The problem may seem somewhat out-dated, but is still a topical subject: 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 it seems so evident to no longer regard art and mimesis as
synonyms, but rather as irreconcilable opposites. In this essay we will
place some question marks around this seemingly indisputable a priori.
Let us begin our story with a short run-up.
SURROUNDINGS
When man appears, he wants to appear in appropriate surroundings. 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 surroundings geometrically, as when the
king is seated against the background of a baldachin - or when the nude
exhibits itself within the confines of the four-poster bed in Urbino. The
human figure is framed not only in the vertical dimension, but in the
horizontal dimension as well. The central actor 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 organic, 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,
whose axes radiate into the environment as roads leading to
the centre. Also roads can follow the natural properties of the
terrain, but, if possible, they 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
as 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. The projection of the half of the long side of the rectangleon the short side, is on the golden section of that 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 were 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 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 disappears, and with it the dialectic between hidden geometrical unity
and visible organic diversity. A one-dimensional image takes its place.
It suffices to compare a Mondrian 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 disappears behind the true-to-life
rendering - like 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.
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
wrestlingwith 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
grass in 'Jacob wrestling with the angel' is no longer red, it loses all its transcendental flavour. We
stumble here on a similar dialectic as that 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 possibilities. 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 in 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.
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 a 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. (see:
Malevich). 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 Malevich 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 Malevich
annihilated the image as such through visual appearance 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
superimposing various layers.
Also here does the loss of recognisability lead to the emergence of
a new imaginary world: a world where the body is no longer confined
within a skin and, as if it were a misty cloud or a lighting aura,
submerges in a space that is no longer an outside world, but an all
encompassing inner space - to which the aura of saints is gods is merely
a prelude.
FROM MIMESIS TO DESIGN (1)
What you see is what you see
Frank Stella
The anti-mimetic 'abstracting' tendency is also at work on a different
level. This time, not so much recognisability is at stake, but the
appearance of things as such. In the beginning, the geometric forms
shared their three-dimensional volume with the human figure. Lissitzky
bans the shifts in colour or shade: his forms acquire an 'unreal'
appearance. Because the perspectival interpretation of obliques
continues to suggest a third dimension, Mondrian and Malevich proceed
to eliminating perspective altogether. They restrict themselves to the
rendering of two-dimensional figures moving along parallel planes in a
layered space. In the wake of perspective, also gravity seems to have
disappeared from such world: the new abstract beings move weightlessly
in a space without bottom and without gravity.
Thus, the three-dimensional world filled with three-dimensional volumes
is gradually replaced with a layered world wherein two-dimensional forms
are moving in parallel planes. With Mondrian, the many-layered space of
Malevich implodes to a two-dimensional space: through the frame of the
canvas, we are looking out at a single-layered space. The presence of
this second layer through which we look from within the real world upon
a single-layered imaginary world behind the frame, is the fragile
umbilical chord with which Mondrian's work is still attached to mimesis.
That is perhaps why he likes to emphasize the frame through opposing it
as a rhombus to the square.
The umbilical chord is eventually severed with painters like Albers and
Herbin, Barnett Newman and Frank Stella. Concentric squares like those of
Albers are no longer different from tapestry of a floor: mimesis is
dissolved into (two-dimensional) design.The real anti-mimetic abstract
forms preserve the same expressiveness and animation as their painted
('imitated') counterparts. But they are no longer represented forms in a
represented space, but real objects in a real world. Not made by nature,
but by man: design hence.
FROM MIMESIS TO DESIGN (2)
When volume and space implode into a one-dimensional world, mimesis is
dissolved into design. That is equally the case when represented volumes
and represented space are translated into real volumes in real space, as
in the Lissitzky below. And from this exercise to Rietveld is merely one
step. This stride from art to reality may be compared with the
translation of a painting in a 'tableau vivant', or better still: with
the reversal of the movement with which a real model or a real
still-life had been transformed into paint on a canvas. The only
difference is that we are not dealing here with recognisable persons or
with fruit and vegetables, but with (combinations of) geometric forms.
And that reminds us of the fact that there is no parallelism between
painting and sculpture in this respect. Whereas there is certainly
something like abstract painting, there is no such thing as abstract
sculpture. Precisely because a cube is a man-made, artificial form, it
can exist either as a purely non-sensory idea or as the form of some
concrete matter. Whereas a cube rendered in two-dimensions can be the
imitation of a real three-dimensional cube in whatever matter, a
three-dimensional cube is always real: there is no original of which it
could possibly be the imitation, as a body in marble can be an imitation
of a body in flesh and blood. A wooden cube is never interpreted as the
imitation of a marble cube. All the cubes are on the same footing: they
all coincide with themselves. That is why the cubes of Donald Judd - as
opposed to the geometrical figures of Piet Mondrian and Kasimir
Malevich - belong to the world of design, not to the realm of art. And
the same goes not only for geometric variants of three-dimensional art,
but for the shapeless Rothko-variants as well: real clouds in
light-shows have an appeal that is comparable with that of a sunset, but
they are not imitations of something. We are dealing with forms of
light-design: light-shows. (James Turrell).
Whereas in painting (or broader: on the two-dimensional plane) the
stride form art to design is made when the geometric volumes and space
implode in the surface, the transudation between sculpture and design
takes place when three-dimensional forms remind of nothing but
themselves. With Brancusi, the transition takes place between his cocks
and his endless columns. Also here do we see how the mimetic taboo is
out at banning even the last mimetic echos that still resound in the
endless columns. That is realised through resorting to geometric forms that
refer to nothing else but themselves. Thus is sealed the transition form
sculpture to design. Donald Judd's boxes are a mere repeat performance
of this stride. The mimetic taboo is out at eradicating
also the last reminder of a body not only in painting, but in sculpture
as well: Tatlin and Naum Gabo replace volumes confined within a skin
with - preferably transparent - planes, if not mere lines. The repeat
performance from this stride are Sol leWitt's cubes. From the human body
to the immaterial geometric forms: we have gone a long way.....
FROM DESIGN TO MIMESIS (2)
The contrary movement with which painting sought to cleanse itself from
even the last mimetic stain to eventually dissolve in design, is the
very opposite of the far more obvious movement with which design has
from way back been freighted with mimesis - a movement that is so
strong, that it probably lays at the roots of art itself. Already on a
purely figurative level is design freighted mimetically, as when the
legs of a chair are shaped in the form of real legs, when a vase is
formed in the shape of human or animal body, or when a sofa is
transformed into the lips of a mouth, like with Dali's fauteuil. That is
so much the case that it inspired artists like Picasso to a new form of
art, as when combined parts of a bicycle to conjure up the head of a
bull. But the mimeticising trend is also and foremost at work on the
purely 'abstract' level of the composition of elements. Forms derived
from a purely technical logic can take a mimetic dimension, as when a
divided hexagon is read as a three-dimensional cube. The effect is
strengthened when a contrast between black and white is added, that is
immediately read as a shadow. Such effects are exploited by Albers
and Op Art. Also differences in colour tend to be read as differences in
depth, especially when the arrangement of the forms extend a helping
hand, as in the squares of Josef Albers. That goes especially for more
sophisticated forms of Op-art or kinetic art, where next to depth also
movement is suggested.
Border-cases are works like those of Arp or Ben Nicholson where it is
not clear whether we are dealing with bas-reliefs or with real
three-dimensional forms. Thus originates a twilight zone between design
and mimesis, where we are not always sure whether we are dealing with
art that is on the verge of dissolving intp design, or with design that is
on the verge of dissolving into art. But in all cases, we are dealing
with a primitive level of mimesis, mimesis 'in statu nascendi' that is
out at unfolding into full, completed mimesis. Nowhere is that more
apparent than in tapestry, where geometric or organic motives are
unfolded in the border that it has in common with the surrounding
architecture, whereas in the centre, more developed organic figures tend
to appear.
Meanwhile, it will have become clear that, on the three-dimensional
level, the twilight-zone between design and artist lies not where the
illusion of volume and space emerges, but where what is identical with
itself begins to suggest something else. Thus, many of Andy
Goldsworthy's creations are in the first place wholes of simple elements
arranged in an elementary composition. But some of them remind of
existing objects where different materials are composed according to
similar rules (eye, nest...). But also such 'reminding of' is merely
mimesis 'in statu nascendi'. It differs from completed mimesis in that
we merely are reminded of something else instead of seeing it as if it
were really there, as when we have the impression of seeing a living
body when looking at a Michelangelo marble. Rather have we the
impression of having stumbled on constructions belonging to parallel -
but nonetheless real - worlds. And that goes equally for the
creations of Anish Kapoor.
These both master designers may remind us of the fact that 'design' is a
most respectable activity. But precisely therefore, it would be better
that designers stop posing as artists, as if they wanted to partake in
the aura of art...
LE NON-PEINT
No doubt, many a reader will merely shrug his shoulders after having
read this text, however distinct and clear the ideas developed in it -
shall we add maliciously: 'more geometrico'? They rather will prefer to
lend their ears to more sophisticated spirits, whose labyrinthic
constructions are merely the rather transparent ideology meant to
legitimise the accompanying anti-mimetic practice.
No doubt either that I am the last to negate that the anti-mimetic élan
has opened new perspectives in art and that has often yielded works of a
high rank. But it might be the order of the day to make up a balance and
to realise what has been lost - hopely not irrevocably.
Or: to think regretfully of what has remained unpainted in the past
century...
© Stefan Beyst, April 2005.
*Sign in the sense of the general category under which symbols are
subsumed. See: 'On the differrence between art and philosophy or
science'.
referrers:
Goncourt's Blog
Mlahanas
Omnipelagos