On Time: Time and Memory in 'Abstract' Painting

From Chelsea Wiki

The notion of the artistic experience occurring in an ‘instant’, that art works have a ‘presentness’, was familiar within modernism. How time figures in the appreciation of art, and how the experience of art can effect our perception and understanding of time, is still an open issue. For example, in commenting on the work of Juan Uslé, Peter Schjeldahl claims that:

The time we spend looking at it passes elsewhere than in the actual world. Imagine the flow of real time as a line, then the moment of contemplating a painting as a second line, perpendicular to the first. In that moment we live sideways, athwart time’s flow. (1996, p.240)

In this essay I intend to examine the importance of time and memory in contemporary abstract painting and how the experience of painting can effect ‘human time’. The initial focus will be on the effacement of time, based upon the above quotation, and will be centred on Uslé’s Sone que Revelabas. El Reflejo (2004) ¹

Note 1: A potentially problematic choice because the quotation pre-dates the work. It is chosen because I had the chance of seeing it first hand at this year’s Venice Biennale. Due to the diverse series which characterise Uslé’s output any single choice seems problematic, however, the quotation addresses them in general terms and so this seems as good an example as any other. It should also be noted that my analysis of the work’s potential ability to affect temporal experience is based upon theoretical concerns, not on an experience. Given this, and what I would maintain to be theory’s necessary inability to disprove the validity of an essentially experiential assertion, I see the task of this essay to be the creation of ideas about time’s role in art (and more interestingly art’s role in time), not as an attempt to ridicule a comment which I find difficult to accept.

Time

It must first be noted that for many philosophers the very concept of time is seen as illusory². If this is the case then the above quotation, and the premise of this essay, is nullified. However, the generally accepted view is that some form of temporal progression is present in experience; typically this is divided into conceptions of time as either circular or linear (or, less absolutely, a tendency towards one or the other).

The quotation clearly assumes time, in its normal state, to be linear. The concept of linear time has had many advocates, from Seneca through to Aquinas, Bacon and Locke. Perhaps the most important philosophy of linear time is found in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Kant sees time, and space, as something the subject projects onto things-in-themselves or noumena. These are outside the limits of a priori (deductive) and a posteriori (inductive) proof, but their existence is said to be justified by the subject’s knowledge of itself. It would not be possible to be aware of existence without presupposing the existence of something permanently other from which to distinguish oneself (contra-Descartes: the existence of thought alone does not necessarily form the subject ‘I’). The key result of a linear conception of time is a view of time into which a succession of events are placed, rather than time which is formed through the repetition of events, as in circular time.

Early philosophies of circular time saw it as the result of motion and it was related to the underlying harmony of the universe, which – drawing upon the seasons and contemporary models of celestial motion – was imagined as circular. Most theories would see time as cyclical rather than circular (i.e. not necessarily returning to an identical state), although Pythagoreans, who espoused reincarnation, believed it to be truly circular.

Note 2: Zeno’s (himself a pupil of Parmenides) paradoxes (around 450BC) attempted to demonstrate how the idea of movement, and by implication change and time (at this stage many saw time as a direct result of motion) , were illusory. This extreme position was still contended by some (and still is) in the twentieth century. The most important work on this is J.M.E. McTaggart’s The Unreality of Time, but also of note is F. H. Bradley: "Time, like space, has most evidently proved not to be real, but a contradictory appearance.” (internet encyclopaedia of philosophy)

Rite and Play

Rather than maintaining an absolute position on either of these, I should like to propose a view of time which is formed through their permanent opposition. Giorgio Agamben’s essay In Playland sees human time as formed through the differential of play and ritual, or – when respectively (although imperfectly) translated onto the above concepts – linear and circular time. ³ Play is a means of making experience diachronic and “tends to break the connection between past and present, and to break down and crumble the whole structure into events.” Rite performs the inverse function of making experience synchronic, and destabilises the “contradiction between mythic past and present, annulling the interval separating them and reabsorbing all events into the synchronic structure.” (Agamben 93, p74) What if the opposing tendencies of play and ritual were to exist in their pure states? Pure play would lead to a succession of events with no reference to the past⁴ (play ‘destroys’ the calendar), in which case experienced time would be accelerated. ⁵ On the other hand, in a purely synchronic society, where the diachronic interval between past and present had been eliminated, “human beings would live in an eternal present,” ⁶ (Agamben 93, p.78) without reference to the passing of time. For Agamben these pure positions cannot exist in society; play and ritual function in every society and “although one might prevail over another to a varying degree, they always maintain a differential margin between diachrony and synchrony.” (1993, p.74)

But can a painting act as pure ritual, pure synchrony? Modernism could be seen as the paradigm of diachrony; the project of Modernism, as conceived by Greenberg, is historical and teleological, underscored by a clear notion of progress (although this is not pure play; each event is conscious of its precedent. However, the inherent notion of progress is clearly akin to that of a ‘hot society’ in which “the sphere of play tends to be enlarged at the expense of ritual” (Agamben 1993, p.77)). Could then ‘post-modernism’ be seen as synchronic? The repetition of signifiers, the re-presentation of prior work – although seemingly in line with the aims of pure synchrony – only serve diachrony. In post-modernism quotation is not, and can never be, pure repetition, rather, it is recontextualisation. To repeat the signifier, however perfectly, does not repeat the sign, for, paradoxically, repetition is always new: “the dialectic or repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been – otherwise it could not be repeated – but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new” (Kierkegaard, quoted in Dillon 2001, p.79). Indeed, not only is repetition of the same necessarily different, but – as Gilles Deleuze writes in relation to Jorge Borge’s imaginary verbatim rewriting of Don Quixote – it could be said that “the most strict repetition has as its correlate the maximum of difference (‘The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer…’).” (Deleuze 94, p.xxii). From this account it would seem that repetition of the same would not enable the synchronic experience which would efface time. It now seems fruitful to move away from repetition of the same to repetition of difference, a repetition which we see in the work itself.

The painting is constructed through many rows of dragged pigment, the form and density (consequently tonality) of which is governed by the movement and pressure of the application. Each row has an obvious relation to its neighbours, and within each row the individual scallops are clearly (although the overlap is ambiguous, i.e. one can always distinguish each element, but not always distinguish its boundary) distinguished from the whole as discrete elements (although the ground does not distinguish itself from the individual scallops, i.e. there is no figure/ground opposition). Although the above objection to the possibility of repetition between objects could be levelled at this painting, the argument becomes one of difference within an object – an internalising of repetition. From this it is possible to contend that the work is no longer the site of interface between itself and the history of abstract painting, nor between itself and a representation of external appearances. Rather, the experience of the work would be a site of its own time, a time outside duration as established through the order of typical existence. (However, as this internalising is predicated upon repetition of difference, it cannot be a site of a simple durationless pure synchrony.)

Note 3: It should be noted that ‘human time’, for Agamben, is closer to history or societal time rather than perceived time. Possibly the example of Playland points to it having a direct connection to perceived time.

Note 4: A useful illustration of temporal progression without reference to the past is the throw of dice, in which the previous throw has no bearing on the outcome of the present.

Note 5: Agamben’s example of this state is Pinocchio’s playland in which, through the absence of authority, the calendar was destroyed (each week having six Thursdays and a Sunday), and “the hours, the days, the weeks passed like lightening” (1993, p67)

Note 6: Even allowing for time to have a meaning the notion of ‘present’ is highly problematic. In this essay I use the term to denote the perception of something as present, even if this is – as William James would have it – a specious present (i.e. to see is to see light, which is movement, and duration is necessary to movement, and duration does not exist in the present, etc.). For a brief account of this see The Perception of Time in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, sections 4-6.

Abstract Memory

I have some reservations about the idea that one’s memory of that which lies outside painting can be effaced through the experience of the work (and whether that would be beneficial). However, I think that to view such a proposition in relation to abstract or ‘absolute’ music is of interest. Visual perception seems rooted in a need to recognise – to impose memory, and typically language, upon an experience. ⁷ This memory is typically one which corresponds to ‘non-art’ objects (i.e. to the things we are most used to recognising, frequently faces and figures). However, with instrumental music, it seems that it is much easier to experience sound as just sound, or sound after and conditioned by another sound. ⁸ I find that when a piece of music makes me remember something it isn’t, the recollection is of another piece – the art form internalises, in such a way as outlined above for painting.

This musical parallel is instructive in conceiving the importance of memory in the potential emotional experience of Uslé’s work. Contraction memory does not just form the past in the present, it also forms the virtual – or, less confusingly, predicted – future. However, the variation⁹ in each individual mark one encounters means that the memory of past marks cannot adequately predict the next mark. This results in two things; firstly in a work which never ceases to change, which denies any finality of experience, interpretation or ontology, and secondly it offers sensory stimulation. This seems akin to the experience of Alvin Lucier’s Carpet of Leaves, a piece in which a constant frequency is accompanied by a cello played pizzicato with a very similar note approximately every ten seconds. I find this a highly emotive work because, in part, of the two variations: the interval of notes and their frequency. ¹⁰ Or rather, because of the work’s constant ability to confound my expectations; the string is seldom plucked ‘on time’, the note is never identical. I feel obliged to note the discrepancy between theory and experience: the Lucier piece is engaging, the Uslé’s fairly dry. There are many potential explanations; I think that although the painting exists within time, the rhythm of experiencing each element is governed by the spectator and so, whilst the expectation of what comes next may be wrong, the expectation of when it occurs is not – and rhythm is a highly affecting. Also, and this relates to footnote 11, despite the work’s temporal dimension, it is also perceived as having a presence in space, a boundary, and is thus other than the self or subject. Because of this it reaffirms the self as an separate identity or part of the world and denies the euphoria which – so psychoanalysis would have it – can accompany the dissolution of the self into the world.

Note 7: The intellect needing to make sense of the plenitude of information selects that which is most useful. For an account of the importance of the ‘cerebral interval’ in perception, as conceived by Bergson, see Deleuze 1988, pp.24-29.

Note 8: I assume the reason it is easier to hear sound abstractly is because vision, certainly from a Bergsonian perspective, is articulated by the intellect for the purposes of easiest negotiation of our environment, retaining in the mind only that of perception which ‘interests’. It is through this that visual experiences, which at their pre-cognitive level are apparently as embodied within matter as music (“perception puts us at once into matter, is impersonal, and coincides with the perceived object” (quoted in Deleuze 1988, p.25)), become spatially distinct as ‘outside’ and ‘other’ – requiring a discrete identity. Perception of music exists within time and is more easily experienced as something within the self, which doesn’t require identity.

Note 9: I use the term for conventionality and convenience, however – and especially in this musical context – I would like it to be understood more as ‘almost repetition’ – as Morton Feldman phrased it – which “captures the notion of an activity attempting to arrive at its own singularity,” rather than of something which varies from a original Form. (Ryan 2002, p.4)

Note 10: With regards to the pitch of note the term variation might be appropriate, in that there is the constant accompaniment. The reality is more complex, with the expected pitch being based both upon the constant and the previous instance. The most important acoustic effect is the wave superimposition of the two very similar frequencies; as a result of this the sounds do not register as two discrete notes but as a gradually increasing and then decreasing oscillating note. The painting does not establish a visual equivalent.

A Complication

Although there may be some credence to this theory of totally internalised experience, I would like to suggest that the work’s process of internalising is more difficult; the folding inwards necessitates a folding outwards, as John Rajchman has it, a ‘complex folding’. Such a process would produce, not just a permanent becoming within the frame, but also a deframing – an opening out which effects both our recollection of the past and our predicted – and for Deleuze, this implies a potential or virtual – future.

The regular order of the work’s rows and divisions between rows forms a virtual ‘grid’; a frame for ordering and internalising the elements, keeping them as separate (striated space). However, in Uslé’s work this clear division of elements is broken down by irregularities; the transparency of the paint makes the layer order unclear, this removes from the ground chronological/geological time and its implication of clear divisions in space (making the ground a ‘smooth’ space, within which “each vicinity is like a shred of Euclidean space, but the linkage between one vicinity and the other is not defined and can be effected in an infinite number of ways. Riemann space at its most general thus presents itself as an amorphous collection of pieces that are juxtaposed but not attached to each other” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.535)). This challenges the grid’s unifying structure, causing the work to ‘spill out’, beyond the framed site, with a “free, smooth, “rizomatic” energy” (Rajchman 1998, p.21) and “unearth “within” a space the complications that take the space “outside” itself, or its frame, and fold it again” (Rajchman 1998, p.18). Thus the painting becomes a site of perplication which “supposes a strange invisible groundless depth from which irrupts something that creates its own space and time.” (Rajchman 1998, p.16) This is not a time of interaction between the viewer and the painting, a pure time removed from all that is outside that exchange. Nor is it a time which removes the ‘subject’ from the experienced world into a realm of absolute subjectivity. Rather, perplication offers “untimely” moments that redistribute what has gone before while opening up what may yet come. It allows us to conceive of a point beyond the false unity or identity which is the condition of intellectual thought, and think of/in the ‘multiplicity’: “it is not a matter of finding the unity of a manifold but, on the contrary, of seeing unity only as a holding together of a prior or virtual dispersion” (Rajchman 1998, pp.15-16) Thus painting becomes a means of taking thought beyond its fixed image of itself and the world; the painting has a “deframing power that opens it onto a plane of aesthetic composition or an infinite field of forces.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, p.188)

For Guattari and Deleuze¹¹ this is precisely the nature and sole function of art – the production of “percepts, affects and blocs of sensations that take the place of language.” (1994, p.176). ¹² Language subsumes the infinite richness of experience within limiting concepts, imposing on the singular the nature of a particular – this is the function of intelligence or common sense. Pure sensation ‘deterritorialises’ the subject-orientated system of opinion and reterritorialises sensation on the “plane of aesthetic composition,” which breaks open sensation to an infinite cosmos: “the peculiarity of art is to pass through the finite in order to rediscover, to restore the infinite” (1994, p.197)

Note 11: According to their final collaborative voice in What is Philosophy?

Note 12: Percepts and affects are the impersonal forces which the subject forms in experience as perceptions and affections: “affects are precisely these non-human becomings of man, just as percepts (including the city) are the nonhuman landscapes of nature” (p.169)

Before Closing

I find Guattari and Deleuze’s late view on the function of art to be difficult in many ways. ¹³ Indeed, I think their writing on ‘non-art’ issues is in often of more ‘use’ to art. ¹⁴ The difficulty I have with the ‘plane of aesthetic composition’ is that it is too abstract, too divorced from the way I experience, think and feel the world. ¹⁵ Very possibly this objection can be applied to most of the ideas expounded in this essay. Nevertheless, this essay does seem to identify that painting can be a radical site of permanent re-interpretation which offers new approaches to the relationship of object, time, space and subject, and that abstraction is not necessarily pure, but can make new connections, new becomings.

Note 13: It is certainly difficult to summarise or otherwise use without sounding almost mystical. For a more lucid account see Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts, Chapter 7 (pp.163-187), however there really seems no substitute for the primary text, and I find that the section Percepts, Affects and Concepts doesn’t cohere without the book’s first section.

Note 14: Although maybe it is as much of a hindrance; Lydia Dona’s practice seems to walk this tight-rope – I am yet to decide whether she has plummeted!

Note 15: I suppose that acknowledging that one cannot escape intellectually formed/mediated experience is precisely the point of Bergsonian ‘intuition as method’, and from this (not as absolutely?), Deleuzian concepts. Indeed, the concept is not to explain or justify but to alter, to create. Maybe I am apprehensive of Bergsonism because it is flawed or at least has generated highly critical philosophical attention. For an effective antidote to Bergsonism, see Russell’s vitriolic attack in his History of Western Philosophy, pp.761-5