Synopsis & Summary Chapter Excerpts Table of Contents Responses

Excerpt

1.  The Emergence of the Absolute Image Series

Even after going through the steps of development described in the previous chapters, a sense of searching continued. There remained a sense of something more to discover—and along with this an ever-persistent desire to find out what that ‘something more’ was.

This consistent focus over time suddenly brought forth—and seemingly from nowhere—the Absolute Image series of paintings. With this the sense of searching was gradually replaced with a conviction of having finally arrived at the goal.

There was no view to any particular outcome accompanying my free exploration of pure color/form described in the previous chapter. The process I had embarked upon of limiting the content of my paintings to square-based grids of pure color was completely rewarding in itself.

Then, just as a sense began to set in that this process had fulfilled its purpose, suddenly more complex structures involving what I came to define as my five fundamental forms—point-line-circle-triangle-square—began to appear in my mind. This unexpected development took place early in 1995. It signaled the opening of a whole new world of painting for me. It was the inception of the Absolute Image series.

The emergence of these images in the mind was so surprising and yet so intensely compelling that eventually I had no choice but to begin painting them. It was an act of faith, really, that this was the next thing that I had to do. I had no idea how the images I was beginning to see in my awareness related to my overall purpose, but the impulse to try to realize them in their concrete visual form became irresistible.

The task that naturally followed from the spontaneous birth of these complete images was first of all a practical one. I had to devise a way of crafting their layered complexity within the confines of the medium of easel painting. To know the materials, you have to work with the materials. It was only necessary, therefore, for me to begin the activity of painting. I knew I simply had to start trying to paint what I was now seeing.

The deeper knowledge delivered by the process of painting itself cannot be gained from discussion or from the reading of books. For me, unfolding a deeper understanding of the essential nature of color itself had come from working with color directly in its purest form day after day. The discipline of allowing color to be itself, of just simply working with it continuously in that way each day for an extended time, had yielded a new knowledge of color and a greater sense of command over its inner dynamics.

Now, with the spontaneous arrival of these new images in my awareness and their more complex geometries, I knew I had to apply the same formula. But in starting to paint these images I faced yet another challenge. How was I to understand the significance of these geometries and their relationship, not only to one another, but also to the structure of consciousness itself?

As with color, I knew that the kind of understanding I sought of these primordial forms, again, could only be made real for me through the process of painting itself. I knew these fundamental geometries could only unfold their inner reality to me if I were to sustain a continuous daily interaction with them. I had to draw these forms every day. I had to continuously draw them and redraw them.

It so happened that at this point the images began coming to me faster than I could paint them. At first this was a little bewildering. I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to paint them all, but how could I? Where should I start, and with which image? If I started one, in the many weeks it would take to complete it, I would lose countless others. With this dilemma the activity of painting came to a halt.

2.  The Role of Sketchbook Notation

However, I was compelled to do something. Even though the images were complex, I decided to try to capture them in sketch form. I realized the images were most clearly present during their initial moment of conception; that they were a product of a particular state of awareness. If I tried to remember the image the next day, or even the next hour, because my state of awareness would have shifted, the image just wasn’t available. To capture it in its completeness I had to record it there and then at the moment of its inner conception.

I found to my relief that I was able to quickly record the images in sketch form as they came, and in such a way that they retained their essential wholeness. More importantly, I found I could access that wholeness again at any future time through these visual and verbal notations. These notes and preliminary visual renderings expanded over time to almost a thousand pages (see Sketchbook pages on this site).

The pressure gone, I could then steadily just continue painting. Moreover, I felt now I had time to contemplate the structure of each image as it emerged in its completed form. The intuitive realization of the image was always primary, and as I have said, intellectual analysis of it always an after-event.

The wholeness of a painting was always left to emerge spontaneously. The analysis of it that followed became gradually more and more in reference to the structure and dynamics of consciousness. Thus began a pattern that continued over many years, the natural alternation of analysis and synthesis—painting the synthesis, writing the analysis.

I was simply trying to understand what these paintings were. I instinctively felt they were central to my overall mission. I knew they were exactly to do with realizing the Absolute in visual form.  I knew also that in examining their structure through the process of writing was the way to make their significance clearer. Fortunately I discovered the process of writing to be as endlessly absorbing as the process of painting itself.

But the most remarkable thing for me about these new images, the most extraordinary thing about their spontaneous arrival, was the fact that they seemed to embody aesthetically everything I’d always wanted to say about painting. They seemed to be the ‘something more’ I had been searching for. They seemed also to have a musical quality, which I associated with the English painters I most admired. Yet along with this sense of musical lightness there was the promise of a certain weight of presence.

This is a deeper resonance within the image. It is a quality I had always looked for in the work of others and particularly aspired to attain in my own work. It can be described as some unheard reverberation emanating from the painting, a kind of silent thunder that one senses rather than hears in the presence of the painting.

Over and above beginning to realize these long-sought aesthetic qualities, there seemed to be another kind of promise in these paintings that was far more important. I became convinced that these paintings could open the way to the deepest reality of the medium itself and perhaps answer all my questions concerning its absolute values.

Becoming aware of a certain sort of power emanating from the geometries in these paintings, I was initially reluctant to show them to anyone else. Although they had positive effects for myself, I had no idea if the effects would be equally positive for others. At first I shared them only with a few very close friends, most of whom, like myself, had been practicing the Vedic technologies of consciousness for some time. I gained more confidence in my work when it appeared that the positive influence they experienced in the presence of these paintings seemed consistent with my own.

3.  From Outside-In, to Inside-Out

The transformations in my work I have just described could be summarized as painting from the ‘outside-in’ gradually moving toward painting from the ‘inside-out’. That is to say, originally, when working figuratively, the process of painting was from the outside to the inside. This meant viewing objects and their relationships in the outer environment, and responding to them within myself during the act of painting.

This process from outside to inside, as I have already mentioned, began to change as the figurative values dissolved away and the exploration of pure color/form itself took over. Then, with the spontaneous emergence of the Absolute Image series, the process of painting from the outside/in had completely turned around. Painting from the outside-in became painting from the inside-out.

With the wholeness of the image being spontaneously generated from within, this inner realization of the image now solely dictated the painting’s outer realization. This required that the inner realization of the image be held in the mind over the many weeks needed to complete its outer realization as a finished painting.

Every structural and aesthetic decision made in the process of its outer realization was now being made in reference to this initial inner realization of the wholeness of the image being held in my awareness. The facility to do this strengthened over time.

It quickly became clear that it was not possible for me to impose anything on the image from the outside. Any outer imposition, either of an aesthetic or commercial nature, whose incorporation compromised the absolute integrity of the initial seed-conception, would break the innocent holistic flow of this inner/outer dialogue. It would freeze the creative process and the life would instantly go out of the painting.

This new creative process from inside to outside was a special kind of discipline. I had to, as it were, leave myself out of it and just innocently record on the outside, and as accurately as I could, what it was I was seeing on the inside. This meant that conception and crafting immediately began mutually enhancing each other very directly. As conception and crafting matured, the relationship of these paintings, both to the structure of consciousness itself as well as to absolute values within the discipline of easel painting, also became clearer to me.

The continuing analysis of the Absolute Image series through the written word was key to this increasing clarity. It helped sharpen conception, it helped consolidate vision, and it made deeper and more luminous for me the hidden beauties of painting. All these things would naturally feed back into the upcoming image in the series. The process of contemplation and analysis together forged a new texture of silent understanding. This naturally wove itself back into the fabrics of the next painting, helping to resolve the challenges posed by that new image and the structuring of its own unique quality of wholeness. CHAPTER 3 CONTINUES . . .

EXCEPTS FROM CHAPTER 3 ENDS

Chapter 16

The Easel Painting Arena and Its Components

Excerpt

1.  Defining the Picture Plane

To discover absolute values in a discipline, the nature of the medium itself and its function in a larger social setting has to be precisely defined. In clearly establishing the nature of the arena of Absolute Image, the process of crafting its inner content—to be discussed shortly—will acquire a fuller significance. I have already explored the arena of easel painting in terms of its cosmic physiology. Now, in the opening section to this chapter, I will try to precisely define the gross physical structure of that arena.

Traditionally, the definition of easel painting is pigmented color/form applied to a flat, independent, two-dimensional surface whose orientation is perpendicular to the viewer. The role of easel painting in the Western tradition has been to provide cultural or aesthetic enrichment to both public and domestic architecture.

The domain of easel painting is self-sufficient. It is an autonomous reality separate in itself from any architecture in which it may be housed or any wall upon which it may be hung. Absolute Image adheres precisely to this tradition-based definition of the easel-painting arena.

We could compare this definition of easel painting to the discipline of wall painting or mural painting. Mural painting, which is pigment applied directly to the walls or ceilings of a building, becomes integral with the architecture itself and therefore subject to its constraints.

This robs the mural painting arena of its self-sufficiency in absolute terms. It disqualifies it as a candidate for Absolute Image whose own requirement of complete self-sufficiency naturally demands that its domain of expression also display that same essential quality. There are other qualities possessed by the arena of easel painting that will need to be added to make our definition of it more complete.

2.  The Visual Image: A Domain of Pure Silence
Free of Both Time and Motion

First comes the quality of silence. The two-dimensional domain of easel painting rests in a continuum of silence. Its language, which is the language of color/form, is mute; it forever reverberates in pure silence. Another quality, and one that is unique to all two-dimensional imaging, is that it stands beyond the values of both time and motion.

This is because it offers the totality of its content as an instantaneous simultaneity. The entirety of its material content in principle is available in a single instant. Nothing is hidden. The totality of its content is in principle always and forever available in the immediate present. Thus the easel-painting domain, in terms of its own innate structure as a vehicle of expression, is free of time.

It is also free of motion because not only is its own content fixed and motionless in itself, but also in principle the viewer is not required to move in order to fully comprehend its totality in terms of outer sensory perception.

Conversely, if the size of the image is large enough to require the viewer to move in order to comprehend its wholeness, or to stand so far back from the image to view its entirety that a sense of intimacy is lost with the artist’s finest idiosyncrasies of crafting, then I put such an image in the category of wall painting or mural painting. It is a different medium of expression. It is not the more intimate domain of easel painting I am defining as the requisite arena for Absolute Image.

As we shall see later in this chapter, the 36 by 36 inch format is a set and consistent size for the Absolute Image series, and has been very specifically determined. Its many levels of significance will be discussed including its specific scale in relation to the human physiology.*

*FOOTNOTE: See Section 14, The 36 by 36 Inch Square Picture Plane.

This freedom from time and motion is the primary value that distinguishes easel painting from all the other artistic disciplines. For example, the traditional disciplines of architecture, sculpture, music, dance, theater (film), poetry, and prose are all dependent on time and motion to unfold the wholeness of their material content; the entirety of their content in an objective material sense is never available to outer sensory perception in a single instant.

This freedom from time and motion inherent within the material structure of easel painting places it closer to the structure of the Absolute itself whose own transcendental reality stands beyond both time and motion. New scientific knowledge concerning the structure of the Absolute, which relates to this concept, has already been discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. With this understanding of the arena of easel painting it therefore appears to be supremely suited to supporting a cosmic value of wholeness in terms of artistic expression.

This means that Absolute Image, operating as it does in a domain free of both time and motion, can offer a great variety of opposing structures and functions, and all in terms of an eternal continuum, all as a constantly present simultaneity in relation to our visual aesthetic reality.

This tangible display as a-togetherness-in-continuum of opposing cosmic functions such as expansion and contraction, of point and infinity, of infinite silence with infinite dynamism etc., is unique to the two-dimensional visual image. The profundity of this mode of simultaneous functioning is that it is the very nature of the Totality of Natural Law itself and its own omnipotent, multidimensional level of simultaneous functioning—a level of functioning that normally stands far beyond our ordinary outer modes of sensory perception.

Absolute Image in principle can give us the direct sensation of those cosmic operations of the Totality of Natural Law in a localized form. The fullest realization of Absolute Image should, therefore, sound an echo of the Totality itself and its all-nourishing presence already deep within the awareness of the viewer. (The togetherness of silence and dynamism within Absolute Image has been described in Chapter 15. The presence together of expansion and contraction will be explained in Section 8 of Chapter 19.)

Another essential factor concerning the arena of easel painting is that its dynamics function materially only in two-dimensions. This two-dimensionality, in a material sense, could be said to be more basic than three-dimensionality.

Easel painting therefore presents an arena that operates on a more fundamental level. This means more fundamental than the familiar three and four dimensions of our full volumetric space/time universe that is available to us in ordinary waking-state consciousness. Here is another reason that the domain of easel painting is uniquely suited to the realization of fundamental cosmic values in the field of the arts.

The significance of this flatness of the easel-painting domain is further heightened by recent scientific speculation that the universe is itself is a projection onto a two-dimensional surface.

3.  The Picture Plane as an Infinite Arena

There are yet more reasons that make this arena supremely suited to supporting the foundation or ground state of our visual aesthetic reality, to supporting cosmic wholeness in terms of an irreducible artistic expression. These I describe as follows:

Although the square picture plane as a concrete object is limited to fixed dimensions, nevertheless it represents a two-dimensional field whose boundaries in principle extend to infinity in all directions. This is because two dimensions can only be limited to a specific size by the introduction of the third dimension. The domain of easel painting does not have a thickness. In principle, the pure nature of the domain itself that supports the image is confined to two dimensions.

A surface with zero thickness, by definition, has to be infinitely extended. This unbounded potential of the pictorial arena applies also to the optical spatial values that allow the viewer the visual sensation of moving into, and in principle, therefore, out from, the picture plane itself.

This infinite potential of the square picture plane in the context of Absolute Image, therefore, parallels the all-pervading cosmic arena that supports and displays all the forms and phenomena of the ever-expanding universe. This cosmic nature of the picture plane is reinforced from another angle as well.

4.  The Picture Plane as An Infinity of Points

In mathematics the line is an infinity of points. Likewise, a plane is an infinity of lines. This means the picture plane can also be considered cosmic by virtue of it being built of an infinity of points. The neo-formalism of Absolute Image therefore views the picture plane, the very ground that supports the existence of the visual image, as parallel to the wholeness of the cosmic arena itself.

5.  ‘Point, to Line, to Plane’ and Absolute Image

The relationship between point, line, and plane was the subject of Wassily Kandinsky’s groundbreaking book ‘Point, to Line, to Plane’ (1926). His analysis of fundamental geometries in the context of easel painting presented point-line-plane as the three foundational geometric or formal graphic elements within the medium.

This principle is not in conflict with Absolute Image. It is important to note, however. in understanding the nature of the graphic content of Absolute Image that it deals primarily with point and line only. It does not lay emphasis on the graphic component of ‘plane’. The factor of ‘plane’ in Absolute Image is confined almost exclusively to the cosmic plane of the overall flat pictorial surface itself.

For Absolute Image, the component of specific planes has less prominence as a graphic entity. Differentiated planes are less dominant because they represent a much more precipitated value of manifestation. If they are present at all it will mostly be as symmetrical divisions of the square picture plane itself. Absolute Image seeks to establish the irreducible foundation or ground state of our visual aesthetic reality; it is therefore required to lay emphasis on the more primary powers of point and line.

Absolute Image stays within the range of these two primordial, irreducible graphic elements, and uses them to structure upon the picture plane combinations of the three fundamentals of all closed forms, circle-triangle-square. This means the visual fullness displayed in Absolute Image retains its irreducible status by confining its dominant graphic motifs to the three fundamental closed forms, circle-triangle-square, and by constructing them predominantly from the two most basic entities, point and line.

As an aside, the Monochrome again could be mentioned in this context. It could be said that the Monochrome offers the viewer the infinity of points within the arena of its picture plane, and therefore exists as a cosmic entity purely in terms of its own reality. But again this infinity of points has not been demonstrably displayed in a form cognizant to outer sensory perception. This function of ‘demonstrably displaying’, as we have already determined, is a requirement of any artistic expression.

How in fact could an infinity of points ever be realized in visual form? The answer is that it cannot, because this reality only exists as a concept structured in consciousness itself. Here we can again mark the distinction between abstract philosophical or scientific concept and concrete artistic expression.

This infinity of points, although real and true as an abstract philosophical or scientific concept, obviously cannot be literally displayed in any tangible sensory form within the domain of easel painting. However, through artistic expression it is possible to convey the experience of an infinity of points without an infinity of points being literally displayed. This is the power of art.

Also, from another point of view, the wholeness of the Totality itself, which is structured from an infinity of points, can only be directly experienced by ordinary waking state outer sensory perception through artistic expression. I am proposing that such wholeness can be enlivened in us most potently through aesthetic wholeness, aesthetic beauty. The pure experience of a cosmic value of aesthetic wholeness can be most effectively made manifest through human artistic expression.
Why do I say this? What allows me to make such a statement? I think I have already argued the case that human artistic expression has the power to actualize such a cosmic value of aesthetic wholeness—now I want to reinforce this with another factor. This reinforcement results from the fact that a specific work of art, because it exists in continuum as a localized concrete form, can readily be collectively shared.

This collective sharing of an experience of wholeness through a work of art magnifies its power. As we saw in Chapter 10, Section 20, the power of attention enlivens the object of attention. Thus, that collective sharing heightens and intensifies the potency of a work of art. In other words, if the power of a work is sufficient to arrest attention on the collective level of society, then in turn that collective attention magnifies cumulatively over time the power of the work of art itself. 

Articulating the Cosmic Totality in a localized expression is precisely what Absolute Image seeks to achieve. However, as we have seen, the more the image can be collectively shared, the more the potency of its aspired-to cosmic value of aesthetic wholeness will be fully enlivened.*

*FOOTNOTE: This empowering through collective attention is what motivates the desire for fame. The thirst for power through fame in our present age is very pronounced because individuals have not been educated to unfold in an easy and natural way the infinite, eternal power that already lies deep within each and every human being. Unfolding one’s own inner potential power should be a priority. This is because fame itself is fickle and the inner value of power steady and consistent. Moreover, when we are secure in our own inner power, then if fame should come, we are better equipped to handle it in a balanced way.

6.  The Scale Factor

The arena of easel painting itself is fundamentally passive in nature—it demonstrably displays an infinite silence. Its potential of infinite dynamism is hidden in its infinite silence. It is this potential of infinite dynamism, however, that is instrumental in dynamically determining the nature of the forms within Absolute Image. This is primarily due to the factor of scale. The factor of scale is initially defined by the scale of the picture plane itself in relation to the scale of the human physiology.

It is this relationship of scale that primarily determines our specific reading of the forms within Absolute Image. It determines, for example, whether a ‘point’ is registered as purely a ‘point’ or as a form that has substance in its own right.

In other words the scale of the point in relation to the scale of the picture plane determines whether it is read as either merely marking a location in space or, when the point is larger, being read as a circular plane in its own right. As the size of the point increases in relation to the picture plane, a moment comes when it would lose the ‘substance-less’ value of a mere marker of position and begin to distinctly assert itself as positive circular planar form.

Or again in the case of a straight line, there is a transition moment on one side of which a line is insubstantial and is registered purely as a demarcation between two zones, and on the other can be read as a long slim plane.

In other words, the nature of a pure straight line is normally experienced as a substance-less entity that operates merely to demarcate one zone of the picture plane from another, or perhaps to signify a connection between two points. As its width increases in relation to its length within the scale of the picture plane, it will suddenly be registered as a substantial form, a fully articulated rectangular form in its own right.

The key factors in determining these things are the scale of forms within the picture plane and their specific mode of interaction with the other forms present there. The ultimate determining factor of scale, however, rests upon the scale of the picture plane itself in relation to the scale of the human physiology.

The underlying principle here is that the ultimate value of the parts—the individual graphic elements within Absolute Image—can only be truly derived in relation to the whole. Whether we read a visual form in a painting as a point or a line, rather than a circular or rectangular plane, is determined for us above all by the wholeness of the picture plane and its scale in relation to the scale of human physiology.

This principle—that the reality of the parts can only be truly understood in the context of the whole—is a basic universal precept of Maharishi Vedic Science. I have given the analogy before of the wholeness of a house being the ultimate factor for determining the significance of the door, window, and roof. It is only wholeness itself, therefore, that can truly reveal the fullest significance of its parts.

This is why the primary principle of the consciousness-based Vedic system of education offered by Maharishi Vedic Science is for every student to first experience directly the Cosmic Totality itself, the unbounded nature of his or her own consciousness within themselves.

The purpose of making that cosmic wholeness a lively presence in the student’s awareness is to enable all the parts of life to be given their truest perspective. That is to say, the truest reality of the diverse parts of life will become directly available to the student in the context of the Cosmic Wholeness Itself.

It is only in their relationship to the wholeness of life that the fullest significance of the parts of life is revealed. The practical utility of this principle is that only in comprehending the fullest significance of the parts of life will our response to them be fully appropriate, and therefore maximally evolutionary and fulfilling.

7.  Two-Dimensionality Versus Three-Dimensionality

As we have said, the arena itself of Absolute Image is strictly two-dimensional. This does not allow any extension of the medium into real three-dimensionality. Real three-dimensionality is the domain of sculpture.

For example, even the return edge of a canvas, if it is made an active ingredient in the structure of an image, lends to a painting the sculptural dynamic of real three-dimensionality. This may augment the assertive presence of the image as an object in itself, but because it transgresses the legitimate limits of its domain, it will disrupt the purity of that domain and thereby undermine the integrity of its content in absolute terms.

Any such intermixing of the disciplines of sculpture and painting would blur the arena of Absolute Image and mar its syntactic clarity. This is because absolute values in a specific mode of expression can only be determined when that medium’s own exact formal purity is precisely set and maintained. CHAPTER 16 CONTINUES . . .

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 16 ENDS

Chapter 13

Mondrian

Excerpt

1.  Absolute Image and the Paintings of Mondrian

We will continue our exploration of the abstract field of consciousness in the context of the concrete reality of the easel-painting domain by reviewing the work of an artist who, it seems to me, spent the main part of his life doing just that.

Anyone with a deep interest in absolute values in the medium of painting inevitably comes to revere the work of Piet Mondrian, for here is a man who possessed an unswerving dedication to truth in his medium of expression.

As an introduction to him let me quote the English painter Ben Nicholson’s description of the first visit he paid to Mondrian’s studio in Paris in 1934:

His Studio . . .was an astonishing room: . . . very high & narrow L shaped with a thin partition between it and & a dancing school & with a window on the 3rd floor looking down onto thousands of railway lines emerging from and converging into the Gare Montparnasse. He’d lived there for 25 years and in that time had not been outside Paris & he’d stuck up on the walls different sized squares painted with primary red, blue & yellow—and white & pale grey—they’d been built up over those 25 years. The paintings were entirely new to me & I did not understand them on this first visit (& indeed only partially understood them on my second visit a year later). They were merely, for me, a part of the very lovely feeling generated in the room. I remember after this first visit sitting at a café table at the edge of a pavement almost touching the traffic going in and out of the Gare Montparnasse, & sitting for a long time with an extraordinary feeling of quiet and repose (!)—the thing I remember most was the feeling of light in the room & the pauses & silences after he had been talking. The feeling in his studio must have been very like the feeling in one of those hermit’s caves where lions used to go to have thorns taken out of their paws.

I see this chapter as a pivotal point in the book. It is pays homage to Mondrian and all his remarkable achievements in the discipline of painting. Through Mondrian we connect directly to that stream of creativity in the Western world that concerned itself more particularly with formal values in painting. It takes us from William Turner through to the Impressionism/post-Impressionism phase and on to Cubism, culminating in Mondrian’s conscious focus on absolute values within the medium.

Many erudite scholars have provided profound commentaries on Mondrians work.* What more then, can I hope to add?  I think if anything new has arisen in this chapter it will have come from the particular angle of approach. Bringing the complete knowledge of consciousness to bear on any aspect of life provides at once a whole new angle of vision. The effect of this can be to make that aspect of life more complete by exposing it to the structure and functions of the Totality of Natural Law Itself.

*FOOTNOTE: I must site particularly Yve-Alain Bois, Joop Joosten, Angelica Zander Rudenstine, and Hans Janssen for their beautiful study of Mondrian’s life and work in their book ‘Piet Mondrian’ (English translation, 1995). After some years of creating the Absolute Image series and analyzing their structure, I decided to ‘compare notes’, as it were, with Mondrian. Their book was a constant source of knowledge and inspiration.

Because of his momentous achievements, feelings of trepidation naturally arise when approaching Mondrian’s work. I take courage, however, because I am not approaching it alone. I come to it supported by a tradition of knowledge whose authority is timeless and which has now been revived in its completeness.

Mondrian himself was briefly exposed to aspects of this same Vedic wisdom earlier in his career through the Theosophical Society. Indeed, I believe it was exposure to that knowledge—even though brief and in fragmented form—that gave direction to the whole course of his life’s work. It set the stage for all his discoveries and the eventual defining of his Neo-Plasticism in the field of painting.

2.  Neo-Plasticism

In the relationship between Mondrian’s work and the Absolute Image series, let us deal initially with the principle of absolute autonomy, the third of the three major principles (complete fullness, infinite sustainability, absolute autonomy) discussed in the previous chapter.

I presented these three principles as primary attributes of the Absolute itself and therefore mandatory for an image aspiring to be the Absolute in visual form. Let us use the benchmark of truth established by Mondrian in the easel-painting domain, therefore, to help define more clearly the principle of absolute autonomy within Absolute Image.

In his own search for absolute values in the context of the Western traditions of painting, and following the same trends of modern science, Mondrian applied the process of reductionism. Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism sought to reduce all color and all form to its essence.

Neo-Plasticism distilled all color to its three primary values red-yellow-blue and their complement the three non-colors white-gray-black. Through this, Mondrian sought to arrest the fullness of color in six essential values. He reduced all form to geometry, and sought to capture the total potential of all geometry in its very essence through invoking the fundamentals of orientation itself, the horizontal and the vertical.

Mondrian said it took him a long time to discover that the particularities of natural forms and their natural coloring (as displayed in Nature) evoke more gross levels of feeling, which tend to obscure the subtlest of all experiences, the experience of pure reality. This outer appearance of form in the world is constantly changing, but the pure reality that underlies it forever remains the same.

To arrest that eternal abstract pure reality at the basis of creation in concrete form, Mondrian saw it was necessary to reduce all the ever-changing color/forms displayed by Nature in the manifest world, to the underlying, constant, non-changing principles of form—the very fundamentals of geometry itself. This included reducing all the mixed, variegated values of color to their essence in the primaries as has been described. Mondrian summed up this approach as follows:

The aim is not to create other particular forms and colors, with all their limitations, but to work towards abolishing them in the interest of a larger unity.

3.  Relative Autonomy Versus Absolute Autonomy

In relation to the degree of autonomy achieved in Mondrian’s paintings, commentators have pointed out that the energies in his horizontal and vertical lines in his paintings are such that they imply an extension of themselves beyond the confines of the picture plane.* They are not contained by any formal structure within the pictorial arena. Running to the very edge of the canvas, the force of their uncontained energy therefore seems to accelerate beyond the canvas edge itself.

However, as commentators on Mondrian’s work have pointed out,* the energies in these horizontal and vertical lines in his paintings are such that they imply an extension of themselves beyond the confines of the picture plane. They are not contained by any formal structure within the pictorial arena. Running to the very edge of the canvas, the force of their uncontained energy therefore seems to accelerate beyond the canvas edge itself.

*FOOTNOTE: Credit the commentators . . .

This remains true even though Mondrian himself, being very conscious of this phenomenon and searching for ways to reduce its effect, at times either stopped his lines just short of the edge of the canvas or even wrapped them around the return edge of the canvas itself (figure 00 and figure 00).

It is true that making the return edge of the canvas an active ingredient in his paintings had mostly to do with emphasizing the paintings’ own independent existence—that is to say, its own self-sufficient object-like existence independent of the architecture in which it may be housed. This extension of his lines onto the return edge did help confine them to the limits of the canvas through a grounding effect.

However, in the context of Absolute Image this cannot be accepted as a viable or sustainable solution because it adds a third dimension to a discipline whose arena it defines as strictly two-dimensional. The inclusion of a third dimension as an active ingredient is not therefore an acceptable solution. This is because adding a third dimension takes us out of the domain of easel painting and instead steps us into the three-dimensional discipline of sculpture.

As I will be reaffirming throughout, absolute values within a medium of artistic expression can only be legitimately realized by strictly upholding its own innate formal values. Later, Mondrian abandoned this use of the return edge to hold his lines within the limits of the pictorial arena as well as the tactic of stopping them just short of the picture’s edge.

It has been suggested of Mondrian’s work, therefore, that his horizontal and vertical lines and their implied extension beyond the picture plane call forth the presence there of a continuing virtual cosmic grid, which constitutes their common matrix (figure 00).

From the point of view of Absolute Image, because Mondrian’s paintings structurally do nothing to negate such an interpretation, once our attention has been drawn to it, the ghost-like presence of such a grid remains, and the paintings from then on seem unable to escape its haunting presence. The paintings thereafter continue to present themselves as asymmetrical fragments dependent for their absolute completion upon this inferred exterior total symmetry.

Therefore, although Mondrian’s paintings are perfectly complete within themselves in terms of their own relative compositional balance, they do not attain the absolute level of autonomy required of Absolute Image.

Because of their implied dependence on an exterior symmetry for their absolute completion, their own self-sufficiency, on an absolute level, is called into question. Absolute Image is founded on the proposition that an absolute level of autonomy can only be attained within the visual image by taking recourse to a perfectly self-contained four-fold symmetry.* As was proposed in earlier chapters, Absolute Image, in terms of our visual reality, regards symmetry as an absolute organizing principle and balanced asymmetry as a relative one.

*FOOTNOTE: Again, by four-fold symmetry I mean a square image that mirrors itself on its horizontal, vertical, and therefore diagonal axes.

4.  Symmetry Versus Asymmetry—
Universality Versus Individuality—Objectivity Versus Subjectivity

The equilibrium of the universal and the particular

Art has shown that universal expression can only be created by a real integration of the universal and the individual

Composition allows the artist the greatest possible freedom, so that his subjectivity can express itself, to a certain degree, for as long as needed

From these three Mondrian quotes we see that his insistence on compositional asymmetry was quite deliberate. He understood that the seemingly opposing values of universal and particular, of impersonal and personal, of objective and subjective, have to have a demonstrable presence in the image if it is to fully realize the totality of Natural Law, the Absolute itself in visual form.

Our explanation in Section 4 of Chapter 3 described that all expressions of Natural Law are unavoidably a combination of both personal and impersonal values, of the particular and the universal. Every expression, even when it is the pure universal value itself that is being defined, is always personal to someone. It will always have a personal component, always have an inevitable personal dimension. This, it was explained, is because every specific expression is always a specific impulse, which can only arise from a uniquely specific source. CHAPTER 13 CONTINUES . . .

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 13 ENDS