The Game of Visual Art

Leif G. Larsen

The Game of Visual Art

- A Pragmatic Theory of Art

Copenhagen 2008

Introduction

This book is an attempt of answering the following questions: What is at stake in a work of visual art? What is visual art for? Why are some works of art more valuable and interesting than others?

These issues are normally treated by philosophers and art historians. They intend to encompass the ”essence of art”, that is, the idea of art as such or those properties common of all works of art.

However, metaphysical theories about visual art are useless to anyone who wants to become a practitioner of art. They are hardly informative to the general audience. Even worse, the evolution of contemporary art has made such theories obsolete. The works of the artists are always ahead of the aesthetic theories and they invariably confuse the theorists.

In short, I share the opinion expressed by the psychologist Rudolph Arnheim in his 1971 book Art and Visual Perception: I believe many people to be tired of the dazzling obscurity of arty talk, the juggling with catchwords and dehydrated aesthetic concepts, the pseudo-scientific window dressing… Art is the most concrete thing in the world, and there is no justification for confusing the minds of people who want to know more about it.

My approach to visual art is pragmatic. I intend to show what contemporary artists actually do when they produce works of art.

What can be learned from studying their works? What can be learned from their written statements?

On the basis of this kind of investigation, I intend to suggest a definition of visual art based on a special way of dealing with concepts. I claim that this method can be deduced from classical

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and contemporary works of visual art, including the most recent works of art. I call this method the Game of Visual Art. It is productive to consider works of visual art as conceptual games, kindred to word-games, jokes and puns, all of which are creative playing with concepts.

Conceptual playing has been of vital importance in the history of mankind. As stated by George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California-Berkeley, and Mark Johnson, professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, the artistic mind is the power behind most of our thinking and acting.

Games of art offer nothing more than a framework to be filled by the player. Part of the work is the framework, that is, pieces and rules. The work of visual art comes into existence when the game is played by the spectator. It is an open system that can be played in many ways. The Italian author and philosopher Umberto Eco has made an elaborated statement of this fact.

The first part of this book elucidates certain basic principles characteristic of the tradition of visual art, and conceptualized as game systems. I focus upon the goals which artists try to realize when they are working on their projects.

The second part of this book is a collection of examples where more theoretical points of view from the first part of the book are illustrated through analyses of different modern works of art, from Éduard Manet to RÊnÊ Magritte.

You may consider this book as a small work of art constructed as a game based on the metaphor: Art Is a Game.

Leif G. Larsen

II

1. The Universe of Concepts

The word “concept� originates from the Latin word of concipio which means I grasp, I hold together. And this is exactly what is at stake. A concept is a piece of reality, grasped out of the chaos of reality as a foreground pattern and made fit for thinking and acting.

When a cat dozes off on the window sill and a blackbird appears outside, she stiffens. Her mind is at work. The bird stands apart from the background as a cat-relevant category and can be grasped in a dual sense. The cat evidently considers the bird shape to represent the concept of what is meant to be a cat´s toy or food.

This is an instance of basic level concepts, of a sort common to the animal world and the human race.

The ability to grasp relevant aspects of our surroundings, to perceive them as conceptual categories and to use them for practical purposes is a fundamental condition for any species.

Eating, drinking, mating, finding shelter from the elements and protection from enemies presuppose conceptual thinking in man and animals.

Brains are devices for conceptualizing, thinking and acting. Thanks to our brains, the higher we can survive and evolve. By conceiving and processing reality, man and animal structure their world, fulfill their needs, get around in the world and relate to our mates.

The brain is a marvelous tool. Yet, in certain respects, it is a primitive construction. It can be deluded. A hound may attack an animated cartoon blackbird on a screen, a mere black spot in the shape of a flickering bird. The brain has limited processing capacity, too. I happened to see a dog hunting two hares. When the two-hare concept split up into two hares running in different

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directions, the dog had to stop, waiting for the brain to catch up to the new situation.

Once in a while, the concept-mechanism is too primitive for practical behavior. A dog might learn that a cat may turn out to be a pleasant companion, and we may learn that a so-called terrorist is able to show sign of human capacities. It is not easy to put conflicting concepts into a proper order of priority.

Accordingly, the continuous testing of the validity of existing concepts is important for the survival of the species. The game of visual art is one of the methods human beings use to take care of this matter.

During evolution, the human brain structure has improved its capacity to identify concepts and tailor concepts to specific purposes. Humans are able to identify the natural gestalts of deer, birds, roots and berries, water, shelters, allies and enemies, and the fundamental structure of the surroundings, expressed en the concepts of the prepositions of “before”, “behind”, “on”, “below”.

We also have the capacity to elaborate and subdivided categories, create new concepts from scratch and extend the range of concepts into new areas by means of metaphors and metonyms.

Some experts hold that the most elevated and sublime findings of the human spirit, including art, philosophy, science and religion arise out of the embodied mind of man, emerging from a brain structure with essential mammalian features. They find support for their views in investigations of language, psychology, and neurology.

Concepts are normally created in order to be perceived and shared by others. They are handy for common acting. Concepts serving communicative purposes also create or enhance bonds between those sharing the concepts. When people share concepts, they normally share purposes, as well. Common concepts are the pillars

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of group culture and group ideals. One may even claim that common concepts are the basis of morality and ethics.

In the game of visual art, slices of the world are displayed as concepts, ready for identification. We obtain glimpses of the conceptual machinery of our mental activity and are offered examples of what we think and act by. This is a unique experience per se.

When an artist wants to display a concept, he or she has several options.

He may present the objects by themselves, a section of the real world, e.g. a piece of furniture, a copy of a person made of plaster with real clothes or a bunch of bricks. Look at this, this is what I mean! The object itself is metonymic for all instances of the category. Apparently, the method has some drawbacks. Some spectators are inclined to consider the concept as something from real life and to interpret the objects as objects to be used for everyday purposes, and not as elements of art.

Objects as part of a work of art are conceptual actors in the game and may play different roles at the same time. Therefore, the spectator needs to know whether in individual object defines the concept of the object itself, the class of similar objects, refers to an abstract, higher level category which includes objects with similar characteristics, or means something quite different, that is, act in a metaphoric or metonymic role.

As the representation of an object often fulfills the same function as the real object, pictorial representation is another artistic strategy.

The images of deer and buffalos painted on the walls of the Ice age cave are the very first examples of this strategy. They were probably executed in order to strengthen concepts, crucial for the survival of the hunters. The intention of their originators may have been to glorify the concept of hunting as a fundamental condition

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of life. Some scientists believe that the pictures may have been part of a more comprehensive ritualistic conceptual pattern.

The masters of the Renaissance and their followers used considerable effort to represent persons, objects, buildings, and landscapes in a sort of transparent, visual space, the world considered through an imaginary window. This method has been industrialized and commercialized by means of camera technique and cultivated into perfection by modern 3D computer technology.

A realistic representation, however, is a concept of its own, basically signifying nothing more than perceived reality with the appropriate significance of the real object.

One of the advantages of pictorial representation is that the artist can arrange the objects so that they represent different conceptual patterns with specific significance, a sort of theatrical reality where the extras are placed according to patterns that represent the concepts of the game. This method provides the artist with the potential to merge realistic representation with other objects of supplementary significance, including lines, colors, texture, and proportions.

The third artistic strategy is to create objects from scratch, e.g. different types of lines, hatching, color fields, organic shapes, mathematical shapes, never seen before shapes, sculptural forms of any kind, general objects with no direct reference to existing objects. They may be used as individual concept in non-figurative art. But they are easily merged into representational concepts, e.g. when merging the concept of a soft charcoal with a realistic drawing of a person.

But whether the artist makes use of the first, second or third strategy or contrives new strategies of his own, he always intends to put concepts fit for the human mind at stake in a special game.

This is what I call the Game of Visual Art,

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2. Games Are Conceptual

Games presuppose a universe of their own. This universe is established by means of game pieces and fixed rules describing how to deal with the pieces. The game pieces have their individual significance, defined by the game constructor. Those who want to join the game must accept the significance present in the game.

In the game of bridge, there are four players using 52 different cards, ranked by value and suit. The rules of the game define how the game is played. In soccer there are two teams, two goals and one ball, and the game is played according to rules most of us know about. However, the playing cards are more than pieces of waxcoated paper, and the soccer game is more than the individuals with their colorful dresses, the leather globe and the goals made of steel.

They have conceptual significance. This fact makes the game playable.

The system of the game is neither right nor wrong. It is valid inside the framework of the game and valid only for the participants of the game. When playing the game, one is outside everyday life and inside the universe of the game.

When we take a closer look at works of art, we discover that they have features similar to the properties of games and game systems.

The pieces of a game of visual art often are real stuff like the cards of bridge and the leather ball. As in other games the pieces represent concepts, created to be manipulated by the players, the artist or the spectator. Thus, the game primarily enacts in the minds of the players.

The fundamental rules of a work are quite simple: we have to identify the concepts at stake, often defined by means of

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similarities and differences, be sensitive towards the concepts emerging in the interplay of conceptual patterns, compare the emerging concepts of the game with your own concepts and see what happens.

If one cannot identify the elements of the game, one remains outside the game, eventually viewing the game as silly or incomprehensible. A lot of people take this attitude towards certain works of contemporary art.

Like all games, the game of art exists in a universe of its own. It can be played for pure pleasure. However, as works of art are based on concepts related to reality, the game may influence our concepts of reality, thus our way of thinking. The artist often has this in his mind when he initiates his project.

A game without players, pieces and rules is not a game. A work of art with elements that cannot be decoded as concepts by anybody is not a work of art. Persons unable to create systems and patterns of concepts that can be decoded by others cannot be considered artists. At most, they can call themselves auto-therapists.

Jokes and puns are simple conceptual games. They can be created by anyone with a sense of humor, that is, people able to consider everyday life at some distance. Jokes are illustrative for the basics of creative thinking and are kindred to the more sophisticated world of art.

A cartoon from The Times deals with the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The spectator sees an airplane on the runway with only one wing, the inscription “Blair Force One” and a speech bubble saying “There is no left wing”.

The concepts at stake in this cartoon are 1) the concept of a British Prime Minister named Tony Blair, 2) the concept of Tony Blair as a politician who has eliminated the left wing of his party, 3) the concept of Air Force One, the airplane of the president of the

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United States, 4) the concept of the airplane as a metaphor for the US president, 5) the concept of an airplane without its left wing, ready for takeoff, 6) the concept of flying as a metaphor for Blair´s handling of British affairs of state, 7) the pun Air Force/Blair Force, 8) the conceptual framework cartoon = joke.

The concepts mingle and blend in the mind of the spectator when he or she decodes the joke. One may start thinking about the British Prime Minister´s aspiration of being a leader with the same status as the American president. Of course, the PM needs an airplane similar to the airplane of the president. One may think of the PM´s political success, including the elimination of the leftists of his party. Politically, the PM seems able to walk on water. Why shouldn´t he be able to handle an aircraft with only one wing? It is natural for him to baptize his plane “Blair Force One” instead of the traditional “Air Force One”, surpassing the American president with a self even larger than that of the American president, his obvious model. And yet, how long could a PM keep flying = continuing his political career, without a left wing group?

Jokes are games whose concepts clash with each other. The player starts looking for the sense of the joke by investigating similarities and differences between the concepts. The significance of the concepts is refined and enhanced in the interplay and in the context of the game. The apparent conceptual mess of the joke is made orderly by the creative mind of the participant, filling out what is lacking in the game by means of his or hers own ideas and concepts.

Works of art can be considered conceptual games constructed in the manner of the Blair type of cartoons, often with a far more complex range of concepts included in the game. They are fit for challenging traditional concepts as well.

Jokes build upon concepts of our daily life. Games of art do the same. In both, the traditional significance is short-circuited in a

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way that breeds meaning, often introducing fuzzy and fertile new concepts.

Jokes imply aspects of reality. They shed light upon the intricacies of language, e.g. the word-pun Air Force = Blair Forcer, politicians, relations between generations, sexual issues or a number of subjects at a time. Works of art, too, touch on aspects of reality; only the range of aspects is greater.

It is possible to evaluate the quality of jokes. Everyone knows the difference between good and bad jokes. If not, we need only to study how the audience reacts.

If the joke was a good one, it might be due to the fact that it had a surprising point, in other words: it was original. This is not the case for most jokes about mothers-in-law.

The quality of the joke might be due to the fact that it treated the well known problem of generation in a different manner, e.g. putting the problem of mothers-in-law in a brand new light, completely reversing the normal way of tackling this problem.

Those being the case, new concepts have been implanted in the mind of the spectator. On might assert that the joke is of special relevance.

The joke might operate with several significations, all of the shortcircuiting into a pattern of new significations with an overall unity, all related to the subject of the joke. The Blair-cartoon is an example of a tricky and complex sort of joke. Without the missing wing concept, it would still have been a joke, only simpler!

Works of art, too, may be evaluated in the same manner as jokes, according to a number of artistic ideals, including Originality, Relevance, and Complexity (chapters 8-12).

Occasionally works of visual art are jokes themselves. One of the ready-mades of the famous French-American painter Marcel Duchamp consists of a bicycle wheel mounted on a chair..

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A bicycle-wheel is a part of a bicycle, intended for sport or daily use. Removed from the rest of the bicycle and mounted vertically on a stool it loses part of its trivial significance. It becomes more like a statuette on a base. The combination is ambiguous – is it a bicycle wheel on a chair, a mock-up of a work of art, or a metaphor for a work of art?

If this piece of handcraft is placed in an art museum, the conclusion is evident. Wheel and stool and the awe-inspiring surroundings must be decoded as elements of some overall conceptual pattern, comprising both.

A spectator declining the game and insisting that the artifact is nothing but a wheel and a stole in improper surroundings brings the game to an abrupt end. He tells his friends and family that Duchamp is an imposter and modern art is nothing but fraud.

A spectator who knows that Duchamp is a serious and professional artist who created a lot of interesting paintings strives to attain the sense of the arrangement.

An informed spectator might conclude that the environment, besides being a museum, is a metonym for what theorists call the “essence of art”. Hence, the wheel/stool must be metonymical for “prosaic reality. This means that the artist wants us to reconsider how sublime art and prosaic reality are related to each other.

If the spectator knows art history, he or she might wonder if the circle of the wheel has some special significance, thus being another element in the game. Since the Renaissance, the circle has been considered a perfect shape, a representation of the Divine and the Beautiful. How can a bicycle-wheel become divine and beautiful? This is another way of introducing the problem of the relationship between the realm of Art and everyday life.

By now the spectators, having some vague ideas about the concept of Art beforehand, play the game of Duchamp. They must draw

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their own conclusions. Duchamp offers no answer, the normal strategy of artists presenting problems without a definite solution.

If the spectators are unable to reach any specific conclusion, their confusion has been qualified into a higher level.

By creating a work of this category Duchamp became an innovator within visual art. He became a founder of the ready-mades on display in practically every contemporary art museum and art exhibition. In a very simple and economical way, the artist has succeeded in creating of work of art relevant even today, 90 years later. An apparent joke has changed our views of the tasks and potentialities of visual art. The subject of the relationship between art and reality still confuses the experts. The institution of art has never been able to incorporate Duchamp´s way of thinking into aesthetic theory.

My disrespectful comparison between a prosaic newspaper joke and Duchamp´s work of art is in itself an example of Duchamp´s method of art. Duchamp´s ideas are very much alive even today.

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3. The Game of Visual Art Most people believe that the purpose of visual art is to represent reality. But even those acquiring the skill of Zeuxis and Parasios, the great painter of Antiquity, who were able to fool the birds and even one another by means of their trompe l´oil pictures, will discover that reproducing reality does not constitute art.

Of course, reality plays an import role in games of art. A work of art may include aspects of reality as conceptual elements of the game. The subject of the game often includes aspects of reality. For the artist, it is a method of bringing some order in his mind. The game may even inspire the spectator to conceive reality different than before the game. But the mere representation of reality does nothing but reproduce reality. As Gertrude Stein, the famous American author dryly remarked: One reality is more than enough!

Visual art may deal with abstract concepts or with concrete materials transposed from the world of reality into the abstract world of concepts. Concepts are stuff from the real world, turned into graspable entities, fit for the human brain. We think and act by using concepts. Any project deserving to be called art is based on concepts, is constructed in order to put forward concepts, glorify concepts, unveil concepts, criticize concepts, ridicule concepts or blow them into pieces, everything in order to enhance our ability to think and act.

In traditional art, strokes with a pen on a piece of paper, colored spots on a canvas or representational pictures of objects, persons or landscapes are transposed into abstract concepts. What is known as “abstract art� is concrete and realistic, insofar as it consists of tangible color spots and lines. But it is abstract, too, as the spots and lines are transformed into abstract conceptual patterns in the game.

In many works of contemporary art, concepts are displayed in the shape of objects. Bicycle-wheels, a wagon-load of foot-wear or a collection of furniture are introduces as conceptual game elements.

They function as the concepts of themselves or as metaphors and metonyms, signifying something else.

In any work of visual art, concepts are combined into a unified overall system, defined, blended, enhanced or subdued by other concepts and by the system itself. They come to life when the game is played, and vary according to the individual player´s mood, skill and creativity.

Here is an example of the method.

Piano player 1

Piano player 2

Piano player 3

Piano player 4

Piano player 5

Piano player 6

Saul Steinberg, the famous The New Yorker cartoonist, has created a drawing of a concert player at a grand piano. His picture is an instance of a deliberately elaborated combination of at least six different concepts or patterns.

The first pattern originates from the method of cartoon-drawing based on children´s drawings. This sort of drawings is born conceptual. This one introduces the concept of a piano player. His fingers are drawn in the cartoonist tradition of displaying the concept of movement.

The second pattern is an abstract dynamic pen-scratching patter.

This reveals the concept of violence and temper, bearing the marks of the energetic efforts of its creator.

The third pattern includes the concept of framing. Pictures are normally framed in a definite manner to indicate that this is the site where to play the game. Normal frames are square or rectangular.

This picture has a frame, too, but it is twisted into the shape of a cloud. It is a deviation from the tradition framing concept, an indefinite frame, signifying the concept of endlessness.

The fourth pattern originates from the basic figure-ground perception of our surroundings. The piano player is placed in a

position where there is no defined relation between figure and ground. The foreground figure is out of balance, placed in a subordinate and insecure position, signifying the concept of unbalance.

The fifth pattern delineates the contour of a grand piano. This is the cartoon style concept of the instrument, signifying the concept of a grand piano.

The sixth pattern represents the player playing his instrument.

However, normal relationships between piano players and their instruments are twisted. The instrument is larger and the player is smaller than he would be in a realistic rendering of the situation.

This difference is further enhanced, as the picture reverses normal perspective view where objects closer to the viewer are larger than objects farther away. A size relationship is introduced in the game that is the concept of more important/less important which we know from the tradition of art. Thus, the instrument, a metonym for music, is more important than the player.

[Steinberg´s drawing can be found on the homepage www.cartoon.bank.com. Seek “Entire Site” with the name of “Steinberg” and find the picture # 6 in the third row]

Steinberg´s piano player is a game where the different conceptual patterns are merged into an overall pattern. The subordinate patterns define and explain each other, enhance each other, blend and interact into a coherent play of significance.

The piano player is a central figure in the drawing. Nevertheless, he is totally subdued by the size and powerful hatching of the abstract background pattern growing out of his fast finder movements, made into the concept of virtuosity. The delicate outline of the player is overwhelmed by the mass of hatching, based on the antithesis of fragility and violence. The musical context player/instrument turns the hatching into a metaphor of violent piano playing. The hatching becomes even more violent,

and attitudes used by some of their colleagues do not deserve to be called proper art.

Let us conclude that the concept of visual art – like the concepts politics and science – incorporates a variety of ideals of strategy.

Nevertheless there seem to be a common general method used by artists: The construction of a consistent game of significance, created with the purpose of generating a singular space for reflection and inspiration, sharpening perception, providing the player with insight into aspects of life, influencing our ability to think and act, thus a vital part of our social world.

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4. Concepts at Work: Two Examples

The following two examples demonstrate how conceptual elements are brought into play in works of art.

The first example concerns the concept of art, based on the so called “eternal values of art�, that is, concepts which we all are able to decode and to relate to, as they are common property of all human beings. This example is a piece of contemporary ceramics.

The second example is an object installation, dating from the early nineties, The Control Tower of the Limfjord Bridge, situated in Northern Denmark. It incorporates certain cultural concepts which the audience must be sharing if they want to join the game, besides some more traditional elements of art.

The two examples illustrate the range of conceptual thinking by means of the method of visual art.

Esther Borup: Earthenware bowl

The first example is an ochre-colored bowl made of earthenware.

The bowl measures 13x11 cm. What you see is what you get: It is the concept of a bowl, at the same time being a real-world bowl, suitable for storage.

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The concept of bowls is a very ancient idea, probably invented in prehistoric ages as an off-spring of a basket, impregnated with clay to make it waterproof.

Besides displaying the concept of a bowl, this artifact can be considered an instance of a more abstract concept: a container. The container concept claims to be a basic metaphor widely projected into the patterns of abstract thinking, e.g. the concept of concept, extended into the act of placing the subject grasped in the mind, conceived as a container.

It is obvious that the pottery maker has chosen a subject with ancient roots and references to primitive and bodily thinking. She explains that she has been inspired by Native American pottery.

The present bowl forms a globe with an opening at the top. A perfect globe constitutes something blown up, e.g. a football or a glass globe. Accordingly, the globe shape of the bowl constitutes the concept of tenseness. The tenseness has been further enhanced as the shape has been pressed into a slightly pointed shape towards the bottom. This slightly pointed shape indicates physical pressure on the globe from outside and makes the tense forces from inside and from outside even more obvious.

The base of the bowl has a diameter of only three centimeters.

When an object has a large supporting areal like a pyramidal shape, it stands solidly. Objects with small supporting areas are easily overturned. We thus encode this type of object as light, contrasting with a heavy pyramid shape.

The upper part of the bowl is tuned slightly outward, constituting the concept of something organic, e.g. a flower or a fruit. The material of the bowl has been pressed into a paper-thin shape at the top of the bowl, and the rim has been formed in the concept of torn paper. Both imply the concept of fragility, an extension and variation of the lightness concept.

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The careful manufacturing of the top of the bowl displays the empty space inside the bowl as another element of the artwork, the concept of space. With the wording of the famous French painter George Braque: Le vase donne une forme au vide et la musique au silence (The vase moulds emptiness, the music silence).

The lump concept of the bowl and the concept of the bowl as the shell constitute a pattern of concavity and convexity.

The outside of the bowl displays the burned earthen material of the clay without any manufacturing besides a treatment with sodium.

The texture is rock-like, signifying heaviness.

A subdued pattern of engraved and slightly wavy stripes on the outside surface represents decoration and also something which has been carefully executed, that is, the concept of care.

The glaze inside is a red-brownish color, a Japanese Tenmoku glaze, darker than the natural color of the clay. This, too, signifies care, and the shiny texture emphasizes the concept of lightness.

This description includes what an observant spectator is able to identify as the concepts at stake in the artwork. There may be more at stake. Artists are not always aware of all the aspects of their creative efforts, as the creative mind often operates unconsciously.

However, the artist herself has confirmed that the current analysis covers what she – more or less consciously – had in mind during the creation process.

Whatever concepts may present, playing the game of visual art includes mixing up.

The color of the outside enhances the darkness of the inside. The inside color lightens the outside color. In this manner, the inside color and the outside color build a specific conceptual pattern lightdark.

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The thin, torn earthenware at the top of the bowl contrasts with the bulky body of the bowl, the shiny and manufactured glaze inside with the dull and raw texture on the outside, and the restricted base area of the bowl, the organic shaping of a rock-like bowl all create harmonic variations of the overall themes of lightness and heaviness, and inside – outside.

A considerable number of immediate and derived concepts are at stake in this modest piece of artwork. Some concepts are obviously present in the physical elements of the bowl, other emerge in the blending of concepts, when the spectator plays the game. The concepts function together, enhance, support and define each other.

They can be paired two or more at a time, alternately serving as figure and background when the work of art is perceived, soon as melody and accompaniment, soon as contrasts and harmonies.

Thus, there are very good reasons to use the metaphor Experiencing Art Is Playing a Game to explain what is at stake in aesthetic experience. A superficial look does not suffice. The spectator needs to be active, attentive, and spend the time necessary in order to perceive all aspects of a work of art. Playing the game is a matter of time, fantasy and sensitivity.

The Control Tower of the Limfjord Bridge is a work of art based partially upon the basic level concepts of the traditional values of art, partially upon cultural concepts.

The tower is situated in the middle of a bridge across a narrow strait between the twin cities of Aalborg and Nørresundby in Northern Denmark. The tower building, a structure measuring 8x5x3 m, fulfills a practical purpose – housing the crew that manages the machinery of the bridge. It does not deserve any architectural prize, being nothing more than a machinery building.

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Leif G. Larsen: Control Tower, Aalborg, Denmark.

The façade consists of lacquered aluminum elements. Normally, these would all be rectangular and painted with the same color. The contractor agreed that the elements could be painted different colors and that some of them could be diagonally divided. Thus, a conceptual pattern of rectangles and triangles about the same size is part of the decoration.

The lacquered elements constitute the concept of decoration, a harlequin pattern in obvious contrast to what can be expected from this kind of buildings. The colors are instances of two separate color palettes, a range of warm colors, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow and brown, and cold colors, dark blue, medium blue, light blue and pink. The colors constitute two ranges of color, but also patterns of light colors, medium colors, and dark colors, besides the overall color pattern.

The interplay of light and dark colors tends to create a concept of depth. The concept of depth, however, has been subdued in the final design in order to counteract the heaviness of the tower construction and create a concept of lightness.

The letters N, V, Ă˜ and S (for north, west, east, and south) were introduced as a part of the design. The artwork was provided with geographical information at the point of crossing between land and

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sea traffic. This bestows meaning for those not interested in decorative art.

This conceptual pattern is further emphasized, as some colors of the tower correspond with building colors in the neighborhood of the bridge.

This part of the installation was intended to comply with the expectation of the members of the City Council. They wanted Art, some sort of traditional decoration of the façade, and that is what they got. But they got something more intricate.

The conspicuous decoration of the tower enhances its status as a landmark which can be seen from the land areas north and south of the bridge, and from the sea areas to the east and west.

Consequently, the work of art defines the surroundings as client areas served by the landmark. The conceptual pattern landmarkclient areal is part of the installation.

An essential aspect of the game is the fact that the conspicuous embellishment of the tower clashes with the barrenness of the surrounding areas. Formerly, the two cities were separate municipalities. The areas on both sides of the bridge have never been conceived as a single urban unit. They were isolated, drab, neglected harbor areas. The former independence and jealousy had made to two cities turn their backs to each other. Any outsider coming to the area would be astonished to see a district which might have been an extraordinary attractive part of any other city of the world, remained a barren area with left over worker´s barracks.

The decoration defines the tower as a traditional work of art, a surplus phenomenon, which displays the surroundings as an area of barrenness. The two concepts are brought together into an open conflict, an obvious challenge to the inhabitants of the two cities, now turned into a single unified municipality.

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15 years after the inauguration of the tower things have changed.

One may claim that the installation has served as a catalyst in the local town planning. The surroundings have been improved and a fancy French restaurant has been opened, and there have been plans of putting a night time projector for light up the Tower. The Tower installation set forth a question which has been answered by the politicians.

The Bridge project is different from the Bowl project. It is less complex, with fewer concepts at stake, less centered around basic human concepts and values, less refined, and – besides the decoration of the tower based on traditional aesthetic concepts – more directed toward abstract conceptual levels, e.g. political ideas of urban planning.

Thus, concepts deduced from playing the Game of Visual Art are conceptual facts that can make citizens think and act.

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5. Art and Beauty

The concept of Beauty is tightly connected to the concept of Art. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the icon of aesthetic theory (1724-1804), created his system of aesthetics out of experience with the beauty of nature and the beauty of decorative patterns. He regarded representative art as “impure” in his vision about the realm of Beauty and Sublimity. While ingenious as a philosopher, Kant´s relationship to the domain of art was far from impressive.

Many current art theories presuppose the Kantian dogma that beauty is essential when defining the concept of art. Beauty is conceived to be a purpose of its own. It needs to be experienced in a specific contemplative – aesthetic – mood detached from practical life and from the passions of life, on the contrary!

Undoubtedly, a work of art is detached from practical life. It is a work of autonomy with rules of its own. However, the same holds true about any other game, from soccer to chess. And none of these are detached from the passions of life.

The principle of beauty seems unconvincing when it comes to the Duchamp type of works of art. It certainly conflicts with provocative and horrifying works, though classified as works of art by most art theorists. Calling certain types of works “sublime” or “awe-inspiring” is a way of solving the problem. Nevertheless, it is but a means of patching up an inadequate theory.

The concept of aesthetic perception detached from everyday life is confusing, as not only works of art, but also fashion, cars and coffee pots and cooking can be looked upon with an aesthetic eye.

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This fact has persuaded some art theorists to conclude that visual art does not exist. Instead, we ought to focus upon the concept of visual culture, covering everything of aesthetic significance.

Hopefully, they are not aware of the economic consequences of this sort of conceptual trivialization.

Asserting that aesthetic experience is a special contemplative type of experience does not conform to the reality of art. The artist does not create a work of art in a passive and contemplative mood. On the contrary, the creative mind is active and deliberate. There is no reason to believe that the artist expects his or her audience to be passive and contemplative when people view the outcome of the efforts. Works of art need to be experienced in the same way games are played, that is, with active concentration and creative cooperation, with enthusiasm or hatred.

Of course, there is a reason why the concept of beauty plays an important role for understanding the concept of art.

A lot of works of art are based upon what cognitive theorists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call “basic level categories”, that is concepts which arise from bodily experiences. Most people are able to enjoy games of this type, as they are relieved momentarily from the tyranny of the trivial concepts of their culture. The game makes their fundamental human potentialities transparent to them. To experience oneself as a human being outside the limitations of cultural concepts is a beautiful experience. May be this was what Kant had in mind when he coined his art philosophy.

Balance, certain lines, shapes, colors, and proportions, e.g. the “Golden Section”, are all perceived as harmonious and beautiful.

Beautiful Harmony is present in most works of art. However, we need to remember that the concept of harmony may be part of different artistic strategies. It is crucial to distinguish between these

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strategies, if you want to play the game according to the intentions of the artist.

The artists of the Renaissance introduced the concept of harmony as a metaphor for the more abstract concept of Universal Harmony.

The concept of Beauty is in accordance with works of art of this type.

The concept of harmony, however, may also be used as a technical device in a work of art. Harmony is inconspicuous, even transparent, as spectators react only when they notice that harmony is lacking. A conceptual pattern need to be consistent, that is, harmonious in order to be perceived as an overall concept. In this manner the harmonious pattern may function as a conceptual entity in itself. Any deliberative deviation from the pattern creates a foreground concept. Providing harmony in a work of art may be nothing more than a working method.

When pictures are placed on walls according to the chaos principle of existing hooks, most of us consider the arrangement ugly. If the pictures are hung according to a precise concept, e.g. the system of placing the bottom line of the pictures alike, we find it prettier. If the system respects a variety of logical concepts, such as placing pictures according to base line, size, balance (one large to the left, two small to the right) or according to color or subject, we are tempted to describe the arrangement as beautiful. System and order is normally considered more beautiful than chaos and disorder.

As proper works of art are carried out in a consistent manner (Chapter 9), any work of art may rightfully be considered to be beautiful, even if the elements of the work are repellent. We admire the consequence of the construction in the same way the mathematician admire a lucid formula.

In Hans Christian Andersen´s fairy tale of The Emperor´s New Clothes, the little child exclaimed that the emperor wore no clothes.

The people had hitherto accepted any statement from their

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authorities, including their announcement that the emperor wore a very special dress for the occasion. The concept of Authority and the concept of Childish NaivetÊ clashed and suddenly the subjects of the emperor were convinced by the child: Authorities may be wrong! Once in a while, it is better to trust one´s own eyes! People got a unique and beautiful experience thanks to the child. The whole episode might have been staged by a professional director.

As stated by the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lucacs, the child in Andersen´s fairy tale is a metaphor for the creative artist.

Thus, works of art may provide some sort of order in our lives, that is, install the order of existential beauty in our minds.

Undoubtedly, the concept of beauty plays an important role in works of art. However, as beauty covers a broad range of aspects of art, the concept is less informative to the creative artist and for the public. Talking about beauty in the many senses of the concept confuses the dialogue between artists, their public, and those who intermediate art. We simply do not know what sort of beauty we are discussing.

Especially, the audience is totally misled by the concept of beauty.

Most people have the traditional concept of beauty in their minds.

They may dismiss works of art because they do not conform to their concept of beauty, and they may admire works of art, because they are able to identify harmonic elements in works of art, even if the artist wanted them to be transparent and invisible, or at least of lesser importance. They are unable to grasp the game.

The search for beauty is a misleading working hypothesis for the creative artist. Art projects emerge from the personal engagement of the artist, is or her discomforts and enthusiasm. The game is constructed to investigate and enlighten the theme, be it beautiful or not. The foundation of the game consists of proper elements, beautiful or not, harmonious or not. Considerations about creating a

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work of art, fulfilling theorists´ claims of beauty, do not advance creativity. They rather tend to pollute the creative process.

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6. What is Art For?

The basic presupposition of many art theorists is that art is an objective phenomenon with a special essence present in any work of art.

One of these theorists is the American art expert Clive Bell. He puts the following question: Which quality is common for the Sophia mosque, the panes of Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpentry, the frescoes by Giotto in Padua and master works by Poussin, Piero della Francesca and CÊzanne? Only one answer appears to be true – Significant Form.

Bell´s definition excluded the paintings of the Italian Futurist painters of his time; their projects were ideological, not artistic.

Others theorists seek to define the essence of art by means of certain purposes; that is, what art is for. According to them, the purpose of art is e.g. efforts to express religious feelings, communicate noble feelings, expressing emotions, realize essential humanity of man, and realize symbols or allegories of truth and goodness, or realizing beauty as its own end. All these theories have to rejects certain classes of art which they call impure, ideological, provocative and so forth. Where artists expand the borders of art, art theorists contract the borders of art, placing themselves as an obstacle between artists and their public.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher, holds that not all categories have an essence of their own. E.g. the concept of games has no specific essence, only family resemblances between different types of games. That is, game A is somehow similar to game B, game B somehow similar to game C, game C to game E

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and so forth, evidently being games, but with no property common to them all.

If works of art can be considered games, family resemblance might be all that works of art have in common. This being the case, there is neither a property common to all works of art nor a common essence of art.

I prefer a pragmatic approach to the concept of art: what is constructed according to the principles of the Game of Visual Art by a person or group committed to the conceptual potentialities of the game can be considered art, if the game is constituted out of personal curiosity, in a quest for order, and not intended to consolidate commercial or political purposes stated beforehand.

In my mind it is more productive to maintain that visual art is a specific way of manipulation concepts of any kind; that is, creating and refining concepts, thus enhancing the thinking and acting capacity of man. Works of art are made according to a certain method. Maintaining that works of art have fixed goals is a way of limiting the creative artistic efforts of the artists.

In primitive societies, the crucial task of the creative mind is to structure what is fundamental in the struggle for life, including concept of food, shelter and clothing, group identity, and to make sense of the forces of nature, giving man the possibility to adapt to nature.

Modern theorists often consider the artifacts made by our ancestor from prehistoric ages to be works of art. They conclude that these artifacts are instances of a perpetual search for beauty, common to mankind. However, they project their own understanding of art into something which was never thought of as art.

It is more productive to maintain that these works were efforts to structure the surroundings by means of significant concepts.

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The decorative patterns of Native American pottery may be beautiful. As a matter of fact, they are conceptual symbols, designed as a means of structuring group and clan solidarity. They are similar to the graffiti of modern times, appropriating buildings, trains, and walls by means of tags and pictures. Some of them are beautiful to look at, but their main purpose is to enhance group solidarity among the graffiti artists.

Interior decoration may be called a quest for beauty. The main purpose of this effort, however, is to structure our domestic scene in a consistent manner and to express our membership in a certain social group. At any rate, the interior decoration and the clothing mode of yesterday are often more ridiculous than beautiful.

The main intention of the creative mind is not to create something beautiful. The intention is to install order in our lives. Beauty is a spin-off of this quest for order. The Game of Visual Art is one of the methods used for that purpose.

In modern society, where concepts are crowding and conflicting, the task of the artist differs from the task of the creative mind in primitive society. It is less a question of installing some conceptual order in a chaotic physical environment, more a question of acting in a universe of crowding and conflicting concepts, investigation their relevance, dismissing obsolete concepts and suggesting news ones.

As we shall see later in this book, this seems to be confirmed by the efforts of modern artists. They do not confine themselves to the expression of feelings or to the concept of beauty. They want to intervene into their surroundings; they intend to create a minimum of order in a chaotic world of concepts.

To investigate the relationship between art and ordinary life is just as legitimate as any other art project. The bicycle-wheel described earlier in this book and the bed room installation of Claes Oldenburg (chapter 21), are art projects of this type.

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The investigation of the potentialities of visual language per se is a relevant subject for the artist, as a sort of visual fundamental research that may inspire colleagues in the trade, and even inspire to new thought habits. Paul CĂŠzanne (chapter 16) is a painter of this category.

Other art games investigate and refine basic level categories such as how to perceive space, how to experience colors and shapes, objects, substances, and surfaces.

The way we perceive visual reality has been treated by a great number of artists. The practical effects of their games are confirmed by the Danish author Karen Blixen, who admits that the famous British painters Constable, Gainsborough and Turner gave her key to the English landscapes. The Dutch masters were interpreters of the landscape and cities of Holland, and Giotto and Fra Angelico made her aware of Sacred Blue Umbria in the neighborhood of Perugia.

The linear perspective system, constructed during the Renaissance, was created by artists/scientists intending to suggest a valid method of perception. This method was based upon philosophical theories and had intrinsic philosophical relevance for their contemporaries.

It had practical implications for posterity, too. One result of the game is the modern way of perceiving reality, endorsed by the camera, the television, and the computer, so widespread that we cannot imagine other ways of perceiving our environment.

But even the perceptive value of linear perspective can be challenge by artists, e.g. the projects of Paul CĂŠzanne and Henri Matisse, mention in later chapters of this book. Both artists are concerned with alternative methods of representation, pointing forward to more dynamic ways of thinking.

The projects of Asger Jorn deal with the investigation of the basic concepts of prelingual archetypes, claiming that they are based on valuable common human experience. The project of Barnett

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Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis, is an effort to cast visual art into a quasi-religious experience. The works of Diego Rivera are created with the intention to further political purposes by means of traditional paintings, inspired by ancient Mexican art and classical and modern art.

The method of creating significance by means of visual games is a persuasive and efficient method of restructuring ways of perceiving and experiencing aspects of reality.

In the modern world, the method is exploited by journalists, fashion makers, cooks, designers, in the industry of publicity, and by political parties. These people are very much aware of the potentiality of the method.

Thus, there is good reason to pose the following question: is propaganda, fashion and publicity visual art?

To answer this question, we might turn to the concept of Science.

Science is a quest for objective truth or what can be considered to be objective truth. Science is an autonomic occupation. When tradesmen and politicians demand specific results from the scientists, and the scientists deliver what is demanded, they are no longer proper scientists. Scientists work by a certain mode. When they are on the payroll of an industry or a political party, their work is biased by extraneous purposes then they cannot be considered to be proper scientists.

It seems reasonable to claim that aesthetic effort influenced by commercial, religious, and political interests no longer can be considered to be proper art. An artist working for the advertising industry to deliver a game promoting a specific purpose is not an artist – unless his client has bestowed some liberty to perform his own intentions, or unless the artist decides to be disloyal to the employer, smuggling his own personal ideals into the product.

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Proper games of art are open to interpretation; they never offer solutions, only suggestions.

In a world where commercial interests tend to create homogeneity across every frontier, the guerilla warfare of the individual artist against traditional concepts is more important than ever. Variability is crucial for evolution. And so is conceptual variability. There is good reason to distinguish between efforts of enriching the realm of conceptual thinking and efforts to simplify the way we think and act.

To conclude: The project of Visual Art is based upon a certain method, the construction of a conceptual game accessible to other people. The art project is a personal project, based upon personal experiences and doubts. It is submitted to nothing but the conscience of the artist. It is a sort of guerilla-warfare of the individual against habitual thinking, again traditions and persons in power.

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7. The Creative Process

When an artist enters upon a project of Visual Art, he or she may choose between at least two strategies.

He may concentrate his attention on the materials at his disposal, investigating the relevance of the concepts that emerge from playing with the visual language itself.

Alternatively, he may be challenged by the reality of human life and try to convey his reflections about this subject by means of materials and templates offered by his predecessors.

Whether the artist utilizes the first or the second strategy, the outcome ought to be the same. Both strategies must be merged during the creative process. The concepts, created by means of experimenting with the materials, need to be adjusted according to the subject of the game. The subject of the game must be adapted ad adjusted according to the possibilities, demands and limitations of the material.

The final result of the creative efforts of the artist is nothing but concepts at play. Concepts – being about a subject – include material and subject. Therefore, we do not have to discuss the traditional antithesis of form versus content. In a work of art, form is content and vice versa.

The artist constructs the game of art with a certain subject in mind.

This subject comes into existence when he tests the game. The spectator interprets the game according to his sensibility and ability and may experience that the game is substantial. Substance (or the content of the game) is no part of the game construction. The content does not arise until someone plays the game.

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The Danish composer Carl Nielsen has provided us with a description of the strategy of constructing works of art on the basis of the material at the disposal of the artist. He initiated his musical career by investigation the tones of music, sensitive to what happens in the mind of the listener when tones are combined.

Nielsen compared the process with rubbing two pieces of wood against each other until they start glowing.

Having played the small prelude no. 8 in Eb minor more than fifty times a flame arose in me. Now the door was open and I could start discovering a brand new and strange universe, he wrote in his childhood memoirs.

The artist of visual art may investigate the fundamentals of visual language in the same manner as everybody else may investigate his or her surroundings. We find a certain stone or wooden stick more fascinating, more special than other stones and sticks. We find certain strokes, color dots, patterns, shapes, organic or geometrical lumps of clay fascinating. The term used by the composer, “glowing�, is a way of describing this sort of experience. Some shapes piled at the top of each other or placed next to each other become more interesting than other combinations. The same may happen when objects are placed into a space where they do not belong or objects which have nothing to do with each other nevertheless are put together. They become special.

When we succeed in efforts of this kind, we have grasped a slice of reality that stands apart from the background, constituting a basic level concept, a concept of specialness. This concept has an imminent potentiality to refer to something else, that is, suitable for metaphorical thinking.

The ability to find or make objects special and comprehend an order different from conventional life is deeply rooted in the human mind. A child collects small objects such as stones and shells and finds them to be of a special value. The very first drawings of

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children are hatchings, lines and geometrical shapes such as crosses, circles and ovals, rectangles and triangles. They, too, are special, concepts signifying themselves, but suitable as generalpurpose forms. When children get older, they extend the significance of their basic concepts, claiming that this shape stands for a bird, this one for a sun or a tree. Metaphorical thinking is under way.

Our primitive ancestors´ first steps into the world of visual concept were similar. Archeologists have found traces of the tool-making Homo Habilis (living 2.5 to 2 million years ago) proving that this early man appreciated green lava and smooth pink pebbles. The Acheulean people, living 100.000 years ago, carried about with them an unusual, apparently useless piece of fossil coral with an interesting pattern. The proclivity to make special existed even a quarter of a million years ago in the use of shaped pieces of yellow, brown, red, and purple ochre found among the human remains in a sea cliff cave in southern France. They were probably chosen for their special color, suitable for special purposes, that is, metaphorical thinking.

The modern artist has endless possibilities to experiment with nonpurposive concepts, finding objects (objects trouvĂŠs) or creating them from scratch, such as lines, shapes, colors, and patterns.

He may utilize the traditional significance of visual language, fragments of works of art, former works of art, combining them and twisting them into something special. This is what Salvador Dali did when he provided Leonardo da Vinci´s Mona Lisa with a moustache. Later on, Dali created a Mona Lisa without a moustache, stating that this was Mona Lisa Shaved.

The modern artist may deform objects, materials and patterns and confront them in strange ways. He may examine what happens when conventional patterns are broken and twisted in manners new and original. The American artists Christo & Jeanne-Claude

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investigated what happened when, in 1995, they wrapped Berlin´s historic German Reichstag in plastic foil. They discovered that by means of this very conspicuous specialness they were able to convert the building into a significant conceptual game.

Investigating materials is the starting point of many artists.

However, the artist of visual art may also be his experiences of the shortcomings of human life in all aspects.

Human beings have an urge for order and comprehensibility in their lives. We impose order in our environment by means of concepts. But the concepts of modern man, covering our lives totally, are created through history, emerging from many different sources, old and new. They do not constitute an orderly system.

Our concepts often conflict with each other. Putting them into some order is a harassing project.

Artistic endeavors often emerge out of a sort of frustration with an environment of conflicting and obsolete concepts. D. H. Lawrence, English poet, grants that the human race protects itself against the chaos of life by means of a screen of prejudices and attitudes. The poet and artist tear the screen, opening up towards chaos and fighting the clichĂŠs of prejudice.

Thus, the artist may suggest alternatives to traditional ways of conceiving reality by sketching new concepts.

The Danish author Hans Christian Andersen provides a prospective poet with some advice in the fairy tale entitles: What One Can Invent (1869): There was a young man who studied in order to become a poet, he wanted to be a poet before next Easter, marry, and make a living from poetry, he knew that it was only a matter of inventing, but he was not able to invent. He was born too late. Every subject had been treated long before he made his entrance in the world. Everything had been made into subjects of poetry and writing.

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Frustrated he turns to an old woman who offers him her spectacles and her ear-trumpet. Equipped with these utensils, he places himself, at first in a potato-field, later in a blackthorn thicket, and finally at a roadside where people were to be seen.

“What a crawling multitude”, the young man said. Story by story! It hums and purrs! I cannot handle it! I am tumbling backwards!

“No walk straight forward!” the woman said. “Walk into the crowd of people! Have an eye for them, listen to them and use your heart! You will soon contrive! But before you leave you must hand back my spectacles and my ear-trumpet!” And then she took both. “”Now I do not see the slightest thing!” the young man said, “now I hear no more!”

“Hence, you cannot become a poet before next Easter”, the clever woman said.

Andersen´s subject is poetry. He indicates that a person who wants to be called a poet has to relate himself to his contemporaries by means of his projects. This is his stepping stone to the universe of art.

Andersen states that an artist must have a heart, that is, compassion.

Nielsen´s message is that flames must emerge in the mind of the artist when he or she manipulates the elements of the game. Both artists emphasize the importance of enthusiasm, for the materials which art part of the game and for the reality which the artist intends to challenge in his game. The tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the music of Carl Nielsen demonstrate that these arts were able to merge the two strategies into valuable works of art.

Serious artists take advantage of both strategies when they set out to construct their projects. They aim at ordering their mind by merging their experiences with the materials and their attitude towards life. The materials are in charge in certain periods of the creative process, offering potential significance. At other moments

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their attitudes concerning the circumstances of life take over. Then they hunt for concepts to fit with their intentions.

The artistic project means working in a dialogue with the matter created and the purpose of the game, the artist sometimes caught up by the unfinished product and forced to think by means of the language thus created. When the project progresses satisfactorily, order and coherence between the concepts of the game and the aspects of reality covered by the project are fused together in the mind of the artist.

Artists occasionally experience that what they have created becomes more important than what they had imagined. The work of art takes over. It becomes a multiple game, open to interpretation, even to interpretations which the artist did not imagine.

But what happened to the young man who wanted to become a poet as soon as possible?

He asked the clever woman who gave him the following piece of advice: “You can do so already before Shrovetide. Hit the poets! Hit their writings, this is the same as hitting them! Don´t let yourself be amazed by them! Just hit and hit, you shall have pastry and be able to feed yourself and your wife�.

And then the young man started a carrier as a reviewer of literature!

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8. Artistic Ideals: Professionalism

In most professions, the difference between a professional and an amateur is obvious. It is easy to state whether a designer chair, a bridge or a brain operation has been executed by a skilled professional or by an amateur.

In visual art, it is not that easy to conclude what is amateurish and what is skillfully made. Even experts of art may be deceived. The manager of an art museum decided to place works of the painters of the famous Cobra school in an annex far from the main building.

He admired traditional art and considered Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, and Asger Jorn to be dilettantes. His successor had to admit that their paintings were professionally executed, albeit with another kind of professionalism. Now, these works have found their rightful place in the museum.

It is confusing even for experts that amateurism may be introduced deliberately as an element in the game of visual art. A painting incorporating a child´s drawing may look amateurish, even if the artist has placed the drawing into the game in the same manner as Marcel Duchamp used a bicycle-wheel in his game of art, i.e. as a concept with all it´s own.

One way of stating the difference between a professional work of art and an amateurish one is to ask the originator about his or her intentions. Most amateurs adhere closely to the traditional art theory, stating that art is the expressing of feelings. Expressing sentiments is just what they are doing, hence they must be artists!

The fact is that when amateurs try to express their feelings, they produce nothing but a chaos of conflicting concepts which cannot be decoded as a game. Without doubt, they derive therapeutic benefit from their activities, but they do not create conceptual

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games and cannot considered be artists in the proper sense of the word.

A work of visual art is a conceptual game, based upon elements with significance shared by the originator and the public. The number of concepts at stake in the game is limited and the concepts are defined in the interplay of the elements. Therefore, professional artists have greater ability to describe what they have been doing and why they have done so.

Just like brain surgery and carpentry have traditions, visual art has traditions of its own. For thousands of years, the creative mind of man has been eager to present concepts by visual means. The result has been a comprehensive visual dictionary with concepts available to anyone.

The prospective artist is offered a whole library of information about the techniques and methods of visual art. He or she might learn how to draw, paint and sculpt, about graphic techniques, perspective systems, theories of proportion, volumes and colors. He may study the history of art and the great masters of art.

The various graphic techniques have a significance of their own.

An ink pen may create a fragile pattern, expressing the concept of lightness, a piece of charcoal creates the concept of softness, and a fat brush may create the concept of heaviness and drama.

Conventional significance has been incorporated into the different tool. They constitute a sort of clip art concepts for those mastering the tools.

Little by little, the artist discovers that pictures, pictorial elements, and even objects have significance beyond their trivial significance of daily life, offering concepts for the game construction.

The professional artist knows that when he constructs his game, he must submit to certain limitations. He needs to respect the way human brains work, e.g. relating to color perception. He, too, must

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pay heed to concepts, experience by all humans in the same way, e.g. perception of foreground/background. Large objects are felt to be impressive and intimidating, possibly due to the fact that such objects are experienced in the same manner as children experience grown-ups, i.e. overwhelming and interminable. Small objects look cute, probably because they invited to be nursed. Animals with round foreheads also look nice and friendly, as they remind us of children; animals with flat heads look scary. Stony materials and dull metals imply heaviness, glass and shiny steel are conceived as light materials because of their transparent or reflexive look.

Unbalanced objects are experienced as awkward and dangerous, as one expects them to fall over any second. Accordingly, sculptors and painters learn that their works need balance. Any deviation from balance is bound to be very obvious to the spectator.

The prospective artists must also learn that some concepts are historical, formed by culture. They have only their conventional significance for people knowing their significance. The concepts at stake in the Tony Blair-joke of chapter 1 are cultural, as the joke has meaning only for those who have heard about a Prime Minister named Tony Blair, his political career and world politics. A great deal of modern art refers to other forms of art and can only be decoded by an initiated circle of experts.

Linear perspective is a conventional system of representation of space. If the artist wants to introduce traditional perspective in his game, he has to master this system professionally. If he is unable to handle the system, the errors will confuse the spectator who does not know whether the violation of the system is by mistake or has a special conceptual significance. An example of deliberate deviation from the system of perspective in order to attain a concept of special significance is present in the drawing NO (chapter 13).

A professional artist knows what happens when concepts interact with other concepts. A stroke neither thin nor fat attains the property of fatness when in front of a thin stroke, and the thin

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stroke becomes even thinner thanks to the fat stroke. The property of a slanting object is emphasized when the object is placed between vertical objects. The cartoon The Piano Player by Saul Steinberg (chapter 2) demonstrates how a lot of scratching becomes more massive when combined with few thin strokes and vice versa.

The amateur often wonders why the beautiful colors of the palette turns muddy on the canvas. The professional painter knows the secrets of color. He or she knows that colors which are supported by a contrast color somewhere on the canvas gain force; at the same time as the contrast color is enhanced. This is due to the construction of the retina of the eye. When looking at something violet, the retina produces an orange color preserved for some time, making an orange color shape very intensive. The problem of muddy colors is solved by using a pattern of colors from the same family of colors or by using only two color families inside the picture frame. They create a specific conceptual color range which happens to express a concept of its own.

Some colors communicate the concept of background and passivity e.g. blues and greens, other colors the concept of protrusion and activity, e.g. reds and yellows.

A basic concept of the human mind is the relation between foreground and background. A colored shape is perceived in front of a colored background. However, a passive color steps backward and an active color steps forward. What about a blue shape on a red background?

The artist mastering this kind of problems has a freedom of action which is not bestowed upon the amateur. Artists with little knowledge about the pitfalls of visual language are less able to fulfill their intentions.

When the artist proves unable to master the tools, the audience cannot grasp the game. If the patterns of the game are executed in a careless manner, the public is not able to register whether the

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system is broken deliberately or incidentally. When they are unable to identify the conceptual elements of the game, the game cannot be played. Thus, the work is unprofessional.

Visual art is a profession. A truly professional artist knows the potentialities, tradition and history of his or her trade. Yet, professionalism is neither necessary nor sufficient to penetrate the conventions of life and create significant original concepts. A work of art, created according to all the rules of art, is not always a work of art. Something more is needed.

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9. Artistic Ideals: Consistency

Professionalism in art, that is, knowledge of the traditions and pitfalls of visual art is a necessary, but no sole condition for creating works of art.

Consistence, however, is a condition sine qua non for any art form, including visual art. This might sound intimidation for an amateur convinced that art is a realm of feelings where rational though is unneeded. But that’s the way it is.

Igor Stravinsky, well known French/Russian composer, in a statement about his German colleague Arnold Schönberg claimed that even if Schönberg´s music appeared to be cacophony without sense, he had deliberately chosen a musical system suitable to him.

Inside this system, Schönberg was consistent and in strict harmony with himself. That made him a composer.

Works of art are based on concepts and conceptual patterns, playing different roles in the Game of Visual Art, either as significant foreground patterns or as harmonious background patterns, changing from one pattern to another when the game is played.

Concepts, however, need to be distinctive. They cannot be grasped or conceived unless they are precise. Without precision, they are merely background noise. Thus, an artist must possess a rational mind, besides being creative and sensitive and in strict harmony with himself.

A work of art is consistent, when the elements involved in the game can be perceived as concepts referring to themselves or as part of higher level categories. This is simple enough.

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A cat knows the concept of a bird, a category of all feathered animals of a reasonable size. The cat will probably perceive geese within a conceptual category of dangerous animals, which also may include dogs.

Everybody, especially men, knows the concept of a blonde. The concept of the number sequences, 1, 2, 3,4 or 2,4,6,8 are evident to all. The number sequence 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 constitutes a mathematical concept. If you are able to grasp the idea behind til numbers, you are able to continue the pattern indefinitely.

In traditional music, the conceptual patterns are well defined: rhythm, pitch, duration, melody, tonality, harmony, sound levels and so forth. We perceive these patterns as concepts, however unconsciously. This is the typical way of processing concepts, as we believe them to be inherent parts of our mind.

Some art theorists claim that visual art is different from music, as visual art is more abstruse. But the might be wrong. Like any other art form, visual art is a conceptual game. Accordingly, it needs to be consistent and distinct. Without any doubt, visual art differs from music, as the number of visual categories or patter at the disposal of the artist is endless. Perhaps it is only a matter of time, before this difference between visual art and music is equalized.

Modern composers are inspired by the freedom of the visual artist and experiment abundantly with conceptual patterns and systems outside the classical range.

The artists of visual art are free to choose any part of the visual world as elements of the game. Much visual material is conceptual beforehand. Letters are part of the category of the alphabet.

Consonants are sub-elements of the alphabetic pattern, selected according to a phonetic concept. Tones of grey colors are elements of a color palette, ranging from black to white or from light grey till dark grey, constituting different concepts of grayish. Warm colors are part of a pattern which includes red, orange, yellow and brown.

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Bluish green, blue, and violet are considered to be cold colors.

Rectangles of different sizes and proportions vary a basic pattern of shapes with four corners and square angles. Elements with no similarity at all are part of an overall chaotic pattern, or what composers call a stochastic pattern. A certain texture may refer to the overall category of textures or a subcategory, a range of textures with family resemblances. Beds, blankets, mirrors, and bed lamps are parts of the category of bedroom equipment and are part of the conceptual game Bedroom Ensemble I by Claes Oldenburg (chapter 20).

In simple works of art, e.g. a picture based on a chessboard pattern the artist can easily be consistent. He only has to stick to his pattern. Many conceptual patterns are so simple that they can be developed with little intellectual effort. Anybody can buy furniture, draw squares and paint the tiles of the Limfjord Tower (chapter 4).

On the other hand, the artist may use patterns so intricate that the spectator must possess a high level of intelligence to grasp the idea of the artist.

It is no easy task for the artist to handle challenging visual patterns in a consequent manner. One exception confirms the rule, two or more are a mess. When the pattern is broken several times, it cannot be grasped as a concept. If the artist decides to deviate from his pattern, it must be done in a way that leaves no doubt that the deviation is performed with the deliberate intention of creating a different sort of concepts.

If an artist decides to restrict himself to the concept of vertical and horizontal lines, he must be obedient to this pattern. The introduction of lines almost vertical or almost horizontal confuses the spectator. Has the deviation a special sense or is it only lacking consistency? If the artist intends to use classical perspective in his work of art, he must use this system with consequence and skill,

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convincing the spectator that perspective and the significance of perspective is a conceptual part of the game.

The NO drawing by Saul Steinberg (chapter 13) is an instance of a deliberate and significant deviation from the normal perspective, as it includes two different representational systems in the same picture.

One of the problems vexing a visual artist is that the objects put at stake in the game are ambiguous. Any element may be part of several conceptual patterns. A red L-shape is a letter and a geometrical shape and a color spot. Sometimes, the artist has to choose between the significations and define the concept(s) he intends to introduce as part of his game, leaving no doubt of his intention. If he places some other letter next to the L-shape, the significance of the alphabet takes over.

The need for consistent thinking becomes greater, when the artist intends to merge several conceptual patterns, e.g. when he or she intends to employ a stroke both as a means of delineating a figure according to the traditional method of drawing and as an arabesque with a conceptual significance of its own. The artist has to respect to different systems at the same time and be consequent towards both, thus solving two problems at the same time. He needs to be rational and creative at the same time.

This drawing by the great painter of the Renaissance Raphael (1483-1520) shows how a skilful artist succeeds in creating a naturalistic representation of his model, as done by a camera, while at the same time creating a significant arabesque pattern. Both patterns merge into a third convincing pattern, making his drawing a unique work of art.

Another example of the merging of a semi-naturalistic representation of a female model and the surface ornament of the arabesque can be found in the work of Henri Matisse: Grand Nu Rose (chapter 17). The artist has maintained a naturalistic approach

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to the figure. But he has deformed it violently, developing the concept of the arabesque to such a degree that it is out of question to reconstruct the model in 3D from the picture alone. The artist admits that he would be very scared if he met his deformed model on the street. This is not reality, it is a game!

When an artist experiments with the merging of patterns containing sub patterns, things get really complicated. The artist needs to be consistent and logical, also when concepts are intertwined and when he wants to introduce concepts that emerge between existing concepts as independent elements in his game.

To conclude: The prospective artist may choose any visual pattern as part of his work of art. This can be done at a modest level, with small concepts easy to grasp, or on a more advanced level with many and complicated patterns.

When the choice is made, the artist must stick to the system chosen.

Inadvertent breaks in the pattern frustrate the player, be it the artist himself or the audience. If the project has not been carried out according to the systems chosen; everyone will be confused and uncertain about the meaning of the work. They cannot grasp the concepts which are supposed to be part of the game. Only an project thoroughly worked out with precision can be played satisfactorily. Without consistency, there is neither game nor art.

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10. Artistic Ideals: Originality

The young man who aspired to become a poet before next Easter in the fairy tale What One Can Invent by Hans Christian Andersen (chapter 7) was right: Poetry and visual art are both arts of invention or creative arts.

Pavarotti, the famous tenor, claimed to be an artist, because he was able to fill out numbers fields on a canvas according to the instructions of the producer of a commercial painting set. He is creative in the sense that his pictures do not exist until he finishes his endeavor. But as he only acts according to the provisions of a manual, he is not creative as a painter.

The antithesis of invention and innovation is plagiarism. Copyright legislation protects what are considered to be creative art against plagiarists who risk being dragged into court.

A person who copies the works of other artist, claiming them to be original works of his own, is a thief. A person who is heavily inspired by his predecessors is not. But how little or how much must be done to convince the court or the art experts that the work is new and original?

We often observe persons in the museums, diligently copying the paintings of great masters. They may succeed in making exact copies of the paintings, indistinguishable from the originals. This is an act of skill, an impressive endeavor of its own. The copies are valuable as copies, better than any reproduction on paper. But producing copies of existing works of art is no creative artistic activity either.

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Is it art when one of these persons, having learned the method and style of a famous master, creates pictures that might have been created by the master Van Meegeren, a Dutchman, was a great admirer of the paintings of the Dutch 16th century painter Jan Vermeer. Van Meegeren was so skilled at painting in the manner of his icon that he was able to fool all experts of art. They believed that his paintings were genuine, although forgotten works of Vermeer. They did not change their minds until the impostor had demonstrated his skill in the prison cell, where he painted a series of new pictures. Even criminals have professional pride.

What about paintings, talent fully created in the style of deceased masters, but provided with the names of their copyists? Can works of this type be considered be works of art?

A colony of artist has settled in Canyon Road, a gallery street of the picturesque city of Santa Fe. The local tourist guide compares this area to the SOHO of New York. From the galleries are sold paintings, convincingly alike the works of great masters such as Van Gogh, Manet, and de Chirico.

Many of the originators of the paintings have frequented art schools, studying their predecessors´ working methods and styles.

Some of the paintings are executed so brilliantly and convincingly that had they been sold with the signature of the masters, the modern painters might have suffered the fate of Van Meegeren. But they are sold with the signatures of their producers.

There is no doubt that tcraftsmen of Santa Fe work skillfully and professionally. However, their works do not constitute projects of art in the normal sense of the word. The originators have no other aim than mastering the style and method of their icons. Taken by itself, their paintings has no other significance than the concept of A painting by X, being a metonym for Traditional Art, too. These concepts are just as legitimate as any other concept used in an art

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project. But they stand alone. A game with only one concept cannot be played as a game of art, one need at least one other concept.

The continuum of originality and novelty extends from minor variations of existing to essential breaks with tradition, a shift of paradigm. Great artists have renewed tradition and initiated new trends in visual art, e.g. the Italian Renaissance painter Giotto, and Marcel Duchamp. Some of these are treated in this book, e.g. Paul Cézanne, whom Picasso called “the father of every modern artist”.

The artists of renewal constitute highlights in the history of art, and anyone interested in visual art should know their names.

Some theorists hold that originality and pioneering efforts are considered to be one of the most important qualities of art. They are biased by their trade. Of course pioneers are relevant for the subdivision of art history in pioneering styles. Art historians are extremely interested in new tendencies fit for new chapters in the history of art.

Some contemporary artists capitalize on the ideals of the experts of art. They offer new strategies in art and benefit from the goodwill of the historians. However, most artists have no intention of pioneering for the sake of mere novelty. Some artists, of course, are more or less confident about their skill and importance, e.g. Édouard Manet (chapter 15). But the majority of arts hope to do nothing more than create interesting games for their own sake or for a smaller or larger public.

The works of Giotto and Cézanne and all other pioneers of visual art do not need to be evaluated because of their historical significance. Their works fulfill the other aesthetic ideals treated in this book: Professionalism, Consistency, Complexity, and Relevance. They pursued what they had in mind. They did not provoke tradition in order to provoke their contemporaries, nor to force their way into the history of art. They only happened to do so,

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thanks to their talent – and because they were at the right place at the right time.

Most works of art are based on former works of art, refer to former works of art, and draw inspiration from former works of art. Even Matisse and Picasso, great pioneers of art, are traditionalists in the sense that their works are base on the teachings of Cézanne.

Great artist often make their personal relationship to tradition part of their projects. They scrutinize, evaluate, and revise tradition.

They enrich tradition, rob tradition, reject tradition, all according to their personal projects.

The so called “neo-realistic painting” constitutes a special problem.

Neo-realistic works of art are paintings similar to color photos.

This strategy does not constitute any work of art. It is a matter of skill, not of creativity. It is nothing more than a laborious process of reproduction, furnishing the product with the texture of real paintings.

Nevertheless, neo-realistic painting may be interesting in the same way photographic art is interesting. The neo-realistic painter may work like a photographer, carefully choosing the part of the world to be represented and choosing how to present reality. The artist´s creativity is also at work when he or she merges several photos of a person into one in order to make a portrait more characteristic.

Modern realistic paintings often entail conceptual patterns of balance and harmonious proportions like their classical icons. They also display the figures, objects, and landscapes as they should look, reviving the classical method of art which Manet sought to confront. In this respect, the originators of new realism can be considered to be artists.

They may be inspired of the commercials of today displaying the concept of the merchandise, the way it should look or idea of the object. Any VIP will be happy to pay for a painted portrait,

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displaying the very idea of his or her person. Therefore, works of neo-realism often appear to be rather trivial, without the typical artistic endeavor of investigating the media or the reality in order to install some new conceptual order.

On the other hand, the quest for originality for its own sake is trivial too. Many spectators are reluctant when confronted by works of art which seem to be nothing more than acts of contrivance. It becomes hard to guess whether the creator intends to transgress the boundaries of art or is simply hunting for originality, solely for the sake of originality.

The visual artist must create new conceptual meaning to be acknowledged as an artist. Originality must be present in any work or art. Sticking to tradition does not necessarily make works of art.

Neither does the mere hunt for originality.

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11. Artistic Ideals: Complexity

Beginners in the domain of art do wise to start with simple projects.

Works of art with few conceptual patterns are easier to handle for the artist and easier to grasp for the spectator than large and complicated systems. The individual who constructs the game does not get lost in intricacies; those wanting to play the game are able to decode the system without too much trouble.

Folk songs, old standard, folk art, trivial art, jokes, slang created, remembered, and handed down by ordinary people, are examples of conceptual games with simple, easy to grasp systems.

It is no accident that commercial art forms operate with simple patterns, the hero and the villain, the dumb guy and the smart one, and the simple system of someone who is pursuing a goal but is hindered by all sorts of obstacles. The public knows the system beforehand and can concentrate on the game itself, enjoying the variations of the game.

A lot of proper art games are based upon simple patterns, too.

Nevertheless, they may involve relevant subjects, e.g. fundamental problems of human existence. The ideal of Relevance is treated in the next chapter.

The amateur is inclined to involve an endless variety of elements in his or her aesthetic products: colors, shapes, a little perspective, and elements copied from admired predecessors. Some of the works of amateurs look complicated, but their complexity is merely chaotic.

Chaotic and conflicting concepts cannot be played according to the Game of Visual Art. It presupposes that the concepts are precise and can be decoded by the players.

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Many prospective artists are convinced that their projects should simultaneously encompass all their visions about human existence.

Accordingly, they intend to incorporate an interminable range of conceptual elements into their creative process. Fortunately, they grow wiser, discovering that projects constructed with greater simplicity may contain most of what they have in mind.

What matters is not the amount of concepts, but concepts acting efficiently as part of the Game of Visual Art. Concepts able to blend and interact with other concepts inside the game are crucial to the game. As stated by the most famous of German poets, Johann Wolfgang Goethe: “In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meisterâ€?. (Mastery unfolds by limitation).

Carl Nielsen, Danish composer started his aesthetic experiments by playing a sequence of simple tones and discovered that the magic of art could arise from this simple procedure. A sculptor will discover that fascinating conceptual blending may emerge when he confronts a large and a small shape, an organic and a geometric form, or polishes a part of a rude stone. The cartoon NO by Saul Steinberg (chapter 14) is an example of simple, easily comprehensible patterns.

Complex works of art are games where a great number of elements, patterns and blended patterns play together in a significant way. As a rule, works of art with many options are more interesting than simple works of art with only a few options, just like the game of chess is more interesting than simple picture-puzzles.

Working with complicated game systems is no easy task. One of the problems of manipulation concepts is the fact that any conceptual element may be conceived as part of several patterns.

The color red can be interpreted in different ways, e.g. as a heraldic color symbol, as a color that protrudes in space, as the concept of vitality, or as part of a representational system, e.g. a red scarf.

Other concepts vary in significance according to the patterns to

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which they belong. Some significations are important elements of the game and enrich the game; others do not belong to the game and need to be eliminated.

What looks simple and uncomplicated at the beginning of the creative process often results in a conceptual chaos with no meaning when the creative process has been terminated.

It is challenging for the artist to balance several different conceptual elements and systems at a time. They interact in unpredictable ways. During the creative process, now patterns emerge crosswise as players in the game. Some of these patterns enrich the game, others tamper with it. The artist must learn to become resolute and consistent, stick to his first choice, and remove anything irrelevant to the game.

The novice is tempted to listen to uninvited concepts. Such elements may even take over the game and leave the prospective artist in a confused state of mind with a series of half finished games. In literature, authors talk about killing your darlings, that is, to remove elements valuable in themselves, but unable to enhance the intentions of the author. They must be discarded from the process.

In the word of Henri Matisse: In a picture any element must be visible and play its individual role, essential or less essential. A work of art includes an entire harmony; any superfluous detail occupies the place in the mind of the spectator which belongs to another more essential detail.

If an artist does not succeed in complying with this ideal, the expert must conclude that the product is clumsy or uninteresting without aesthetic quality. The general audience may experience the details of the work, e.g. beautiful colors and proportions or exact representation of nature. But there will be no communication between producer and spectator, or pleasure of being a participant of a game on the premises of the game.

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The works of art analyzed in the last chapters of the book are far more complex than jokes, easy to grasp and soon to be forgotten.

The aesthetic experiences from works of this type are richer and more varied. It is possible for the spectator to return to complex works of art over time and still discover new aspects. Thus, the expression inexhaustible, often used about great works of art, makes good sense.

Some works of art are constructed on the basis of very few elements. They may be recirculated, forming significant patterns on different levels. Works of this kind are satisfactory because of their condensed and economical usage of the method of art.

This is an aesthetic ideal that only the great masters of art are able to realize.

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12. Artistic Ideals: Relevance

Works of visual art are conceptual games. When conceptual patterns are confronted, compared, and blended in the game, new significance emerges. As concepts guide our thinking and acting, games of art somehow influence the way we think and act. Thus, visual art can be considered as a contribution to a continuous evolutionary process, aimed at adaption to our environment.

But not all works of art are equally interesting in this respect. Some artists hold that they construct their games purely for their own benefit. They see no other reason for making art than getting a personal kick out of their efforts. They do not imagine that the reason why they get this personal kick might be that their brains do not differ that much from the brains of their public and their audience may get a similar kick from their works. Some artists build their games for the sake of the game itself. Other artists create their works of art in order to influence the way we think and act.

Accordingly, we may conclude that some games are more relevant for human existence than others.

Some of those who create works of art are inspired by their experience of the flaws of reality. They try to process their experiences in the Visual Game of Art. According to Igor Stravinsky, a real artist must be in strict harmony with himself.

Artists do what they do because it seems relevant for them to do so, thus bringing some sort of order in their conceptual state of mind.

They hope that their efforts are relevant to their public, as well.

They work according to the ideal of relevance.

A part of the audience want their concepts of reality challenged and enriched by their cultural activity. In art, in literature, movies, theatre, music, or visual art, people search for messages relevant to

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their individual lives. Thus, relevance is a common ideal for both the artist and his public.

The simplest way of stating that a work of art is interesting to the audience is to postpone the decision until the relevance is obvious to everyone. Nobody would have believed that Duchamp´s readymades were important when they were created in the beginning of the 20th century. Now we know that Duchamp´s endeavors were part of the restructuring of the concept of art and relevant for the way people think and act today.

It is more difficult to decide whether a work of contemporary art is relevant.

When someone holds that a certain work of art is without any interest at all, the reason could be that he or she has not been able to grasp the conceptual patterns at stake in the game. This fact, however, tells more about the spectator than about the work of art in question.

Works of art are of little relevance if they demonstrate nothing more than the virtuosity of the originator. Wilhelm Furtwängler, famous German conductor, maintains that athletics, drill and acrobatics halve nothing to do with the quality of art. They are impressive, but of little human interest.

Works with trivial information are generally considered less relevant than works of art that refine traditional concepts, challenge prejudices, reconcile contrasting concepts, or throw light upon concepts we try to subdue.

Relevance concerns many different issues. Art about art, the problems of how to construct an art game or studying how human perception can be influenced efficiently, are relevant issues for the artist of visual art and for colleagues of the trade. However, the way we perceive space, whether statically or dynamically, influences human activity, from science to architecture, and the

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way we think and act. Therefore, this sort of visual games can be considered relevant.

The project Vir Heroicus Sublimis by Barnett Newman (chapter 19) deals with existential and religious problems. The project Bedroom Ensemble I by Claes Oldenburg (chapter 20) offers an untraditional concept of the vulgarities of the modern world, replaying the problems of Duchamp about art and society. Both have influenced the way people think and act, directly or through other art artists and art forms. Both have appeared to be relevant works of art.

Works of art referring to basic level categories and problems common to human beings are relevant, as basic level concepts are the building blocks for our lives. We extend them metaphorically into more abstract concepts by which we live. Conceptual games that influence and restructure basic level concepts are relevant, too.

Works of art that deal with conceptual pattern on a highly abstract level are seldom relevant for the general audience.

Different sections of the public have different preferences. Experts of art, including artists, will probably find the endeavors of Paul CĂŠzanne more relevant than the lyrical paintings of the FrenchRussian painter Marc Chagall. The general audience probably will hold that the paintings of the latter are the most relevant. What we consider to be relevant depends on our attitudes, needs and our actual situation of life.

To be relevant for a greater public, a work of art must reflect elements of human interest, proving that the artist has “walked into the crowd of people, had eye for them, listened to them, and used his heart�, to quote Hans Christian Andersen (chapter 7).

A Danish author describes the artist as a professional human being.

As a matter of fact, some works of art are created by persons worth listening to, with experience of life and sensitivity to the key aspects of life. They have tried to translate their experiences into a

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visual game of significance. When they succeed, we are able to identify essential concepts about existence, when we view their works of art. They are highly relevant to our lives.

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13. Evaluating Visual Art

When philosophers and aestheticians discuss the quality of art, they do not use the concept of quality in a consumer´s sense of the word.

They aim at encompassing the “essence of art�, that is, the quality common to all works of art. They have little interest in discussing why one work of art is better than another, that is, the question of ranking works of art according to their quality. Sometimes, they are forced to rank works of art e.g. when they curate exhibitions. But the criteria for their decisions often are hidden in twilight, little accessible for discussions.

For the general audience, the personal experience of the individual is what counts. If a person has a strong feeling that the concepts emerging during the dynamic perception of a work of art are so important that they may influence his way of thinking and acting, he or she is entitled to hold that the work of art concerned has value, even if the experts disagree. We cannot trust even the most skilled judges of taste about this issue; we have to experience the real thing for ourselves.

Art theorist Nelson Goodman argues that we do not understand other people or works of art better, just because we are told that they are magnificent. We have to make their acquaintance and find out by ourselves what kind of people or works of art they are.

Yet, we may appreciate advice from the experts of art. We like to be informed that certain works of art are worth while dealing with, even if they look uninteresting at first sight. We feel that we have a right to know why some works are better than others. After all, it is better to concentrate on works of art that have been recommended by the learned than waste our time on less interesting works.

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Once in a while, experts of art have to discuss the quality of single works of art as compared to other works of art. That is part of their job as curators for art exhibitions, as purchasers and sellers of art, and as members of prize committees. They have to rank works of art according to the qualities of the single works.

For some unknown reasons, experts on visual art are reluctant when it comes to sharing their evaluation criteria with the public.

The quality of the individual works of visual art is seldom discussed in the same way as literature, movies and theatre performances. The art connoisseurs insist that their evaluations are based on their expertise and sensitivity only; pointing out that the value of visual art cannot be precisely objectified. Therefore, we have to trust in the decisions of the experts. It is not easy as we know their many mistakes through history.

All people think and act according to some sort of presuppositions and concepts, unconsciously or consciously. Of course, experts too, act according to concepts, and most concepts can be communicated to the public.

I have tried to put words upon some of the concepts behind the evaluation of single works of art under the rubrics of professionalism, consistence, originality, complexity, and relevance. While this list is not exhaustive, I would argue that experts are guided by these criteria when they evaluate works of art.

Experts of literature, theatre, and film evaluate books and performances for the benefit of the public. Their reviews are interesting for their readers. We are informed by them, we learn from their statements, and we are introduced to their respective domains of expertise. Reviews are instructive for most readers and tend to demystify literature and movies and theatre performances.

Of course, a review will be worthless if the reader concludes that the reviewer is biased by idiosyncrasies or comradeship or

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commercial interests. Reviews are nothing more than an introduction and do not represent the real thing. Some reviewers are so repellant to their readers that the readers are inclined to take an adverse position. And yet, reviews serve to promote the dialogue between the artist and the public.

Ass visual art is at least as important for our lives as other art forms; there is no reason to treat visual art differently from literature, theatre, and film.

I agree with the view of art experts who maintain that the spiritual worth of art is elusive. What emerges during the spectator´s playing of the game, evades a heavy-handed description. It depends on the skill, knowledge, and creativity of the spectator and his or her personal life situation. We cannot look into their minds. But the quality of anything else, including the quality of French wines, is evasive too. Any sort of explanation why this or that product is better than others sort of merchandise is informative, as long as the reviewer is able to argue for his or her choices.

Many art experts restrict themselves to transposing their personal experiences into lyrical statements. This sort of reviewing is as inaccessible to the general public as is the work of art itself.

Rudolph Arnheim calls this “dazzling obscurity of arty talk�. The public need neither juggling with catchwords nor authoritative interpretations. All we need from the experts is some sort of recommendation, telling what is at stake in the game, telling us that the game is worth playing, and hopefully some clues for playing the game ourselves.

Visual art is not a private playing field for specialists. It is a method for discussing concepts and the way we think and act, relevant to anybody with an open mind. There is no reason to conceal this fact from the general audience.

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14. The Joke as a Game of Art

Many experts and intermediaries of art consider art a matter of seriousness and sublimity. Art is placed in a metaphysical sort of twilight, often described in a quasi-lyrical or quasi-religious tone of voice. The experts try to persuade into believing that the more serious the work of art are, the better it is.

Most artists do not share this opinion. Many of them make use of humor and irony as part of the aesthetic game. When the German artist Sigmar Polke constructs a machine where a potato circles another potato like the planet Tellus around the sun, he creates a joke, nevertheless a game of art.

Visual jokes may be works of art. Consider, for example, a cartoon

by Saul Steinberg, who for many years worked for The New Yorker.

[Saul Steinberg´s cartoon NO can be found at the home page www.cartoon.bank.com. Search “Entire Site” with the word "No" and find page # 2 at the bottom].

On first sight we see a graphical pattern created by means of light pen strokes. Metaphorically, the artist tends to give the impression of lightness, sophistication and irony, in the style of the magazine where the cartoon was published.

Arts experts may note some resemblance to the works of the French painter Raoul Dufy (1877-1953). The works of Dufy possess the same sort of lightness and elegance as Steinberg´s cartoons. The reference to Dufy is a part of the picture, although accessible for the art connoisseur.

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Steinberg creates a small theatrical performance placed inside the frame of the picture. We are told where we can find the crucial elements of the game.

The performance is carried out by two persons, a humble supplicant and a self-aware representative of power. They constitute the conceptual pattern of dependence/independence.

Starting from there, we can begin to investigate the details of the picture and determine how they interrelate.

The cartoon represents a small part of reality, drawn according to the traditional method of cartooning where persons are created as concepts like persons in children´s drawings. Two persons are sitting next to a desk table, one in front, and the other behind the table. They are drawn in a way that stresses that one is the boss, the other his inferior, the first one protected by his drawing-table, the other unprotected. These concepts are variations of the theme of dependence/independence or social distance.

The overall representational system is twisted. It includes two incompatible systems of representation. The boss and his desk is seen from above and oblique, constituting traditional perspective.

The supplicant and his chair are drawn without perspective, as if drawn by a child. In the blending of concepts emerge a new concept, the pattern of inseparable worlds. This metaphor signifies that the two persons exist at separate levels, secluded from each other and unable to communicate.

The mutual relationship between the persons, superior and inferior, is emphasized by the positioning of the characters. The supplicant sits on a small chair, awkwardly place at the border of the picture frame. The boss rests comfortably at the table, in his proper place within the picture. The two concepts are merged into a pattern of security/insecurity, a variation of the main theme.

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The larger part of the cartoon is occupied by a bubble containing only one word: NO. The bubble is much larger than anything else in the picture. It means significance in the picture. As it originates from the boss, it stresses his significance even more.

The bubble and the word NO are drawn in the light manner of the rest of the picture, being part of the overall stroke pattern. But the word NO has a hatching filling, different from the rest of the picture. This fact makes the NO an even more significant part of the picture. This NO is the mother of all NOs, the concept of a definitive rejection of a request.

Looking more closely on the hatching, we discover that the hatching is created by means of a calligraphic, intricate, elaborate, although totally unreadable scripture. W all know that calligraphy takes time. The artist must have spent a lot of time in the elaboration of the mock scripture calligraphy inside the NO. It is obviously futile to spend so much time on a project with so little meaning. Thus, the meticulous calligraphy is metonymical for the care the boss undertakes in order to formulate a rejection of a request, even if this fact is of little importance for the supplicant.

However, the contrast between the concept of carefulness and the obvious and plain significance of the oversized NO is monstrous.

The pattern is contradictory and turns into the concept of ridicule.

Steinberg has created his game of significance and left the arena to the public. From her we can start playing the game. We have identified the concepts at stake; we have investigated their mutual significance and interplay, now we can experience what emerges in our minds when we play the game.

Most people will identify themselves with the supplicant.

According to some powerful basic child/parent concepts, we are inclined to take the party of David against Goliath. As a rule, we depend on parents, big brothers, spouses and bosses. Why do we supplicants have to listen to carefully crafted explanations when we

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know that the final result is a rejection of our wishes? If there is some more or less sensible explanation behind the decision of our superior, why can´t we speak freely?

We can speculate as to whether our superiors are competent enough to handle their jobs if they have to explain their doings in this circumstantial manner. Will we be able to handle this kind of situation in a more sensible way?

The cartoon may also challenge our traditional concepts in other ways. Do we have to put up with ridiculous bosses, authorities, parents and so forth?

The interpretations of the game can be continued in endless ways, which is in perfect harmony with Umberto Eco´s theories about the open work of art.

The joke of Steinberg is – within the modest limits of a cartoon – a small work of art. It operates with consistent graphic and do not contain any superfluous elements. You cannot change any single concept present without reducing the quality of the game. Every element has a precise significance and fertilizes other elements, enhancing their meaning. The artist involves elements of his own personal experiences. We feel that he is on our side in this little game about basic human relations.

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15. Édouard Manet: In the Conservatory

Édouard Manet: In the Concervatory. State Museum of Berlin

When did Modern Art commence? It is hard to tell. At any rate, the French painter Édouard Manet (1832-1883) was one of the founders of contemporary art. Traditional or modern, Manet´s work of art In the Conservatory is created by means of carefully selected conceptual patterns, blending, defining and stimulation each other in his Game of Visual Art. The painting represents Monsieur et Madame Guillemet, close friends of Manet´s and owners of a fashion house in Paris. We may surmise that Manet, like a photographer, has arranged this little scene, Madame Guillemet on the bench, her husband behind.

After that, Manet has made use of his professional knowledge of how to structure a picture of arranged reality. He has exploited his

pictorial medium according to the system we normally use when we depict our surroundings, whether by means of drawings, paintings or photos.

A contemporary Danish poet has proposed an interpretation of the scenery. The woman is relaxed, reposing and self-contained; the traditional powerful position of the man is at stake. He is barely contained inside the frame of the picture. The hand of the woman rests self-confidently and calmly on the bench, while the hand of the man points enquiringly at the woman´s hand without reaching it.

These two hands expose the battle-field of the sexes, the closeness, the temptation, the helplessness. With these hands only we are introduced to the purgatory of love.

Without any doubt, Manet would have been flattered by this interpretation of the painting. He may have had some vague ideas of this kind, when he made his friends pose. However, he did not think according to literary ideas of this kind. From his notes (next page) we learn that he was primarily a painter, above all interested in problems of painting.

The statements of the poet point to the fact that a work of art is open to all sorts of interpretations. According to the theory of Umberto Eco about the Open Work of Art, any interpretation, including interpretations outside the fantasy of the originator, are permissible. You have only to respect the framework and the rules of the game, and psychological findings in the picture of Manet are consistent with the game.

On the other hand, authoritative interpretations of this type of which especially literary scholars are fond, may tend to limit ways of playing more in tune with the intentions of the artist.

A keen and unsentimental observer, Manet made a lot of sketches of his comrades and associates. We are told that his human interest

was rather limited. He was a professional artist, primarily interested in using his acquaintances as bricks in his games of art.

Anyhow, here they are, his two friends, snapped by his photographic eye in a situation characteristic for them fit for his project and depicted plainly.

According to the traditions of his age, the painting The Conservatory represents three-dimensional space, with foreground and background.

The revolutionary idea behind his system of painting is his choice be rejection. He renounces the painstaking reproduction of all the details of the art of his contemporaries. He is not interested in the nuances of color, used by traditional artists to explain the surface of the figures. The figures are more like conceptual shapes, filled with summary masses of color to furnish the figures with shape and fullness. Inside the frame, constituting the border of the game, the picture is constructed by means of patterns of light and dark color fields and blue and green colors in a manner adequate to describe the pictorial space. He might be inspired by the recent invention of photography.

An account of his method of painting, describing his efforts to paint a picture of boats and the sea can be studied on the next page. It is a down-to-earth, consistent, no nonsense statement.

Today, Manet´s project does not sound very impressive. At his time, however, it was a revolutionary endeavor, having definite effects on the traditions of visual art and the concepts of everyday life and the role of the individual, reminding of the little child in the fairy tale about the Emperor´s New Clothes.

Manet´s background was one of class society with confidence in the authorities, at the same time a society on the verge of a new optimism, with democratic ideas, and influenced by scientific and technical innovations. The aristocracy stuck to its traditional

values, while the middle class was eager to create values of their own.

Note on Manet´s working procedure I. With a scene like this, so disconcerting and so complicated, I must first select the characteristic episode and delimit my picture by an imaginary frame. The most salient objects here are the masts with their multicolored bunting, the green, white and red of the Italian flag, the dark, undulation line of the barges laden with spectators, and the arrow-like line of the black-and-white gondolas fading away into the distance, with, at the top of the picture, the line of the water, the goal set for the races and the ethereal islands.

II. I shall first try to distinguish the different values as they build themselves up logically according to their several planes in the atmosphere.

III. The lagoon, mirror of the sky, the parvis of the barges and their passengers, of the masts, pennants, etc. It has its own color – tints borrowed from the sky, the clouds, the crowd and the other objects reflected in it. There can be no question of wire-drawn lines in a moving object such as this, but only of values which, rightly observed, will constitute the real volume, the unquestionable design.

IV. The gondolas, the various barges with their mainly somber coloring, and their reflections, constitute the foundation I shall lay on my parvis of the water.

V. The figures seated or gesticulating, dressed in dark or brilliant colors, their parasols, their kerchiefs, their hats, form the crenellations, of differing values, which will provide the necessary foil and give their true character to the planes and the gondolas which I shall see through them.

VI. The crowd, the competitors, the flags, the masts, will be built up into a mosaic of bright colors. I must try to catch the instantaneousness of the gestures, the shiver of the flags, the rocking of the masts.

VII. On the horizon, far up, the Islands….The sails in the furthest distances will be merely hinted at in their delicate, accurate coloring.

VIII. Lastly, the sky, like an immense glittering canopy, will envelop the whole scene, paying its light over figures and objects.

IX . The painting must be light and direct. No tricks; and you will pray the God of good and honest painters to come to your aid.

Manet´s painter colleagues were representatives of tradition. They created art in the classical style. Their subjects were historical and mythological. They made use of subdued and brown nuances of

colors, present in the paintings of their predecessors. They had to believe that this sort of art was the proper sort of art, as museums and collections were full of paintings with varnish that had turned dark with ages.

The artists constructed their paintings carefully by means of classical perspective, with all the nuances of color between light and shadow which they knew could be found in reality. They composed their pictures in order to display their models in the best light, like the staging of a theatre. They depicted the world as it ought to be.

Manet attended an art school with the traditional kind of ideals. He did not do well. He respected painting as a craft, but quarreled with his teachers and models. When the models posed as Olympic gods and goddesses, he told them to pose as they purchased radishes at the vegetable market. Like Hans Christian Andersen, his contemporary, he preferred to walk into the crowd of people.

Manet appreciated what was relevant for him: the crowd of people at the market, life on the streets, night life, life in bars and restaurants, his friends. He intended to depict the world as it was according to his own eyes and experience – without other people´s explanations. According to him, visual art had to leave the stage of the theatre and enter ordinary life.

This project was revolutionary. The reaction of his contemporaries demonstrates the importance of his art. The art connoisseurs blamed him for his lack of interest in the graduated color tones that real artists made use of in order to make their persons threedimensional. The experts maintained that Manet´s models were flat as playing cards. They did not look right and were not realistic.

Today, we feel estranged in front of the authoritative and traditional kind of realism displayed by the predecessors of Manet.

The individualistic realism of Manet is our way of perceiving our

surroundings. This fact makes it difficult for a modern spectator to evaluate the merits of Manet.

Manet´s project was to modernize visual art, intending to depict reality the way it looks, according to him. This was the project he carried out, by rejecting only that part of tradition which hampered his vision of representing a three-dimensional reality on the twodimensional areal of the canvas. Without false modesty, he was convinced that posterity would assign him his rightful place in the Louvre for this contribution to art.

Even without knowledge of the history of art, we ascertain a work of art in which surfaces, shapes and colors constitute an convincing pictorial space. This space with a reduced color range creates a perfect sounding board for an emphatic portrait of his two friends and their mutual relationship. We experience them as individuals, as a married couple, as human beings we might observe today. It is impressive that those people who might have been our great-greatgrandparents appear in a manner as if they had been our contemporaries.

References: T- A- Gronberg (ed-): Manet – as Retrospective. New York. Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. 1988.

16. Paul Cézanne: Apples and Oranges

Paul Cézanne: Apples and oranges. 1899. Musée d´Orsay

Some artists perform as rock stars and others occupy a prominent position in the realm of art thanks to professional marketing people and close ties to the Art Institution.

Other artists prefer to remain anonymous. They stay at home, working with their projects without making too much fuss about it.

They may have a regular job, a small fortune, or a loving spouse willing to support them. They work with the intention of bringing some order in their minds by means of their visual thinking without the intention of initiating other people into their doings. These people, too, may produce great art.

The French painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was prototypic for the latter kind of artists. He was an unobtrusive person with an ordered economy, remaining in his house in Aix-en-Provence and working diligently in order to solve the painterly problems in which

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he was absorbed. He was not “discovered” by the art connoisseurs until he was in his mid-sixties. After that, his career took off.

As stated by the most famous of his successors, Pablo Picasso: He was my mentor. Did I look at his paintings? I spent years studying them….Cézanne! It was the same for all of us – he was like a father to us. He was the one that protected us!

The painting Apples and Oranges is a still life with apples and oranges, placed on a table covered by a cloth with wrinkles. Some of the fruits are placed directly on the table, others on a dish or in a bowl. A blanket with a flower decoration, wrinkled in a decorative manner, constitutes the background.

[The painting Apples and Orange can be seen at the home page www.musée-orsay.fr. Click “English”, “Collections”, “index of works”, “Search”, “Simple Search”, write “pommes and oranges” in the search field and click “search”] Like Manet, (chapter 15), Cézanne was absorbed by the problems of visual reality, including vegetables, fruits, the neighbor, the family, the friends, and his favorite subject, the Sainte Victoire Mountain.

Cézanne the subject was a pretext for working with the pictorial problems that interested him. He investigated the problems of transposing 3D reality to the 2D canvas in a manner more realistic than his predecessors.

He was not content with looking in the view-finder as was Manet. He moved his fruits and bowl around to a place where they were able to inspire him to do what he had to do.

His working hypothesis was as follows: A picture is primarily a two-dimensional rectangle or square with physical lines, shapes, colors and objects placed at the pictorial area, all constituting a pattern like the pattern of a carpet. Producing the illusion of reality seen will never turn out to be more than superficial. Instead, an artist may exploit the fact that the objects of the pictorial area have features common with objects of reality. The artist, instead of using the

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pictorial elements in order to depict reality, may use them to construct a game about reality by means of the pictorial objects. Thus, the spectator may experience a more bodily perceive reality closer to reality than a superficially depicted reality. This means that the artist has to revise the principles of the current visual art.

A painting being a two-dimensional bodily reality of its own, colors and lines need to be considered bodily realities, too. They should be considered as real as the arabesques of the carpet. As experience of space is a part of reality, the artist has to transpose this experience to the picture plan in a bodily manner, too. As a matter of fact, this was a sort of revival of the methods of a of a former age.

This scheme is carried out in the painting Apples and Oranges.

Color ranges CĂŠzanne utilizes patterns of color, divided into two main color ranges: the reddish shades from yellow-white, orange, scarlet to reddish brown, and the other bluish shades. The blues include the pale blue and grayish blue of the blanket, the blackish blue colors below the table, the deep shadows of the table cloth and the decorations and shadows of the background blanket.

The two ranges of colors include complementary colors, enhancing each other and making the colors strong and tangible with a bodily reality of their own.

Color dynamics The colors of the painting are placed in spots, paired in significant timbres. They constitute modulated dynamic ranges across the plan, another reference to bodily experiencing or basic level concepts.

Lightness/darkness The patterns of lightness and darkness are part of the picture, too.

Lightness is present in the light table cloth and in the part of the painting that is illuminated. Darkness is present in the dark shadows of the blanket

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and the table and in the part of the picture in penumbra and in complete shadow. The lightness/darkness pattern is a pattern of its own, partly consistent with the color patterns, but also deviating from them, creating new patterns.

Pure color/broken color The pattern of pure colors/broken colors arises from the pure colors of the fruits and the subdued colors of the remainder of the picture, an effect of the reflection of the light upon the objects depicted. This pattern, too, relates to the rest of the patterns at stake in the picture, in concordance with them or breaking them deliberately, creating new conceptual patterns.

Foreground/background The single elements of the picture are placed in receding layers, the fruits on the top layer, the wrinkles on the cloth, the cloth on the table, the table in front of the blanket of the background. This layering of pictorial element is a basic level pattern that fundamentally respect to twodimensionality of the canvas. The spectator is challenged to perceive the different layers one at a time, making his experience into an active way of creating three-dimensional space. He gets a bodily and dynamic experience that creates a virtual 3D space in his mind when he plays the game.

Geometric shapes and lines A pattern of geometric shapes and lines is part of the picture, emerging along and between the slanted lines of cloth, blanket and table, in the wrinkles of the cloth and the blanket, and along and between the imaginary slanted lines between the different constellations of fruits.

They, too, indicate the movements of the eye, part of the bodily experience which comes when playing CÊzanne´s game of art.

CĂŠzanne does not initiate his work by constructing these patterns. They emerge little by little as a result of the artistic process. At first he tries to fasten his sensual perceptions and experiences of colors and shapes,

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texture and solidity on the two-dimensional field of the canvas, respecting the potentials and limitations of this surface. It is a very slow process, so slow that Cézanne had to change his fruits several times due to their decay. Each brush stroke is color and line and perceptual experience, everything in accordance with the rules of the game set forth by Cézanne.

Gradually, perceived reality is transposed into pictorial reality. Every color, shape and line is put into a significant position inside this overall pattern as concepts, explaining, defining, and enhancing each other.

The space that emerges when the spectator plays Cézannes Visual Game of Art is an embodied space. It needs to be perceived dynamically, as Cézanne intended to create a dynamic space.

The oeuvre of Cézanne is unique is unique in the history of art. Small segments of visual reality are transformed into concrete, monumental, and tangible reality based on the potential of visual language. By syntactic pictorial means, he creates a visual metaphor for nature as tangible and coherent, thus inspiring our general way of thinking and acting, be it inside the real of art or in practical life.

This is why Cézanne is considered to be the founder of contemporary art, and why his followers conceived his oeuvre to be an inexhaustible source of ideas. Artists interested in pictorial construction, e.g. the Cubists, Picasso and Matisse were inspired by his constructivism.

Cézanne and his colleagues have inspired us to conceptualize the work of art as a game that can be experienced actively and dynamically. His works are complex an inexhaustible masterpieces.

References: Fritz Novotny. Painting and Sculpture in Europe 1780-1880. Harmondsworth.

Penguin Books. 1980.

George Heard Hamilton. Painting and Schulpture in Europe 1880-1940.

Harmondsworth. Penguin Books. 1984

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17. Henri Matisse: Big Pink Nude

On first sight Henri Matisse´s painting Big Pink Nude seems to represent only the concept of a reclining nude. And yet the wellknown French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is respected as a great artist by art experts as well by the general public. What is Matisse´s secret?

[The painting can be seen at the home page www.artbma.org.flash.html.

Click “Matisse in the Cone Collection” and the text “Matisse was fascinated with his own creative process”.]

The model depicted fills up the picture area, and there is hardly space for the entire figure. She is placed on a blue background layer, probably a blanket with a white pattern. Behind this layer is another layer, white with a green pattern, may be tiles. The two background layers are place flat like the pattern of a blanket.

Between the layers, we see a red-brownish area with the look of a three-dimensional back of a sofa and an indeterminable yellowbrown figure. The colors of the painting are few and simple, the body of the nude rose, the blanket blue. The artist has made no effort to shade the rounded shapes of the model and depict them three-dimensionally. Nor has he depicted the shadow which the model normally would throw on the blanket. The blanket and the wall, too, are summarily depicted, the blanket as seen from above, the wall as seen from aside.

Matisse does not seek to represent the virtual three-dimensional picture space with planes and perspective, nor does he want to explain shapes and colors as sensed y the eye in the manner of Manet and Cézanne. And yet, all three painters have one thing in common: what Duchamp refers as “retinal art”.

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The originality of Manet appears when he is compared to his predecessors. The originality of Matisse is disclosed when we compare his later works with his first works.

The first paintings of Matisse were carried out according to the guidelines of Manet and his impressionist followers had laid down for modern painting. Little by little, Matisse´s interest changes from the virtual space of the picture to the reality of the picture itself to a consistent and final solution demonstrated by his paper collages from his final years.

At first, Matisse depicts the colors which can be seen with a sensitive glance at the lighted and the shady side of his models.

Later on, his primary interest is the intrinsic value of the color. He intends to make background and foreground color vibrate together.

This is exactly what we observe, when we view the current picture.

We see complementary colors like blue and rose that no longer create the illusion of reality. Now the colors constitute the concept of physical reality. The lines formerly used to explain the sculptural shapes of the models are now turned into arabesques.

The lines no longer create the illusion, but represent reality themselves.

The starting point of the rose nude is the large pink female figure on a blue background, a closed shape on a reclining background.

The two colors come close to complementary colors. But this conceptual pattern is blended in a manner that constitutes a vibrant space of its own.

The delineation of the figure leaves a pattern of arabesque on the surface which the spectator can trace, a sort of sensual resonance, the metaphorical concept of sensing the model with one´s hands.

The spatial and sensual experience of the artist, the experience of looking at a beautiful human body, has been transpose to the twodimensional area of the picture. The lines of the model of Matisse

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are not supposed to depict reality as seen by the artist. Matisse was well aware of this fact: If I happened to meet somebody on the street looking like my model, I would flee in panic. I paint pictures, I don’t create a woman.

We are unable to reconstruct a three-dimensional model from the information present in the painting. The properties of the colors, shapes and lines are displayed as realities of their own in a game about visual experience.

The concepts at stake are 1. The rectangular frame, constituting the site of the game, but also constituting a conceptual pattern of frame/figure.

2. The concept of a female model.

3. The color contrasts of the pink figure and the blue of the background constituting a vibrant color field pattern.

4. The foreground/background pattern.

5. The horizontal/vertical geometric tile pattern/the organic pattern of the model.

6. The lines of the model, that is, patterns of tension/relaxation.

7. The geometry of the sofa versus the organic shape of the model.

8. The distorted representational pattern of the model – the small head and the large body.

When we have identified the patterns at stake, we can start playing the game, comparing the similarities and contrasts of the picture, experiencing the enhancing of the patterns of the game, focusing on one pattern now as foreground, now as background, registering the blending of concepts. We may compare the pink color of the body defined by the blue color of the blanket and vice versa, the blue/pink color pattern as a vibrant background for the arabesque pattern with lines of tension and relaxation. A complicated section

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of sensed reality has been transposed into a two-dimensional areal that can be experienced from an infinite number of points of view.

The artist has created a virtual space with a reality of its own.

Matisse´s painting comply with his ideal: anything which does not benefit the painting is harmful. Any superfluous detail that occupies the mind of the spectator needs to be subdued for the benefit of more essential details.

Big Pink Nude is the work of a master, created by Matisse at a time when he is harvesting the result of many years of investigations of how to express sensual qualities by means of methods at the disposal of a visual artist. The painting is an example of his success, demonstration his method of updating visual art in an original and consistent manner. With simple, though convincing means, he succeeds in creating a complicated Game of Visual Art. References: Lawrence Gowing. Matisse. London; Thames and Hudson 1979.

Alfred H. Barr. Matisse: His Art and his Public. New York; Museum of Modern art 1951 (Reprinted 1966).

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18. Diego Rivera: The Making of A Fresco Depicting the construction of a City

The famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera (l886-1957) has created the Making of A Fresco (1931), a mural measuring 5.68 x9.91 m on view in the San Francisco Art Institute in California.

[The Making of a Fresco (La elaboración de un fresco) can be seen at the home page www.diegorivera.com/murals/sfelabfreso.html]

An artist may have several reasons for choosing this kind of size.

Size may be utilized in order to create an awe-inspiring object. This was the purpose of Barnett Newman when he created his large painting Vir Heroicus (chapter 19).

The size concept can also be utilized if an artist wants to become conspicuous on the market of visual art.

Diego Rivera had a different goal in mind. His reason for choosing size – his collected works over art cover an area of 6000 m2 - were ideological. He wanted art to be seen by ordinary people. As he said: We reject the so-called easel-painting and the art of all ultra-intellectual circles, because it is aristocratic, and we glorify the expression of monumental art because this art is the property of the public.

At the same time, he chose a technically complicated medium, needing an entire working staff. This was a deliberate step, too. He underplayed his role as an artist, undertaking the role of master artisan – like the artisans of the Middle Ages, another inherent part of his consistent artistic project. He consciously rejects the concept

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of the artist as a genius and the concept of art as a message from a realm of metaphysics.

Rivera had prepared himself well for the task. As a young man, he studied at a traditional art academy with roots in classical art, including the science of proportions and perspective. Later on, he studied the great masters of art in the Prado Museum of Madrid, in Toledo, in London, and in the Louvre of Paris.

Later he became friendly with the avant-garde of visual art in Paris: Amadeo Modigliani, Robert Delauny, Fernand Leger, Marc Chagall, Picasso, Chaim Soutine, Gino Severini, André Lhóte, Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger, Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Matisse.

José Vasconcelos, at the time headmaster of the University of Mexico, and with considerable political and artistic interests, urged Rivera to study the art of Renaissance in Italy, especially the works of Giotto, Paolo Ucello, Andreas Mantegna, Tintoretto, Piero della Francesca and Michel Angelo.

Loaded with knowledge of classical and modern art, Rivera returned to Mexico.

My homecoming produced an aesthetic exhilaration which is impossible to describe. It was as if I had been born anew, born into a new world. I was in the very center of the plastic world where forms and colors existed in absolute purity. – Gone was the doubt and inner conflict which had tormented me in Europe. I painted as naturally as I breathed, spoke and perspired. My style was born as children are born, in a moment, except that the birth had come after a torturous pregnancy of thirty-five years.

Rivera returned to a country in a political and economic chaos. The peso had collapsed. Relations with the United States were suspended, the population decimated and the school system torn asunder. Eighty per cent of the population was illiterate. A new revolutionary government had taken over with the goal of restoring

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order. It was convinced that art and culture might contribute to stabilizing the situation and unifying the nation.

Rivera, equally interested in politics and art offered to cooperate.

In the meantime, JosĂŠ Vasconcelos, his benefactor, had been appointed a minister of education. He joined Rivera on a journey to southern Mexico where he experienced the local population and the archaeological past of Mexico, discovering that the art of the Aztecs, Toltecs, and Mayans was as important as the classical works of Europe.

The great project of Rivera was to merge elements from classical European painting with the ancient art of Mexico and to make his results accessible to the general public.

The mural The Making of a Fresco is an example of this strategy.

In this pictured, Rivera operates with a foreground, precisely defined, with persons placed on a ground-plan in a virtual, threedimensional pictorial space, with line of sight of perspective, that is, a traditional concept of representation of reality.

The picture is divided into three panels inspired by thirteenth century pious Italian painting. Thus, it includes a historical concept, the concept of religious painting of the Middle Ages. It is no coincidence that the central worker/engineer has been put right into the middle of the painting, the concept of a resurrected savior of humanism. The characters are depicted with simplified rounded shapes, inspired by the works of Giotto and Piero della Francesca.

They can be viewed at a certain distanced and are created according to the demands of the technique of the fresco of few details. This fact, simulation the simple effect of a poster, makes the picture easy for the viewer to decode, even if he has little knowledge of art history. Thus, the concept of simplicity has several entails.

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Like other frescoes by Rivera, this one has a pattern of earthen colors including the black, creating a uniform concept of the natural colors of simple living. Contrasting with this subdued color pattern, the color areas of vigorous red in steel constructions and coats constitute a harmonious and predictable pattern of its own.

The picture is subdivided according to a concept of geometry, stressed by the structures of the building. This system of geometry is founded upon the teachings of proportion of the artist of the Renaissance, incorporating the so-called Golden Section, and the spiritual significance of this philosophy of the Renaissance. The proportions of the picture constitute a pattern of dynamics, extending into the dynamics of working activities in the single sections of the picture where the goods are lifted and lowered, drilled, chiseled, turned and screwed, the concept of working activity.

The predominantly dark colors of the painting are contrasted by single areas of light, further complicating the intricate pattern of balance of the picture. They build a harmonic pattern of dark/light, serving as a background for the spectator´s investigation of the picture story.

Like the pictures of former ages, the painting has a story. In the left section, a sculpture and his assistants are cutting stones. Other workers are continuing the process. At the top, a factory ventilator is the outcome of their efforts. According to Rivera, this artifact is a functional sculpture, an outcome of industrial necessity, another concept present in the picture.

At the bottom of the middle section, the architects are investigation their blueprints, workers are about to set up elements, and a modern skyscraper and an aircraft crowns the picture.

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Thus, the picture metaphorically compares the efforts of the artists to create the fresco with the efforts of the workers, architects and engineers of creating a modern industrial town in the United States.

This is a tribute to the working people and the progress of technology at a time when humanists were convinced that these endeavors were alternative to an existing society with deficits and lack of hope.

The picture can be considered to be a metaphor for the aspirations of Marxism towards the role of visual art of the new society: the artist is depicted as a builder of the new town, and the new town is a metaphor for the New Society.

The art project of Rivera is a project of criticism and ideology, meant to make ordinary people aware of their significance and worth. They are not similar to the devotional paintings of Social Realism. Rather, he intends to utilize the Game of Visual Art to reach his goal: As long as the work has formal quality and the theme, having sprung from the same environment, is of interest to the proletariat, it will be able to sensitize the worker to his environment and will therefore serve the revolutionary process.

Rivera considered art to be an organic and purposeful human endeavor, as important for human beings as bread, meat, fruit, water and air. The artist had to remain an artist if he wanted to be Identified with that part of humanity that represents the positive pole of this great biological phenomenon that we call the revolution. If he is a worker in the widest class sense, anything that he would do as a good artisan, that is, sincerely, would necessarily be a revolutionary expression, whatever the theme. If an artist in these circumstances paints a portrait and a bouquet of flowers, both paintings will be revolutionary.

With an attitude of this kind, it is no wonder that Rivera had to give up his membership in the Communist Party.

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Diego Rivera is a modern artist. This is not due to the fact that he – like any post-modern artist – merges different art forms, preColumbian art, the art of the Middle Ages, the art of the Renaissance, and Modern art. But he succeeds in fusing this apparatus with patterns of history, religion and politics. It is an enormous effort to mould this complicated conceptual network into a simple unit easy to grasp by the ordinary crowd of people he wanted to communicate with, even if many of the aspects incorporated in his art were far beyond their horizon.

The Making of a Fresco is an outcome of his artistic will. He is a monument in the art and history of Mexico.

References: Juan O´Gorman: La tecnica de aDiego Rivera en la pintura mural. Cuadernos de la revista Artes de Mexico. 1954.

Diego Rivera. A Retrospective. Founders Society Detroit Institute of Arts. 1986.

Diego Rivera. The Vitality of an Artist. Joint catalogue for exhibitions in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm. 2000.

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19. Barnett Newman: Vir Heroicus Sublimis

The American painter Barnett Newman (1905-1970) is the originator of the painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis from 1950. It is extraordinary in every way. It is of uniform color, primary red, constrasted only by single narrow strips. Besides that, it is big, 6x2.5 m.

[The painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis can be seen at the home page www.moma.org”. Click “The Collections”, “Browse and search the Online Collection”, “Advanced Search”, write Vir Heroicus Sublimis” and click the search result “Moma.org.The Collection/Barnett Newman Vir Heroicus Sublimis”]

In an article about his painter colleague Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman wrote: In 1940 some of us woke up, discovering that we had no hope – that painting did not exist. Or, to use a modern sentence, painting was dead, a quarter of a century before the same thing happened to God. Our wake up seemed as intoxicating as a revolution. Our wake up inspired our aspirations – our search for the great goal which is something different than ambition – to start from point zero as if painting has never existed.

This naked revolutionary moment made painters into painters.

The vision of a new start of the history of art, pretending that painting had never existed before, may sound rather naïve. For artists, it seems inevitable to relate to the art of their predecessors.

And of course, this is strongly demonstrated when an artist openly rejects the endeavors of his predecessors.

It would be most consistent and in accordance with Newman´s project to give up analyzing his picture. His intention was that it

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should stand by itself. However, as he claims to be an artist, he must accept being subjected to an analysis, explaining why he is an artist. This is facilitated because his project deviates from the strategies of his predecessors. Hence, we are able to encircle his system and the concepts which are part of his efforts.

According to Newman, former art, even the works of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian with refined geometric shapes and primary colors, was based on sensual perception, that is, visual experience.

Thus, former works of art were a naturalistic kind of art, even if they were called “abstract art�.

The vision of Newman was visual art, based on a pure idea, a real art of abstraction. Thus, he rejected trivial reality with apples and oranges, portraits, gas stations, billboards, scrap heaps and TVstations in favor of a reality of constancy. As he wanted to start afresh, it is no wonder that his picture titles included words like Genesis, The Beginning, Abraham, The Name, Now, Here.

Newman wanted to cleanse painting from significance, leaving nothing mere the idea of absoluteness. With this kind of philosophical point of view, the pictures have to be very different from traditional visual art.

The proportions of Vir Heroicus Sublimis deviate from the proportions of traditional art. The painting is much wider than tall.

The vertical bands are not placed according to traditional proportional systems. Proportions, normally being conceptual elements of visual art, are utilized in an untraditional manner. They are meant to be metaphorical for the idea of absoluteness.

Traditional artists often use brush-strokes stamped with their personality. Jackson Pollock, the artist colleague of Newman, brought this tendency to the extreme by stating his personal presence on the canvas by means of brush-strokes, metaphors of his individual mind and physical attendance.

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[The works of Jackson Pollock can be seen at the home page www.artcyclopedia.com. Write “Jackson Pollock” in “Search Artcyclopedia/artists by name.]

The current canvas of Newman is of uniform color at anonymous, with the appearance of the product of a car painter. Newman has no intention of expressing his feelings and personal presence. His pictures are objects of their own.

The size of the picture, the proportions, the color and the anonymity are crucial elements of Vir Heroicus Sublimis. The size alone is a deviation from tradition. When one alters the size of an object, the character of the object is modified. A blowfly in the size of an elephant turns into a frightening monster. The oversize (14 m) of Claes Oldenburg in Philadelphia is more than a monstrous clothes pin, it is a magical object. A picture with the size of 6x2.5 m is no longer a traditional painting fit for contemplation, but an inevitable fact, literarily unavoidable. >It becomes part of the surroundings. Without the decoration normally reserved for wall paintings, it attains the void significance of the wall.

Art history contains several instances of unicolored pictures, e.g. the white paintings of the Russian painter Kasimir Malevitch and the blue paintings of the French painter Yves Klein. Newman has made use of a color of a very dominant kind, primary red, protruding in space in a way that almost stupefies the spectator.

This effect is somewhat mitigated by the five vertical bands that break the cohesive areal of red. Some of the bands simulate a small indentation in the area of red; other bands are vibrant on the background of intense red, creating after-images on the retina. But these are minor deviation. They do not subdivide the pictorial area and do not try to compete with the strong color of red that overwhelms the senses of the spectator with intense presence, as if the spectator looks at some rough sea or awe-inspiring cliff scenery. The title word Sublimis is deliberately chosen – sublime

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means something which is elevated and frightening, producing a feeling of the spectator of being lifted into another sphere, surpassing sensuousness and finiteness.

These are the game pieces of the Visual Game of Art of Barnett Newman. The sense of the game is to implicate the spectator in the enormous field of color. At the time, we perceive the picture as a wall, at another time we perceive the color as one of the black holes of the universe – despite the red color – absorbing us throughout.

The picture is transformed into an object of ritual, summoning up an experience of totality, a basic level experience on a par with the experience of primitive myth and symbols. An object of “tragedy and timelessness”, in the words of Newman´s colleagues Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. We are leaving the realm of placid aesthetics and heading towards the realm of ethics. Maybe we are even heading towards art, conceived as a sort of religion, suitable for saving a worldly and sinful society from damnation.

With an approach like this, we are tempted to attach to the vertical bands a significance of metaphysics. Newman himself claimed them to be Signs, representing his way of surpassing consciousness.

Some of his admirers asserted that they represent the creative gesture of God or the divinely division between lightness and darkness created by God. Newman´s admirers considered the bands to symbolize the figure of Adam, and referred to passages in Jewish cabbalist teaching.

Finally, some observers have pointed out that the project of Newman, rejecting figuration, hunting for ultimate Truth and the rejection of worldly society, has important Jewish inspiration.

The project of Barnett Newman is ambitious. His faith in art as a redeemer for humanity is on the verge of getting out of control and his strategy of asceticism is close to doing away with art, even if he has no intention of doing so.

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However, the solutions chosen by Newman in order to realize his art project are consistent. His project is original, and his issue about the role of art is relevant. His works of art have been inspiring for many contemporary artists who have incorporated his ideas of the picture as the concept of an object of its own.

References: Harold Rosenberg. The De-definition of Art. New York. Horizon Press 1972.

Robert Hughes. The Shock of the New. London. Thames and Hudson 1991.

Sam Hunter. American Art of the 20th Century. New York. Harry N. Abrams 1972.

Edward Lucie Smith. Art Today. Milano. Arnoldo Mandadore Editore 1977.

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20. Claes Oldenburg Bedroom Ensemble I

The Swedish-American artist Claes Oldenburg is the originator of the installation Bedroom Ensemble I, created in California in 1963.

It consists of a complete bedroom ensemble, a remembrance of a visit 16 years earlier at a motel near Malibu.

[Bedroom Ensemble I can be seen at the home page www.cybermuse.gallery.ca. Write the name of Claes Oldenburg in “Search the Collections”]

This very true-to-life bedroom suite is part of Oldenburg´s reaction to the form of visual art practically ubiquitous in the United States at the time. The experts of art termed this form of art “Abstract Expressionism”.

The teachings of abstract expressionism were Oldenburg´s starting point, too. This is a non-figurative way of painting, stamped by the authentic personality of the artist: his individual painterly brushstroke writing and the free and independent individuality coming into existence in his art. Jackson Pollock, American artist (19121956), drove this art form into extremes by creating works of art during a sort of happening, heaping up colors on his canvas.

[The works of Jackson Pollock can be seen at the home page www.artcyclopedia.com. Write “Jackson Pollock” in “Search Artcyclopedia/artists by name.]

We may consider the action-painting of Pollock as a method of surviving in a world of mass-media, conformity and throw-away mentality. With abstract expressionism, the issue is to discover oneself, defining one´s personal identity and individuality in a modern world of consumption.

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As stated by Edward Lucie-Smith, English art critic: What Pollock intends to inform about is the feeling of his Ego, a feeling so overwhelming that the surrounding world has very little impact on him.

The notions about art being an elevated metaphysical reality, as claimed by Barnett Newman (chapter 19), meant nothing to Oldenburg. He was interested in presence here and now.

Oldenburg started his proper artistic project by appropriating the indispensable articles for everyday use as raw material for his art.

They were as objective, impersonal and down to earth as anyone might wish, infected by the trivial significance of everyday life.

They suited his purpose well and could be incorporated into his game of art as conceptual patterns.

A colleague of Oldenburg, Richard Hamilton, made the following statement in 1957 about an alternative art form, far from abstract expressionism: It needs to be popular (aimed at a mass-public), transient, short-lived, cheap, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, cunning, glamorous and commercial.

The previous generation of artists shuddered. According to their ideas, art should be elevated and aristocratic, distant from the vulgarities of common life, meant for contemplation in the secluded temples of the museums. They had to reject this sort of aberration from the realm of art.

Oldenburg had the intention of relating himself to the trivial world.

The materials of everyday life, from mass media, commercials to newspapers, were perfect as a popular and accessible frame of reference, common to the artist and his public. They were used in a manner that at a time was kind, critical and ironic, as part of a strategy that was earth-bound and vital. This strategy, of course, has a drawback. The significance of the banalities of everyday life is short-lived. What is in today is out tomorrow. This sort of art

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will never become Eternal Art. But this fact is crucial for the project of these artists. Art must influence life now here, exactly like existence now here shall influence art.

Oldenburg´s Bedroom Ensemble I is created according to the manifesto of Hamilton. It is rather ironic that the installation has already initiated the first step towards eternity. Today, it can be contemplated as a solemn work of art at the Canadian Art Gallery in Ottawa!

The framework of the installation is the concept of a bedroom suite, displayed as a pharaonic burial chamber or – as Oldenburg named it – Plato´s bedroom. One pattern is consistent: the concept of geometry or abstract rationality, expressed by the square and rectangular elements of the bedroom, the bed, the bedside tables, the dressing tables, the small couch, the decorations at the walls, the windows, the door (with the plate Private), the circular mirror and the tapered lamps.

Another conceptual pattern is created by means of hard surfaces, with the exception of the pillows and blankets, the exception proving the rule.

The choice of the bedroom itself is equally deliberate. The bedroom is the softest room of the house, far away from conscious and rational processes of mind, the concept of irrationality, in contrast to the rationality of the furniture.

The choice of color is another pattern of the installation. The colors of the room are black and white, blue and silver. We are far from the romantic universe of Laura Ashley. The color concept is in accordance with the rationality of the room.

An essential part of the installation is the furniture. The pieces are chosen, not only because they are rational, sculptural shapes. In accordance with Hamilton´s manifesto, Oldenburg has selected cheap, prefabricated artifacts. He is not afraid of the concept of

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trivial significance associated with these kinds of objects. On the contrary, they are part of the game. These objects are simultaneously used as formal sculptural elements according to the code of traditional art, and used as objects of everyday life with the significance implied by their origin and use.

The installation has a common appearance, a tiger and zebra pattern, a further concept in the game of Oldenburg.

What fascinates Oldenburg is the investigation of what happens when he confronts normally incompatible elements, the concept of traditional sculpture with the concepts of vulgar objects from everyday life, like the cheap bedroom of a motel. At any rate, both are estranged by the queer combination of the two realms of reality.

Some observers are inclined to believe that Oldenburg ridicules modern reality. Others claim that he uncritically accepts modern reality. In fact he does both. He accepts modern life in the sense that Édouard Manet (chapter 15) was fascinated by modern life.

Oldenburg has his fling in modern life, not as a cool observer like Manet, but as a participant in the vulgar, confusing, noisy, fascinating, touching and repelling consumer´s society that hlas been his fate. As stated in his book Store Days of 1967: I am for the art of punching and skinned knees and sat-on bananas. I am for the art of kids ´smells. I am for the art of mama babble.

I am for the art of bar-babble, tooth picking, beer drinking, egg-salting, and in-sulting. I am for the art of falling off of a barstool.

I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for the majestic art of dogturds, rising like cathedrals.

I am for the blinking arts, lightning up the night. I am for art falling, splashing, wiggling, jumping going on and off.

I am for the art for fat truck-tires and black eyes.

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I am for Kool-art 7-Up art Pepsi-art, Sunshine art, 39 cents art, 15 cents art, Vatronol art, Dro-bomb art, Vam art, Menthol art, L& M art, ExLax art, Venida art, Heaven Hill art, Pamryl art…..

Oldenburg´s sources of inspiration are obvious. And the sources of the raw material of his works of art are evident, too. Basically, he works according to the method used by artists before and after, games with elements, similar, partly similar or contrasting. In his Bedroom Ensemble I, the crucial game is experiencing what happens when traditional basic level concepts of art, a composition of geometrical elements, clash with the trivialities of consumer´s society. Insofar as the audience is confused not knowing whether they are contemplating works of art or objects form everyday life, pushing themselves to try to get some sense out of the clash of concepts, Oldenburg may feel that his efforts have not been in vain.

References: John Russel & Suzi Gablik. Pop Art redefined. London, Thames and Hudson 1969.

Barbara Haskell. Blam! New York, Whitneay Museum of American Art 1984.

Sam Hunter. American Art of the 20th century. New York, Harry N. Abrams 1972.

Robert Hughes. The Shock of the New. London, Thames and Hudson 1991.

Mario Amayo. Pop as Art. London, Studio Vista 1965.

Claes Oldenburg. Store Days. New York, The Something Else Press Inc. 1967.

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21. Asger Jorn: Dead Drunken Danes

Picture Titles are not always informative. Once in a while, they are intended to be catalogue numbers or private references which other people cannot decode. The curious title of the painting by the Danish Cobra artist Asger Jorn Dead Drunken Danes (1960) has an explanation of its own. The painting was inspired by the derogative remarks of president Dwight D. Eisenhower about the Scandinavian welfare society. According to Eisenhower, this system made the population into suicides and drunkards. The statement of the president made the artist, a leftist and a supporter of the Scandinavian political system, define the welfare state with a defense of visual character.

[The painting can be seen at the home page www.louisiana.dk. Click the “Museets Samling� (Collection) and click the picture of AsgerJorn (# 3 from above].

The painting may be decoded as a spontaneous burst of anger, an explosion of red, yellow, blue, green, and black colors right from the tube onto the canvas, as he himself had been struck by the insinuations of Eisenhower. We might be tempted to conclude that the colors are metaphoric missiles against the canvas and the canvas is a metaphor for the president of the United States. The painting is more refined, however. What looks like an unarticulated burst of anger is the outcome of deliberate considerations about the potentials and purpose of the work of art. Behind the painting lies cold logic.

Jorn has somehow been inspired by the Catalan painter Joan MirĂł who created figures and shapes from imagination, convinced that the fantasy of his own was similar to his fellow human beings. He presupposed that we all have an imagination, fundamentally of the

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same kind. Accordingly, he was convinced that figures, shapes, and colors significant to him would be equally significant for his fellow men.

When starting on a piece of work, many artists have some idea of the end result. Therefore, their starting point must somehow be conventional. The artistic philosophy of Miró leads to the opposite starting point for the creative process. It is logical to enter upon the project without knowing where to end.

Basically, Jorn´s strategy was to start his paintings in one corner, permitting colors, lines and shapes to emerge spontaneously – as long as he perceived that they were able to communicate with and respond to his fantasy and imagination. When they were significant to him, Jorn could count on their significance to other people.

Jorn´s project was aimed at the community of human imagination, what was Fantastic, peculiar, dreaming, mystical or rebellious, the “supernatural”, what is of a second nature, the barbarian, love, the hallucination, the coincidence, the absurdity, the marvelous, the purposeless, the insane.

Early in his career, Jorn mad use of drawn elements, inspired by children´s drawings and folk art. He was fascinated by this kind of though material. Little by little, he gave up this sort of figuration, concluding that the color itself ought to be free and imaginative as the children´s drawing itself. Color should not submit to line, it should be the product of free brush strokes. According, the figures, with their drawn delineation, disappear gradually from his paintings and are replaced by spontaneous strokes of color. The colors turn into forms of their own, cut short to an imaginative universe where figuration emerges due to the free strokes of the brush.

This means that in Jorn´s paintings, there is no longer the presence of brick-like elements, made part of an overall unity where the elements can be decoded as parts of a central unity. Jorn intends the

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elements to be unpredictable entities, with elements that gradually step forward in the manner of a puzzle picture. Jorn refers to the classical Greek temple, constructed by means of clearly defined single elements as compared to the Islamic mosque with its wilderness of shapes and patterns.

Jorn´s vision of color is inspired by the theories of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. The latter refers to the symbolic significance of colors on the human mind. The color red awakens a sense of power, energy and aggression, blue provokes sensations of restfulness, green is a neutral color that turns into a sense of vitality when it turns yellow, and a sense of gravity and meditation when it turns blue.

According to Jorn: The black color often is a break in the picture, significant as the rest between the movements of music. ---The color of black is always in contact with intellectually stressed grey and brown clangs of color. The color of red is partly the color of love, partly the color of blood, in the transition the revolution. In the drama, however, the yellow and green colors of gentleness encounter the lyrics of the nature and the mind.

As skilled artist, Jorn had to admit that colors, lines and shapes must submit to the psychological laws of the pictorial areal. The spontaneity of Jorn is deliberate. He is aware that spontaneity unbound will turn out to be a sort of nonsense that cannot be perceived by his audience with significant meaning.

Of course, he knows that the extension and placing of the color and the relationship of the color to other colors are essential for the significance of each color of the picture. The color red will only get the right shade, strength, and brightness when confronted with a green color of a proper character. The spontaneity of Jorn is based upon a highly professional level of consideration. His spontaneity of Jorn is a deliberate sort of spontaneity.

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In the painting Dead Drunken Danes, the spectator does not obtain the right sensation of the colors unless he plays the game, as they emerge only in the interplay with other colors. The masses, the lines, and the shapes are established in their mutual interplay. They receive their relevant symbolic values, basic level concept or metaphors for experience of common human significance when someone play the game and perceive everything dynamically.

This is Jorn´s message to the American president. Jorn belonged to the left wing of the political spectrum. His response, however, was less political, placed on a higher and more existential level, expressing what Jorn considered to be essential for human existence: A sense of spiritual kinship around human fantasy and imagination. Exposed on a background of this kind, the presidential remarks reveal themselves as petit bourgeois and dull.

As an artist, Jorn is inspired by various painters, Pablo Picasso with his free use of drawing, Miró´s ideas of surpassing language and diving into more basic layers of meaning, and Matisse´s use of color as an object of its own. Jorn refers to the Spanish Skeleton, the Surrealist Muscles and the French colorists as The Skin. He endeavors to combine these elements in the manner of a number of contemporary artists with similar ideals, temporarily working together in an art movement called COBRA /Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam). Their projects were created with a conviction that they were able to make an imprint of their world view on the surroundings in a fertile way: Down with the petit bourgeoisie, fantasy to the power!

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22. Summary

What is Art? This is a question often asked, especially nowadays when artists provoke with works of art apparently with very little in common with traditional works of art. They are not what the art connoisseurs expect them to be: beautiful and sublime nor do they enact in a universe of their own. They often imply political and ideological statements.

The art experts do not offer a proper answer to this question. Some of them cut the Gordian knot by maintaining that art is what theorists of art at any time accept as art. But this is not a theory, only a pragmatic solution which often functions in practical life.

Most theories about visual art leave us with a number of unsolved problems. They tend to focus on aspects of art of little interest for the practitioners of art and the general audience. Accordingly, it is tempting to look for another approach to the elusive concept of art.

Cognitive scientists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claim that the mental activity of the human mind originates in the body of man. They are supported by the findings of various branches of science Thanks to the creative mind of man, basic bodily experiences common to all human beings, so called basic level categories, have gradually been transposed to more abstract spheres by means of metaphors and metonyms. However, the human mind places limits to the capacity of men to conceptualize our world. Thus we have to reject the idea of objective concepts as independent from the human mind.

The cognitive scientist focuses upon the oral language. But thinking by means of objects which can be perceived by the retina is more fundamental than the language. Basic level concepts such

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as in front of/behind, up/down, large/small, male/female, child/grown up, balance/lack of balance are the original way of perceiving the world. Visual thinking is right in the middle of cognitive science.

Creative visual thinking is more than the outcome of the so called eternal quest for beauty as supposed by the traditional aesthetic theory. We have reason to believe that creative handling of visual elements has a far more important purpose: that of suggesting concepts fit to think with and act by.

A common feature of all artifacts of the kind we consider works of art, the cave paintings of Spain and France, the patterns of primitive tribes of Africa and the Native Americans, but also classic art, modernistic art, contemporary art, seems to be a quest for order, that is, a search for concepts fit for grasping and incorporation the world into the human mind.

From this point of view, we may try to consider visual art a game or play with concepts which are put at stake in the game, enhanced and blended into new concepts. Playing with concepts is an option accessible to all human beings, aboriginals and modern man, children playing parents and kids, people telling jokes, people decorating their houses and gardens and, of course, artists creating works of art, conscious about their doings.

The game metaphor stresses the fact that the pieces of the game should not be taken too literarily. For the audience, it is often hard to understand that pieces with unmistakable similarity with other objects should not be considered utensils, placed in improper surroundings. The fact is that these kinds of objects do not perform in the role of trivial reality only. They perform as conceptual pieces of game in the work of art.

The traditional theory states that art acts in a universe of its own.

So does the game of art. However, the artist normally intends to transgress the limits of the game. He or she often considers a part

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of reality a proper subject for the art game. When we investigate works of art, we notice that artists utilize the significations created to investigate aspects of reality. Commitment in the problems of human life without any doubt has been motivating for the artists of the past, including the cave painters, and still is.

The examples of this book prove how artists, randomly selected, have been working on the art projects. Their works have been constructed as visual games of art, created in order to offer hypotheses about aspects of reality.

We have learned about Édouard Manet´s proposal to reject the theatrical representation of reality, to which his contemporaries adhered, to the benefit of representation based upon sensual reality.

We have investigated Henri Matisse´s relationship to sensual reality and his efforts to transform his experience to a more objective sensual reality. We have been confronted with Diego Rivera´s efforts to utilize the spectrum of visual art forms, prehistoric art, classical art, modern art in order to promote national and social freedom, and Claes Oldenburg´s ambivalent relationship to consumer´s society. We have studied Asger Jorn´s attempt to focus on the importance of a pre-lingual reality, and Barnett Newman with his focus on the importance of a metaphysical reality.

This book has concentrated upon the quality of art as seen from the point of view of the artist and the spectator, viewing the game of art as a conceptual game for the benefit of themselves, and the work of art as a personal project for the artist and the spectator.

Respecting even this bounded perspective, the reader my wonder how widely differing working methods and attitudes toward art projects deserve the common denomination of Visual Art. The artists themselves are wondering, too. Artists working according to a certain method and strategy are inclined to maintain that methods

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confronted with the slender figure of the player, and his fragility is enhanced by the hatched cloud of music. His place in the picture neither precise nor balanced and the twisted perspective indicates that he is controlled by the music more than he is in control of the music.

When we experience the patterns in their mutual blending and interplay, we perceive a master of the classical piano playing a grand concerto, e.g. the Emperor Concerto of Beethoven, transposed into a Game of Visual Art. Taken by themselves, the concepts of the game are conventional and predictable. Yet they obtain original significance in the interplay and blending of the game.

Bibliography Rudolf Arnheim. Art and Visual Perception. University of California 1954.

Rudolf Arnheim. Visual Thinking. London. Faber and Faber Limited.

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Curtis F. Brown. Star-Spangled Kitsch. New York. Universe Books.

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John Dewey. Art As Experience. New York. 1934 Ellen Dissanayake. What Is Art For? University of Washington Press.

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Umberto Eco. La Struttura assente. Milano 1968.

Umberto Eco. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Cambridge 1992.

Edward T. Hall. The Hidden Dimension. Doubledau & Company. New York. 1966.

Mark Johnson: The Body In the Mind. The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago og London. The University of Chicago Press. 1987.

Peter Kreuzer. Das Graffiti-Lexikon. Wandkunst von A bis Z. Wilhelm Heine Verlag GmbH & Co. M端nchen. 1986.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. 1980.

George Lakoff. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. The University of Chicago Press. 1987.

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George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Philosophy In the Flesh. The Embodied Mind And Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York.

Basic Books. 1999.

Fernand Leger. Fonctions de la Peinture. Paris. 1965

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Was die Schönheit sei, das weiss ich nicht. Künstler, Theorie, Werk.

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Stuttgart. 1996.

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