The Diversity of the Visual Form

Purpose

The purpose of this work is to entice a need for visual knowledge, with a view to avoid the

destruction of form through violent actions and to stimulate rethinking, analytic decomposition and

artistic re-composition based on harmonious premises. This allows the cooperation of methods and a

balanced syncretism of the constituents involved. Therefore, original solutions, referencing fractals and

gesture extensions may appear widely; the incidence percentages of the ordering and random factors

determine the resulting artistic and visual aspects.

Objectives

The objectives of the Continuum concept are the development of visual artistic creativity. The target

groups are people without professional artistic experience whose awareness can be raised towards the

diversity of visual artistic forms with reference to natural forms and to forms created by artists.

Methodologies and results

Enticing a taste for analysis and comparison of diverse visual forms can stimulate, at any age,

receptive mental attitudes, of contemplation and research, in nature, life and art. Simultaneously or as a

follow-up, creative actions are achievable both through initial ludic, free, entertaining approaches of

playing with visual forms, as well as through induced and proposed problem settings of approaching

and constituting groups of forms with certain meanings and also artistic solutions. The popularization

of a set of activities from the author’s own artistic creation, a set of works entitled Continuum, supports

the plea for the aesthetically non-invasive diversity of the visual form .

In his The origin of the form in art, in an exploration beyond the youthful consideration of the

artistic act gratuity, Herbert Read (Read 1971), states that art is an ordering , through the creation of

form and beauty, and at the same time a model for the social conscience. Form is defined as a result of

the entire creation process, from the idea that generated the artwork to the total number of language

means that shape the work – color, line, volume etc.

Our life is an educational continuum , even if we are not always aware of this fact or accept its

evidence and rigors. We live in a time ruled by the visual, in which images embrace, subdue and absorb

us.

Visual artistic creation correlates with the natural geographic and biological context and with the

historical, social, political, religious and cultural ones; this general context is echoed in the artwork as

the incidence of the environment over the artist. The visual forms through which the artists express

themselves are a result of the respective incidence, filtrated through the peculiarities of one’s own

personality; each artist seeks one’s own path through a cluster of virtual possibilities.

The path of shaping the forms that ultimately define a style can be found, in the process of time,

through successive, intuitive and/or deliberate explorations, in a theoretical and practical sense;

alternatively, it can appear as a derivative of a concept, pre-established in a certain time and space, an

ideational base that imposes certain regulations or rules of visualization (as in Ancient Egypt, for

instance). Most of the time, the two alternatives intertwine and the artist opts, unconditioned or

conditioned by circumstances, with varying degrees of subtlety, for a canon, current, fashion or style.

With references to Postmodernism (a cumulation of syncretic artistic manifestations, polarized

internationally), my proposal of Continuum represents an ensemble of double-sided paintings. The

bidimensional modules, conceived and painted on both sides, were reshaped compositionally (photos in

Figure 3 ); they were based on the concept of open creativity suggested to the viewers. The latter can

interact with the painted ensemble of modules and enlarge the range of compositional altenatives, both

bidimensionally and tridimensionally; this extends the diversity of artistic expression. The idea is

inspired from the diversity of the visual form, natural and created by human beings, spontaneous and

deliberate.

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The Continuum presented in this paper is a double-faced compositional suggestion in itself. It has a

pattern of forms and colours capable of generating other forms which, in their turn, can be assembled

from these components. Almost modules, but still not identical as form, they allow for different

assembling, in relation to one face or another, or with both of them at the same time. The result, that is

the re-shaping, plane or space stylization, allows for natural and man-made forms. Structurally, the

continuities and discontinuities of the composing forms can exist within the forms concurrently. The

opening of a wing, the rhythm of a wave, the approximation of a human silhouette, a tree, a mountain,

a butterfly, a cross form, a roof, a building, a boat, a book and other forms of images that could be

obtained from the Continuum components show that the replacing of the direct, explicitly narrative

representations, with an indirect, allusive representation highlights the symbol as a means for the life of

ideas and stimulates of the perceptive and creative imagination. Thus, the symbolic configurations are

not only those obtained from the concept’s semantic inner structure towards the exteriorization to the

receptors, but also in the other way around: from the results of the associating the elements available

towards the mental re-creation of certain connotations, induced to the author of the works as well as to

the potential beholders-authors. This takes place exactly through the re-composition of plastic solutions

of some already formed forms.

However, these new forms are not cut-outs or variants or associations of borrowed artistic

visualizations, as they are personally conceived. The forms presented and recombined here remind one

of the post-modernist taste for compositional experiments, used as ways of creativity which visualize

and offer a semantic enrichment to some personal artistic suggestions. The idea of pictorial modules

offers the possibility for a variety of assemblies and shifts in connotation. The generalizing and

monumental, initially ludic Continuum is transformed into particular assemblies. Each of the latter

reveals a much closer meaning, through the same plastic elements as in the basic format, of a different

composition as compared to its primordial specific, visual and ideational semantics.

The Universe is reflected in us – in our physical and psychic structure, in our intrinsic order and

disorder - and its creation, in the rhythms, symmetries, asymmetries and everything that pulsates,

appears and transforms within each human being. Resonance logic is present everywhere in the visual

forms of reality and in those which make up the artistic aspects in time and space.

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The painting that includes organic and angular forms from the Continuum modular ensemble is

made on wooden panels using geometrical and stylized shapes. These shapes can be recomposed into a

square (Figure 2 ), in a continuum of a frieze or in other bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional, free and

rhythmical associations (Figure 1 , 2, 3 and 4). These suggest nature-created and human-made forms.

The hypothesis can be applied, therefore, not only to painting, but also to sculpture and to the dynamic

possibilities of the programmed movement of some parts (through turns and balance for instance). In

this way, art and technicality merge into a visual performance in which borders between artistic

expressions are blurred. The dimensions of the forms may also vary, from monumental – aesthetic to

miniature – functional. The perception and artistic expression also uses the ludic state, irrespective of

the age of the viewer who might act upon it. Every work or piece from the Continuum painted modular

ensemble can be perceived both separately and in relation to the others. The sections or the painted

modular works have symbols with different semantics. They recompose and bring in new symbolism

and shape images suggestive of cosmic and earth aspects. The images convey the impression of

movement, continuity, of random and ordered situations, of rhythmic pulsation, of composition and

decomposition in diverse elements, with visual resemblances and differences. The name of the

Continuum concept used to entitle the personal ensemble of modular proposals and visual-artistic

works previously presented was derived from the very possibility of endless ways of reception of given

visual forms.