A Comparative Study of the Concept of Abstraction in Islamic and Western Art (Based on the Traditionalist Theories (original) (raw)
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LIVENARCH VII: Livable Environments and Architecture: Other Architect/ure(s), 2021
Considering the reasons of volition for art, the content of Aesthetic Science is questioned. The aesthetic phenomenon, by its structure, involves a process between subject and object interest. The artist, who is a subject, affects and transforms the object by taking an aesthetic attitude. This effect reveals the aesthetic work of art. In certain periods, aesthetic research was directed at the object, and works of art were studied only in the field of objectivist aesthetics. At the beginning of 18th the century, as a result of the Renaissance, human research led to the importance of subjectivist aesthetics. An understanding called a subjectivist or psychological aesthetic regards an aesthetic object as a screen in which the emotions and thoughts of the subject are reflected. It accepts the analysis of these psychic transmissions of the subject as both an essential and only reasonable way to determine the aesthetic object (Tunalı, 2011). From this point of view, it is possible to see every image that forms the essence of the work of art as the embodiment of a style of vision, and every style of vision as a reflection of the trends represented by the subject. Examining the need for art prompt through subject matter leads to a psychological interpretation of the meaning of art. Views through which a person understands the work of art with an inner sense are encountered in the process from antiquity philosophers to modern time researchers (Tunalı, 2011). According to these views, a person has a sense of beauty, which is natural, and the meaning of a work of art is understood only by this feeling. The end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, with the dominance of the discipline of psychology, theory of knowledge, logic and morality are desired to be taken back to psychology, as well as aesthetics and philosophy of art are desired to be based on psychological foundations, taking the same path. These opinions indicate that thoughts and intuitions are weighted in explaining works of art. In the understanding of aesthetics, the whole competence is the ability of thought and image, because it is related to the beautiful spiritual universe. Theodor Lipps, a famous representative of this understanding, is described as the founder of modern psychological aesthetics. According to Lipps: Aesthetics is the science of beauty. “An object is called beautiful because it evokes or can evoke a special feeling in me, that is, a feeling called a 'sense of beauty'. According to this, ‘beauty ' is the ability of an object having a certain effect on me.” (Lipps, 1906) Lipps explains the analysis of this special feeling that the object evokes in the subject with a theory that he calls empathy(einfühlung). That is the feeling leading the person to aesthetic pleasure. According to this, the source of aesthetic pleasure is not the object that it grasps first with sensory and then emotional activity, but its own spiritual activity. The subject experiences this activity in an object that is an entity other than itself. (Lipps, 1906) Although the theory of empathy may seem to Lipps as the main requirement of artistic creation and aesthetic pleasure, it is not sufficient to explain the desire for art, given the parallel between the history of art of the period and geographies. Looking at the history of art, there are stylistic variations in the arts of many nations and eras. For example, given the differences in the arts of Eastern Civilizations, another condition should be sought instead of empathy. So what is this "other art prompt"? Can the theory of empathy, which the Modern Western world uses in explaining the psychology of style, be sufficient in explaining the demands of art of other civilizations? Or should another explanation and method be sought? May the empathy, ''which means” hearing something from within", be valid in abstract art while it is enough to explain the art styles of societies that establish intimate relations with the world? Art historian Wilhelm Worringer examines the subject by asking why and how the artist chose different paths in his works, which he has put forward as a review of stylistic psychology. Connecting the distinction between art styles to the inner worlds of artists, Worringer looks for the effectiveness of empathy by looking at concrete examples of art history. As a result of his research, Worringer, who believes that he must look for another point of the handle in processes other than Greek-Roman, Renaissance and Western art, seeks the condition of an art style performed with abstraction (Aydemir, 2015).. He explains the desire for other art with the concept of abstraction, by which he puts against the theory of empathy. According to Worringer, the activity of empathy is a positive interest between man and nature, while the condition of abstract art is a reaction to the negative and insecure nature of the universe. The sense of empathy finds satisfaction in the vitality of natural beauty; the spiritual coexistence with a person, nature and life, while the abstraction found at the opposite pole finds satisfaction in inorganic forms that reject life, achieving abstract, absolute imperatives. In this study, the theory of abstraction and empathy, which has made important conclusions about stylistic psychology, will be studied through architectural works of art. The Theory, which has found a valuable place in the history of art, will be looked at in the private Sanjak mosque. Searching of the other art request at the opposite pole of the theory of empathy, which Western art especially uses when conveying the naturalist style, is considered compatible with the subject of Livenarch 2021: Other Architect/ure(s). In this context, the conditions that lead to empathy and abstraction of style in architecture will be examined and analyzed within the content of the study. By the content reading method, important concepts in Worringer's work of abstraction and empathy will be determined. The concepts detected will again be evaluated based on the physical and qualitative architectural elements passed in the work. In the example of the Sanjak Mosque selected as a sample area, the comparative concepts reached within the content of abstraction and the theory of empathy will be a new and developable step in the sense of studying the style in architecture. In this context, the study aims to make architectural works questionable and meaningful within the content of abstraction and the theory of empathy. Key Words: Stylistic Physcology; Wilhelm Worringer; Abstraction and Empathy; Architecture and Physcology; Sancaklar Mosque
Figurative Art Versus Abstract Art
2019
Western culture in the twentieth century supports two kinds of visual arts: figurative art and non-representational art, each of which is the negation and opposite of the other; and yet both are called 'art'. The main reason for this confusing state of affairs is the absence of clear demarcation lines between art and non-art. In this essay an attempt is made to outline a different approach for revealing the profound differences between these tow kinds of artistic phenomena by anchoring art in the nature of mind. It is suggested that all branches of culture, including art, are specific embodiments of certain basic properties of mind, the most important of which is the complementarity of connectivity-disconnectivity, but they do so at different levels of abstraction. It can be shown that all works of figurative art share those attributes of mind, but none of the works of nonfigurative art share them.
The Invisible in Painting Art between East and West
The Academic Research Community Publication (ARChive), 2017
The Art of painting relies on the employment of the painting's vocabularies in an idiomatic meaningful format under the framework of the dialogue form. Such methodology occurs at times and in a new style to create new systems and formats at other times (Form Structure). The dilemma lies between these two frameworks where there are reality and mind, sensory and mental or visible and invisible, that is, between what is perceived by the eye of idiomatic semantics forms and what is realized in accompanied suggestive or figurative meanings. The interpretation of the invisible in the vision of Oriental Art is different from the vision of the western art because the spirit of the culture is manifested in the first to incorporate the individual in the group. As in the universe, it removes intervals so that the individual may seem similar to his surroundings in order to reach the infinite and unlimited aspect. This vision is based on a type of intuitive knowledge in the form of detection or discovery, which is based on the dualism of the visible and the invisible. Therefore, the receiving process is unlimited to the aesthetic pleasure that focuses on the form alone, and it is an existential process that is based on the dialogue between the receiver and the artwork. Islamic Sufi aesthetic thought tries to find the sensory effects in the universe. It is not concerned with the mental abstract perceptions of geometric shapes associated with the western logic." Islamic abstraction would not seek to meet the formal requirements such as a mathematical current of Mondrian or freeing the spirit of the form extracted from the content, internal necessity of the structure or the internal empathy for the colors and meanings. It does not intend to reach ideal purity in the form so as to realize the artistic feeling in Malevich. It tries to find natural laws, including geometric shapes ,and then its loads them with facts and meanings towards the absolute. It results in a new standard vision that will create another independent reality which does not end with just watching the painting so as to combine the idea with the artistic vision to denote the meaning"(Abu Elmaggd, 2011).
Online Journal of Arts and Design OJAD, Volume: 7, Issue: 3, July – 2019; pp: 20 – 36. (DAAI Index), 2019
Before modernity arts and crafts produced by cultures were rooted in the common societal values and traditions of practice. Modernity as a corollary of political, cultural, and scientific revolutions caused radical changes in the constitution of cultures. At the beginning of the twentieth century arts experienced radical changes in their themes and communication techniques. Scientific advances that influenced all the world intellectuals while on the one hand, elevated arts to a universal level and enriched their themes with concepts such as movement, dynamism and simplicity, on the other hand rendered artistic interpretation, criticism and education questionable. In the 1960s the moving of the epicentre of artistic prominence from the mid-Europe to the USA supported first the Minimalism and later the social Expressionism via the artistic visionaries. Abstract art that at the same time opens itself to the criticism of the ordinary man but lacks the true interpretation of the basic meaning is deplete with serious innate problems of reading and methods of teaching apposite for the age. This study encouraged by the practice-based research that is promoted in the western world during the last couple of decades dwelt upon the readability of some concepts from the samples of abstract art. Upholding an assumption that artistic concepts are related to learning and remembering and might stem from the tacit knowledge, eight national abstract art pieces were selected and re-read via the concept of space/time. In the study that adopts persuasion method, the cases were read with semantic significance. It was concluded that although the cases seemed abstract artistic endeavours they hid a latent meaning. Thus the research proposes that the teaching of painting via concepts prove possible and pose a reliable pedagogical tool.
From the artistic symbol to the symptom of art.
2006
The aim of the abstract is to debate whether the categories of symbol and symptom imply different determinations when it comes to art. We shall also look into clarifying the difference between the perception of the artistic symbol (through artistic images) and the work of art that manifests itself visually through the symptom and try to reach a conclusion, based on these two perspectives, about the characteristics of the art terrain, within the triangular framework author-work of art-spectator Viewing the symbol from its Greek derivation (symbolon) and the renascence, as a means of interpretation associated to the artistic (as one of the parts of the division, the symbol maintains the receptor out of the work of art) and the symptom as a reference to the work of art – art as a manifestation of the symptom emphasises the process bringing the receptor into the work of art. Can we consider the artistic as a domain of the images (symbolic) and the art as a domain of the objects (symptom)? The symbol as a’ divine’ entity that implies the pure form, the symbol interpreted in light of its linguistic Greek origin as one of the parts of the split object, stimulating interpretation, the symbol as an autonomy identity whose result is simulacrum [Volli in Melotti, p.73-87], or the symbol as an operative moment [Boidi in Melotti, p.102], it will always implicate an entity in the artistic image, whereas in the work of art remains the implication of the symptom that manifests the action that gives rise to art itself? At its limit the images of art become hyperbolic « symbolising» the symptom. Renouncing to the possibility of being simulacrum or phantasmagoria, they symbolise each thing and their contrary, introducing the “presence in the representation” [Didi-Huberman, 1990, p195]. Within this limit the images do not satisfy or symbolise , as objects of desire, but as a need to liberate which edges the non-representation of the manifestation of the symptom of art, and in this aspect the symbol is integrated by the symptom. Let us taking into consideration the triad figure IRS, real-imaginary-symbolic [Žižek, 2004, p98]. Symbolic real imaginary Imaginary Real symbolic Nucleus of the non-representation From the vertices of the triangle, real-imaginary-symbolic we can establish an infinite network as the constellation space of movement of the individual, thus forming successive triangles (infinitively) that personify in themselves the different territories of what is real, symbolic or imaginary. Each of these territories is subject to the domain of the different images. These domains, however, are not fixed; on the contrary they exist as if limited by porous membrane. The nucleus of this corresponds to the non-representation, banning the image. In this nucleus the existence of images would prove to be self-destructive. The images of art manifest themselves as symptoms of the work of art itself, as loose ends of the system of art; the are presented by the gaps- in the aesthetic domain, where the symbolic manifests itself as being insufficient. In this abstract we intended to demonstrate that the objects of art distance themselves from the artistic images via the symptom as an inclusive possibility of a demonstration of art. The objects of art renouncing the external symbolic interpretation include the viewer as a constituent of the work of art, placing emphasis the procedural unity. As a limit the symbol becomes part of the symptom in art, becoming the referent that recuperates the gaps of the artistic past2. By emphasising the process, the object of art (the symptom) reveals itself as the designator of the unity and thus contradicting the artistic images that represent symbolically what is still disassociated. Nevertheless, the objects of art which are still subject to the domain of representation3 can only gain a unity that is revealed in its disconnection from desire, thus allowing the artistic image to be interpreted in the object of art. In the full text version there will examples taken from the history of art to illustrate these arguments.
Abstraction in art with implications for perception
… Transactions of the Royal Society of …, 2003
The relationship between people and art is complex and intriguing. Of course, artworks are our creations; but in interesting and important ways, we are also created by our artworks. Our sense of the world is informed by the art we make and by the art we inherit and value, works that, in themselves, encode others' world views. This two-way effect is deeply rooted and art encodes and affects both a culture's ways of perceiving the world and its ways of remaking the world it perceives. The purpose of this paper is to indicate ways in which a study of abstraction in art can be used to discover insights into, to quote the call for papers for this issue, 'our perception of the world, acquired through experience' and 'the way concepts are formed and manipulated to achieve goals'.
Before there was an art of abstract painting, it was already widely believed that the value of a picture was a matter of colors and shapes alone. Music and architecture were constantly held up to painters as examples of a pure art which did not have to imitate objects but derived its effects from elements peculiar to itself. But such ideas could not be readily accepted, since no one had yet seen a painting made up of colors and shapes, representing nothing. If pictures of the objects around us were often judged according to qualities of form alone, it was obvious that in doing so one was distorting or reducing the pictures; you could not arrive at these paintings simply by manipulating forms. And in so far as the objects to which these forms belonged were often particular individuals and places, real or mythical figures, bearing the evident marks of a time, the pretension that art was above history through the creative energy or personality of the artist was not entirely clear. In abstract art, however, the pretended autonomy and absoluteness of the aesthetic emerged in a concrete form. Here, finally, was an art of painting in which only aesthetic elements seem to be present.
A Comparison of Modern Art. Conceptualism, Violence and Expression
Conceptualism, Violence and Motion; Haring, Emin and Bacon, 2018
Duchamp’s interest in “idea’s – not merely visual products” challenges spectators to consider their reception of his art; seeing becomes both active and political. His ready-made Fountain (1917) -iconic of 20th century art- rather than surviving in the exoteric as much classical art before him, Duchamp’s work began in the esoteric, conveying specific idea’s that might be interpreted individually dependant on the socio-economic, emotional and intellectual locus of the spectator. In this sense, Duchamp births ideas from ideas. The Fountain is an anarchic critique of classical art, which works in a strange paradox; an exoteric exterior (depicting figures from well-known Greek myths or legends) and the esoteric given its audience- the higher echelons of society. Duchamp, simply attributes new meaning to a mundane object (a urinal) making it exquisite. The renaming of this urinal as a fountain lampoons the pretentions of higher art, satirizes it and queries all art that came before it. As the ‘father’ of conceptual art, of course, the idea behind Duchamp’s work was more important to him than the product. The visual product of a urinal doesn’t abide by mass conceptions of beauty but rather pragmatism. Yet, the beauty of the Fountain indeed lies in the concept (the idea) behind it, for Duchamp “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats), the honest human principle behind Fountain remains a symbol of the capacity of human artistry and wit. While art critics now understand this image as a symbol of anarchic opposition to capitalist ideals, the image nonetheless remains subjective, at the mercy of the spectator for in the same way “Poetry is not written only by ‘poets’ but by everyone” (Lautreamont) art is not made only by artists but spectators. Hence, while “Duchamp’s esoteric mind created images which would open upon hidden perspectives beyond the merely visible” in the case of his Fountain his esoteric riddle of a urinal captioned “Fountain” and signed under the pseudonym of R. Mutt became exoteric due to its form; a urinal being a universally understood object. This essay will consider the link between idea and meaning in modern art post-Duchamp. Considering the role of emotion and expression in the evolution of conceptual art, how visual products imbibe subjective meaning and emotion on to the spectator in order to convey an idea. Interrogating how the idea in the artist’s mind can be interpreted dependant on the context of the piece and the negotiated reading of its audience no matter the quality or form of the visual product. To do so three pieces of modern art will be discussed – Francis Bacon’s Dying on the Toilet Triptych (1973), Keith Haring’s Untitled (1985) sculpture of an elephant and Tracey Emin’s My Bed (1999.)
NOTES ON THE 'MEANING' AND THE 'ABOUTNESS' OF ART
Published by the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts Leiden University, 2022
This article was written as a lecture for the emeritus celebration of prof. Janneke Wesseling (Leiden University) in June 2022 One must distinguish between asking 'what a work (does or does not) say' (= its 'meaning') and asking 'what the work is about' (= its aboutness). The subject or issue of a work, what it is about, is not a 'message' that is said. Art is always about something, and that means that it presents something, raises something, talks about something, opens a conversation... One cannot limit the 'aboutness' of art and inscribe it in an essentialist definition of what art is. But art is indeed - retrospectively, historically and therefore factually - mainly about certain issues. History has excavated a bed in which art flows today, and which serves as a frame of reference for what art can be and can possibly do. Art concerns issues that every society faces because, anthropologically speaking, they concern basic facts of human existence and the human condition. This historical ‘aboutness’ of art concerns, schematically, three issues. First of all: art is about the image. Art still remains the only or most important place where the understanding, production and use of the image can be historically and critically framed, and discussed. Art is therefore relevant and potentially interesting, when it deals with what an image is and does. Secondly: Art is about the aesthetic gaze and the aesthetic approach of the world: that special, artificial kind of attention to the way in which reality immediately presents itself, and isolates it, abstracts it from the meaning, use and value of things. The exclusive focus on 'first appearance' places this basic condition in brackets, and places us in a hazardous and potentially dangerous relationship to things can be socially very disrespectful, cruel and disruptive. In Western culture, the aesthetic gaze has its own well-defined place and play field in the arts. Within art, it is then possible to experiment fairly freely, without great danger, with the appearance of things, and to test the elasticity of the aesthetic approach. Finally: art deals with the 'poetic'. The poetic is the effect of meaning that comes with the failure, with the not immediate succeding, of ‘reading’ the work of art, when this is experienced as an obstacle and a riddle. The poetic is in the language what the distance is in the landscape. Riddle games exercise in enduring and mastering incomprehensibility. Art is interesting when it is, in some way, about what images are and do, and thus contributes to the 'taming' of the image; when it is about experimenting with the 'aesthetic'; when it varies on reenacting the confrontation of the profoundly incomprehensible.