Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
radically different stages because each new element precipitates overall
reorganization. At each stage the organism must be unified.
(5) My approach differs from that of psychologists like Bach, Hammer, and
Furth. These authors work with a spontaneous drawing, or 'picture from the
unconscious', analyzing the symbolic meaning of the picture's subject matter.
Plastic form does not depend on subject matter. These authors also analyze the
structure of a spontaneous drawing but such structure is the product of
unconscious or 'instinctive' impulse alone. Plastic structure is built up in stages
and reworked repeatedly. Instinct makes the artist sensitive to the unity of the
canvas and suggests what must be added next. But each instinctive impulse is
tested again and again by trial and error.
(6) A plastic painting grows organically and its organization resembles that of a
living organism (see overall unity; evolves; Creating pictorial space; unified
structure.) Since a living organism is a dynamic system, it seems that a plastic
painting is also a dynamic system, or that its evolution on the canvas is the
evolution of a dynamic system which includes both painter and painting. But the
personality is also a dynamic system. This may account for the homology: all
dynamic systems self-organize according to a common set of principles |57|.
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