From The Abstract to The Concrete
It is often stated that one of the major achievements of the 20th Century Art is, following the lead of various artists but mainly Picasso, to have traveled from a point of representation to one of abstraction; in explication of which theory innumerable Picassoid studies of reclining nudes are produced.
Representational art in the west is complex, all cultural arts are pretty damn complex… indeed they tend to equal complexity, the human brain will force them to a level of sufficient complexity to inspire Mana or it will discard the art
An incomplete listing of examples
In the West this complexity focused on two areas — that of perspective and realistic detail (in pre-20tth Century styles.)
In many Far Eastern cultures complexity focused on pattern and the ability to harmoniously balance a concept. This can lead to relative sparsity of detail to achieve balance
In African countries Art evolved often into a concern with pattern and the relationships of the color palette.
Perspective was not a major feature of any but European art, this would indicate that perspective is perhaps a rare development and a historical anomaly in Human Art.
In Art the process is one of congealing from the abstract to the representation of the abstract idea. A basic, abstract vision is had; from there, the artist, working in styles and materials familiar to them begins to build a representation of the vision. This is even so in landscape or portrait painting because the reality must first be abstracted within the mind before it may be represented.
At this time there is no agreed upon cultural form for what is known as Western Art, that world has fully fallen apart into a thousand different complex subcultures. Other cultures may have some art that still draws inspiration from traditional sources but outside those cultures there is the International Art World where no single model of how to move from abstraction to representation can prevail.
This lack of a model is problematic for achieving Mana, because every artist must seemingly be completely original, and failing that they become just an aspect of design.
The only artists that can achieve Mana in the International world must do so from a perspective of working with the materials that rule all around us — Money and Theory.
This article was written by IG Agents 13 and 81.
