The Law of Constancy, Abstraction & The Toll on the Individual

1) The Law of Constancy

According to neurologist Semir Zeki of London University, the brain searches for constancy in an environment that is ever changing. It does this so that it is able to recognize objects irrespective of variations in light, perspective, distance. this is also true for situatins and people. The brain can recognize an individual regardless of their emotion and a situation irrespective of its mood or ambiance.

In other words, the brain seeks what is the essence of things. For example, the essence of an object should enable you to identify that object under any circumstances. In order to do this the essence of an object or person or situation should somehow contain all variations possible, and yet still be recognizable. It is this recognizable state that the brain seeks. The question that now interests us is, what would these essences created by the brain look like?

Zeki gives the example of the early cubist painters such as Picasso and Braque. Picasso's Démoiselles d'Avignon (1907) is the first example of 'simultaneous vision'. The face of the figure on the far right is distorted. Here the artist has attempted to portray several angles of the face on the same plane. A very dramatic example of this is in Picasso's later work, Frauenbildnis. This technique was used extensively and is exemplified in the painting Man with Violin.

Both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso produced paintings using similar colors and techniques. It is as though the subjects had been broken up and the pieces then scattered onto the canvass. It was the hope, according to Zeki, that the spectator would be able to reconstruct the image.

This technique has very limited success and most observers of the painting would not know what the subject was without the title. So, for Zeki the cubists failed to extract and represent the essences, although others may well have succeeded both prior to and after their period.

Vermeer’s Girl with Pearl Earring is the essence of the artist’s daughter. That is, it contains all the emotions she is capable of displaying in a single two dimensional representation.

When this painting is shown to a class of students asked to describe what the girl is feeling and thinking, there is rarely any agreement. Answers are usually extremely variable. They range from happiness, boredom, surprise, fear, love, to sadness and on the verge of tears. How is this possible?

When students were asked to explain their answers, their classmates were able to see what they meant. The most frequent explanation given by students is that the girl reflects the emotion expressed or felt by the spectator. This means that the way we interpret the painting is ever changing.

However, Zeki’s explanation is that we are able to see a certain number of expressions in the painting and agree with other people, but not entirely. It is the lack of complete agreement that reveals genetic variability from individual to individual. He comments that according to Charles Darwin any organ that shows such a high degree of variation is one that is evolving very quickly.

In regard to Vermeer's famous painting Zeki's explanation is unlikely given the fact that people can usually see what others see. If interpretation was genetically determined I cannot imagine that this would be possible.


The Law of Abstraction

Abstraction is the process of generalization; that is, it is the reduction of a complex forms to their most basic elements. It differs from the search for constancy described in the previous unit, in that it is concerned with global reality whereas constancy is concerned with the particular.

In a sense abstraction is the search for the “essence of global reality”. With this we could explain everything. Physicists are in search of the formula that will explain everything, the silver bullet or Holy Grail of science. Such a formula will take into account the elements that conform to the general models but notably those that do not, the outlying points.

The easiest way to understand this is the abstract paintings of landscapes. Landscapes are extremely complex. Each one is replete with millions of particular elements. These include its geology, physical geography, its natural history which is comprised of all its biological components including plants and animals and so on. If it is an urban landscape or “cityscape” it includes architectural and urban planning features. It may also comprise elements relating to social phenomenon, such as the living conditions of different social groups. It is impossible for the brain to focus on all these 'particulars', simply because it has a limited capacity. Instead what it does is it tries to get a general impression of the assembly or the totality of all the objects and life forms present. It is this that painters from Cezanne to Mondrian attempted to do.

The abstract artists focused on either/or the line, the edge and the circle believing that these were the most basic of forms. Malevich believed that his paintings could be understood and appreciated by all people irrespective of culture. This was because the basic forms that were contained in his paintings were innate. What did he mean by this?

In order to understand this it is necessary to go into to some philosophy. We will firstly look at Plato’s world of perfect ideas followed by Aristotle’s perfect reason. this will be the subject of the next lesson.

The toll on the individual

Creation of synthetic ideals generates malaise. This is because the individual is surrounded by particulars, and not elegant generalities or abstractions of reality that our minds create. These ideals give us a discontentment with reality and lead to the pursuit of perfection and betterment, but also theymay engender consumerism.

Zeki believes that art exists to provide relief. In reproducing these ideal forms we can a last see them in the real world.