squares 1~5

squares 1~5

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Picasso and Matisse belong to the same school called Cezannism

It is commonly said that  Abstract Art is the final stage of  Modern Art.
But some artists like Kandinsky and Kupka are not directly connected to Cezanne.
Picasso and Matisse are direct heir of Cezanne though they are not abstract artists.
Picasso said,
 " There is no abstract art.
You must always start with something.
Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."
The classification by isms is superficial ; it is based on sign level and fomal art is based on sense level.
The re-classification by the structure of artwork is necessary.
I show the common element of Picasso and Matisse,
.  
        Cezanne  Five Bathers / Matisse  Pink Nude / Picasso  Woman with Flower


Until the last time I showed that the pictures on the left and the center are made of arcs and that the circles of the arcs are structured with pivots .
    Cezanne  Bathers(litho)  pink and green circle-arc model
This lithograph is composed with lines only.
And Cezanne must have thought the composition satisfactory, as it was signed.
Therefore we can expect the work represents his syntactic idea .


Matiss spent several months to finish this painting and he left 22 photos of each session.


In the thirties Picasso made many  harmonious paintings.
I chose [Woman with Flower] to make the circle-arc model and the scale diagram.

Matisse  Pink Nude  circle-arc model / concentric scale diagram



    Picasso  [Woman with Flower] circle-arc model   scale diagram


The largest yellow green circle is dominant in [Pink Nude].
The third largest light blue circle is dominant in [Woman with Flower].
I used lighter blue for the two circles with many pivots; the right circle with five pivots and left circle with four pivots.
The concentric circle scale diagrams show that [Pink Nude] is more harmonious than [Woman with Flower] because of two reasons.
1) the number of circles in the scale in [Pink Nude] is five and the number of the circles in the scale in [Woman with Flower] is eleven.
2) the proportion of the circles in the scale of [pink Nude] is very even and the proportion in [Woman with Flower] is uneven.


Unlike a book a blog should be readable without refering the previous blogs so much.
So I show some pivot structure models from the past writings.

        Sharaku(Hokusai)  [Otani Hirotugu]

    Sori(Hokusai)  [Namiura first version]

    Kaigetudo 

The same pivot structure was used by some Ukiyo-e painters.


The present problems in art criticism are due to the careless use of the term 'art' for many different meanings.
'Art' should be used for one meaing.
In my writing it means formal art which is universal (regardless of when and where).
Some time before I started conceiving three problems  to think over.
1) What is modern art? (hundred year problem)
2) Who is Sharaku? (two hundred year problem)
3) What is fine art? (ten thousand year problem)


For long time I had the notion that abstract art is made of lines and curves,
When I wrote about Matisse's [Pink Nude], I realised that I see the contour of any shape as a chain of curves.
Abstract art and figurative art became the same type.
Any consciously drawn curve has single curvature which is an arc.
After defining that the smallest element of art is arc, I could solve the second problem.
Establishing the grammar  and finding syntactic devices like pivot structure, 
the other two problems may be solved .
The examples of syntactically similar works form a group of jigsaw pieces like an island and many islands may be connected to become one.
I further expect to find the pivot structure in other styles of art like ancient Chinese Jade design, early mediaval miniature, early renaissance painting and so on, which makes unification of art.


Universal artwork is the shape of the image projected on retina.
Digital image online is ideal artwork.
As any shape is geometrically analysable,
All artworks should be classified into one system.