Phenomenology of the Visual Arts (even the frame) by Crowther Paul

Author:Crowther, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2011-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

I have argued, then, that art which abandons the traditional conventions of pictorial and sculptural representation, but which still follows their conventional formats of presentation, should be described as abstract art. Through adopting such formats it is approached through a presumption of virtuality, i.e. the expectation that whatever is thus presented is ‘about’ something. In the context of abstract art, this is satisfied through properties of optical illusion.

The presumption of virtuality means that all factors in the work’s visible appearance are relevant to such illusion, and will be read in terms of it—if only because they are meanings which are accessible within the internal resources of the work itself.

Now whereas most approaches to this would regard it as no more than a vaguely interesting suggestive or associational feature of abstract works, I have argued that it is of the greatest import. This is because our cognitive relation to the visual field is dependent on an horizon of visual possibility, which structures the objects of our visual attention. The visual given is embedded in a contextual space.

Abstract art is able to express this by virtue of the interplay between the artist’s individual viewpoint and the allusive way in which contextual space is evoked. It is an aesthetic model of vision’s character as an open complex system.

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