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.
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Picture example:
Paul Klee
Little Busters! (Key)
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