absolutearts blog

Child-like freedom and Abstract Expressionism in Art - by Adrian Setterfield

2011-01-13T09:15:00.001-05:00

One might say that even a child can smear and splatter paint around in such a manner and then call it abstract art. Or anyone can do it. This is true. Yet there is also another approach to an abstract expression. What I’d term an alternative to the immediate reaction that may rise when faced with abstracted expressions.

With these paintings I propose to invite the viewer to simply view the painting as it is.

Initially you might see all kinds of objects appearing, just notice this and allow that to be. In this letting it be as it is, notice the attention shifting from one point to the next. Your brain will be capturing data with the most basic of information it has been taught to process into what is known as objective appearance. This information being that of line and colour. The brain knows its habitual pathway of reading the message the eye conveys and it does this automatically. The brushstroke placement on the surface of the canvas, does not represent any recognizable object, yet tends to hint towards shapes that may represent a recognisable object. Notice how this action of trying to recognise shapes in the picture, happens. The brushstrokes, which are also colours, are spontaneously placed and yet intuitively guided, very much in the same manner as when the body moves around in space, the brain is capturing data at a rapid rate to such an extent, that it looks as if the body moves freely between objects without bumping into them. When the painting is painted, there is no reference point from which to begin. It is seen to be One movement not separate from everyday life. This also means that every stroke is known to be totality, or the whole of existence, expressing itself as the moment. Even on reading these words, you may or may not notice how there be a moment when you cannot fathom what I’m saying. And you are most accurate to have this experience, because the ‘knowing’ spoken of here is the knowing that knows that I don’t know. i.e this cannot be worked out or gotten through conceptualisation. And this is what the expression, as these artworks, represents.

Given that our brains have fired their electrical impulses in specific frequency ranges in order to record data in a specific way that is known as ‘form’, this so called known route becomes the pathway through which we come to recognize form every time it appears. Now, the fact is, this is all here say, because there is no actual known definition of what the goings on of the brain are. It is very much all a story. But what the words, together, hint toward, is that the objective appearance is not what is actually seen, it is not actual reality. This is also demonstrated as the abstract painting. The brushstrokes and colours are like words which point to what they actually are as indefinable. A paradox appears, because the attention can be and is only ever on one. Either on the brushstroke, or on reality. (What is ‘termed’ reality so to speak) The brushstroke is reality and it is not. That can just be so or it cannot.

The naming of the painting based on an interpretation of the feeling of the work as it is executed. Again, note that it is only a word/name and not ‘what’ the painting is all about.

What you recognise in these paintings is totality. You are invited to see through the conceptuality the brain adopts habitually in its recognition of space AND the concepts that are believed to be reality, totality, God or whatever name ‘it’ may be called. Whatever it is, it is and it aint personal either. So what you see, being not what you really see can prompt a pondering on the idea of being and the direct seeing of ‘being’ as it is right now without any effort to be. That thou Art.

Some history with regards to this kind of painting.The Danish painter, printmaker and ceramicist Asger Jorn was a founding member of the COBRA art group, along with Carl-Henning Pedersen (1913-2007), the Belgian writer Christian Dotremont (1922-79) and painters Corneille Beverloo (b.1922) and Pierre Alechinsky (b.1927), and the Dutch painters Karel Appel(1921-2006) and Constant (C.A. Nieuwenhuys) (1920-2005). Part of the European style of abstract expressionism, COBRA's unifying doctrine was freedom of expression with an emphasis on brushstroke and colour. Jorn's paintings from this period are marked by violent brushstrokes. One of the few modern art movements to come out of Northern Europe, COBRA paintings are best known for their expressive brushstrokes, child-like imagery and strong primary colours. Like Dada artists before them, the members of COBRA were rebels; perhaps affected by German wartime Occupation, or by the apparent collapse of Western morality, they rejected conventional values and promoted the idea of free expression. Thus they were totally opposed to the ordered rationality and rules of geometric abstraction, and rejected traditional modern art. Instead they were interested in producing art that emphasized childish instincts such as spontaneity and impulse. So rather than reproduce the world around them, they aimed to exploit the free expression of their subconscious and go with their instincts.A child before age three will have very little graphic recognition of concepts. In other words, The graphic marks made by a very young child, contrary to some schools of psychology, are understood to be undefined and spontaneous. This is ‘child wisdom’ or freedom. Before the concept of being Jenny in a body who has a kitten and a mommy, becomes recognised to be ‘mine’, the ‘mine’ doesn’t exist. It is a free expression. Neither can one say that the child conceptually chooses what colour to use...it is all spontaneous. The child, without boundaries of mine and yours, lives spontaneously according to the intelligence that animates it. This free and spontaneous animation continues throughout life yet can be overlooked simply through a false identification the mind manufactures around its habitual path of thought.

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