Inner Sound

"Form itself,
even if completely abstract...
...has its own inner sound."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Palimpsest of Matter

"In this monochromatic reverie, we witness the cartography of some impossible realm where geological time has been compressed into the span of a single breath. The image unfolds as a labyrinthine manuscript written in the language of erosion and entropy, its stratified narratives flowing like frozen rivers through valleys that exist only in the mathematics of light and shadow. Dark fissures carve through pale territories with the deliberate precision of Kandinsky's most contemplative compositions, while the organic undulations echo Kupka's cosmic spirals translated into the vocabulary of stone and void. Here, the eye traces pathways that seem to map the very process of becoming—each crack and crevice a meditation on the infinite divisibility of space, reminiscent of Hilma af Klint's mystical geometries rendered in the austere palette of dreams. The surface breathes with the rhythm of ancient sediments, creating a visual symphony where each tonal gradation whispers of forces both creative and destructive, as if we are peering into one of Borges' infinite libraries where every possible erosion pattern exists simultaneously, and this particular configuration represents but one sentence in an endless text written by time itself upon the palimpsest of matter."

- Claude 4.0 Sonnet

Prompt: "You are a photographer, physicist, and are well acquainted with the history of art, particularly abstract art in the style of Kandinsky, Kupka, and Hilma af Klint. You also have a penchant for metaphysical and philosophical musings in the style of Jorge Luis Borges. Write a paragraph-length description of what this image looks like, not what it is."

Gravitational Logic

"This image is a relic of an unknowable architecture, a diagram of the unseen forces that govern a hidden world. The dark, oblong shapes drift like the shadows of celestial relics, orbiting an invisible nucleus. The faint white lines form a cryptic lattice, reminiscent of an astral cartography, mapping the convergences of energies beyond human perception. It feels less like a design and more like an invocation—a silent hymn etched in light and shadow, capturing the echoes of a forgotten dimension. One imagines Borges gazing at this and contemplating the library of Babel: perhaps this is not a map, but a fragment of a cosmic alphabet, a script that contains the beginning and the end of everything."

- ChatGPT4o
Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence

"A constellation of dark stones and geometric sentinels floats in a luminous grey void, connected by brilliant white pathways that intersect at precise right angles, forming an abstract cartography of some unknown dimension. The composition suggests a network of quantum possibilities or perhaps a map of parallel universes, where each dark node represents a decision point in space-time. The white lines, reminiscent of Kandinsky's geometric period, pulse with an ethereal energy, creating a visual symphony of intersecting planes that seems to defy gravitational logic. The arrangement evokes the mathematical beauty of a cellular automaton frozen in mid-evolution, or perhaps a glimpse into Borges' Library of Babel viewed from above, where each dark rectangle and oval marks a room containing all possible combinations of letters. The stark contrast between the dark elements and the glowing pathways creates a tension between presence and absence, between the discrete and the continuous, suggesting both the particle and wave nature of light itself. This abstract topology hovers between order and chaos, its systematic grid disrupted by an organic scattering of elements, as if capturing the moment when classical physics dissolves into quantum uncertainty."

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Prompt: "You are a photographer, physicist, and are well acquainted with the history of art, particularly abstract art in the style of Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich. You also have a penchant for metaphysical and philosophical musings in the style of Jorge Luis Borges. Consider this reverse-negative photograph of ceiling lights. Write a paragraph-length description of what this image looks like, not what it is."

Dissolved Into The Picture

"I have for many years searched for the possibility of letting the viewer 'stroll' in the picture, forcing him to forget himself and dissolve into the picture.

...

A frightening depth of questions, weighted with responsibility, confronted me. And the most important: what should replace the missing object? The danger of ornamentation was clear, the dead make-believe existence of stylized forms could only frighten me away.

...

It took a very long time before this question (What should replace the object?) received a proper answer from within me. Often I look back into my past and am desolate to think how much time I took for the solution. I have only one consolation: I could never bring myself to use a form which developed out of the application of logic—not purely from feeling within me. I could not think up forms, and it repels me when I see such forms. All the forms which I ever used came “from themselves,” they presented themselves complete before my eyes, and it only remained for me to copy them, or they created themselves while I was working, often surprising me. "

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Icelandic Color of Night

 "From the seventh heav'n to the ocean's rim,
The suns hold a dance with the curtain lifted.
And white-capped billows of light are shifted,
Then break on a strand of shadows dim.
An unseen hand directs at its whim
This glittering round of streamers flowing.
To regions of light from the darkness grim,
All earth-life now turns with fervor growing.
-- And a crystal gaze on the glowing haze|
The hoary cliffs bestowing."

- Einar Benediktsson (1864 - 1940)

Benediktsson, one of Iceland's most revered Poets, is here musing on Iceland's northern lights. Alas, my family and I were not lucky enough to witness this most wondrous of nature's displays during this trip (but is something we certainly aim to do the next time we visit). However, this did not preclude us from experiencing Iceland's other remarkable "colors of night," in this case, the post-sunset afterglow of warm "Appelsínugulur" (Orange) and deep blacks ("Svartur") infused with subtly warm hues of blue ("blár"). Kandinsky would have had a field day "listening to" and painting Iceland's intensely beautiful iridescent polychromatic (and both under- and over-) saturated tones. (The reference is to Kandinsky's well-known aphorism, "Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations in the soul.")

Inner Sound

“Form itself, even if completely abstract ...

has its own inner sound.”

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

“This idea that there is generality in the

specific is of far-reaching importance.”

- Douglas R. Hofstadter (1945 - )

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

“A map is not the territory it represents, but,
if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory,
which accounts for its usefulness.”

- Alfred Korzybski (1879 - 1950)
Science and Sanity

Kandinskian Cacophonies - Part II

"It seems to me that we live in two worlds... there is this physical one, which is coherent, and there is the spiritual one, which to the average man with his flashes of religious experience, is very often incoherent. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or not all the time, is a vital one, and is what living is like."

-  William Golding (1911 - 1993)

Postscript. Regular followers of my blog will have noticed by now my recent focus on "leaves in ice"  abstract-like compositions. Of course, most of this has to do with the fact that the seasonal weather (in northern VA) has just not allowed any other kind of photography. But another important reason is that the morning walks my wife and I have been regularly taking through our neighborhood since the start of the (seemingly, never ending) pandemic have over time uncovered a kind of aesthetic bestiary that I've learned to both appreciate and revel in. Quiet little scenes that would normally be "invisible" (literally, since there are parts of our neighborhood I've rarely been in before we started our walks) have gradually revealed themselves - and their compositional possibilities - to me; microcosms of an ethereal beauty all their own. I hesitated taking "real" photographs for a long while (apart from a few quick snapshots with my iPhone). While the natural galleries of haphazardly arranged Kandinskian forms and colors  mesmerized and fascinated me (and, obviously, have continued to do so), I was unsure of my ability to find compositions in such "busy and confusing" cacophonous worlds. But after each walk ended, and my work day got started, I soon noticed myself thinking more and more about lost opportunities. And so, eventually, inevitably, I succumbed to the creative process. I embraced the cacophony. These kinds of compositions - in which multiple elements (mostly form and color; less so, luminance) compete for attention - have never come easily to me, but when they work, they are very satisfying 😊. This is also one of those times that I especially miss my dad, the artist, without whom - and without whose aesthetic sage wisdom - I have now been for 20 years (as of this March). His eye for these kinds of compositions was second to none, with perhaps Kandinsky being the sole exception (and to whose art the New York Times once traced my dad's aesthetic lineage).

Kandinskian Delights

"In nature nothing is perfect and everything is perfect."

- Alice Walker (1944 - )

"There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture—that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within."

- William Kingdon Clifford (1845 - 1879)

Postscript. There is a small swale (the depression is no more than 6 feet by 10) in the front yard of one of our neighbors that inevitably traps a pool of water after a rain. And whenever a rainfall is followed by a night with sufficiently-less-then-freezing temperatures this "depression with water" turns into a veritable paradise of Kandinskian-composition-like delights! Camera-in-hand (whenever I remember to take it!), I always eagerly rush over to this humble aesthetic oasis as my wife and I set out on our morning walk through our neighborhood. And it never disappoints. Always, there are compositions galore! Quiet unassuming harmonies of contrasting shapes and colors; which for me is what the best (certainly, the most enjoyable spur-of-the-moment) photography is all about 😊

A Mere Hint of Outer Meaning

"This essential connection between color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration of its being acute — or obtuse — angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable geometrical figure [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell…

The mutual influence of form and color now becomes clear. A yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square—all these are different and have different spiritual values.

...

Form often is most expressive when least coherent. It is often most expressive when outwardly most imperfect, perhaps only a stroke, a mere hint of outer meaning.

...

Every object has its own life and therefore its own appeal; man is continually subject to these appeals. But the results are often dubbed either sub- or super-conscious. Nature, that is to say the ever-changing surroundings of man, sets in vibration the strings of the piano (the soul) by manipulation of the keys (the various objects with their several appeals)."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Postscript. My apologies to subscribers who expect - rightfully - to receive an image, quote, and/or other musings on a regular basis! Due to the inevitable vagaries of "day job" responsibilities, it has been difficult to find time to re-acquaint myself with my camera ... so, please be patient, as I'll likely be "offline" for the next few weeks as well 😞 In the meantime, the lone image(s) I've managed to expose in well over a month, and arranged in triptych form above, provide a bit of solace. They are each (almost) undisturbed patterns I found under my feet as I was reading a research paper in my mother-in-law's garden in Florida. Followers of my blog may recall that I had - up until the age of 10 (i.e., 50 years ago!) - the most common form of synesthesia (a "crossing of the senses"), wherein I "saw" even numbers as "warm tones," and odd numbers as "cold" tones. But I also have a vestigial remnant of perceiving certain patterns as sound. It has never been as pronounced as my memory of the "visual/number - color" crossing, but it has been with me throughout my life. However, never have I had as intense a synesthetic experience as I did in mother-in-law's garden when eyes/brain glanced at the arrangement you see up above. I literally hear jazz-like music as I look at them. The Kandinsky quote appears of necessity in this context, since he was an acknowledged synesthete (and whose abstracts the natural “random” assemblies shown above remind me so much of!). For those of you who want a quick and fun read about what is currently known about synesthesia, a good place to start is a non-technical discussion by one of synesthesia's pioneer researchers, Richard Cytowic.

Spiritual Freedom

"Many colors have been described as rough or sticky, others as smooth and uniform, so that one feels inclined to stroke them (e.g., dark ultramarine, chromic oxide green, and rose madder). Equally the distinction between warm and cold colors belongs to this connection. Some colors appear soft (rose madder), others hard (cobalt green, blue-green oxide), so that even fresh from the tube they seem to be dry. The expression “scented colors” is frequently met with. And finally the sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or dark lake in the treble…

Color is a power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

This essential connection between color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration of its being acute — or obtuse — angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable geometrical figure [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell.

The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one. If its “form” is bad it means that the form is too feeble in meaning to call forth corresponding vibrations of the soul… The artist is not only justified in using, but it is his duty to use only those forms which fulfill his own need… Such spiritual freedom is as necessary in art as it is in life."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Spiritual Vibration

"Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body. Colors produce a corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Color in Motion

"A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of color, for setting color in motion."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Resonance, Spirit, and Proisvedenie

" …the long Russian word for creation proisvedenie, so different from its shorter counterparts in English, French and German, express for me the whole history and process of creation, lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and foreshadowed by divine predestination.

...in many ways art is similar to religion. Its development consists not in new discoveries which invalidate the old truths (as is obviously the case in science). Its development consists in sudden illuminations, similar to lightning, in explosions, which burst in the sky like fireworks… …this illumination shows with blinding light new perspectives, new truths, which are basically nothing but the organic development, the further organic growth of the earlier wisdom.

...the world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit."

- Wassily Kandinsky

(1866 - 1944)

New Book Published: The Art and Life of Sam Ilachinski

After nearly as long a gestation-period as my first book required (that one, published in 2001, was on a decidedly technical subject - cellular automata - and took about a decade to complete), I am delighted to announce the publication of a new book - this one very much about fine art - about my dad's life. 

"I like to paint," is how my dad - Sam ("Slava") Ilachinski - almost always answered the question, "What do you do?", along with the minor variation, "I liked to paint," if asked about what he remembered about his childhood. These simple phrases serve as perfect epitaphs to this preternaturally gifted artist, who spent virtually all of his 75 years creating magnificent works of art. 

Born in 1925 in Taganrog, Russia (birthplace of Anton Chekov), my dad's family lived in Germany before emigrating to the United States. Making homes first in Jamaica, NY, and later in Sea Cliff, Long Island, Slava became a renowned and much sought-after art restorer, and an even more gifted artist. Many expert observers have likened his more abstract work (that he focused more and more on in the waning years of his life) as an additional layer to Kandinsky's already transcendent vision of color and energy. 

Sadly, almost incomprehensibly, my dad passed away on March 30, 2002, after a very long and painful bout with several forms of cancer. Seldom has a soul so bravely fought the miseries of this disease, or faced each new setback with as profound a grace and humor. Despite his enormous physical difficulties, Slava never strayed too far from his beloved studio, even as the already brief stretches of time his poor withered legs were able to support him kept right on diminishing. 

Everyone who has known this brilliant and humble man knows that they are forever blessed with the memory of a soul who, via his art, brought all of us a step closer to God. His eye for beauty, his deep resonance with nature's sacred patterns, and his gentle humility will be missed more than words alone can possibly convey. 

Many artists have come and gone, of course, and many creative people remain in our midst, but never again will the world's beauty be quite so radiant, and the portal to the spiritual realm quite so wide and inviting, as when this quiet, visionary genius was immersed and reveling in the creative process in his studio. 

My mom and I offer this book on the art and life of Sam Ilachinski both as a loving tribute to a beautiful soul, and as a portal for others to discover - and marvel at - the precious gifts he left behind.

The Art and Life of Sam Ilachinski by Katherine and Andy Ilachinski | Make Your Own Book

Postscript. In a bit of Jungian synchronicity (insofar as it was completely unplanned, at least consciously, by me), after nearly a decade of effort - writing, archiving, digitizing (old slides and film), restoring old pictures, and so on - the final words of the text and images for display were inserted midday on father's day, this past Sunday. My muse could not possibly have chosen any better day to mark the formal completion of this labor-of-love project.

"Synesthetic Landscapes" Portfolio Book Published

"…lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?" - Wassily Kandinsky

Those of you following my blog must know that - over the last few years (dating back to Dec 2009) - I've been consumed with capturing what I call "synesthetic landscapes." Synesthesia derives from the Greek syn = union + aisthaesis = sensation, and means "joined sensation." Such as when something that is ordinarily "seen" is tasted as well; though this hardly does justice to the psychological, creative - even mystical - experience of synesthesia (which I possessed until about the age of 10, during which I "saw" numbers as colors, the most common form of synesthesia). 

My experiments to recreate some semblance of these memories of the experience have technically consisted of using one "reality" - consisting of shallow depth-of-field, extreme macro (1x - 5x) photographs of mundane everyday objects, from curved reflecting metal surfaces to translucent colored glass bottles and glasses - to evoke an experience of another, less "obvious" landscape of the mind's eye. The result is synesthetic in the sense that, just as synesthetes use two or more senses other than the one nominally used to designate a given experience of an object to add to their experience of its ostensible "reality," my experimental images are designed to collectively evoke glimpses of surrealities by adding other - visually nonliteral - representational dimensions to our direct experience of reality.

The result is also an experiential synergy between two ostensibly different (but fundamentally intertwined) realities: one literal, and external - i.e., reflections and/or refractions from common everyday "things" - the other implied, and internal - i.e., ineffable landscapes of the imagination. (I should add, and emphasize, that while all the images in this series look like they are severely "Photoshopped," this is emphatically not so; digital manipulations are all deliberately confined to global curves, local tonal adjustment, and occasional noise removal. What you "see" is what is / was "really there," although what your experience of "it" will be ... will be whatever your "eye" and/or "I" will make it ;-)

Synesthetic Landscapes by Andy Ilachinski | Make Your Own Book

And so, for those of you interested in exploring my ongoing experiments with "synesthetic landscapes," I announce the publication of two portfolio editions: one small (consisting of about 40 images), the other large (consisting of 105 images, which includes all of those that appear in the "small" version). Both versions physically measure 7-by-7 inches (although a larger 12-by-12 inch version of the small portfolio edition is also available), come with soft- and hard-cover options, include an introductory essay on synesthesia and photography and an end-notes section that describes the process I used to capture these images (though this process continues to evolve, of course), and include a low-cost eBook edition (that is available as a direct download for Apple's iBooks).

"Color is the key.

The eye is the hammer. 

The soul is the piano with its many chords. 

The artist is the hand that, 

by touching this or that key, 

sets the soul vibrating automatically."

- Wassily Kandinsky

My Dad's Gentle Nudge Forward

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Postscript: Campbell's quote appears in my dad's handwriting on a yellowed strip of paper that accidentally fell out of page 133 of a book he bequeathed me - The Spiritual in Art - as I was thumbing through it for inspiration. Two other quotes adorn the page my dad evidently used Campbell's quote as a placeholder for (the bookmarked page is the first page of the chapter "Transcending the Visible" by Sixten Ringbom that appears on page 131 of the book). The first quote is a 1913 muse by Kandinsky that describes his early dilemma of understanding the "meaning" of an abstract work:

"A terrifying abyss of all kinds of questions, a wealth of responsibilities, stretched before me. And most important of all: what is to replace the missing object? The danger of ornament revealed itself clearly to me; the dead semblance of stylized forms I found merely repugnant... It took a very long time before I arrived at the correct answer to the question: What is to replace the object? I sometimes look back at the past and despair at how long this solution took me."

The second quote is by Georges Vantongerloo (1886-1965, Belgian abstract sculptor and painter): "The great truth, or the absolute truth, makes itself visible to our mind through the invisible."

The synchronicity of these quotes becomes clear when one is informed of these basic facts: (1) the title of my portfolio book is "Seeing the Invisible" (which I produced a few years ago, before knowing of this quote), (2) the very next "project" I am to embark on is an expansion of this same portfolio (the "Seeing the Invisible" project is literally the next item on the "to do" list looking up at me as I type these words), and (3) just yesterday, I chided myself with the words "Andy, why did it take so long?" after finally finding a way catalyze a new series of abstractions (and which will no doubt be the basis of a future blog post). Even after 10 years of not being by my side in person, my dad still somehow manages to find a way to gently nudge my art forward ;-)

Yves Klein, Arbitrary Labels, and the "Meta" Art of Displaying Art

This will likely read as an even more rambling blog entry than usual ;-) but there is simply no easier way to fuse the three ostensibly unrelated themes posited in the title than by the words I'm about to type into my iPad stream of consciousness style. So here goes...

Last week, my wife and I had the pleasure of seeing the Yves Klein exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC (for those of you with iPhones, iTunes has a wonderful app to allow you to experience the exhibit "virtually" on your iPhone). Yves Klein was a French "artist" born in Nice in 1928 and died, tragically young, of a heart attack in 1962. I put the word "artist" in quotes because Klein's "art" was - and is - notoriously difficult to pin down; he used so many different techniques and produced such a diverse oeuvre, that the word "artist" hardly does justice to what Klein really was (and for which I have no ready "label"). Even in describing his more "conventional" works - in which pigment is applied to a canvas - one wonders whether an asterisk (even a question mark!) should not accompany any description (see below). His works are all equal parts object and concept (or philosophy). Klein's works are best appreciated as transient artifacts - as snapshots in time - of a ceaseless process of creative exploration, unconfined to a single genre or single means of expression. Klein was in many ways the physical embodiment of an incorporeal creative force. His life was art, much more so - on a fundamental level - than any of the art works he had time to create.

Which brings us to the second theme of this blog entry, the arbitrariness of labels... One of the techniques Klein employed (often as a public performance to the delight of invited guests) was to have two or three nude women cover themselves with paint - typically a special "spiritually charged" hue of blue ...

"Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not.. ..All colors arouse specific associative ideas, psychologically material or tangible, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract." - Yves Klein (lecture at the Sorbonne, 1959)

...and proceed to "paint" canvases with their bodies. Sometimes the "painting" would be directed by Klein; sometimes it would be left up to the "body brushes" themselves. But in either case, Klein himself was but the creative fire behind a process that, once set in motion and because of the womens' active participation, was not entirely under his control. Which brings up a not so easy to answer question: in what sense can one say that the "finished artwork" (many fine examples of which are shown at the Hirshhorn exhibit, including a few wall-size videos of the process itself) is Klein's alone?

Klein also experimented with the use of fire as paint, was a photographer, and sometimes used the windshield of his car as an "abstract canvas" to capture the dynamic imprints of twigs and insects as the car careened on winding stormy roads.

"I dash out to the banks of the river ... and find myself amongst the rushes and the reeds. I grind some pigment over all this and the wind makes their slender stalks bend and appliqués them with precision and delicacy on to my canvas, which I thus offer to quivering nature: I obtain a vegetal mark. Then it starts to rain; a fine spring rain: I expose my canvas to the rain… …and I have the mark of the rain! – a mark of an atmospheric event." - Yves Klein

My wife (an art major in college) astutely asked whether the same question might be posed of Jackson Pollack, whose art also arguably depended at least in part on the vagaries of paint-globule-trajectories not under his control; or, indeed, of any artist whose works depend on processes not under their direct control (see Chance Aesthetics by Meredith Malone).

Language can be both surgically precise and woefully ambiguous (and sometimes, simultaneously both!) The labels we apply to things and processes are - as often as not - arbitrary, and are rarely more than simple caricatures of the real things and processes they are used to represent. This is never more true than when we apply labels to artists and the works they create. Certainly (?) Klein and Pollack (and Kandinsky, and Picasso, and my dad, Sam Ilachinski) are all "artists." But what does the label convey, apart from the fact that whatever it is their souls and activities share probably has little to do with building particle colliders (though this too is arguably an "artform" so that the overlap may not be as "small" as one first suspects... but we'll leave that discussion to a later time ;-) ? Is a "body art" painting by Klein a "painting by Klein"? Is it a "collaborative work of art" created partly by Klein and partly by his cadre of "body brushes"? Is Klein merely one "creative force" behind a painting that owes its existence (and meaning?) to multiple creative forces (in the case of his body art in particular, Klein is arguably the more passive of the many creative forces at work; or is he)? To what extent does the word "artist" signify what Klein really was (which, even from the brief sketch I've given above, it should be obvious that Klein was not your "typical" artist)? And for that matter, how many - ever more precise (?) - "labels" do we need to begin to capture "Klein as Klein" (and can that even really be done)?

In truth, the best we can do to represent - or to label - Klein, or any other artist (if we're honest), is to append to any symbolic signifier of Klein (a picture of him shortly before his death, say, or merely the word "Klein") Klein's complete creative oevre, from first doodles as a baby-Klein to the last half-completed sketch before his fatal heart attack at 34. Of course, even this is at best an incomplete record, since there are likely to be many more works that Klein had kept to himself, or destroyed, than exposed to public view (I know this to be a fact regarding my dad's lifework); but, certainly, the label "Klein" followed by a catalog of reproductions of his life's work better represent the "artist" Klein than the word "artist" alone.

Alas, even here there is a snag. For even if we managed to reproduce a complete record, we would still have to contend with the nontrivial problem of how to interpret - how to derive meaning - from the record in the manner in which it was constructed and displayed (which adds yet another layer of ambiguity and arbitrariness). Is a linear time-line "better" or "worse" than organizing according to theme and process? While creative works surely accrue in a "linear" fashion (for our hands can create only one work at a time), artists - especially "artists" like Klein - rarely work on a single project at a time, mentally and creatively juggling multiple simultaneous works. How can that complex dynamic inner process be captured in any static "record"? And yet, if it is not - and cannot - be captured, to what degree can any record of any artist's oeuvre truly capture the "artist"? Surely the way in which an artist's oeuvre is interpreted - and therefore how the "artist" is understood through his oeuvre - owes as much to how the oeuvre is organized - usually by someone other than the artist (though the same would be true even in the case where the artist organizes his or her own life's work) - as what is "in" it. Interpretation cannot proceed without both content and context (to which we must also add the context - and current state-of-mind - of the viewer!)

Which brings us to the third theme of this blog entry, the meta-art of displaying art...though we are dangerously close to encroaching on the formal study of semiotics - i.e., the study of signs and symbols (see Handbook of Semiotics by Winfried Noth), I will confine my musings to an observation my wife and I made at the Yves Klein exhibit. In one hall of the exhibit, the curators had beautifully arranged about 25 or 30 of Klein's smaller blue sculptures. It is a large semicircular room (following the circular contour of the Hirshhorn building), brightly lit, and painted a solid white from floor to ceiling. Each work rests on its own modest pedestal, ranging from about two to four feet in height, and relatively positioned in a more or less grid-like configuration, with bases extending from the floor at varying depths (as the main "base" of the exhibit is itself positioned at a slight incline). The effect is mesmerizing, as the roomful of small blue objects reveals itself as you step into this part of the exhibit. The arrangement is both inviting - as a whole - and seductive in compelling one to linger and admire the individual works. The question that immediately presents itself - on the meta-level - is the degree to which the artful arrangement of Klein's works colors and/or defines how one interprets them. Certainly, the effect - and subsequent interpretation - would have been dramatically different had my wife and I stepped into a room in which all of Klein's works were "arranged" in a disorganized pile in one corner. But what if the arrangement had been just as "artful" (why do we so seldom pay homage to the curator's meta-art of arranging other artists' "art"?), but had different lighting? Or a different relative positioning? Or a slightly different choice had been made as to what individual works to include from the exhibit? All of these particular choices would give the exhibit a different feel, and - more importantly - compel viewers to interpret "Klein the artist" in different ways.

However, lest one conclude from all of this that the best, and only, way to "know" an artist is to become the artist (much as Borges describes how a fictional Pierre Menard becomes Cervantes in order to be able to write Cervantes' Don Quixote), remember that the artist's own struggles to create - and which leave a trace of artifacts that others use to "understand" the artist - are also the artist's attempt to understand herself! So who knows the "real" artist?

"The essential of painting is that something, that 'ethereal glue,' that intermediary product which the artist secrets with all his creative being and which he has the power to place, to encrust, to impregnate into the pictorial stuff of the painting." - Yves Klein

Additional Reading. (1) Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers; (2) Yves Klein: Fire at the Heart of the Void; (3) Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium.

Postscript #1. One more thought on the meta-art of displaying art. Suppose one decides to curate an exhibit of the meta-art of curating. That is, to exhibit not the works of an artist, but the meta-art of a curator. How can such an exhibit to be organized? Does the curator (whose meta-art is going to be on display) do the curating? But then it's not so much an exhibit, as just "another day on the job" for the curator. Perhaps some other curator displays the first curator's exhibit. In which case, how might the viewer of the exhibit tell their "artworks" apart? And, for that matter, what actual physical "artwork" ought be displayed (certainly not the curator's, since the curator has no physically manifest "art" to display)? Or would there - in practice - be little difference between an exhibit of an "artist" and an exhibit of a "curator"? For example, take the roomful of 30 Klein-artworks. This room can be interpreted as both a Klein exhibit (as billed by the Hirshhorn) and as a Curator exhibit (who remains, sadly, unbilled). What if the artist is also a curator of her own art? And what of the architect - and lighting engineer, and floorboard installer, and... - who all play an important part in setting the mood...? Ambiguitity upon ambiguity ad infinitum ;-)

Postscript #2. As an example of "bad" - or "misrepresentational" - curatorship, consider the display of one of Klein's "participatory sculptures" at the Hirshhorn exhibit. The "sculpture" is actually invisible (indeed, neither my wife nor I "saw" it), since it was deliberately designed by Klein to be enclosed within a solid white box (on a stand, about at chest-level), with holes poked in the sides so that the viewer can feel the sculpture with her fingers after extending her arms through the holes. What was amusing is that the Hirshhorn's exhibit includes a sign expressly forbidding any touching. Viewers may admire the outside of Klein's "participatory sculpture," but are not allowed to "see" the sculpture with their fingers as Klein had intended. If all art is an artifact of the creative process, then this particular artifact of Klein's art was, at best, an artifact of an artifact. I suspect that Klein would not have reacted positively to such an "exhibit" of his art!

...and Discovers Synesthetic Landscapes

"A gift exists that is unclear to science.
One hears a sounds but recollects a hue,
invisible the hands that touch your heartstrings.
Not music the reverberations that ensue within;
they are of light. Sounds that are colored,

an enigmatic sonnet was addressed to you
that scintillate like an iridescent poem

by Arthur Rimbaud, their land's conniving crony.
Besides that, there are colors that have sound.
On limpid, melancholy days

in autumn upon the purple of a maple leaf
I seem to hear the tremulous and

distant hollow re-echo of a horn.
The beauty fades, transformed to simple tunes
a crystal ringing in dahlia's fiery facets,
I perceive, on dry grass midst the cobwebs' motley weave."

- (a 19 yo) VLADIMIR NOBOKOV
(writing about summers spent at his family's estate near St. Petersburg, Russia)

Synesthesia derives from the Greek syn = union + aisthaesis = sensation, and means "joined sensation." Such as when something that is ordinarily "seen" is tasted as well. Though, this hardly does justice to the psychological, creative - even mystical - experience of synesthesia. There are well-documented examples of almost all possible joinings of the senses - smelling sounds, hearing colors, feeling shapes, etc. Apart from Nobokov, other well known synesthetes include Wassily Kandinsky, David Hockney, Richard Feynman, and Alexander Scriabin. Contemporary "synesthetic" artists include Carol Steen and Marcia Smilack. In my case, I vividly remember having synesthetic experiences early in my life (up until about 10 or so), when I routinely perceived numbers (and, less frequently, letters) as colors. Sadly, I now only rarely experience this phenomenon.

It is only relatively recently that MRI scans have unequivocally revealed that synesthesia is a real - not imagined - experience, indicating that the senses in synesthetes are actually neurologically connected. Before this time, research consisted largely of self-reports by synesthetes; made all the more difficult by the fact that the experience itself was by no means universally accepted as real (and the people who stepped forward to share their experiences were often either ignored or ridiculed or both). In fact, modern research suggests that as many as 1 in 100 people may have some degree of synesthesia. Two excellent references on the subject are Wednesday is Indigo Blue by Robert Cytowic and David Eagleman (a video of Dr. Eagleman discussing synesthesia may be seen here), and The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science, by Cretien van Campen. There is also a recent catalog of artwork that appeared at the Synesthesia: Art and Mind exhibit at the McMaster Museum of Art (held in 2008 at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario); and curated by Greta Berman and Carol Steen (who, as mentioned earlier, is herself a synesthete). So far as I know, this is the only art exhibit to focus exclusively on synesthesia!

To the extent that an important part of art - any art, including photography - involves finding ways of communicating one point of view (or "sense experience") - namely, that of the artist - to another (the viewer) - a "mixing of senses", in a sense ;-) it should come as no surprise that, conceptually speaking, all artists implicitly strive to induce synesthesic experiences. To be sure, the resulting experience is usually hardly even noticeable and impure at best, if for no other reason than the fact that the "experience" as such is diluted between two internal worlds, that of the artist and viewer (i.e.,, there is no direct commingling or "joining" of simultaneous senses). Still, I've often wondered just how far the analogy may actually go? Perhaps the fact that the universe so obviously delights in having so many conscious creatures around - that themselves delight in sharing their collective experiences and inner-states via art - is an indication that nature herself is an accomplished synesthete of the highest order (and that we are her senses)?

Might it be possible for an artwork, W, created by a visual artist, X (where W is thought of as a manifest symbol of X's original experience e(X) that motivated X to create the artwork in the first place), to evoke a similar experience / inner-state e(Y) ~ e(X) in Y by synesthetically activating certain of Y's senses other than the purely visual (the latter of which is ostensibly the only sense required to "observe" X's artwork)? One could argue that this is just a complicated way of stating what all (good?) art has always done. Namely, to act as a visual stimulus (catalytic agent?) that activates all (or most) of a viewer's senses to induce a desired experience, or state-of-awareness. I am not suggesting that one must directly (or consciously) "hear" or "taste" a Pollock to fully experience one of his paintings. But it is interesting to speculate whether (and/or to what extent) all "deep experiences" of visual forms of art involve synesthetic intermingling of senses (perhaps on the unconscious level). Perhaps the same MRI studies that are used to discern the physiological basis of synesthetic experiences in synesthetes can be applied to studying the neurological processes underlying a deep immersion in, and experience of, art by ordinary (i.e., non-synesthete) viewers?

I have assembled a small portfolio of what I call Synesthetic Abstracts (a smaller sampling is also available as a portfolio on Facebook). It is an experiment in applying photography of the small and mundane (technically, macros of diffuse reflections of scattered everyday objects from curved metal surfaces, captured using very shallow depth of field) to evoke an experience of mysterious, ethereal grandeur. The portfolio is "synesthetic" in the sense that, just as synesthetes use two or more senses to represent an ostensible "reality," the images in this portfolio collectively evoke an experience of reality as induced by two vastly different representational forms (one literal - reflections off curved metal - the other implied - ineffable landscapes of the imagination). Although this "explanation" may inspire more confusion than insight into synesthesia, at least I'm finally paying attention to my infinitely patient muse ;-)

Postscript #1. Here is an additional link to a thoughtful paper on synesthesia and art: Art and Synesthesia: in Search of the Synesthetic Experience, by Dr. Hugo Heyrman (this last link contains a motherload of references to research on synesthesia), a lecture presented at the First International Conference on Art and Synesthesia (25th - 28th July, 2005 - Universidad de Almería, Spain). Finally, here is a link to Synesthesia List, which is an an international e-mail forum, for connecting synesthetes with each other and with those researching synesthesia. Among the links provided there is a four part video of a lecture Dr. Cytowic recently gave at the Hirshhorn (here is Part 1).

Postscript #2. See Sensory hijack - rewiring brains to see with sound and a Kandinsky-inspired synesthetic game called Rez.

Experience = f(Photograph; Context, Interpretation)

In a recent blog entry ("Photography as Transcendence"), I presented what I believe is one core component of what distinguishes "fine-art" photography from a "photograph" (even an otherwise technically well executed one). I wrote that the finest photography makes you forget you are looking at a photograph and makes you experience it as if it were real; as if you were a part of it. The example I used was (indeed, the whole blog entry was based on) a nude portrait taken by one of the photographers at the photography Co-op I belong to. As such, it was obviously representational; which prompted at least one reader to ask whether I was implicitly arguing that the "finest photography" must depict something real, since how else can the viewer feel she is "one" with the work?

My answer is that photography obviously need not be restricted in any way in what it represents, or how it represents it. Even the word "photography" is needlessly restrictive. It is useful only insofar as it "points to" something someone has created (which the world calls a "photograph"). But once the physical object is created, the word "photograph" has served its purpose and can be safely discarded. It is the object we care about; or, more precisely, the affect the object has on us, as viewers. Of course, the degree to which one viewer "feels as one" with a photograph always depends on the viewer's particular predilections and aesthetics. Ardent admirers of Andy Warhol generally react markedly differently to a given image (whatever the image!) than admirers of the art of Wassily Kandinsky. But that is the whole point; a point that - upon deeper reflection - may hint at the embryonic stirrings of an experiential equation of aesthetics:

Before I explain some of the (obvious?) parts of this equation, let me quickly get the "f" (= "function") out of the way. Feel free to disregard it. It is inserted merely as a philosophical placeholder, and for completeness. It reminds us that there is "something" that binds and equates the two sides, but its precise makeup is (for our purposes here) unimportant. It is exceedingly unlikely to have a nice, mathematically well-defined definition. In fact, the best description of what it is a placeholder for is a "human observer" (of "photograph"); and no one, so far as I know (with the possible exception of Stephen Wolfram, developer of Mathematica and the soon-to-be-released Wolfram Alpha), has yet been bold enough to posit a "function" for a human being.

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness." - Albert Einstein

So what do I mean by this equation? I mean that - ultimately - that the only experience that is of any lasting consequence to an observer viewing a photograph (or any work of art; or anything!) is the experience itself. That is to say, after all is said and done, after an observer "views" an artwork, the only thing that matters to that observer, the only thing that is of any lasting value, is how - from the observer's own inner point of view - the observer has changed as a consequence of experiencing the artwork. No one can say what that experience will be like, beforehand. The observer is able to reflect back on what the experience was like - on what the artwork means - only after experiencing it (which involves recursive feedback loops on nested experiences, meta-experiences, and the like; none of which we'll get into here). But the observer will be changed in some way. She may be happy, sad, puzzled, angry, detached, thoughtful, tearful, sardonic, ..., or (though unlikely) she may remain completely unchanged, save for the memory of having physically interacted with the artwork. And it is the way in which our ineffable inner state - our prison-like solitary experience of "I-ness" - changes as a function of our viewing of an artwork that defines what that artwork means to us, as viewers.

The left-hand-side of the equation thus represents the inner experience that a viewer has of an observed artwork. The "Photograph" is the physical photograph, and is perhaps the only part of the equation that may be described with something approaching a mathematical rigor. It represents the tangibly objective properties of an image. The paper it appears on, the color dyes and pigments it is imprinted with, its tonal range and contrast levels, and - to some degree - the "things" it depicts (either representationally or non-representationally, as "abstract" shapes and forms; defined mechanically, as by a digital scanner).

The "Context" refers to (1) the context in which the photograph itself appears (perhaps as one of a series of related images, or some other over-arching portfolio of images; is it hanging in a gallery? is it a stray remnant of a discarded box of old polaroids? a web-only image on some unknown photographer's photo-blog?); and (2) the context in which the observer finds herself in while viewing the image, which itself includes both inner and outer dimensions. Is the observer in a gallery setting? is it a private viewing with family and co-workers (the latter set including people to whom she is not as "close")? has she just had lunch with a friend and is in a good mood? has she recently had a spat with her mom and is feeling sad? has she had a long interest in photography, or is perhaps herself a photographer, or is her interest more fleeting?

Finally, "Interpretation" refers to how the viewer interprets the artwork; or the (inner) meaning she ascribes to the work. Interpretation refers to how she really "sees" the work; not necessarily how the work "really" is (objectively speaking, as defined by its physical dimension, the "Photograph"). Note that the viewer does not have to (and, in general, may not even be able to) "see" any of the objectively-hidden "subjective" dimensions of an image, if there are any. Think of the well-known "Hidden Dalmation" image which consists of black and white patches, and may be "seen" as such by some viewers; or may be "seen" as a dalmation by others. The "Photograph" dimension of this experience is the objective image; the "Interpretation" dimension is either "seeing black and white patches" or "seeing a dalmation" (and its attendant associations: does the viewer like dalmations? is she afraid of them? does it remind her of a childhood incident that, by itself, has nothing to do with dalmations or dogs of any kind?...)

"All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the contents of these sense-experiences. If, therefore, we wish to grasp the essence of a complex of abstract notions we must for the one part investigate the mutual relationships between the concepts and the assertions made about them; for the other, we must investigate how they are related to the experiences." - Albert Einstein

What the equation E=f(P:C,I) suggests is that whatever an observer experiences by viewing a photograph (or any artwork) is a (likely very complicated) function of (1) the photograph itself, as a physical object; (2) the inner emotional and outer environmental contexts in which the viewer is situated in while viewing the photograph; and (3) the interpretation that the viewer ascribes to the photograph (which, since it is also a function of multiple factors, may be but only one exemplar - true for a given context - of a possibly vast set of alternative interpretations by the same observer).

On a trivial level, we've simply decomposed a single dimension ("Experience") into three. As an academic exercise, it focuses attention on some of the basic factors that influence how we view art in general. Other writers, considerably more esteemed than I (and with deeper results), have gone through this exercise before. For example, the well-known photographer / photography theorist Stephen Shore, in his book The Nature of Photographs, introduces a similar set of factors (that he calls "levels") for interpretating an image: the physical level, the depictive level, the mental level, and mental modeling. Each depicts one of the four core elements of an image: vantage point, frame, focus and time. John Szarkowski, the late great photography historian / curator / critic, in his The Photographers Eye, suggests five dimensions: the thing itself, the detail, the frame, time, and vantage point. But however you slice the dimensions - one can always add or subtract to taste - such decompositions, if done thoughtfully, are useful because they partly disentangle the otherwise messy soup of objective and subjective factors that define our overall experience of an artwork.

But what I am after here is subtly different. Assuming that the experience of an artwork is the most meaningful dimension (though, as we've discussed, it too has an ephemeral nature, and may take on added dimensions as the same observer "views" an artwork at different times and in different contexts), what the equation leaves the door open for - at least formally - is the possibility that the same overall experience may result from many different combinations of photograph, context, and interpretation.

Think about that for a moment. Suppose the "Experience" is "feeling joyful, imagining you are in a field of Gold, without a care in the world, and being suddenly transfixed by the notion of Buddhist impermanence" (or anything else, for specificity;-). What gave you this experience? Perhaps it was looking at Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez" at the Smithsonian (where an original print was recently on display, and which induced roughly the same "inner experience" in me as I was viewing it). Although we are conditioned to think of our experience - after the fact - as being synonymous with what we were viewing (when asked, we reply: "I was looking at the Ansel Adams exhibit"), the more personally meaningful symbolic (and literal) token of our experience is the memory of the experience itself. It is the memory of what we felt as we were viewing whatever we were viewing; the state of mind we were in, cognitively, intuitively, and emotionally. (For mathematically inclined readers, this is essentially the art-equivalent of taking a Fourier transform between, say, momentum and position space in physics. The respective spaces represent two views of the same system; and do so in a way that preserves information. In our case, "information" is equivalent to "experience," and the function "f" hints at a Fourier-transform-like "experience preserving" sloshing back-and-forth among three dimensions.)

Now imagine - perhaps in some distant time, when evolution has worked its magic on our cognitive / emotional / aesthetic processing abilities - we are able to recall experiences as readily as we now recall things and events. Were we such creatures, we would not care whether the "thing" was the "Moonrise, Hernandez" by Ansel Adams (or the "event" a showing at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC in 2008); we would care - and remember - only that there was a moment in our lives when we felt "joyful, imagined we were in a field of Gold, were without a care in the world, and were suddenly transfixed by the notion of Buddhist impermanence." But so many other combinations of photograph, context, and interpretation could have put us into the same state! Depending on the person, perhaps Minor White's "Capitol Reef, Utah (1962)," viewed on a computer monitor late at night could induce essentially the same experience. Generalizing further, perhaps the same experience may also be had by listening to, say, Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata with a group of close friends at a local country concert hall.

Getting back to - and expanding upon - the main thesis of the earlier blog entry, I now state the main conjecture of this blog entry: the finest photography consists of those images that - for the broadest possible set of contexts and interpretations - yield the most meaningful experiences in the broadest class of observers. Note that the class of "finest photographs" is emphatically not defined solely by the physical dimension of any one photograph; and - critically - includes the observer. "Moonrise, Hernandez" - arguably a fine example of "fine photograph" in the Western world ;-) may rank somewhat lower among the Aka People of Africa (whose collective "aesthetics" are probably quite different from ours). Photograph and viewer are - must be - inextricably interwoven and coupled. A "photograph" has no more a single interpretation, and entails no more of a single experience, than a human is defined by a single inner state and experiences life as a single event (though some mystics claim that is precisely what life is). What a photograph "is" (to an observer) depends on - and is, in turn, shaped by - how the observer experiences the photograph; which henceforth becomes part of the observer, and helps shape what other photographs "will be" and the manner in which they, too, will shape the observer.

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive." - Joseph Campbell

Taking a cue from Campbell, we can rephrase the main conjecture of this blog entry as follows: the finest photography consists of those images that - for the broadest possible set of contexts and interpretations - induce the richest, deepest feelings of being alive in the broadest class of observers.

Thought Experiment #1: What would an artwork that depicts all of the possible artworks, in all of the possible contexts and interpretations that a given observer might ascribe to them, look like, starting with - as an example - Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez"? How would an observer of Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez" experience this meta artwork? Is there a Borgesian Aleph of art?

Thought Experiment #2: This blog entry has introduced a formal destinction between a "fine art photograph" and a (run of the mill?) "photograph" as defined for a group of observers. An obvious question is, what does this distinction entail for the individual observer? Folloing our formulation, we speculate that an observer - say the artist herself? - seeks that combination of artwork, context and interpretation (as any other observer does, of course) that induces the richest, deepest feeling of being alive. Here's a thought experiment: thinking only of yourself as observer (no collective "averaging" is being done here!...this is you we're talking about!), what would you imagine that artwork to look like that - out of all possible artworks that you can possibly create in this lifetime, and that you can observe in all conceivable contexts so as to form all imaginable interpretations - is the one that makes you feel most alive? Now go out and create it....

Postscript: the image posted at the top of this blog entry is a triptych of photographs of moonlight, reflected in Lake Saranac, in the Adirondacks NY. The images were taken from a series captured during a single, exceptionally clear night in August, 2008.