Abstraction and Art

BY BERNARD GORTAIS

Multimedia designer and painter artist, researcher attached to the Computer Science
Laboratory (Paris 6 University), 4, place Jussieu, Paris 75005, FRANCE, and to the
Computer Methods Laboratory (Evry University), LaMI - UMR 8042, CNRS /
Université Evry-Val d'Essonne , 523, Place des 91000 Evry, FRANCE

1. ABSTRACT

In a given social context, artistic creation is made up of a set of processes

which relate to the activity of the artist and the activity of the spectator.
Through these processes we see and understand that the world is vaster than
it is said to be. Artistic processes are mediated experiences that open up the
world. A successful work of art expresses a reality beyond actual reality, it
suggests an unknown world using the means and the signs of the known
world. Artistic practices incorporate the means of creation developed by
science and technology and change forms as they change. Artists and the
public follow different processes of abstraction at different levels, in the
definition of the means of creation, of representation and of perception of a
work of art. This paper examines how the processes of abstraction are used
within the framework of the visual arts and abstract painting which
appeared during a period of growing importance of the processes of
abstraction in science and technology at the beginning of the 20 th century.
The development of digital platforms and new man-machine interfaces allow
multi-media creations. This is done under the constraint of phases of
pluridisciplinary conceptualisation using generic representation languages
which tend to abolish traditional frontiers between the arts: visual arts,
drama, dance, music.

Key words 
Abstraction, lyric abstraction, geometric abstraction, art, multimedia,
perception, process, reality, relation, representation.

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2. INTRODUCTION

Before adressing the question of the use of abstraction in the arts, it is

necessary to try to show how a work of art is distinguished from another
object. By definition the word "art" (ars in Latin and   techné  in Greek) means
trade, know-how, effective and skillful transformation. Art is not produced
by nature, it is not a given. It is the root of the word  "artificial" although all
that is skillful or artificial is not art and we have to take care not to confuse
artefact and work of art. The most significant aspect of a work of art is not
the know-how or the process itself. The seal or signature of the artist does not
help to define something as a work of art because, if we look at history, many
works of art were produced by slaves, artisans or workers. The pyramids in
Egypt, many sculptures in ancient Greece, the building and decoration of the
cathedrals during the Middle-Ages are good examples. Neither can one say
that the artist is an artisan who has genius because, unlike artisans, many
artists are unable to find the conditions which enabled them to create a
particular work of art. The is not defined by its means of production either
the dadaïsts1 showed with their "ready mades", the first industrial objects to
be exhibited as works of art, by being diverted from their normal use or
simply taken out of context.
Can one therefore say that a work of art is defined by its beauty? For Kant 2
beauty is the experience of the "free and harmonious play of imagination and
of comprehension". There is no such thing as objective criteria of beauty by
which to measure an artist : if there were, freedom to create would no longer
exist. Beauty is not a property of the work of art but a feeling which results
from the relationship between the subject and the representation of the
object. Representation in art means making present something which was not
present before, it means making something perceptible to the senses (but not
necessarily intelligible) which was not perceptible before. This something is
made present and perceptible by an object which is its sign. A work of art
may even represent nothing other than itself and express an idea or a feeling
in perceptible form, etc. To paraphrase Paul Klee3, art does not express that
which is visible one but makes it visible. A work of art is thus the
objectivation (representation in the form of an object or an event) of a
subjective relationship to the world by means of expression that are
perceptible to the senses.
Representation through imitation is doomed to failure. Imitation is always
disappointing because it is less than the real object. Artistic techniques are
not reproductive techniques. The desire to imitate leads to the representation
1 Artistic movement 1918-1921.

2 German philosophe (Königsberg 1724 – id, 1804).

3 Artist, german art theorist (Munchenbuschsee, near Berne, 1879 – Muralto-Locarno, 1940).

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 of appearances. The majority of artists and philosophers agree on this point:
"art exists at the very minute that the artist deviates from nature. That by
which he deviates gives him the right to live" said Jean Cocteau 4 in The
Difficulty of Being. "To write is not to describe. To paint is not to depict.
Similarity is only trompe-l’œil" said Georges Braque5.

Figure 1 - Michel Angelo, "The last judgement" Figure 2 - Giacometti, "The walker"

Paradoxically, it is through the deformation that art makes living reality

perceptible. Michel-Angelo’s6 characters of the Last judgement7 are monstrous
but they give the impression of heavenly wrath and Giacometti’s 8 thread-like
walker with both feet cast in the base seems to move in eternity. Our
subjective relationship to the world is often expressed and represented by
deformation and by the use of codes and rules which constitute languages.
It is these languages that enable us to identify the different styles and schools
of art. The discontinuities of language are often the signs of cultural changes.
Art does not not copy reality and its true function is not to represent it; it
does so incidentally in figurative painting, but it can also radically do
without as in "abstract" painting. The function of a work of art is not to
represent reality and the reference to the real world is not central. Its function
is to make the artist’s relationship to the world perceptible through symbolic
signs that objectify it. As a symbolic device, art, whether figurative or not, is
an abstraction. A work of art is a collection of subjective relations, an
interface between levels of consciousness in a shifting context. It is on this
context that the codes, languages, rites, techniques which enable the creation
of the work of art and its relation with a public depend. For the artist, the
relation is the production process itself, for the public the relation is the
perception process in its context. The elements of the context form a dynamic
complex system and these elements change at different speeds. Some, over a

4 French artist and writer (Maison-Laffitte, 1889 – Milly-la-Forêt, 1963).

5 French artist (Argenteuil, 1882-Paris, 1963).
6 Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, artist ant italian architect (Caprese, près d'Arezzo, 1475 — Rome, 1564).

7 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Last Judgment1537-41, fresco, Cappella Sistina, Vatican.

8 Swiss painter and scuptor (Stampa, Grisons, 1901 – Coire, 1966).

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 given period of time, will be regarded as invariants, whereas others vary
over the same period. In the language of visual arts, for example, the formats
of the different supports have retained over the centuries the same
significance as far as the symbolism of the vertical and the horizontal are
concerned. They can be considered as invariants over this period whereas the
use of colours and forms frequently changes.
We perceive more than we realize. Works of art bring out certain aspects of
reality which were not perceptible before. They express, but no in so many
words, that the world is vaster than we believe, "If we go further into what
we feel in front of a Turner 9 or a Corot10, we will find that if we accept them
and admire them, it is because we had already perceived something of what
they are showing us. But we had perceived without seeing" wrote Bergson 11
in Thought and Movement.

Figure 3 - Artistic relations are

symbolised by the relations between the
three apexes of the triangle located in a
context. The interactivity of these terms
varies considerably depending of the
artistic domain and technology used.

In this paper:

artist means any person or group of persons who generates a work of
art deliberately, watheever the method ;
 work of art means any permanent or transitory object or device which
enable the artist and/or the public to have an artistic experience ;
 public means any person or groups of persons who establishes a
relation with the work of art ;
 context means all the practices, behaviors and knowledge which
characterise a society at a given time.
Most of the examples have bee taken fropm Western visual arts

9 English painter (London, 1775 – id 1851).

10 French painter (Paris, 1796 – id, 1875).

11 French philosophe (Paris, 1859 – id, 1941).

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3. The artist creates, the public re-creates

The experience of the artist and the that of the public in relation to the work
of art are processes that usually do not coincide in time and are always
anchored in a dynamic context. The perceptions of the artist and those of the
public are never the same. The major function of the artist is to act as a
mediator between a representation and a public, not to transmit it. Possibly
the work of art will enable the public to enjoy in turn a subjective artistic
experience. Each work of art will resonate in its own way over the whole
range of human emotions and each person will be touched in a different way.

Figure - 4 - Processus de création de l’artiste

The artist expresses in an unusual way a new relation to reality. It is the

artist who brings strategies, material things and sequences of actions and
perceptions into play to experience this relationship to the world. The use of
this process which is contingent to the artistic relation converges towards
the production of works that we call works of art when they have a public.
They emerge within various frameworks and take different forms. The work
of art can be anything at all provided it is a trace of this process.

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Figure 5 - B. Thomas, Installation intime, Figure 6 - B. Thomas, Installation cohérente,

Neguev desert, 1995. laser ray, Paris 1995.

It is considered to be good when it is effective, i.e. when it acts as a mediator

between a non-routine relation and the public. The surprise caused initially
by the artistic relation will disappear with the installation of new routines. A
good example of this opening/closing process is that of the impressionist
painting which caused a scandal at the beginning of the 20 th century, was
rejected outright by the Parisian bourgeoisie and academic circles, and which
a few years later became the model of what should be put on the wall above
teh settee in the lounge.

Figure 7– Public re-creation through the work of art

When the artistic form of expression changes, the language changes, constraints
change but the function of art remains the same. Rather than review the various
artistic expressions, let us look at one in more details, that of the visual arts ; let
us study its syntax and see how the way it play with language evolved over
time. If we understand the role of abstraction in this area we can understand
the role of abstraction in other art forms. The concepts of structure,

12 French sculptor and multimedia artist (Constantine 1952 – Paris).

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 composition, rhythm, symmetry, regularity, contrast, and syntax are common
even if their content is different.

4. THE SYNTAX OF VISUAL ARTS AND ABSTRACTION

The conception of painting has always involved abstract processes:   "la

pittura è cosa mentale" said Leonardo da Vinci13. Maurice Denis14 said "before
being a battle horse, a naked woman or some anecdote or other, a painting is
first and foremost a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain
order". The word "language" refers to the expressive function of thought and
communication between human beings by means of a system of vocal signs
(words) and possibly graphic signs (writing). The visual arts constitute a
language based on forms, formats, colours, constructions, rhythms, lines.
These forms of expression become fully autonomous in nonfigurative
painting. The history of Western Art coincides with the history of the
autonomy of its language .
Before the Renaissance, paintings were done on close-grained wood panels
coated with fish glue. The colours were mixed with linseed oil. Drying was
very slow. To save time, a waterbased medium, tempera, was introduced. In
both cases the light colours closer to the background appeared hollow while
the dark colours stood out more. In about 1425, the Van Eyck 15 brothers
invented a mixture of linseed oil and terpentine which made it possible to
give greater depth to the colours. Titian 16 revolutionised the very conception
of painting by starting with a dark background the colour of bull’s blood to
which the painter added lighter and lighter in richer and richer matter that
bore the imprint of the painter’s hand and tools.
From this moment on, two schools have existed side by side, The first
corresponding to smooth flat surfaces, stretches from the Medieval painters
and Florence to Dali17, Magritte18 and the geometrical or so called "cold"
abstraction of painters such as Mondrian19. The second where the body and
the genesis of the painting are apparent runs from Rubens 20, Delacroix21 and

13 Italian artist and scientist (Vinci, near Florence, 1452 —Cloux Castle, near Amboise, 1519).
14 French painter (Granville, 1870 – Paris, 1943)
15 Flemish painters (end of XIVth century – middle of the XVth century)
16 Italian artist (Pieve di Cadore, 1488 – Venetia, 1576)
17 Spanish painter (Figueras, 1904 – id , 1989).
18 Belgium painter (Lessines, 1898 – Bruxelles, 1967).
19 Dutch ainter and art theorist (Amersfoort, 1872 – New York, 1944).

20 Flemish painter (Siegen, Westphalie, 1577 – Anvers, 1640).

21 French painter (Saint Maurice, Val de Marne, 1798 – Paris, 1863).

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 Van Gogh22 to the "lyrical" abstraction of Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock 23,
Rothko24 and Pierre Soulages25.

a) The Kandinsky system 26

Painters and draughtsmen have always used the expressive functions of

lines, surfaces and colours, but it was only at the beginning of the 20 th
century that these functions became completely abstract and removed from
figurative representation and were used for themselves. At a time, when the
Western world was persuaded of simultaneous progress of Science and
Civilisation, Klee and Kandinsky raised the question of a science of art.
Kandinsky believed in the progress of art and considered that abstract art,
freed from the figurative representation, is a higher form of visual
expression. This quasi-mystical search reaches out to the possible discovery
of a universal generic formula from which all artistic creations would arise,
or where all compositions would find a numerical formula. This would mean
implicitly that all artistic expression could be taught to a computer.
Space - Space is dynamic, forms are generated by forces. Without, a form is
an element ; within, a form is defined by its internal forces, by its tensions.
The action of a force breathes life into a given material, and this life is
expressed through tensions which, in turn, give an internal expression to the
element. An element is the effective result of the action of a force upon the
material. For Kandinsky, all phenomena from the internal or external world
can be expressed in lines. For him, a form is made up of three fundamental
elements : point, line, surface.
Point - A point is the smallest base form, the elementary particle of
painting. It is both the symbol of the end of a sentence and the minimal
graphic element and conveys a latent fertility. The geometrical point is
immaterial. As a symbol of silence, it is introverted, concentric and static.
Graphically, the point has a strong rhythmic effect ; its equivalent in sound
would be a dry percussion. The time necessary to perceive a point is the
minimum time of graphic perception. It is the most concise temporal form. It
thus implies that there are times and durations of perception in painting. A
point is also a fundamental element in choreography and in architecture:
dancing on points, soaring arched Gothic cathedrals, etc.

22 Dutch painter (Groot-Zundert, 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise, 1863).

23 American painter, (Cody, Wyoming, 1912 –East Hamton, 1956).
24 American painter,(Dvinsk,1903 – New York 1970).

25 French painter (Rodez, 1919).

26 French painter and art theorist, (Moscou, 1866 – Neuilly-sur-Seine 1944).

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 Figure 8 – Points resonating on a surface

A point resonates on a surface. A simple resonance is where the point located

at the centre of the original surface emits a simple resonance. A point that is
off centre in the original surface emits a double resonance: that of the point
and that off being off-centre.

Line - A line is created by a generator of points.

A generator of points which moves at a constant speed and in the same
direction plots a straight line. Three different impulses in different directions
on a generator of points create a broken line or a triangle. Two different
impulses to right in different directions on generator of points create an arc
of a circle.
Horizontal - A horizontal line is the most concise form of an infinite number
of cold movements. A horizontal line is the direction of chronological time,
moving from left. The associated colour is black, the associated feeling is
calm, the associated temperature is cold.
Vertical - A vertical line is the most concise form of an infinite number of hot
movements. A vertical line is the direction of immediate time, of appearance,
of emergence. The associated colour is white, the associated feeling is
awakening, the associated temperature is hot.

Figure 9 – Horizontals resonating on a surface

Figure 10 – Verticals resonating on a surface

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Diagonal – A diagonal expresses the combination of hot and cold. The
difference in gradient towards hot or cold defines their internal sound. A
rising diagonal is red, a falling diagonal is grey or green.

Figure 11 – Diagonals resonating on a surface

Curved lines - A curved line is a straight line that has been deformed by
tensions. It is the antithesis of the straight line. For Kandinsky, a curve
contains a more constant force than does a broken line, it is less aggressive
and more durable. The most powerful contrast between lines is that which
exists between the straight line and the curve.
Straight lines, broken lines, curves are characterised according to their
tensions, the length of the segments, directions and thickness. All these
characteristics are relativised with respect to the original surface : a curve
signifies lyricism , a broken line represents drama.
Angles – A right angle corresponds to the colour red, to objectivity, to a
square. An acute angle corresponds to the colour yellow, to dynamism, to a
triangle and to dynamism. An obtuse angle corresponds to indigo, to
melancholy, to a circle.
Free lines - A free line does not touch the edge of the frame and is thus
subjected to a tension which increases as its extremity moves closer to the
frame but cancels out once it has touched it.

Figure 12 – Free lines resonating on a surface

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 Surfaces - The four sides of the original surface have a particular resonance.
At the top, forces fall violently downwards, with a light tension towards the
top meaning lightness. At the bottom, forces fall gently downwards with a
strong tension towards the bottom, meaning density. The right side of the
surface is to the right of the spectator and means adventure, departure. The
left side of the surface is to the left of the spectator, and means home, return.

Figure 13 - Is Giacometti’s "Walker"more melancholic when he returns towards the

left than when he goes towards the right side?

b) Strength and weakness of Kandinsky’s analysis

Kandinsky was the first one to seek the primitives of a work of art and to
associate them to an emotional symbolic content. It was a revolutionary
move in which signs were freed from all figurative representation. The
definition of fundamental elements in the constitution of graphic
representation made it possible to propose a syntax and a language. This
clearly raised the question of writing in painting and dance and their
relationship to music. However, Kandinsky‘s system came up against
several problems: the classification and analysis of the relations between the
elements of a graphic work of art presuppose objective measurements, the
number and complexity of which are immense. The qualitative analysis of
the interactions between several elements becomes virtually impossible as
soon as the number of elements increases. The distinction between points,
lines and surfaces is uncertain. When does a point becomes a surface ? Is
transformed into circle? At what moment does a point emerge as a point in
the perception of the painter and the spectator? Kandinsky left it up to his
successors to decide. It will depend on the size of the original surface, the
vicinity of the other elements and their size. For example, a small circle will
be seen as a point on a given surface. But on an identical surface in the
presence of a smaller form, it will seen as a circle. It is a complex question

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 which presupposes that the question of borders have been solved. The
distinction between interior and exterior is always very difficult and relative
to a reference space which can vary. The transformation of the point into a
surface and the perception of its colour are subjective.

c) Constructions
In both the Western visual arts and other arts, the perception of what is
changing in the work is only possible if invariant abstract element exist
which provide structure and rhythm. In poetry, this gives the formats of the
poems, the rhymes, the length of the stances ; in music this gives the chorus,
the melodic lines, the recurring chords, the tempo, etc. In painting, the spatial
structure often derives from the format of the support with its corresponding
length/height ratio. The subdivisions of this ratio generate geometrical
structures which underpin the whole creation. Let us take two examples :
Alberti’s27 musical proportions based on the ratios of the first whole numbers
on the musical scale : 2/3, 4/6/9, 9/12/16, and the Botticelli’s 28 Birth of Venus. In
the works of Veronese29, the golden number30 generates all the proportional
ratios. In the work of Tintoretto 31 and the baroque painters, dynamic
compositions based on the use of diagonals avoid symmetry and exploit the
proportions provided by the frame. In the 20 th century, the works of
Cezanne32, Matisse33, Kandinsky and Mondrian are good examples of
rigorous geometrical compositions.

d) Colours
A colour is defined by its tint, saturation and luminosity (T, S, L). There are
three primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and three secondary colours (green,
orange, purple). The complementary colours result from the combination of
two primary colours. If all three primary colours are mixed correctly this
gives grey. It thus follows that each primary colour has a corresponding
complementary colour which can be mixed with it to give grey. Some colours
are considered warm (red, orange, yellow), others are considered cold (blue,
green, purple). In the visual arts, colour variations are based on seven colour
contrasts.

27 Italian architect and art theorist(Genes, 1404 — Rome, 1472).

28 Italian painter (Florence, 1445 – id, 1510).
29 Italian painter (Verone, 1528 – Venise, 1588).
30 The golden section is also called the golden ratio. It is closely connected with the Fibonacci series and has a value of 0,61803... The golden section has been used in many designs, from the
ancient Parthenon in Athens (400BC) to Stradivari's violins. It was known to artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and musicians and composers, notably Bartók and Debussy.
31 Italian painter (Venise, 1518 — id, 1594).

32 French painter (Aix-en-Provence, 1839 — id, 1906).

33 French painter (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 1869 — Nice, 1954).

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 Figure 14 – Types de contrastes

The simultaneous use of contrasts either reinforces or reduces them,

depending on the case. The result is different rhetorics and laws of harmony
which evolve with the different schools and styles. What is important is that
even if the perception of the colours is subjective, they serve as a symbolic
means of expression for the whole range of our emotions.

e) The time-image perception

An imagecan be regarded as a sign made up of signs. The time necessary to
perceive a fixed image is both the time necessary to perceive the image as a
sign and the time necessary toperceive the signs which make up the image.
The first is global and virtually instantaneous, the second depends on the
complexity of the image. The two are indissociable, each one referring back
to the other. The game consists in feeling and indentifying those elements
that make up the work of art in establishing relations between them. This
relational analysis which consists in isolating from the whole the elements in
their respective categories is a task of abstraction which accentuates the
feeling of meaning, direction and order in the perception of the work but
without codifying it. Even if the experience of time is subjective, we can
objectively say that we perceive a straight line more quickly than a line
made up of bends and that the mind travels faster through a monochromatic
painting by Malevitch34 than through a painting by Rubens. This does not
mean that we are making a normative judgment.

34 Russian painter (Kiev, 1878 —Saint-Pétersbourg, 1935).

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 f) Example : "The Piano Lesson" by Henri Matisse 35

"Art is always more abstract than we imagine. The form and the colour speak
to us about form and colour, and that’s the end of it" said Oscar Wilde 36 in
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
« The Piano Lesson », painted by Matisse in 1916 is a good example of the
use of abstract language in a painting. A network of vertical and horizontal
lines gives a somewhat severe rhythmic and musical structure to the space
against which come into play the arabesque produced by the wrought iron of
the balcony and the music stand on the piano. The diagonals are created by
the right edge of the green surface, by the left edge of the pink surface of the
table, and by the dark triangle in the eye of the young boy at the piano. They
are also created by the relationship that the spectator creates between the
green surface and the pink surface in the bottom right-hand corner of the
painting.

Figure 15 and 16 – "The piano lesson" H. Matisse, oil on canvas, 1916, example
of the use of abstract language in painting.

The surface is stark, made up of flat brush-strokes of colour which produce

two kinds of contrast : a contrast of simultaneous colours green/grey,
pink/grey and a contrast of unsaturated complementary colours (green/pink)
which produce calm, freshness and a touch of melancholy. As we can see,
the elements which make up the painting can only be counted and described
objectively whereas the way they are perceived can only be subjective and
must be translated laboriously into words.
Except in the conceptual arts and multi-media, the artist does not usually
start by formulating in words what he is going to do using signs, but the
contrary. Even if it is sometimes possible after the event to justify
35 Henri Matisse, 1916, oil on canvas, 245 cm x 212 cm, Museum of Modern Art of New York.
36 Irish writer (Dublin, 1854 — Paris, 1900).

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 associations of signs and contrasts of colours using rules a posteriori one can
justify associations of signs and contrasts of colour rules, the rules are not the
cause but the effect . "There are no rules to be laid down, otherwise it would
be industrial art. How could it be any other way since when the artist has
done something good, he has involuntarily surpassed himself and no longer
understands what has gone on."37

5. LANGUAGES AND DIGITAL ART

The development of digital art goes hand in hand with the development of
computer science and the multi-media. The use of computers in artistic
creation entails specific constraints: orders are transmitted to the machine via
language interfaces and behavioral models are used, which means adding a
layer of language to the process of artistic creation and raising it to another
form of abstraction. The effect of language and abstraction is increased, but
this time on the human level, through the conditions in which multi-media
works of art are produced, since this often requires pluridisciplinary
production teams and conceptualisation phases during which the goal that
the system must reach and the means to do so have to be defined.

Figure 17 – Operating loop of an information processing system used to create a visual work of art.
The artistic relation which underpins the project is explained in the conceptualisation phase
(Language 1), translated into visual art language primitives (Language 2) then translated into a
programming language (Language 3).

Digital processing uses interfaces and sensors to interconnect images, sound

and movements on the same platform. The question of a kind of meta-
37 Henri Matisse  Ecrits et propos sur l’art, Paris Hermann ed, 1972 .

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 language that is common to the various forms of artistic expression, visual
arts, sound, choreographies is thus raised. Time and space are primitive
elements which are common to the different media and constitute the
simplest means to organise the way they inter-relate by acting on their
structures and their rhythm.

6. EXPERIMENTAL PROTOCOL
Kandinsky came up against the difficulty of the huge number of possible
combinations offered by language and by the subjectivity of the way in
which we perceive works of arts.
Stuying the semiology of the visual arts would mean making a systematic
study of the interactions of the elements of its language: format, forms,
colours, lines, etc. The project Dancing with machines38 should lead to the
setting up of an experimental protocol in order better to understand the
compositional relationships within a specific artistic language and the
correspondence between the different languages.
The device is made up of a multiagent system provided with sensors that can
record the performance of an actor-dancer and propose a multi-media
translation in real time in the form of sound and visual sequences. The
language of the system is based on the traditional primitives of artistic
expression and on a supervised learning system which enable it to modify its
behavior according to the context, which is made up of the project and of the
reaction of the director. The successive learning loops converge towards an
agreement which is acceptable to both the director and the dancer within the
constraints of the system which defines a multi-media score of the
performance.

38 http://www.lami.univ-evry.fr/~hutzler/Projets/MisesEnScenes.htm.

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 Figure 18 – The autonomous information processing system perceives the movements of the
dancer through appropriate sensors, decides on a suitable response and carries it out.

7. CONCLUSION
The main function of a work of art is to be used as a support for processes
creating relations between levels of consciousness which cannot usually
exist. This true for both the artist and the public. The feelings of beauty, of
ugliness, such or such emotion are induced effects of this relation but are not
the cause. As for the visual arts, whether figurative or not, they are
fundamentally abstract and based on primitives of form, colour, structure,
rhythm, etc. This abstraction makes it possible for one level of consciousness
to penetrate or brake into another one, so to speak. This momentary and, in a
way, abnormal break-in validates the artistic quality of the work. The form of
the relationship is part of the context and changes with it ; they both re-
invent themselves all the time. The artistic capacity of work of art to create
relations is not acquired once and for all, and the context in which it operates
may change in such a way that the system of signs and references used loses
all effectiveness. The examples given in this article come primarily from the
Western visual arts but what this teaches us can be generalised to all artistic
activities including the cinema and multi-media. A work of art function as a
merging agent between a known world and a perceived world. This function
is based on abstract means, structures, formats, compositions, rhythms,
languages and contrasts and it must take into account the data of the context.
Regardless of whether it is a matter of languages, signs, colours, movements
or sounds, of whether the author is a person or a group of persons, of
whether the system is interactive or not, it is only the practicalities that
change, not the stake, that is common to all the arts. An approach addressing

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the strategic dimension of the artistic process (what opening strategy to
counter what closing strategy?) could usefully be developed for research,
artistic creation and teaching, based on the concepts of perception routines
and the inhibition/disinhibition states of the artist and the public.

Acknowledgements  : the author would like to thank Rosalind Greenstein for the
english version of this paper.

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