Quote from 'The Hidden Order of Art'

"Gombrich's great achievement to have finally broken the 'externality' illusion that had invested the conventional schemata of Western realism with objective reality. (One wonders whether Wittgenstein would have tried to give objective validity to the logical structure of language had he not-- somewhat naïvely-- accepted that the elements of a picture had the desired objective structure, which, of course, they had not.) According to Gombrich the coherence of a picture rests on entirely conventional schemata which the artist has learned to read as though they were as objective and real (realistic) as reality itself. The rules of realistic picture making were the rules of a game played according to certain conventions that were constantly modified like the rules of a game. Had Wittgenstein known Gombrich's ideas he would have been able to synthesize his older 'picture theory' of logical language with his final 'game theory' of language. Understanding the flexible rules of learning to play the game accordingly is all there is to the objectivity of images both in the visual arts and in language."

-- The Hidden Order of Art; Ehrenzweig; pg. 111

Sometimes I think about exactly what a book will eventually say or reference, at least vaguely, and when I see it all connected out of nowhere in a manner far better than any inkling I had prior, and I throw my hands up in the air. Or, which is the same thing I am describing actually, I hope to find something relevant in an unplanned location (e.g. a random book) and it ends up being far too relevant. Same reaction. Thank you Burren College library.

On immersion vs. belief

From last post:

"I have been recently thinking about what having a strong conviction about something means, or questioning why that is so significant, which more or less is the same thing as having a belief."

"I'm not sure what made me focus on 'belief' first rather than immersion"

So belief and conviction is what is similar. But I also alluded to immersion being similar, which is actually wrong. I think they have similarities and might even appear the same at first glance/surface-level (though the latter doesn't matter), maybe a similarity in its style of operation or the location of something or another, etc. etc. etc.

What I mean is that immersion is the suspension of self-awareness or self-consciousness; it lacks the third-person, stepping-back motion of "let me think about what I'm doing for a second here", it is tunnel-vision, it enters a smooth and fast propelling motion... Immersion is also what occurs when someone believes the sun will set tonight and rise again tomorrow morning, and so it is a suspension of doubt, of being skeptical; it is going along with things, hence the propelling motion. Examples would range from going along with the laws of physics, to going along with the man-made conventions of the business world. All are possible to doubt and go against, all are possible to go along with. None are possible to not doubt. This isn't to say that all are "fake" and there is some higher truth out there we can reach regarding sunsets and suit-and-tie handshakes, it is how everyday life occurs and continues on. But this isn't to say that one example of immersion cannot be "better" or "worse" than another. It is not stupid to assume the sun will set, it might be stupid to think LinkedIn is a necessary force for history of the universe.

But at the end of the day, LinkedIn is used. If someone were to sigh a "well, you just have to use it, don't you?" this would not be immersion, he is self-aware. The same man can, however, lose this awareness and operate as if he believes LinkedIn is as necessary as the sun, perhaps with enough time, or with enough usages of the site, etc. This is him becoming immersed. It is why I have always used the word "delusion" to stand for the things people believe in when immersed.

A clearer example is the capitalistic belief in the supply-demand model. I have seen many times an internet user state with full conviction: if we just stopped making our demands seen on affordable apartments, then rent would stop going up; or, 'the reason rent goes up is because you people buy at this price'. We see people and governments (or more so figures in governments) claim that the best way to run a non-business service is to run it like a business, and we can see when it fails (a $2 train ticket cannot fund a transit system, but we lose our business sensibilities when we realize you cannot just raise the price of a train ticket any higher-- or I suppose NYC can, but it still is cheap compared to what that city will make you fork over for a sandwich). 

So now belief pops up. But I don't mean that belief is just part of immersion, it is not like how 'delusion' is the object of focus within the immersion system/model and doesn't really appear or exist elsewhere.

***

What matters in discussion of belief is not the object being believed in, but the fact that one believes, belief itself. Does this work across the board for all sorts of beliefs? A belief in God is difficult to wrap one's head around not because of God's nature, not because God is an unbelievable being (I am not saying a god is nor isn't believable, because I do not have an answer, and any answer isn't relevant here) but because someone is seriously believing in a god. It sounds the same, so perhaps it should be worded as: (1) God is a type of object that, due to its qualities and characteristics, is/isn't realistic, (2) The act in certainly believing God, particularly because this object sparks no universal conclusions (not everyone agrees God exists, many types of gods, etc.), is/isn't strange. The topic of this is the same: believing in something. Within it are the things of the topic: the object of belief, the act of believing itself, and the characteristics of both the object of belief and the believers' acts in regards to how "believable" something is. Number 1 focuses on the object of belief, God, and Number 2 focuses on the act of believing in its specific context.

So in an art context, belief is found in someone believing in their own practice, believing in what they are doing, believing in its importance, for instance. "Belief" is actually a poor word in certain contexts because it has a habit of constantly pointing at its object, so much so that if we call back attention to it ("the act of believing"), it sounds as if we are criticizing all acts of believing overall. It is belief itself in the specific situation/context outlined, because of its object. We should imagine the grammar to be switched around in order to express where our attention should lie: the object is not certainly believable, therefore the belief is strange-- No! Do not look back, you must stop looking at the object! The sentence should be verbalized out loud, a clear "belief in the specific situation we outlined" followed by a pause, a glance to the side, lean back, sigh, and in an overtly lazy and unserious tone, "well... because of [the object] obviously..."

The phrasing is doomed to fail.

A specific case: a painting student paints, and when asked why he paints the specific things he does, he answers "Well, I enjoy where I grew up, which is by the ocean, so the marine themes and sensibilities are from that". But why does he paint the ocean, why choose to paint it, why not write about it, why not become a scientist and study the ocean, a sociologist of ocean-side locations? "I think art brings out a different part of the ocean, or any topic really; it expresses more. And, I don't know, I like that. I want to both overtly depict things visually, and sneak in sensibilities underneath, like the memories and feelings I have," and he can run on and on about why painting as an art, due to whatever theory here and there, is able to complete this and that. But that is all practical. No, why does he paint and make art in general, and specifically why does he feel the need to put his memories and feelings into art and express this and that, etc. etc. And now the painting student stands quietly, he cannot think. You must guide him to a clearer question and a clearer topic. If one questions, critically or not (it usually comes off roughly the same, a passive critical or back-handed tone), why he chooses to do any of this, why he presents the work, why he studies it, why he feels the need to show people and attempt to sell this art for real money, and so on... Now he will answer, now he will light up in passion and defend himself. Of course, one can fall back to practical, externally-held statements, of the importance of art in the world and so on. But his true answer is that he just feels/thinks/believes that he must.

That is what I am talking about, that is the object of our focus here. Seriously, what is up with that sort of believing? In this case, it is better worded as conviction (and I will just keep belief and conviction interchangeable, even though they aren't the most similar words otherwise).

And it is moments like these, the existence of someone holding a strong conviction in what they do, that makes everything seem special, better, higher quality, more gripping, more striking, more stable, and so on and so forth. It is the power of belief, and this can be compared to confidence.

***

So why did belief pop up previously, or more so, what is similar in immersion and belief/conviction that merged the two worlds? It is the suspension of disbelief and doubt, it is confidence and certainty. It's what holds it all together.

I read a book and believe the author to be a real person (if the case is made that they are a real person), I believe the name on the cover to be theirs, I believe the name to be consistent in identity with the other books that adorn it, etc. I do not pause and doubt this and think 'what if it is multiple people?' 'what if this is a pseudonym of the last author I just read the other day?' Some questions are easier to think about than others (very well someone could be a pseudonym). So to specify: this author has a personal biography, a description of them and their work in the back cover, a photo of their face, and international recognition as being the author, they go to book signing events, everyone who knows them in their personal life saw them study to be a writer and eventually publish the book. It is still possible to doubt that whichever human we are watching is the author, but it is a level of absurdity that becomes mental.

Because it is still possible to doubt, all it means is that one will just choose to believe to continue on, and if everything is possible to doubt (ignoring the topic of the self because I do not want to get Cartesian here), then one just chooses to believe in everything to continue on.

Within immersion, this is what holds the tunnel-vision together, the glue of the tunnel. Something like capitalistic theories are easier to critique and doubt in a serious manner, and those same theories are ones where the belief in them seems significantly less necessary. Who says this results in that and all of these actions must be upheld in societies, the government? Bah! Easy to doubt, isn't it? Something like the sunset is harder to doubt, because it one of the examples that becomes mental to doubt due to its absurdity (I should also say that how long or how many people uphold a belief also affects its supposed validity). When we do not doubt, it is an act of moving on, whether consciously (not very immersed) or unconsciously (highly immersed). What allows this continuing-on is belief. We believe the sun will set, so we time our evening around it. If we did not believe the sun would set, any amount of doubt, little or large, would linger on, and it would both become difficult to time our evening (we now don't really know when it'll get dark, because perhaps it will never) and pointless (if the sun won't set, why plan our evening arounds things at all). So the belief is necessary. This is why I do not ever wish to indicate that believing in something means the thing is bollocks; similarly, I do not think we should stop using numbers just because someone made up their vocabulary and system, it isn't like there necessarily is some greater truth out there behind made-up believed-in lies.

In our examples of belief in general, like the art student, one's conviction is what powers on further action, it is again for the sake of allowing things to continue on. This then brings up an interesting note, whether or not it is possible to do something without a belief in it. I think it is, because in this operation, belief is the mental process, similar to a reasoning, while the act of doing is the physical/external/real/produced thing, similar to a result or the thing at hand. This is not to say one is before the other, it is to say that they are two different kinds of things, located elsewhere yet within the same context/situation. The difference (a difference in kind?) is what allows this example: an artist doesn't believe in his own art and therefore feels like he is creating pointless work, or becomes confused, feels lost, or shuts off all of his feeling and thinking. He is still making artworks and having an art practice, just without belief in it. Now, is it possible to do such a thing with confidence, seeming as confident as our special artist with his high convictions? Perhaps, I do not know.

I once again haven't really reached any conclusion or real question in this post.

Thought on immersion in art

A thought I wrote earlier that I never finished:

I wonder if the most typical "real" appearing artists, those who are so immersed in their own art-making, who seem to have such a high level of love for the game, are this way because of (or partially) a belief in what they do. They 'feel" strongly about it, in a "there is something to this" sort of way. They do not need to be conscious or unconscious of any of this (I always assume most I observe are unconscious, but who knows).

It would be entirely possible to be assigned to make an artwork and provide it with a highly complex and substantial conceptual existence, one that elevates that artwork to a truly respectable and "real" level. Repeating an artwork, or a manner of art-making, without any real thoughts behind it may operate in a similar way.

But isn't there something different, something special in those who believe in their art so strongly? Not that they need to have a sense of importance or find their art to be special, or find their art to be art at all... It may be similar to when you meet someone overflowing with genuine confidence. There just is something different about them, not that they have a certain personality or behavior, but they just do things that are genuine, feel so attached to themselves; when you know that someone has a strong sense of self, for instance.

I wanted to expand on how I observe others to be more immersed in their art, which then speaks to a more general concept of immersion. I'm not sure what made me focus on 'belief' first rather than immersion; I have been recently thinking about what having a strong conviction about something means, or questioning why that is so significant, which more or less is the same thing as having a belief.

Questioning image-making

For a while now I have been wondering how people go about making art, specifically in coming up with imagery. I would say I have lost track of how to make art, although I cannot remember when (if at all) I did know. I do know, though, that I was never unconscious about this topic.

What I mean is that when observing others, which of course operates by assumption, people seem very immersed in their image-making. A lot of people come up with something immediately and on-the-spot, although not everyone does this. I have always been impressed with those who can doodle something when told to. I cannot do this and have never been able to do this.

But I realize that when going about my projects in art school so far, I haven't really "waited until inspiration struck" either. I wait, I just don't remember inspiration. I sit down, I think by way of writing some things down, and the planning stage comes about in the form of a line-by-line succession of notes, bullet points, or statements. This leads to this, to that, and that explains that part, which means its this... and then I stumble into an image somehow.

The reasoning for the art is realized prior to making it (although the more "psychoanalytic" facts and reasonings about the art still come later, if that matters). I create the art's logic before the art is crafted.

I think the image exists as only a sense, though. I never picture something clearly in my head, even though I would be entirely able to. I know I purposefully leave things open, I enjoy generating the image while drawing it. I need to decide on things only after observing instances within the process. Plus, I think openness has its advantages.

the architectural structures depended on
which marks where already made

It is the way of the stereotypical painter that fascinates me because I am not one. I have an easier time coming up with architectural imagery. It's not that I don't know how to draw anything else, I just struggle to make anything else into an image-scene (an architectural drawing becomes an interactive 3D model/space in my head). If I set about drawing a person, I draw a person, and then it ends quite quickly. I don't know how to merge the object or person into a space. I only know space itself.

Or, it isn't about what I know/don't know, but that anything else results in something different. I fear I have a tendency to become illustrative far too quickly, which is why I don't consider myself as sophisticated or fine-artsy as most people (and I don't want to make illustrations, so I think this is a flaw of mine). I can merge space with object/person, but it becomes illustration. That is why I am constantly asking how to be a painter.

Painters I've observed just get "so into" their process and image, with such a level of certainty, but appear pretty unaware of what's going on. I mean that they are unconscious in a good way. Immersion surrenders the act of stepping-back and viewing something objectively or critically. I suppose this is why people can overwork an image, or get too stuck on one part, or not see something others can.

If we treat overworking or lack-of-seeing as symptoms, then it becomes strange, because I have memories of doing those things prior to college. Back in high school, when no one properly took art seriously, but we all believed we were doing something vaguely serious, and everyone worried about "same face syndrome" and made jokes about the "pain" of learning anatomy because we thought those were the things you were supposed to worry about. However, if I think about the very few art assignments I made in high school, I was distinctly not immersed in them, save for the moments where I got lost in the process of repetitive crosshatching (is this the only time I was immersed? Where I remember the "symptoms"?).

And I think I should make a quick confession about the fact that I would draw anime art starting at age 10, and just about any drawing in this I was extremely immersed in, particularly in digital art. But this is shameful, and it actually goes nowhere, so I'm scrapping it aside (although the topic of the digital work field/space is interesting and I would like to get to that sometime).

I must go farther back and think about childhood. I remember the first time I decided to draw from life; I think I had seen some still-life in the museum and developed an inkling on how it was made (I had no idea what art terms meant). Before then, I had been pausing the television and copying it. While watching television, I would watch the outline of each cartoon character, and I would envision curving one of those rubber dividers used in landscaping (I saw my neighbors redo theirs and was fascinated by them, for some reason) to make the outlines.

This became an obsession as strong as my hobby of clenching my feet when the car passed over the white dashes that divided street lanes. I attribute my natural tendency to be good at rhythm games (specifically ones that have linear notes landing on a horizontal hitbox) to this. Similarly, when I went about drawing from the cartoons, I was really good at copying the outlines.

And after this saga, I lost the desire to ever draw something made up without knowing why (in hindsight, it was traded for making my own anime drawings).

Prior to it, like any kid, I did make imaginative drawings. I remember the process for these well: I had an idea and thought I should draw it, and so I drew whichever "thing" was in my head, and the more narrative the idea was, the more I developed a scenery around it. I often made stories along with my drawings and made my mom write them down on the backside. In particular, because they were the drawings I liked making the most, I drew a lot of robots, though none of them were ever placed in a space. My mom assumed there was a story to these too, so there is a page somewhere where I claim a robot's ability was to clean the house and take out the trash (I like to think I said this to amuse my mom, which worked), but I remember this being very forced, and the robots held a special place in my mind in some manner.

Basically the process is as follows: some pre-held sense or idea; depiction of the main subject or an outline of the scene; development of subjects; determining interaction between subjects; depiction and development of these interactions; continue until a completed scene.

When I force myself to sit down and draw, which was an exercise of sorts in response to my lack of imaginative image-making, I struggle to have any idea at all of what to draw. But when I begin on this process, it goes quite quickly, and the result always surprises me. When I look at the image, I can see how I created its own space/world and where everything falls into place within it, even if it's just a simple sketch. 

the left hand (the pointed finger touching the palm) is the
most visceral to me, because it was the most visceral to make

The only thing I know that happens when I drew this, was "this hand goes here, and it touches this (draws 2nd hand), and it's part of the body so..." It's a lot of 'this and so' instead of 'this means that because.' So I wouldn't say it's the subconscious taking over or anything because I am aware of something and using some sort of logic while making it; I'm just not aware from a third-person or twice-detached perspective. Logic is possible in immersion. It's the logic of the image. Immersion lacks critical logic? It's similar to tunnel vision, isn't it?

***

Of the older painters: how does one go about making up a portrait or landscape? Where and what is the difference in process between making up a portrait/landscape from life, and making up depictions of myths, religious scenes, or just scenes that don't exactly exist in real life? And if it is a more straightforward process (painting a portrait of someone and depicting them as they are), is this less substantial or interesting? I am hinting that people do not find this less substantial, so I am asking why so, and where is the substantialness located.

And then I go right back to thinking about art school. Assuming we have gone over the serious of questions about if this or that kind of art is better, and landing on the easy answer that 'no, nothing is better or worse, at least inherently', but then adding a footnote of 'the more revolutionary or innovative are more interesting, yes', I have to ask what art students are doing (because that is my world; you could ask of professional artists, but that's not my world, and sometimes they get into such a rhythm of making their signature art that you need to observe them in a different manner).

Why do my painting classmates make the paintings they make? What do they think about? How do they come up with these images? I have never asked directly because it doesn't ever come up; I did attempt to ask a classmates who is actually part of visual communications why she made her project, how she went about the idea, what interested her, etc. (it was a book containing anonymous replies to a question about their first love experiences). She didn't really answer. Anytime this sort of question is asked in a class, people are a bit baffled, as if they were asked something they thought was common sense.

Of course I can say that this means I'm not a real artist, and it's probably true. But I still want to have an answer. This also doesn't mean that I think people should explain everything, or have their art be explainable. I have had classmates who make such strange art in such strange, immediate, spontaneous ways, that no one questions them because this strangeness becomes its own explanation.

The closest I've gotten to the location of this question/topic is when people explain the emotion behind their art, or the emotion they put into it. I mean that quite frequently people explain the reasoning behind repetitive motifs in their art, for instance, in terms of concept (no surprise in a conceptual school), but this is a step that occurs after the art. It is located in the after, even if its contents take place elsewhere (the motif occurs during the art, the reasoning before and outside of the art), it is an analysis. I am asking about what occurs in the before (and inside, not outside).

This question is especially true for those who feel so strongly about their artmaking and do things with such a high level of confidence or belief (not that they cannot be self-conscious or doubtful at the same time). I want to see what they are seeing, or see what they are thinking (or think what they are thinking? think in the manner of how they are thinking?)

I haven't really reached any conclusion or real question in this post.

Analysis of a small example in my writing

There is something I often do when I write (and I rarely ever write), and that is repeat a word. Truthfully, this is because of my poor vocabulary. My lack of knowledge in higher quality words, as well as my extremely small closet of words (more accurately, my vision in finding words is just extremely far-sighted), causes me to latch onto one for longer than I should.

I start off a paragraph with this sentence:

I gaze at myself often now as I have never seen a more unfamiliar figure. I am trying to figure it out.

I repeat 'figure' which adds a particular rhythm to the text, and I do enjoy the rhythm of texts (I have learned that I mainly focus on movement or rhythm in things, such as music, visual art, etc.) so this isn't entirely accidental. What really happens as I wrote this is that my mental picture was of me looking in the mirror at myself, but specifically viewing myself as some form of a human: a form of a human is a figure. I write the word figure because it matches the concept I was aiming for and affirms a sense or tone I was meaning to construe. Then I must describe why I will look in the mirror at myself, which is to understand what I'm looking at. My poor vocabulary and tendency towards casual language closes down all walls, leaving only the phrase 'figure it out' left to choose. I cannot see past any of these walls because I had just chosen the word 'figure' for the previous sentence and it is now stuck in my head.

I allow this repetition to occur because there is a sharp difference between the two sentences. 'Figure' was chosen in the 1st due to its representative connection for the object of 'myself as a human thing', so it is already slightly abstracted, slightly metaphorical, and in a way formal: the word 'figure' elicits thoughts of figure painting, the "nice" formal word for body. 

I have always felt an unreasonable disgust at the word body, similar to looking at raw meat in a deli. This disgust was at such a level to where my mother would allow me to run off to a different section of the grocery store. I now have fond memories of this moment for it was the rare chance for me to be alone in a public setting, without any responsibility for watching the shopping cart or hunting down an item. And so body becomes the deli meat which stands in the way from my peaceful solitude.

The 1st sentence is also lengthy in its route of description. I often write sentences like these, especially when I'm desperately trying to describe something, both ignoring any enjoyable rhythm of text, while also keeping my attention on not using too many words: the result is a choppy, weirdly accurate, 'I can't cut this down or rearrange this anymore' type of sentence.

I gaze at myself often: a striking-down motion, grounding with the descriptor of 'often'... as I have never seen a more unfamiliar figure: a rocky upwards motion, the steps of 'as I', 'have', 'never' acting as mini strike-downs (thus they became the flat steps of a stairway)...

A choppier sentence usually will have a lot of "that" words in it, as if the sentence throws a handful of words at you and points at each one, like a child reciting reading a book, not yet away of how a sentence should flow. This is a mixture of the two, a stairway.

The 2nd sentence is informal, short, and straightforward not by way of a striking-down motion, but a toss. It tosses itself at you, and says 'there.' That's all there is to it. It uses the phrase 'figure it out' and elicits a casual tone, and so the toss motion is more so represented by a shrug. A friendly toss from a stranger, but he wears no expression on his face.

By opposing the two in succession, especially when the 1st sentence starts the paragraph, makes the reader (and me as the writer) jump from one world to the next: dualisms of formal/casual, choppy/smooth, descriptive/expressionless. And so the repetition of one word, especially when it occurs at the end of the first sentence, makes an ostensive connection between the two worlds. It doesn't connect them actively, it actually separates them further. The word 'figure' makes an appearance in a formal and luxurious manner, it bows and leaves, but then we see 'figure' again, this time as a stranger. 'Well I'm not the first figure because just look at me...' it shrugs. But as a reader of words, the repetition of a word is so loud and obnoxious that it seems wild two figures managed to appear before us as two different identities: a revolving door of words and their refusal of identity theft.

There are more examples of this, but I am not going to go search for them. From my memory, I am thinking of times the repetition of a word occurs starting at the last sentence of a paragraph, and then again at the first sentence of the next paragraph. This should take on a different motion from a revolving door, something like jumping out of a window and landing on the grass, where we as the reader become confused about if we were watching someone through a window from our 2nd floor apartment and suddenly ended up on the grass with them, or if we never left our location at all.

Note: I have always hated the first sentence in my example! Even in my analysis I became under the influence of my writer-self and did not look closely enough at the words. I often read it as if it is 'I gaze at myself as never seeing a more unfamiliar figure', a usage of as to mean doing something simultaneously. Then I correct myself and reread it as "I gaze at myself often as I have never seen a more unfamiliar figure", and picture myself in awe of my own image, as this sentence is similar in wording to the phrase 'I have never seen a more beautiful...' But both are wrong! The 'now' always escapes! I must read it slowly, climb the stairs much slower: I have been looking at myself a lot, recently, because I look unfamiliar, so much so to where I haven't seen a more unfamiliar figure than myself. This is what I am trying to say. But I refuse to say it in such a manner, it's too casual. I must act proper and run away from the meat deli, only to chop my fleeing in half with the butcher's knife out of nowhere.

I also enjoy creating a metaphor, and then turning that metaphor into a world to continuously revisit.

On 'abstract': its definitions, "floatiness", and usage in art

Brought on from my last post, I have been briefly questioning the word 'abstract' as it holds such a strong and understandable meaning to me that I find myself unable to define it (unlike other words where I can recall a definition that made sense, and my understanding of the meaning is a bit "choppy", because I have a poor vocabulary).

In an art-related context, clearly, it is meaning the abstraction of an image. Something torn away from its factual, "real" existence; and that encompasses qualities of being concrete, collectively defined and agreed as fact, and so on. Like a verifiable piece of evidence, something empirical, a factual existence has this sense or assumption that we can return to it (is this why a fallen building or a closed restaurant shocks us so much?). Something abstract cannot, or it at least doesn't hold the assumption that it can be returned to.

I wonder if this verifiable 'returning-to' is actually not so true, that is, either the abstract-object (e.g. idea) can be returned to and the real-object can as well, or neither of them can, perhaps by way of a change occurring (although I already don't like this latter half). Or, something like the abstract-object and real-object aren't too different in regards to their existence towards us, the existence that we can return to, touch, or interact. When we return to a real-object, are we returning to the object itself or an idea of it? But this has already become quite a pointless question...

What I mean to get at is that the abstract existence of something is different than its real or concrete existence, at least in some manner, such as how we interact with it or believe to interact with it. When someone's idea is quite abstract and he is explaining it to us, we might understand him or believe we understand him very well, but it is often difficult to "return" to the idea and picture it again (for the sake of analysis, reference, etc.), and so we ask 'Well that's too abstract, so can you give an example or something?'.

I suppose what matters in terms of the integrity of our interaction is the fact that we can understand this abstract idea without interacting with it the same way we do for the real-object; e.g. we don't need to "see" it with our own eyes to understand it. This is unusual compared to the real-object. There is no point in questioning the building in front of us because we see it, and while you can question this, it just has no point (I don't have the care to unravel this entire topic on certainty). Our belief and trust in the empirical senses is just that high, the integrity of our interaction with a real-object is great. The abstract's is not due to the very nature of its existence (I am not saying to raise its integrity to be as high, although I claim this lack of integrity is not a bad thing, because even I can fed up with someone's overly abstract explanation).

And the thought I had was how with the great existence of abstract art, which interestingly does hold a high integrity, perhaps by way of some sort of self-verification, the meaning of 'abstract' takes on some object-like existence. 'Abstract art' is art where the imagery is not of a represented object, it is abstracted. The head of a person, for instance, has been twisted and reshaped into a circle. We know it is a head because by some way or another the art has made us understand that this circle is a head, perhaps in its title or the context clues of its surrounding image. This could happen by way of a "code", some metaphor key of circle=head, rectangle=torso, and so on, but this existence is barely abstract and is also in my opinion quite lame (lame if we are to treat it as special, I have nothing against circle heads).

It seems that this code uses abstraction and creates its own concrete existences within it: circle, head, now draw the line of understanding and meaning to connect them. This immediately becomes strange. If abstraction makes it so that we cannot "return" to concrete objects, then why and how did it just create its own concrete objects of returnability? If we were to be abstract purists, this would feel like a cop-out.

But what of pure abstract art, e.g. abstract expressionism, or just really in most existences of abstract work that we don't even question anymore, where there are no recognizable codes? The title of a work where, say, we see multi-colored splatters and unrecognizable shapes, becomes just an additional layer of conceptual context; calling a wild abstract image, "My Mother", isn't a code, it just adds some sort of additional meaning ('Why on earth is it called that?', 'How weird', 'That's how he sees his mom?!') and context (for some reason the artist titled it that way, similar to an event that would spur an artistic creation). Note: I'm not saying it cannot be a code, it just isn't in the regular existence of a code, so if it were a code to us, it functions so fundamentally different than the circle-head key that it doesn't matter.

I wonder with how long abstract art has existed and the name it has made for itself, it has now climbed the ranks to sit at the same definition-meaning level of 'Portrait' or 'Landscape,' despite originally being a descriptive word within art (and we still see this with something like 'abstract landscape'). We know what an abstract work will look like, what it will entail, its history, and how to interact with it (we will interact and "treat" a landscape differently from a portrait, and the same for total abstraction). This suddenly feels so concrete, almost like a coded existence itself, a concrete field of abstract paintings...

And so what happens to abstraction within this? The function of the descriptive of 'abstract'? 

If 'abstract' is the same nature of those floaty-ideas your over-explaining mate loves to talk of, of no returnability, graspability, a slippery nature that never focuses in the sight of our vision, never solidifies in the grasp of our touch, and never specifies in the sound of our hearing, have we suddenly developed an abstract sixth-sense? Where is the floatability in the abstract work? The paint splatter is there, right in front of our eyes, fully specified, fully solidified, and fully focused.

There is an idea that abstract painting is more "real" in regards to the paint, we can see it as paint, it is just paint. Meanwhile, representative painting is less real because we are falling for the illusion paint is giving, we are not seeing the paint for being paint, we are somehow "seeing" a person while looking at paint...

What I mean more so is in the word of 'abstract', less so this practical function of its description within art and so on. The sense from the word 'abstract' is what I am concerned with. I think about how in an intro painting class ('Painting Practice' for any SAIC people), when my teacher assigned an abstract assignment, where it was mandatory to be totally abstract, many people completely missed the mark. Someone painted an urban scene but turned the buildings red, and when questioned where the abstraction was, she said 'Well, the buildings are red!' This shocked me because I was not a 1st year student in this class, and so I felt a violent pull back towards my high school memories. But what also shocked me was the sharp difference in the understanding of 'abstract.'

The correct abstraction assigned was what I've been previously defining, of floatiness, of no codes, of no returnability, and whichever way that applies itself to visual art. The abstraction the classmates were thinking of was a definition closer to 'when the thing is different from how it is supposed to look.'

It is not that this definition of abstraction is wrong, or always wrong, because it is seen with the cartoon: the human is 'abstracted' into a circle with circle eyes and a line mouth, and so on. Is this closer to the circle-head code? Is this definition of abstraction what art ends up really doing, even if we understand its correct existence should be of floatiness? Are we still copping-out?

Note: This is similar to an issue I kept running into when reading Deleuze (in a class) on aesthetics, and his disapproval of abstract art, as he was looking at abstract expressionism and earlier artists like Kandinsky, and disapproved them for just using codes (and is probably why I keep falling back on that word). And I feel this should be mentioned for context. But I do not mean to talk solely within that context, nor take anything from that angle, because firstly Deleuzian aesthetics is not the most fun route to walk down, and secondly I find the route to be too rocky, that is, I can't help but see the problem of coding, yet I can't help but hold faith in abstraction! I think there is something to the idea that Francis Bacon saves and returns the body/head (blah blah...) by using portraiture and not abstraction, but I do not see the rest of this take... And I do not with to ostensively engage with this context any longer!

I should try to locate whichever "problem" I am desperately trying to point at, and this is why I am writing this (I think while writing, and I think in a style similar to generating writing). Summary: I find something strange in the nature of abstract art as a whole, and as a thing (conceptual object). I am suspicious of something in abstraction, and I am concerned with the supposed loss of a definition of abstraction (one of "floatiness").

Why am I concerned? That is what I am trying to figure out.

To ground this, and to finally return to my original reason for writing this (or being reminded to write this) is the example of 'abstract anime'. What do I even mean by this concept (I am not saying it is my concept)? It is not enough to just abstract the anime-face, an abstracted version of the cartoon anime style. Abstract anime is something more, it is this strange floaty concept, and that is why I wrote a post pointing to various sources and claiming they are "anime" (this slang is fitting, actually: it is giving anime), especially sources that shouldn't elicit that. It is closer to the "correct" definition given in my painting class example. It is closer to the word definition.

I just need to figure out why I care about this version of the definition, and further develop whether or not it really is different, and if it is how so, and if it isn't why not, and so on and so forth...

In a less serious and more personal way (as in it may only apply to me, or I will only speak on it as if it applies to me, which is such an interesting usage of language by the way), I would like to approach this floaty version of abstraction. I may be a bit of a purist. I may be trying to make complete sense of something that by its nature is less conceivable (concretely conceivable, "reachable"), which I wouldn't be surprised at. Or, it may also be an attempt to uncover some less conceivable idea that permeates its way into so much more outside of our attention, and I would also not surprised at this.

For what it is worth, in terms of 'abstract anime' and whatever I am trying to develop in that, its usage of the word 'abstract' and its relation to the definition I was referencing in this point is a conceptual existence. And, while I don't have the energy to explain why this is, I think something in that would be useful. Earlier I claimed that wondering if we interact with the abstract idea of an object, even when interacting with its real and concrete existence, was a pointless question; I wonder if this last bit is more so in relation to that...

I should also mention that when I wonder or question, I am not literally asking questions and expecting answers. There is a reason I do not seem to care to go into the history of abstraction or the etymology of the word, and it isn't just my own lack of knowledge and intensely high degree of stupidity causing that, I am just not writing a history book.

***

Picture example: 

Paul Klee

Little Busters! (Key)

 

'That's anime', I point to both. What connects them is 'abstract anime'. Yet one isn't anime, and one isn't abstract. 'Abstract anime' is abstract, because it connects these two images, because it is these two images.

On abstract anime and its examples: intuitive recognition, anime-clouds, and seeing faces in the dirt.

Note: these sorts of posts are speculative and I don't wish to be taken in a serious tone. I just into topics like these from random starting points, and I haven't made up my mind on any of it.

Examples like Teng Yung Han's are very literal, especially the first photo below. It is a clear, literal abstraction of a figure, the lines drag themselves out of place, it's quite modern. The main difference is that in place of the most human-like facial features, there is anime: the wide face, the large eyes, the exact anime facial proportions. If anime is, in only one sense, the erasure of the human features of the nose bridge, the bumps, the wrinkles, the erasure of definition itself, then we can see how such a thing appears here. What is exaggerated is not, say, the near grotesque nature of a human face, but instead the pleasantries of the flat, empty anime face.

Teng Yung Han

Teng Yung Han

There is an exact manner at which these facial features come to be, a specific organization, that I am unable to word well enough (anime is not just 'the large eyes' and I want to avoid this notion as much as possible). It is almost as if the childish, wide proportions of anime developed themselves, all by themselves, so much to where it becomes its own being: it isn't a translation of a child into a drawing, of a person into a cartoon, and so on (I hint at this in these notes).

More has to be developed for me to clearly define what I'm talking about, so I will skip ahead. What matters, in my opinion (I do not think there is just one explanation, this is just the one I'm focused on), is visual recognition. Not similarity of like-ness, nor resemblance; such things are the operations of the end-result objects (in this case, drawn faces) to each other. I am focusing on the other side of the operation: the recognition in the human viewer.

When I say 'Teng Yung Han is drawing anime, because look at the eyes, it's shaped like anime eyes', I am calling out to two objects: Teng Yun Han's drawn faces and the already-defined, already-drawn anime-eye (both the concept, its definition, and the visual thing). This is as if you cut the faces out of Teng Yung Han's drawings, and then cut the eyes out of several different television anime, and put them side by side.

When I say 'this is anime', I am calling out to a concept of anime not necessarily defined. I know what it is, someone else may know what it is (or we think we know what it is, we think we are speaking of the same thing), and this knowing is because of our recognition. We don't need empirical proof to jump to this knowing, it operates at the same speed of intuition, and calls to somewhere in the mind, perhaps. By this, I mean our visual recognition is shaped largely by what we've already seen, by our mental-visual schemas. This doesn't mean it's impossible to empirically prove that something is anime, you can go back on your tracks and hand-select instances from your schema, and then cross compare and so on. But this takes place after our intuitive recognition.

The point is that someone may very well look at Teng Yung Han's drawings as I explain and map them out, and then stop me and go 'Hey, where are you seeing that? Where is the eye?' and I would be very surprised that someone wasn't on the same page as me. I must remember that my eye has been trained to see this sort of imagery because I am so familiar with a certain manner of anime visuals.

Have you ever seen a face somewhere, maybe a cloud or something in the dirt, and look at it with another person who also sees a face? And then when you, for your own entertainment, start to map out what the face looks like, the other person stops you and says 'Oh my gosh, that's the nose? I thought that was the mouth! Now I can't unsee it!" and nor can you unsee it.

*** 

 You are looking for faces in clouds, and I am looking for anime.

Max Ernst

An early example (Ernst) of spotting the anime not-so-anime (but very-much-so-anime!). A note: is this not just the cartoonish face? But there is not a real binary between cartoon (western) and anime.

And then, like a paranoid schizophrenic (crude metaphor), I force you to listen to me as I point out the anime in all of the clouds, and the more pointing I do, the more anime-clouds appear, so fast that I cannot even finish my explanations before I'm labelled as delusional.

Paul Klee

The most reoccurring example in the sphere of the non-anime is Klee. Note: I really should clarify that there is no binary between cartoon and anime in this argument, but there is a clear difference when an image is so general that it envelopes both the stereotypical cartoon and anime (typical of the non-anime examples).

I don't have the time nor energy to break down, image-analysis style, why this brings about my recognition of anime. I do want to share, however, how this sparked my intuitive cloud-identifying vision: I of course was familiar with Klee but less so with his various drawings (this tendency is shared across all things with me), and I wasn't familiar with the angels. I was familiar enough with his style, or more so similar styles of the time, to see the image of this angel on my internet feed and think 'Who is that? Isn't that...?', but what overwhelmed my thinking was the delayed yet impactful sense of 'that's cute.' And it wasn't just me, but whoever shared this image, and whoever was engaging with the image. That is, the image appeared on my feed with a link to a blog sharing someone's revelation with these angels and how cute they were, and while I cannot remember exactly how so (nor would I feel certain enough to retell anyways because it was not in English) but it was likened to something related to anime in some way shape or form. I cannot put my memory-finger on it. The point is, there was a group of people reacting to this image in the exact same manner due to the same mental-visual schemas.

Paul Klee

It is enough to make me drop everything, point, and plead 'But just look at it, how could you not see it?' The delusion grows as the certainty of the intuition grows because they are one of the same.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee

It is always possible to point to examples in the art, to empirical reasoning. Both of the following images have features that seem to be quintessential to the anime face: the wide and often times pointed chin (image 1), or the simplified anime eye (image 2, on the left, it is actually an architectural column of sorts). I am not dismissing the possibility of this act or what it can do, I am just simply uninterested in it, and think that there is a different area to focus and develop (the intuitive/recognition act).

Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Although, it is possible that the intuitive/recognition act makes it so that the empirical reasoning doesn't really matter after all, that is, if it takes one to have a certain schema or to recognize in a certain way to see the same thing, then whatever that thing "truly" is isn't as relevant. One friend saw a nose, one saw a mouth, but it really is just some shapes in the dirt, no? I am uncertain on if this leads me to make some sort of statement, or what that statement would be (I am really not insulting empirical reasoning).

What I am interested in is why we recognize in the way we do, what this recognition does, and how it operates. This can include mapping out the recognition and tracing it back to its schema, which would get us able to hand-select some examples (closer to empirical reasoning). This can also include the opposite direction, going forwards, full-speed ahead and to keep pointing at more and more paranoid anime-clouds until my finger cramps up. And then, just see... see if/what/how...

Believe it or not, this is anime:

Paul Klee

Because this is:

low quality image of an anime character

And this is:

unknown source

That's why this is anime, despite featuring no people:

Hyun Ju Lim

My interest in recognition and schemas, whether forwards or backwards, can also include a focus on how 'anime' (in this specific manner) came to be, and how to deal with its existence.

Much more needs to be thought about, and there is a dire need for things to be put into experimental practice (art-making wise). Perhaps somewhere in this, I will be able to know why I care about any of this.