Nat u r al Abst r act Ar t Barrie Dale AGSA
Th e M ission
Wild-haven.co.uk
I am going to trace Art through from its beginnings. I want to know what role it played in bringing us to our current situation. Stone-Age art was superb, largely because humans were then fully engaged with Nature. We have now lost this involvement, both in our art and in our everyday lives. We are in danger of destroying the natural world, our only lifeline. If we are to survive we need to find a way back. I want to see what role art might play in this, the reversing of the trend. Can we re-capture the intimacy with Nature that Stone-Age artists had?
In Th e Begin n in g Art started in deep, dark Stone-Age Caves. Humans were then then part of Nature. Inspired by their intimate association with the world around them, they produced superb line-drawings and sculptures. Their work showed a great zest for living. They learnt to paint and to sculpt before they learnt to write, make cloth, or make pots. Their closeness to Nature was that important to them. Art was what they did first in the journey to becoming civilised. As artists, they faced great difficulty. Their implements and materials would have been extremely crude. They had to work by torchlight. This was the Ice-Age, and they were probably cold, tired, hungry. This may, though, have been an advantage; nutrient deficiency and an excess of adrenalin may aid visual awareness.
Sculpture; Russia; about 30,000 BC. This bird is f lyin g, beautifully-observed.
Com pr eh en sive Exper t ise The artistic prowess of Stone-age artists showed in several distinct ways:
Visu al M em or y - Working entirely from visual memory, they were able to produce extremely accurate drawings and sculptures of lions, horses, birds, . . . They were probably much more practiced in using their visual memory than we are now, with our books, phones , photographs, television. (See over).
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Sculptured horse: Germany, about 30,000 BC . This horse is anatomically very accurate; How was that achieved? The artists had no rulers or means of scaling that we know of.
A Tast e f or Abst r act ion - They felt free to exaggerate those aspects that created the greatest emotional impact. Apparently this came to them naturally. They emphasised what made a rhinoceros most rhinoceros-like, a bull most bull-like. In this they were anticipating the work of later Chinese and African artists, and, of course, modern Western artists, like Picasso: Picasso was a considerable admirer of cave art.
Rhinoceros; Chauvet Cave, France.; about 30,000 BC. This is a superb line-drawing - free-flowing, confident, economical. The line itself is interesting, varying in thickness and character to emphasise and explain the masses.
Un der st an din g M ovem en t - They were able to portray the way animals m oved, a very difficult feat. It might be that a deep understanding of animal movement was necessary for survival, and they simply expressed this knowledge. Or it may be that, with only a limited language, they saw movement as a whole, rather than a complicated operation involving separate limbs. (see over).
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Sculpture of a Bison. Russia. About 20,000 BC This animal is clearly moving. Perhaps the sculptor had a highly traumatic experience of being approached by a lbison?
Exu ber an ce If we extend our interest beyond the Stone-Age to other peoples not yet exposed to urban industrial culture, we find that much is similar; the art is again outward-looking, forward-looking, even exuberant. In the art of Bush peoples, or pre-Roman British tribes, for example, we find the same sense of liveliness as we found in cave art. Startled Antelopes. Bush Art. From Sir Herbert Read "The Meaning of Art". This image has tremendous life to it, even though heavily abstracted. These animals are alert , listening intently, ready to flee. This is reality.
White Horse; about 1000 BC; carved by Bronze-age tribes in the chalk of the Oxfordshire Downs, Uffington, England. This image, again heavily abstracted, is full of the joy of being alive. The spirit of a horse is captured completely. It is vital, ebullient, galloping freely across the downs. 4
Th e En d of St on e-Age Ar t Stone-Age art died out when humans stopped living in caves, and it appears to have had no progeny. It would seem that for all the ?advances?we have made since then, we have never quite re-captured the zest for living that cave-art exudes. Up until the eighteenth century, much human music and painting still had a positive, outward-looking feel to it; the music of Vivaldi, Pergolasi, Bach; and the art of Claude, Poussin, Constable, and the early Turner was optimistic and uplifting. But then, as we began to make life easier for ourselves by developing technology, we started to become more introspective.(1) The music of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mahler was substantially about the agonies of being a human being. Turner, later in his career, and then progressively Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, started to intellectualise art. And although Nature was still the mainspring, this was no longer obviously so.(2)
In t ellect u alisin g Ar t Turner, contemplating a steam engine, not only wanted to paint it, but to say what impact it might have on the world - to convey an idea. His painting ?Rain, Steam, and Speed? depicts a steam engine seen from two different angles, expressing both its nature as an irresistible, and therefore threatening, object, and the fact that it was driven by fire.
Rain, Steam, and Speed. JMW Turner. National Gallery, London, UK. Again, when portraying the St Gothard Pass in the Alps he, a Professor of Perspective, distorted the perspective to convey the immensity of the mountains. Such trends gathered pace with Cezanne. He was at pains to show that simple representational painting could not reveal the deeper truths of Nature. He never aspired to eloquence. Instead, he wanted to emphasise the difficulties involved in painting, and to maintain that there was nothing the painter could do about it. Art was inadequate before Nature; but, at the same time it was a necessary way of communing with Nature, as the Stone-Age artists realised.
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Braque and Picasso went still further, and ended up by saying, in summary: - the truth cannot be seen from just one direction; you must look from many directions; - the artist is a participant, not a spectator; an artist's presence changes everything; - to capture a true essence you must over-emphasise those aspects that create the most emotional intensity; to represent reality you must distort reality.
So artists had now rejected the idea that you paint what you see. You may now paint what you think (Picasso, Braque); or paint what you feel (Van Gogh, Munch, Rothko)
Landscape: Vincent Van Gogh
Man with Guitar: Georges Braque.
Artists had made a great intellectual advance. Painting had been taken to a new level of meaning. However, there was a downside. Artists had apparently assisted in the human abandonment of Nature.
Th e In f lu en ce of Ar t At the time of the great artistic revolution described above, art had a powerful influence upon the attitudes of society. This was before the days of photographs, films or television. So art was an intrinsic part of the mechanisation and urbanisation that took place between 1880 and 1930, profoundly changing society. Artists and the rest of society both rejected Nature at the same time. For Artists, the move was more apparent than real; but that was not how it seemed.
Dist an cin g Ou r selves f r om Nat u r e We have seen that Stone-Age artists scaled the heights through their deep involvement with Nature. All great artists start off in this same way; the initial spark, shown by their early sketch-books, is a love of the real world, and a need to understand it. The difficulty is that , since the age of Picasso, the end-result may not immediately portray any degree of closeness to the real world (3) .
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Th e Dow n side There is now a perception, shared by some members of the general public, and by certain vested interests, that Nature is not revered by anybody, even artists. From there it is but a short step to proclaim that Nature is of no value, and can be exploited to exhaustion. Which is precisely what we have been doing. We are now very close to the end-point; where Nature cannot sustain itself. We have no option but to reverse these trends. Only the completely mis-informed would claim that we could survive without Nature. We would have no air to breath, no food, no clean water.
Wh at Can We Do? Everyone must play their part in moving back closer to Nature. Nature must be revered and appreciated for what it is: an indispensable source of material and spiritual sustenance. I am both a scientist and an artist. As a scientist I know what dire straits the human race is in. I have played my part in trying to alert politicians to the situation (4). I have also done what I can in a practical sense to reverse the trend, by creating and maintaining a small Wildlife Reserve - "Wildhaven".
Th e Role of Ar t ist s Artists were highly influential in the move away from Nature in the early 1900s. They have now got to find ways of exerting their influence again, to reverse the trend. They have got to show that Art, based on a deep regard for Nature, is central need of the human spirit. If you doubt that, remember that the first thing that humans did when they started to become civilised was to learn how to paint. Artists must insist that Nature is the source of all art; that art is the touchstone for how we live our lives; that we cannot afford to lose either Nature or Art. As in the 1900s, artists have got to help their fellow humans find a new, this time better, way of living. We now know almost the opposite of what we thought we knew in 1900. Mechanisation and technology do not, by themselves, lead to Nirvana. They are useful only if they are deployed with wisdom, some of which can be found in Art.
Possibilit ies How can artists help? I would be difficult to re-instate natural representational art and easel painting as a major social force. It would require artists of immense charisma and creativity. It would be very difficult to say anything new and gripping. On the other hand many critics would say that only a face-to-face confrontation with a major work of art carries the right emotive power. So this is an imponderable Abstract art, as commonly understood would have the difficulty that it would not appear to represent a return to nature. Whatever sort of art it is may have to be transmitted electronically; and given our current habit of hopping casually from one thing to another, there may have to be a lot of it.
At t it u des Artists who acted as cheerleaders for the mechanical/industrial age were appropriately aggressive and dynamic. Is this the correct attitude to take as we try to reverse the trend? Or, given the desecration of Nature that we have witnessed, would anger be more appropriate? Or should we instead aim to be enlightening, uplifting persuasive? Perhaps some of each, according to character. 7
An Oppor t u n it y Artists have not fully explored the abstract art that can result from high-magnification photography of natural forms; this presents an opportunity to be challenging, distinctive, original. I am promoting Nat u r al Abst act Ar t . I photograph natural subjects at high magnification . The results are effectively abstract, with no apparent link to subject matter. I capture only those image that have immediate, instinctive, appeal. I reject those that I've had to think about. There is no manipulation. I hope that Paul Klee would say that they are images that appealed to the subconscious.
Som e Exam ples
Representing the Present.
Representing the Past.
Spacecr act Appr oach in g En celadu s
Pain t ed Sh ip Upon A Pain t ed Ocean . Petals of Phalaenopsis.
Petals of Phalaenopsis
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Representing the World as it Once Was.
Representing the World as it Might Become.
Th r ou gh Flow er y M eadow s u p t o Dist an t Clou ded M ou n t ain s.
Escapin g Fr om t h e Apocalypse. Petals of Phalaenopsis
Petals of Geranium Pratense
Regeneration
Mystery
Daw n in t h e M ou n t ain s
A Tr ace Upon t h e Fabr ic of Tim e
Petals of Phalaenopsis.
Petals of Phalaenopsis.
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Adventure.
Fantasy
Upon a Lee Sh or e.
Evan escen ce
Petals of Phalaenopsis.
Petals of Phalaenopsis
Wh at is t h e Sign if ican ce? I hope that I am following, with respect, in the footsteps of Paul Klee:- questioning the truth of Visual Experience, probing the contents of the preconscious mind. If, I have persuaded any artists to be more demonstrative about their dependence on Nature; or fellow human beings to be more respectful of Nature in their everyday lives, I will have achieved a great deal. I am deeply grateful to Robert Hughes ('The Shock of the New') for his towering erudition.
Barrie Dale
AGSA
wild-haven.co.uk
Foot n ot es (1) Is there a connection here? There is evidence that exposure to Nature lifts the spirits; and that people who reject Nature are more likely to suffer from depression. (2) Van Gogh found his inability to capture the splendour of Nature too much to bear. Fellow artists, also trying to express their, rather more negative passions, such as Munch and Rothko, also descended into despair. (3) This is, of course, a misunderstanding, but one easily made. (4) See "The Independent", p3, 6/6/1989; "Private Eye", p25, 9/6/1989; "Hansard", 153, (106), 15/5/89.
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