Nat u r al Abst r act Ph ot ogr aph ic Ar t Bar r ie Dale
AGSA
Wild-h aven .co.u k
I am trying to produce abstract art in what I hope is a different way; by responding instantaneously and instinctively to the arbitrary images resulting from high-magnification explorations of natural forms. I respond instantly, but only to images that have immediate appeal, trying to eliminate any influence of the intellect. I hope that in this way I am exploring my pre-conscious mind. How does this compare to other ways of producing abstract art, of which there are many:
Pain t in g M en t al Im ages Wassily Kandinsky is often credited with being the first artist to produce ?Abstract Art?, in about the year 1911. (He would, however, protest vehemently that his paintings were not abstract; and that there were many other artists doing similar things at about the same time. But he is seen as the pioneer). He had strong, unconventional, religious beliefs and maintained that, in his mind?s eye, he saw his images vividly - all he had to do was paint them. The results may have been abstract to many others but to him they were expressions of mental or spiritual reality.
Wassily Kandinsky; Composition VII. Oil on Canvas. 1913. Kandinky said that this was the most complicated painting he ever produced, and maintained that it was something see saw clearly in his mind's eye. 2
It seems likely that many other great artists could hold detailed visions in their minds, and simply then have to paint them. Ruskin believed very strongly that Turner, late in life, with a rich store of memory to draw on, could visualise mentally, and in great detail, scenes which did not actually exist. He was synthesising, into a single image, his total manifold, holistic experience of places too extensive to be visible from a single point. This may have been a very early attempt attempt at natural abstract art
Th e An alyt ical Appr oach The cubists, Braque and Picasso, greatly extended the ideas that Turner had had an inkling of. Their archetypal paintings were of simple things seen from many angles, first produced in the years 1911-12. These were not ?visions?. Cubism is an intellectual exercise, aimed at revealing a materialistic truth - how, in a painting, can a material thing be represented in all its aspects. So, in some senses, natural, not abstract, art In this article we will leave cubism aside; producing ?cubist?photographs of natural forms is a different challenge.
Exer cisin g Th e Pr e-con sciou s M in d Paul Klee was quite clear that in his painting he was exploring the contents of his pre-conscious mind. It is very difficult to examine his ideas in detail; are we talking about ?visions?; or exercises of the imagination; or creative artistry? In 1920 Klee wrote about painting ?Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things?. Had he perhaps heard that science no longer believed that what we see is what is there? In what sense were his images those that lay beh in d visible things?
Paul Klee. The Geoffnet (The Opening). Watercolour Goache on Paper 1933. 3
Wh at w e Th in k w e See is n ot Wh at Is Th er e An yw ay At about the same time that great artists were moving decisively into the realms of non-figurative art, scientists had started to show that everything we think we see is actually an optical illusion, a trick of the light. Ernest Rutherford showed in 1911 that what appears to be solid matter is, in fact, almost entirely empty space. The fact that we can see matter is because it consists of tiny, rapidly-moving electric charges - a complex, pulsating, electrical disturbance. Light is itself simply a rapidly moving electrical disturbance. The two interact with one another, to deceive us. So all representational art and photography is simply a fiction. In this sense all art and all photography is abstract.
We h ave been Doin g Th is f or a Lon g Tim e With great artists, the feelings being expressed in non-figurative painting are intense and passionately held. Prehistoric artists, who were superb at figurative drawing, would express deep feelings by over-emphasising certain aspects of an image, thus initiating the concept of abstraction. In this they were anticipating the work of African and Chinese artists, and eventually Western artists, and they did it quite naturally.
Cave Painting. About 5000 BC. Laas Geel, Somalia. Courtesy of Abdular Geelah, Wikipedia.
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Nat u r al Abst r act Ph ot ogr aph ic Ar t . I want to produce Natural Abstract Photographic Art. I need to find a way of doing this that respects what others have done, but is not simply a copy of what has gone earlier. I need a valid definition of abstraction. I know that what we see, even if we can agree on what we see, is not what is there. So, if I photograph a flower and it looks like a flower, that is already an abstraction. If I photograph it, completely honestly, and it looks like a spacecraft, that is also an abstraction; a different one. Which is the more valid? Again, if I photograph a flower, say, six times at normal magnification I can produce a fairly comprehensive account of what it looks like. But if I photograph it at high magnification I can produce thousands of abstract images, each of them saying something valid about the flower. The actual form of the flower could not be constructed from the high-magnification images. But they all tell us something about the subject; they are all valid. But there are too many of them; we need to be selective. So I take only those that have a second meaning, unrelated to subject matter, but which is immediately apparent. I am hoping that these secondary meanings appeal to me because they represent something that I, unconsciously, like or believe in. So my definition of 'abstract' will be 'not resembling subject matter '. Here is an example:
The Godola. High-magnification image of petals of Phalaenopsis, in natural light.
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work so that many images appear in the viewfinder, almost all of them unremarkable. But occasionally one catches me by surprise; it has ?meaning?. I force myself to capture it immediately. At the moment of capture the nature of the meaning may not be clear; I know only that there is a meaning. It is only in retrospect that things may become clear. Or apparently so; because it I can never be certain about what it was that impelled me to take any given picture. I
Here is another example; where did this one come from?
The Beast Rejecting Solace. High-magnification image of Dendrobium petals in natural light.
Su m m ar y I hope that my images qualify as Natural Abstract Photographic Art. I hope also that they provide insight into the nature of appearances; and show that the images we see are constructed of many smaller, apparently unrelated, images. To see many other images of mine please go to http://www.wild-haven.co.uk
Bar r ie Dale
AGSA
wild-haven.co.uk 6
