Kinds of abstraction

Looking at works of abstract artists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
What initially got me interested particularly with Rothko, was his development and evolution of an art form that tried, in a sense, to go beyond form... and possibly of not wanting to 'represent' reality in the literal sense... I find it interesting the way Rothko attempts to discover formlessness through colour.

The idea of 'improvisation' is appealing in the sense of discovering how form and colour... possibly, material and texture, or even text and narrative, become a part of how we explore and express ourselves through different media. Abstract art, in the way that we define 'abstract', is a way of beginning from one could say, 'the unknown'. We do not know what lies in the abstract; art becomes a process of discovering interactions of how materials enable us to explore and 'represent' that which lies hidden from the visible ... apparent world. In this sense, all art is 'abstract' in that all art derives firstly from an exploration ... 'a journey' through the like of a visible world into something other than the known realms of reality; into the imaginary. Art facilitates a venturing into the invisible world.

Art is a way of experiencing the infinite. Art can catalyzes our imaginary perception to discover new worlds.

Possibly, unconsciously, this is what Jackson Pollock discovered in his art. A sense of the 'abstract' in art, was essentially a discovery of an imaginary world embodied in our physical experience of body and material. Merleuy- Ponty would understand this as a phenomenological insight into physical reality, by a process of embodying 'reality' in an imaginary way that paradoxically appears to transcends our ways of understanding materials and yet form an experience that is physiological.

Abstract improvisations are temperamental, specific evolution's of our bodily re-creations; our body perception of growth and experiencing life both materially and immaterially is captured in a moment of a particular time and space. Form and colour become 'composition' and rhythms of elements that interact with each other to bring into play an imaginative liberation beyond constraints of order, structure, materials or sense perception.

Patterns in art can connect to those patterns we observe in nature. And yet, art can also be a process of configuring abstract notions of time and space that is imaginary. Patterns in nature become a part of the growth, and potentially the evolution of any substance that is in a process of forming; apparent naturally and primarily in our ways of perceiving nature. Possibly, what we appreciate in patterns of nature is a sense of 'stillness'; of 'silence' and harmony. Of aesthetic beauty. A process of inter-relationship, of inter-connections and interaction as perceived within and extending to, a greater or minuscule level, e.g. an atom or to that of the Cosmos. This is how we observe, record and appreciate the magnificence of the Universe we live in! Over millennia humans have invented new techniques and mechanisms to enter into the depth and breadth of the Universe, and have found innovative ways to capture a 'kind of reality' that in early times we would not have conceived or believed existed. I am thinking of the advancements in science and technology and the correlation to language development. Through centuries of dedicated robust attention to detail, with greater sophistication and specialization, we have invented novel ways of probing, devising, revealing and expressing that which lies hidden and beyond our physical perceptual field of reality. New technologies enable us to explore and discover new realms of reality by creating new paradigms of thinking that describe new concepts of phenomena. These insights into matter and life have opened new horizons into our imagination that have become as in the past, an insight into matter that re-evaluates our previous judgement as to the nature of phenomena and questions the very foundation of the workings and causation of things we thought we knew about. Deeper insight into reality has been presented to the world of our cultures regarding how the human psyche - as in the imaginary world of psychology, e.g. in dreams, have shaped and constructed the workings of the brain and nervous system as template of a model of reality. And thus the development of our brains has shaped our ways of understanding forms of reality, i.e. the cognition of a concrete or abstract ephemeral reality. Are these realms of our mental cognition a simulated reality? is it such that what we think we know of appearances is matter of perceptional paradigms between the nature of different bodily and material phenomenology? Or are these concrete forms of an absolute universal kind? In the course of the years through rationalization and logical conclusion we have reasoned out through a 'scientific temperament' a tool for thinking around the nature reality as a 'complex' and most often in-explainable phenomenon exists in its logical conclusion. To be absolute and definite about the nature of things is known to be paradoxical and most often in-comprehensible - given the way we have recorded data and perceive the world with our sentient being. Science has enabled our thinking ability to anticipate and explain probable hypothesis, but in the end these remain hypothetical probabilities and are largely categorized as degrees of known uncertainties.

Possibly this is how Mark Rothko or an artist such as Jackson Pollock intuited their forms of visual art i.e. it became apparent to them that reality is an infinite unknown and the role of art could merely indulge into this phenomenological truth of 'not knowing or understanding the visible world' and yet experiencing fragments of it in a material sense and getting to bodily feel and attempt to perceive bits of it. It could have been this insight that motivated both of them to pursue and venture into that realm of investigating ways of perceiving a visual reality that is unconditionally 'in-explainable' - i.e. that which is beyond appearances. Art in this way attempts to make visible a world that lies beyond our perceptional body e.g. the world seen through our optical eye.

'Touched upon by the essence of the abstract; there lies hidden in all forms, both in nature and in the imagination, a sense of reality that we know we don't know''.

In principle, abstract art can not be over-ruled from figurative art, as being superior or closer to the real things or to the unknown. Eternity and the feeling of infinity lies in figurative forms of art as well that narrate and illustrate visible worlds working in and transcending the viewers physiological and literal perception of reality in to a deeper and profound insight of the mysteries of the immaterial unknown. Figurative art is another kind of abstraction of reality ... a reality that exists in the realm of experience that the mind's eye recognizes images devised from the visible world. Art, I think in this context, attempts to reach and touch those abstract resources of material and immaterial realms of reality that lie beyond our perceptional body and mind.

Roshan Sahi
Dec. 2019