience to wait until the colours light up from what, in comparison with the pure  colours of geometric abstraction - is often sneezed at as 'museum brown'. The emotional freight of Goya's Kronos is all the more strong since the subject stages precisely the situation to which the colour chord owes its expressiveness: the threatening mouth with the white of the teeth, the red of the flesh and the dark of the void in which everything disappears..


NEW DIMENSIONS OF VAN MIMESIS (4)

Artists walked still another path to escape the recognisablity of the world of appearances: they concentrated on light or colour as such. The problem here is that, unless you monochromically cover the entire surface with one and the same colour - there are always shapes to be discerned - even if they have no clear contours as in geometric abstraction. Precisely therefore, also these 'shapeless' paintings acquire an eminently mimetic freight. That is already apparent in the paintings of Mark Rothko. He replaces the black hole wherein Malevitch annihilated the image as such through appearing as such, the emergence of the visible - the primeval gesture of mimesis.

And how much we are dealing with mimesis precisely here, becomes apparent as soon as we let the echo of geometric abstraction in these works die down. For it suffices to replace the rectangular shapes with more organic forms, and we find ourselves back in the familiar realm of fire, clouds, sunsets that fascinates man from way back. The theme flourished as a background in landscapes, or as the aura around saints and gods. Da Vinci regarded the rendering of such transparent phenomena - water, fire, mist, clouds - as the proper domain of painting (think of his drawings of the flood), while bodies confined within a surface rather pertain to the domain of sculpture. But is is foremost in photography that the theme - unhampered by the mimetic taboo - comes to full bloom. By zooming in on a sunset or by eliminating every reminder of the landscape with its confining surfaces, a new form of 'unrecognisablity' is obtained.

Similar effects can be obtained through photographing transparency or to superimposing various layers.