Abstraction and Emotion: An Analysis of Jason Martin's 'Day Paintings'
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The idea of art having emotive power is nothing new. However, in art up until the twentieth century – that is, predominantly representational art – the cause of this could be seen as the viewer’s empathy with the subject depicted (e.g. any Pieta; Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa). 1 Abstract painting cannot easily be explained by these associations. The main concern of this essay is to examine ways in which experience and abstraction co-exist; the study will attempt this by limiting itself to the analysis of a single experience. Of all the shows I have seen, Jason Martin’s exhibition Day Paintings (Lisson Gallery 2004) caused the most intense experiential response; this study will endeavour to analyse what factors – whether inherent in the manifest ‘works’ or in the broader context of the experience – contributed to this reaction. It is hoped that by gaining a fuller understanding of which general and specific conditions of spectatorship elicited this response, theories will be developed which could apply to broader artistic practice.
Before addressing the fundamental issues of this essay it seems necessary to outline certain limitations which possibly make this a less valuable study. As the show was almost a year ago I will be analysing memories of the experience; in any investigation this would have repercussions, in this particular one I believe they go beyond the limitations of memory. In some ways I believe art to be essentially immaterial – an ideal – to which concrete manifestations can only aspire. Due to this the physical art I see is a disappointment, which has implications in justifying my artistic practice. To allow me to continue my practice, I may feel required – consciously and I think also subconsciously – to believe the ideal can be attained. Consequently, anything which I found moving when experienced, I am liable subsequently to elevate to a status far beyond that which experience warranted.
I believe it would be unsatisfactory to attempt to verbalise an essentially pre-cognitive psychological response to the works. Thus, although the focus of this essay will be guided by my experience, it will consider more what formal characteristics of the paintings, and mental state of the viewer, could cause such a reaction, and why.
The experience occurred at a specific time and resulted from the relationship between me and the exhibition. Whilst this essay will primarily analyse the objects in this relationship, it is necessary to elucidate the condition of the subject. Traditional aesthetic theories hold that the most active responses are predicated upon disinterested contemplation, that is, in the detachment of one’s expectations, pecuniary motives and subjective affections. 2 My typical attitude when viewing art is anything but disinterested; as a practising artist/student I am always conscious of how the work viewed relates to other art and my own practice. 3 However, I had no expectations for this show; I knew already the material processes of the work (so no ideas to ‘borrow’), and believed it to be a sterile, knowing, reinterpretation of action-painting doctrines. I went to the show because it was at a prestigious gallery near my railway-station. These factors allowed a state of spectatorship typically alien to me, 4 an attitude I can never have again in front of the works. 5
Note 1: It should be noted that a formalist such as Clive Bell might well assert that even representational painting arouses emotions solely – or at least principally – through the abstract quality of ‘significant form’.
Note 2: Originally cited by Shaftesbury in early C18th (Dickie 1997, 12) this tenet was reinvigorated in the C20th with Edward Bullough’s ‘psychical distance’ attitude theory (Dickie 1997, 29). The position is clearly stated by Alison: “it is upon the vacant and unemployed, accordingly, that the objects of taste make the strongest impression.” (Sesonske, 1965; 185) It should be noted that many have discredited the view. Also of note is Kant, for whom disinterestedness – although a prerequisite of judgements of taste – is not a variable state; appreciation of beauty is a pre-cognitive judgement and therefore unaffected by material concerns, etc. Pleasure in the beautiful is “a disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, either of sense or reason, here forces our assent” (Gaut 53).
Note 3: Or, more probably, looking for ideas to ‘appropriate.’
Note 4: Within the appreciation of visual art. Similar experiences occur in my appreciation of music, which I find most affecting when I am not consciously trying to be moved by it – when it grabs one out of periphery thought and one is lost totally within its form.
Note 5: Hence the need to write this in the form of a reminiscence.
I would like to advance the hypothesis that my reaction to the work is linked to a Kantian notion of the sublime. 6 In the Critique of Judgement Kant divides the sublime into two categories: the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. According to Kant these states are best excited by natural phenomena, and have as their root cause the incalculable. The mathematical sublime is invoked by that which is ‘absolutely great’ (94), i.e. ‘what is beyond all comparison’ (94). Reason attempts to contextualise this vastness (by subjecting it to comparison – ‘how many of ‘me’ tall is this’, etc), however the object is outside the standards of sense appreciation. The initial frustration at our inability to subject the spectacle to reason is replaced by a realisation that we are able to think of that which is beyond comparison: the sublime is “the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense.” (98). From this it can be seen that the sublime is to be found – not in the object of contemplation – but in the mind’s reflexive judgement of its own greatness. This is also the cause of the dynamically sublime, which occurs when the mind overcomes the terror provoked by the incalculable power of nature and becomes conscious of its superiority. These theories draw upon Kant’s metaphysics, expounded in the Critique of Pure Reason; whilst the self in the empirical world is causally determined, there is behind this the noumenal self, possessing free-will. The sublime response allows one to grasp this ‘thing in itself’ despite it being outside the possibility of sensory experience. This opens the mind to the possibility of its own free-will, resulting in a feeling of euphoric liberation.
Although the experience of the sublime is not predicated on specific material properties, 7 Kant sees it as being something typically caused through a response to nature, rather than art. The art which grew up around the notion of the sublime is, I feel, more an illustration of that which can cause sublime delight (Frederick Church, Niagara; Casper Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog). 8 Indeed, it could be argued that any representational painting denies a sublime response – the very fact that it was painted means it has been subsumed within a system of measurement i.e. is within the limits of sensory understanding.
The material form of Martin’s works is easily grasped by reason; their dimensions are numerically expressible, their material and process of manufacture readily apparent. However, the actual experience of spectatorship is totally removed from this. Although they have an essentially plane surface they appear to have tangible volume; this establishes an inconsistency between the rational/measurable knowledge and the empirical/phenomenological experience of the work at any given moment. The mind can impose no limit to the volume of the work; all empirical evidence assumes that it has volume, whereas rational thought leads one to assume it is volumeless, therefore it can be experienced as infinite/boundless – ‘beyond all comparison’. Coupled with this is a concomitant sense of astonishment, which, according to Burke, is the ‘effect of the Sublime in the highest degree.’ (1990, 53) 9.
The idea of boundlessness also links – paradoxically – to the claustrophobic feeling one encounters in front of the works. One is drawn into the painting until it almost ‘engulfs’ one, possibly making one feel trapped; however, it is also quite a liberating experience. 10 This could productively be linked to a psychoanalytic theory proposed by Peter Fuller describing his response to a Robert Natkin painting. Immediate seduction by the colours and light11 is followed by ‘moving through’ the ‘skin’ of the paint surface; inside the painting is an ‘illusionary space’ in which the viewer can become enmeshed. Accordingly, the painting offers the illusion that it is a ‘subjective object’ – a painting of which you are more than a viewer, almost a subject. This seems to link with Burke’s idea that ‘the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot contain any other, nor by consequence reason on the object which employs it’ (1990, 53). Fuller elucidates a different reason for our response to the work; for the viewer – as a subject of the work – the boundary between outside and inside the painting is ambiguous. The work evokes, and possibly returns one to, a stage of mental development prior to the realisation of ‘self’ and ‘not-self’, i.e. before the separation from mother. This, being reconstructed in the present, is both pleasurably fascinating and simultaneously frightening. The “painting recaptures aspects of infantile experience about the nature of time, space, and ourselves which, in adult life, we have been compelled to renounce.” 12 The fragmentation of the ‘self’ – the loss of boundaries and the resultant feeling of being both within the world and the entirety world itself – could explain how the painting is simultaneously engulfing and boundless.
This view connects an essentially twentieth century hermeneutic to eighteenth century Romantic thought. The direct response induced by the painting delivers a purer, more innocent experience which prefigures thought and so is unrestrained by social convention and language – “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” 13 This emancipation from knowledge and its restrictions could explain the feeling of liberation which – maybe not acutely – these paintings evoked in me.
Note 6: I refer to it as the Kantian sublime to distinguish it clearly from similar C18th theories, scientific terms, etc – rather than to claim all/any of the views expressed originated from Kant.
Note 7: As was the beautiful in Burke’s conception – small, smooth, bright, etc
Note 8: Although a work like Turner’s Snow Storm – whilst ostensibly representational – could be seen to represent a response, rather than a scene, possibly making a sublime response to it more possible.
Note 9: This statement applies to sublime in nature. See Burke 1990, Part II section I for a fuller account.
Note 10: It would appear that the best art manifests itself in contradictions!
Note 11: Surely pertinent with regard to Martin’s alluring reds and slick, glossy surfaces: ‘at first your eye responds to the painting’s superficial seductiveness and decorative inducements; it is shamelessly beguiling, immediately pleasurable and engaging.’ (Fuller 118)
Note 12: Originally from the exhibition catalogue of the Color-Bath show. In Art and Psychoanalysis Fuller seems less that confident with the veracity of this explanation.
Note 13: Rousseau 1968 p49
My reaction to these works could also connect to the dynamic sublime. 14 Whilst the Kantian model is concerned with the manifestly infinite power of nature subsequently controlled by the mind, thus asserting the dominance of the cognitive faculties over nature, one could claim that Martin’s works directly demonstrate to the viewer man’s – empathetically the viewer’s – dominance over fluid substance and possibly by association/implication the tangible world. The dynamic sublime here becomes infinite power of creativity. This may appear far fetched, but there are conditions specific to Martin’s work which lend credence to the hypothesis. Their process of production is one which requires great physical exertion, 15 and the fact that the medium is hard to control is patent in the many glitches and aberrations in the surface. 16 This tension between human control and the natural independence of medium is made more evident by experiencing them as a body. 17 This makes it apparent that the artist has exerted a supposedly ‘superhuman’ power over the substance of the painting:
- before aesthetic order can be born, not only must there be order, but this order must dominate an actual disorder…In great music the torrent of sound seems always on the point of turning into hurricane and chaos, and always the composer, Beethoven or Wagner, soars over the tempest, reins in the chaos…18
This is aided by the transparent process of making in Martin’s works, in that they could be read as indexical signs; that is, a sign which is neither a symbol nor an icon, but a direct result of the thing to which it refers: “as distinct from symbols indexes establish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to their referents. They are the marks or traces of a particular cause” 19. As a trace of an action the viewer may be able to determine the process of construction at a more direct, pre-cognitive stage, allowing a profounder response to the work.
Key within a sublime response is the idea outlined above of the dislocation of apprehension and comprehension – what the painting is to you as experienced, and what you believe it ought to be. Martin makes this very acute by reducing the painting to monochrome and denying the expectation of normal pictorial form. However, form is present, and is far more illusionistally three dimensional than conventional perspective. It is less expected because it is not achieved through standard devices – the paint’s relative tonal or chromatic differences – but through the play of light, a device seldom used in conventional paintings. I find that this reliance upon light to ‘make’ the work is fascinating and compelling, focusing the viewer’s attention on the fundamental prerequisite of vision. However, I am not sure if it really explains a pre-cognitive response to the work in the same way as the sublime theory.
At this stage it seems important to acknowledge and analyse the impact of my experience being based upon an exhibition, not just individual paintings. The serial nature of the works allows a greater appreciation of the nuances and subtleties of the singular elements. This, when viewed consciously from the perspective of an artist, makes the works a fascinating study of materials and the intuitive responses which guided the artist within the strict parameters of his practice. However, this collective experience could be relevant to my direct experience of the show. Drawing on Kant’s analytic of the beautiful, 20 the seriality of the work implies a definite goal and an underlying concept, suggesting that the works have a ‘purpositiveness without purpose’21 – purpose being “that whose concept can be regarded as the ground of the possibility of the object itself” (Kant 1951; 63). The works clearly have no definite purpose (as would a tool) and if a definite concept were apprehended by the viewer it would require an objective judgement – taking judgement of taste beyond direct experience. However, Kant claims that objects can suggest purposiveness in their form without the experiencer conceptualising a definite purpose. This appreciation of the harmony of form is seen as belying a harmony within our own cognition. 22 The theory of purpositiveness remains applicable despite Kant’s theory being inadequate as a general theory of beauty; many similar things display equally the form of purpose but are be experienced differently – individuals find different animals more beautiful than others, etc.
Note 14: Albeit a somewhat distorted form.
Note 15: I seem to acknowledge this less than most people I have spoken to about them, but it may have underlied my experience.
Note 16: It seems particularly telling that the works which I found weakest and most prosaic were those which seemed most perfect, where no irregularities were evident. Note 17: Making it explicit that these irregularities are caused by an inherent tension between maker and material – unavoidable when extending the process to its limits – rather than a lack of the artist’s dexterity.
Note 18: A comment made by Andre Maurois after a speech Valery delivered on aesthetics (Valery 161). This idea, whilst almost repugnantly romantic, has great resonance with my own feelings about art and its power to move.
Note 19: See Krauss Notes on the Index, part I.
Note 20: Possibly slightly too tenuously.
Note 21: Kant 1951; 55
Note 22: Whilst this appears to correlate with the theories of the sublime expressed earlier, it is important to remember that the theory of purposiveness without purpose forms part of the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’, not sublime.
Another issue the experience of the work as a body raises is that of time, which I feel is potentially of great importance to my experience of the works. Time is clearly a requirement for viewing any work, but visual art has traditionally not been temporal. 23 I believe that temporality is of fundamental importance to understanding the intensity of my experience of the works. I propose that Day Paintings, rather than being exclusively spatial, had a three-fold temporal or quasi-temporal nature.
- The exhibition as a work in itself presents an unfolding of an idea/system/ by the presentation of many works which form a coherent and carefully orchestrated experience for the viewer. This can be seen to function in a manner similar to film, each frame/painting being experienced in its relationship to those seen previously. 24
- Unlike the vast majority of traditional paintings, Martin’s work is not intended to be accessible from a single view-point. Its content is only apprehensible through the viewer’s active engagement – that is, by moving around the work to perceive the variations caused by the different reflections of light. This imposes a necessary but uncontrolled duration to the works. 25
- A third form of temporality relates to the work’s transparent association with a physical movement within time – the single sweep of the brush/comb which forms the striated surface. The proposal that this might be apprehended directly, rather than comprehended through thought, has been commented on already.
Even if the works do function on a temporal level, it wouldn’t necessarily equate to a more intense experience when viewed – maybe functioning in either a purely spatial or temporal way could elicit a more powerful response. I believe that in general a combination of qualities will give a richer experience and although this essay deals with the overtly spatial experienced temporally, to illustrate this theory from the reverse perspective seems perfectly germane. The music theorist Carl Dahlhaus, in Esthetics of Music, claims that music is such an emotive art-form because of a two-fold experience; that of its temporal progression throughout the work, followed by a so called ‘quasi-spatial’ appreciation. This refers to the experience of the listener at the end of a movement or piece, when the architecture of the composition as a whole is grasped as a ‘spatial’ design.
Key within this concern of temporality is the impact of memory and culminative experience, factors which seem to have been too long neglected within the ‘fine-arts,’ but which have been analysed in relation to music and film – both of which inform my reflections on Day Paintings. A single bar of music, if isolated from the experience of the preceding bars, has little effect. A single bar can have great effect only as the climax of the myriad memories it evokes. I propose that a crude model of sonata form could be applied, and explain my response to, Day Paintings. Sonata form constructs a composition from three discreet sections: 1. exposition, 2. development and 3. recapitulation. The exposition introduces the first subject, in tonic key, and the second subject, in dominant. This is followed by the development, in which the material of the exposition is ‘worked out’ in a kind of ‘free fantasia’ – breaking down and analysing the existent themes. Then comes the recapitulation in which the exposition is repeated, though often with modification, and with the second subject typically in the tonic. The recapitulation could be seen as the experiential climax, when the listener most fully understands the work’s logic, and the memory of all past experience is combined into its most potent form.
When applied to the main room of Day Paintings – the only room in which I found works which really astonished me – it could be seen as: 1.) the first two paintings introduce striation as dominant motif, in large, impressive paintings. However, the ‘potential space’ is not pushed but only hinted at (the comb movement was not very daring), establishing an idea but leaving the mind open to possibility. Also, one is black and the other white, both lacking the psychological impact possible through other colours. 26 2.) The largest wall has smaller works, each of which focus on different facets of the ideas already introduced: one is an acute rhomboid exploring how striation relates to the support’s shape; another is a small canvas which protrudes relatively far from the wall, emphasising the beauty of the paint congealed at the edges; others examine different colours, or degrees of rotation of the brush/comb. Each adds to one’s understanding and appreciation of specific qualities the paintings can have, distilled into their most pure form. I contend that when one sees a subsequent painting which has similar qualities (even though they may not be as pronounced/arresting), one’s memory of the past, richer experience, will make the work experienced in the present have a sum beyond that of itself in isolation. 27 This is a pre-cognitive response, even if one later understands which recollections were triggered. An effective example of this is the complex emotion of ardour, hope, but primarily agony, which I felt when watching a blissful, languid section of Summer Interlude. After a few moments I realised that this was because the first bar of the incidental music was similar, although not identical, to a motif which dominates the opening of the third act of Tosca. 28 Within sonata form the effect of layered experience is most striking in the recapitulation, which, for me, reached its climax in a large crimson painting. In this the ‘virtual space’ was as extreme as any of the other works, and the heightened psychological effect of colour was fully utilised by the rich, bodily and intoxicating red. It was an astonishing painting, however, I saw one displayed in isolation which was materially quite similar, and this had no effect whatsoever. 29 This suggests that the experience of the works as a body does offer both a richer experience of them as a group and a deeper appreciation of each individual work.
Note 23: Temporal, although etymologically linked to general matters of time, has a more specific connection to things ‘of this life’ i.e. non-celestial, temporary, in a state of flux. (according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary)
Note 24: Although conventional films tend to construct a narrative meaning through dialogue as much as image, and its emotive effect, rather than being abstract, is typically achieved through a sympathetic/empathetic response to depicted human emotion (although formal elements clearly affect on a directly psychological/pre-language level, i.e. the rhythm of montage in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potempkin; B+W and muted colour in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, etc). Music is also widely used for emotive impact. The most direct links to abstract painting within film are silent, abstract works such as Stan Brakhage’s hand painted films (Black Ice 1994; Chartres Series 1994), and some of George Landow’s, i.e. Bardo Follies. These films control the rhythm of image progression, and therefore offer a very different experience compared to the Martin show, which one traverses at any desired speed.
Note 25: I.e. the experience necessarily changes over time, but the tempo of the change is controlled by the viewer rather than the artist, as is also the case in the first example of temporality.
Note 26: Although they are still very impressive paintings, as can be the expositions of symphonies – semi-demonstrated infuriatingly well each time a mobile phone rings with the start of Mozart’s 40th, etc.
Note 27: A representational painting could rely upon recalling these memories through what it depicts, but with abstraction – unless the Martin’s might evoke the memory of other phenomena; waves, the undersides of bathroom tiles, etc – the artistic language needs to build up internal references. This is also something which comes through in the debates on the emotive potential of orchestral, abstract music at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see Dahlhaus).
Note 28: The fates conspired to force me to use this example.
Note 29: It should be acknowledged that this does not prove the veracity of the idea of the ‘orchestrated exhibition’: although the object was similar, the phenomenon was different due to inferior lighting; I was now expecting something from the work, a wish to recapture my first reaction to them; it might not have been as successful an example; it was at the Frieze Art Fair – a force powerful enough to suck the life out of any work!
There are, and I feel should be, no real conclusions to this study; the experience of art is based upon a complex nexus of memories, perception, etc, and as such I would prefer not to claim that any one idea advanced is correct – to do so would require me to be a dogmatic advocate of psychoanalysis, Romanticism, etc.30 That said, this study, although written from a necessarily subjective position and about very specific pieces, seems to suggest approaches to painting and exhibiting which could be applied to other work and experienced strongly by other viewers.
Note 30: What a cop-out conclusion.
Bibliography
Arnheim, R (1966) Toward a psychology of art, Berkeley : University of California Press
Burke, E (1990) A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful, Oxford U.P.
Dahlhaus, C (1982) Esthetics of music, Cambridge U.P.
Derrida, J (1987) Truth in painting, Chicago : University of Chicago Press
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Journals
Krauss, R (1973) October III, Notes on the index.
Films
Bergman, I Summer interlude
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Eisenstein, S (1925) Battleship potempkin
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Miscellaneous
Puccini, G Tosca
