Some thoughts about the abstract.
People are always trying to place things, when we say ‘abstract’ everyone thinks they know what it means, what sort of work they will see, but we don’t because the word implies an individualized re thinking of the world.
It is helpful to think of abstract as an area rather than a style. ‘The abstract’ is like saying Africa or America, a place with its own multiples, histories and attitudes. The name connotes something we feel but the reality of each experience is unique.
Abstract is like a species.
To work from the world towards an image is abstraction, to work through a language back towards the world involves the abstract. It is a loop of thinking, one leads to the other and back again.
Imagine a scale of thinking with full on literalism at one end and abstract at the other. These poles are bound by a subjective logical thinking they are surrounded by the dark matter of illogical thought. A turtle in the sea. The literalist relies on belief and power and history. The abstract is explorative skeptical a bit more humorous and flexible and polyglot.
The resistance is in fluidity rather than solidity.
The attitude of the artist is crucial.
The abstract is not an argument with the world but a rethinking. Trying to rework events in the direction of more creativity, more fluidity. It is inherently a subjective thing of the self and the world and the re-thinking in between the thing is coloured by both, but it is new.
The abstract looks at the world as many things rather than as one and it is the friction between the world and the remaking that gives it its currency.
The abstract thinking artist works towards making things that are more than what they are by virtue of being what they are.
No comments:
Post a Comment