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.