Sydney College of the Arts
The University of Sydney
Doctor of Philosophy
2006
Theories of Art Practice/Painting
Thesis
The Darkened Room
Painting as the Image of Thought
By
Thomas Loveday
This volume is presented as a record of the work undertaken for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy, Theories of Art Practice/Painting at
Sydney College of the Arts,
The University of Sydney
ii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................ iv
List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................ v
Introduction........................................................................................................................... 1
Overview........................................................................................................................... 1
The Contribution of the Thesis to Knowledge.................................................................. 4
Synopsis of the Chapters .................................................................................................. 6
Painting, Modernity and Philosophy .............................................................................. 12
The Mirror of Nature, The Glassy essence and Anti-ocularcentrism ............................. 23
The Importance of Deleuze and Guattari for Painting.................................................... 34
Darkness and Ambiguity ................................................................................................ 41
Chapter 2. Surface and Depth: Seeing As and Seeing In .................................................... 52
Gombrich and Wollheim: Seeing-as and Seeing-in........................................................ 53
Two-fold Attention: Archi-Natural and Pictorial Space................................................. 62
The Codification of Pictorial Space: Representation of Spatial Concepts...................... 65
Pictorial Space that Doesn’t Represent........................................................................... 72
Chapter 3. The Image of Thought and Abstraction........................................................... 101
The Impure Mixture of Surface and Depth................................................................... 104
Two Kinds of Abstraction ............................................................................................ 105
Painting as Philosophy of Sensation............................................................................. 122
Foucault’s Third Resemblance ..................................................................................... 124
Abstraction as a Propositional Approach to Painting ................................................... 132
Chapter 4. Abstract Space................................................................................................. 136
Abstraction and Representation.................................................................................... 136
Axiomatic Abstraction.................................................................................................. 137
The Space of Abstract Painting .................................................................................... 142
Grid Space: Towards Flatness ...................................................................................... 145
Chapter 5. The Planets ...................................................................................................... 162
Deleuze’s Model of Proposition and Painting .............................................................. 163
Paintings as Propositions of Space ............................................................................... 171
The Title of the Proposition.......................................................................................... 173
The Nomad Science of Painting ................................................................................... 175
Paintings as Propositions of Becoming ........................................................................ 179
First Series: Flat............................................................................................................ 180
Second Series: Mannequin ........................................................................................... 181
Third Series: Finger Wharf ........................................................................................... 183
Fourth Series: The Planets ............................................................................................ 185
The Planets as Propositions .......................................................................................... 195
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 200
Appendix 1. Bibliography................................................................................................. 205
Texts ............................................................................................................................. 205
Exhibition Catalogues................................................................................................... 212
Journal Articles............................................................................................................. 212
Dictionaries and Reference Texts ................................................................................. 212
Internet Sources ............................................................................................................ 212
Appendix 2. The Planets, 2003-4...................................................................................... 214
Appendix 3. Previous Painting.......................................................................................... 226
Flat, 1997 ...................................................................................................................... 226
Mannequin, 2000-1....................................................................................................... 232
Finger Wharf, 2002....................................................................................................... 233
iii
Acknowledgments
Many thanks are due to my supervisor, Dr Eril Baily for her patient, thoughtful,
tireless and timely assistance for an occasionally undisciplined writer and to my
Associate Supervisor Dr Debra Dawes, for advice and discussion on painting. I am
very grateful to Dr Timothy Rayner for his advice and many discussions, especially in
philosophy and to Dawn Mischewski for the daunting task of editing the thesis,
including helpful questions and to my partner Donna Maree Frances Brett for her
support, advice and assistance during the long and often stressful process. I would
also like to acknowledge a much older debt to the father of an old friend, Wladislaw
Dutkiewicz. Without Wlad’s inspiration and the life-long friendship of his son Dr
Adam Dutkiewicz, I might never have tried to paint.
iv
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Diagram of Deleuze and Guattari’s Theory of Art, Philosophy and Science.
..............................................................................................................................38
Figure 1.2 The Movement of the Triangle, from Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the
Spiritual in Art, Dover Press, UK, 1977, pp. 6-7.................................................43
Figure 1.3 The Movement of the Triangle after Kandinsky. ........................................44
Figure 1.4 Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 31 or Sea Battle, 1913, Oil on canvas,
145 cm x 119.7 cm...............................................................................................47
Figure 1.5 Wassily Kandinsky, On White II, 1923, Oil on canvas, 105 cm x 98 cm. .48
Figure 2.1 Gombrich’s mirror experiment...................................................................54
Figure 2.2 The Rule of Similar Triangles.....................................................................55
Figure 2.3 Perspectival Recession or Parallel Lines....................................................64
Figure 2.4 Victor Vasarely, Struck, 1984, 80 x 80 cm.................................................66
Figure 2.5 Subjective point, defined by lines. .............................................................68
Figure 2.6 Charles Csuri, Computer Drawings of a Surface, Which Was Based on
Four Boundary Curves, 1971. .............................................................................69
Figure 2.7 Grid of architectural space, Vasarely’s spatial base-state. .........................70
Figure 2.8 Archi-natural event.....................................................................................70
Figure 2.9 Archi-natural event in colour......................................................................71
Figure 2.10 Bridget Riley, Bali, Oil on Linen, 1983, 237cm x 195.1cm.....................72
Figure 2.11 Diagrammatic version of the geometric layout in Riley’s paintings........77
Figure 2.12 Spatial diagram of colour planes in Bridget Riley’s paintings.................78
Figure 2.13 Surface depth in colour: A model of Bridget Riley’s working method. ..79
Figure 2.14 Bridget Riley, Kiss, 1961..........................................................................80
Figure 2.15 Bridget Riley, Arrest 1, 1965. ..................................................................81
Figure 2.16 Bridget Riley, Movement and Squares, 1961, tempera on hardboard......84
Figure 2.17 Author’s representation of architectural space that approximately
corresponds to Riley’s Movement and Squares, 1961. ........................................85
Figure 2.18 Bridget Riley, Fall, 1963, emulsion on hardboard. ..................................87
Figure 2.19 Bridget Riley, Loss, 1964, emulsion on hardboard. .................................88
Figure 2.20 Bridget Riley, Arrest 2, 1965, acrylic on linen.........................................89
Figure 2.21 Bridget Riley, Deny 2, 1967. ....................................................................90
Figure 2.23 Bridget Riley, Study 2 for Curvilinear Grid, 1998, Pencil on Paper, 103.8
cm x 71.8 cm........................................................................................................93
Figure 2.24 Bridget Riley, Descending, 1965, Emulsion on Hardboard. ....................94
Figure 2.25 Bridget Riley, Ground Study for 28th August ’98, 1998, Gouache on
paper, 104.5 cm x 72.2 cm...................................................................................95
Figure 2.26 Bridget Riley, Rough Study for Blues and Greens, 2001, Gouache on
paper collage, 47.5 cm x 91.5 cm. .......................................................................96
Figure 2.27 Bridget Riley, 2001, Blues and Greens, Oil on linen, 118.8 cm x 280 cm.
..............................................................................................................................96
Figure 3.2 Albrecht Dürer, Stereometric Man; Two Body Sections, Pen drawing,
before 1519. .......................................................................................................111
Figure 3.3 Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960, 1960, 290.83 cm x 268.29 cm oil on canvas.
............................................................................................................................128
Figure 3.4 Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918, oil on
canvas.................................................................................................................129
v
Figure 3.5 Kasimir Malevich, Quadrangle (Commonly referred to as The Black
Square), 1915.....................................................................................................130
Figure 3.6 Peter Halley, Pulse Generator 2000, Acrylic, Day-Glo, pearlescent and
metallic acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas, 221 cm x 188 cms. .......................133
Figure 4.1 Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles (originally titled “Number 11”) 1952, 210.4
cm x 486.8 cm, oil, enamel and aluminium paint on canvas. ............................138
Figure 4.3 The surface or compositional grid............................................................148
Figure 4.4 The grid represented in pictorial space, or pictorial grid..........................149
Figure 4.5 The grid is tilted up from pictorial space onto the picture plane..............150
Figure 4.6 Satellite photograph of the Earth in which “down” is an horizontal viewing
direction. ............................................................................................................151
Figure 4.9 The grid in the picture plane is seen from the perspectivally generated
“point of view”...................................................................................................152
Figure 4.10 The grid on the surface is seen from a “plane of view”. ........................152
Figure 4.11 The space of the image is moved to that between the eye-plane and the
surface plane. .....................................................................................................153
Figure 4.12 Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Compotier, 1879-1882. ............................154
Figure 4.13 Robert Owen, Afterglow #2, Blind Spot, from the series Text of Light,
2003-4. Photograph courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. ............156
Figure 4.14 Robert Owen, Melatonin Shift #1, form the series Time-Feeling Time,
2003-4. Photograph courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. ............156
Figure 4.15 Robert Owen, Spectrum Shift #3, from the series Text of Light, 2003-4.
Photograph courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales...........................157
Figure 4.16 Robert Owen, Vessel #2, Blue, from the series Cubes and Hypercubes,
2003. Photograph courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.................158
Figure 4.17 Robert Owen with Denton Corker Marshall Architects, Webb Bridge,
Docklands, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2003. Photograph by the author...159
Figure 5.1 Natasha Johns-Messenger, Infinity Billboard, 2004, digital photograph,
billboard. ............................................................................................................169
Figure 5.2 T Loveday, Flat 2, 1999, 84.1cm x 59.4 cm, gouache on paper. .............171
Figure 5.3 T Loveday, The City, 2001, 120 cm x 120 cm, oil on canvas. .................175
Figure 5.4 T Loveday, Flat 1, 1999, 84.1 cm x 59.4 cm, gouache on paper. For
images of the full series, see Appendix 3. .........................................................180
Figure 5.5 T Loveday, Mannequin 1, 2000, 120 cm x 120 cm, oil on canvas. For
images of the full series, see Appendix 3. .........................................................182
Figure 5.6 T Loveday, Finger Wharf 1, 2002, 185 cm x 210 cm, oil on canvas. For
images of the full series, see Appendix 3. .........................................................183
Figure 5.14 Compositional abstraction returned in the painting series The Planets. 191
Figure 5.18 T Loveday, Jupiter, 2003-4, working detail...........................................193
Figure 5.19 T Loveday, Saturn, 2003-4, detail..........................................................194
Figure 5.20 T Loveday, Jupiter, 185 cm x 205 cm, oil on canvas, 2003-4. Photograph
by Diana Panuccio. For images of the full series, see Appendix 2....................195
Figure 5.21 T Loveday, The Blue Planet, 185 cm x 210 cm , oil on canvas, 2003-4.
Photograph by Diana Panuccio. For images of the full series, see Appendix 2.197
vi
Introduction
Overview
This thesis is an interdisciplinary explanation of correspondences between painting
and philosophy. It does not offer, as could be assumed, a critique of philosophical
concepts or an instrumental description of painting. Instead, it shows how concepts
from philosophy can be used to see painting in new ways, particularly abstract
painting.1
The philosophy discussed here is limited to continental or speculative philosophy,
mainly, but not exclusively, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The
work of philosopher Richard Rorty also plays a part because he presents a clear
description of the relationship between vision and philosophy. From a philosopher’s
point of view, painting is highly relevant to an image of thought and is in general,
used to explain conceptual assemblies. Rarely, however, do philosophers talk of
painting’s own philosophy.
This thesis argues for an account of painting as philosophy of sensation.2
Since philosophy makes images of thoughts, painting as philosophy of sensation is
concerned with how an image of thought can appear as sensations within paintings.
Before discussing how painting presents an image of thought, the notion that thinking
is an image of thought needs to be discussed. Philosophy has provided many images
of thought, but the movement from a transcendent to an immanent image of thought is
of particular interest because it is shown that painting, like philosophy, also makes
this shift. This leads to the philosophical question of the relationship between
transcendence and immanence and, from there, the corresponding shift from painting
as representations of being to painting as becoming.
Philosophy has been in the process of self-questioning throughout the 20th century,
even to the point of self-destruction. The result for western philosophy has been a re1
In this thesis, the term “abstract painting” will initially mean painting that is concerned with nonrepresentational pictures. The reason that the meaning is given this way is so that the question of
representation can be discussed from the point of view of both philosophy and painting. The question
of surface and depth in abstract painting is discussed in a number of places in the thesis. This
discussion elaborates upon the non-representational meaning of abstract painting.
2 This is a term taken from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s, What Is Philosophy? Columbia
University Press, NY, USA, 1994, pp. 177-87.
1
focusing away from transcendence towards immanence. In this process, philosophical
“representation”, which is a feature of transcendent thinking, has received a thorough
and vigorous critique that is reflected in other fields, such as painting. Within
philosophy of sensation, the relationship between transcendence and immanence takes
the form of a relationship between representation and abstraction. It is within the
shifting relationship of representation and abstraction that the philosophical
importance of painting can be explained in terms of an image of thought.
The thesis begins with interiority as the location for an image of thought, showing
how this changes under modern ways of thinking. The focus is mainly on how
abstract painting is the result of a modern image of thought. Changes in painting are
compared with changes in philosophical concepts to establish areas of correspondence
between painting and philosophy.
The influences of the two fields, painting and philosophy, are assumed to be a
mutual influence, painting influencing philosophy and philosophy influencing
painting. Sometimes, painting provides insights into concepts and sometimes
philosophy explains painting. One of the key philosophical concepts is vision, where
vision is used as a metaphor for conceptual “seeing”. It is argued that this has a strong
influence on painting as, through its use in philosophy, the image of thought changes
from one configured as if it were on a mirror-like surface, to one that has both depth
and surface. This is comparable with a change in philosophy between the European
Enlightenment and the 20th century and is argued here to be inherent in abstract
painting practice3 concerned with the interplay of non-figurative surface and depth.
For philosophy, this is a change from transcendence to immanence but, for painting, it
is a change that needs another term. This term is “strange seeing”,4 a necessary way of
seeing that allows the seeing of depth when seeing a surface. With strange seeing, a
new theoretical position for abstract painting is possible that corresponds to a similar
position in philosophy.
3
The relationship between the thesis and art practice is one of theory to practice. The thesis is a
particular theory about a particular practice. As such, the thesis is situated among the influences upon
the practice as well as situating the practice among the same influences. Text and practice work
together as a theoretical practice, a writing practice and a painting practice. The sense, to use a
Deleuzian term, of the thesis and the painting, is theory. While the sense of the painting is surface and
the sense of the writing is text.
4 The term “strange seeing” appears here in quotation marks but will appear as standard text throughout
the paper from here.
2
Darkness is a feature of strange seeing and figures in both philosophy and painting.
Connected to the sublime and uncanny, strange seeing is that which makes possible
the consciousness of multi-valence, or multiple layers of space,5 in both conceptual
assemblies and in paintings. Strange seeing opens up the spaces of autonomous
intensive works to an impure mixture of surface and depth. This impure mixture is
argued to be a Deleuzian image of thought. Further, since this image of thought is
made as a visual sensation or event, it is best understood as a philosophy of sensation.
As philosophy of sensation, painting can be understood as propositional. Using a
four-part Deleuzian model, denomination is a naming of an intensity, presence is
made manifest and has an internal or signifying logic, all of which is held within its
place by the interweaving and balancing of sense and nonsense.
The connection between sense and nonsense, surface and depth and immanence is
made using an explanation of two forms of abstraction, reductive and constructive.
These two forms of abstraction come together within resemblance in order to appear
as the image of thought. The thesis uses resemblance to show how abstract painting
can take part in philosophy of sensation.
The main concept for painting as a philosophy of sensation is the twofold seeing of
space. In a small section of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari describe their
concept of sensation, primarily in reference to painting but also in relation to figures
such as “house”, “cosmos” and “flesh”. Deleuze and Guattari use these terms
simultaneously as both metaphors and literal terms. They use the term conceptual
personæ for this type of concept. Strange seeing is how the movement from the house
to the cosmos can occur. Strange seeing concerns conceptual personæ not within
conceptual assemblies but as figures assembled for seeing, or æsthetic figures. In
abstract painting, æsthetic figures are the basic ingredients of constructive abstraction
and within which the image of thought is found.
5
The term “space” is used here in its post-Kantian meaning, which is to say as becoming space or
space that includes time. This can be compared to the Bergsonian space/time, or “duration”, where time
and space are taken to be a single attribute constituted of virtual multiplicities. The spatialisation of
duration creates an image of thought, but for Bergson, this is as a non-representational image. So, the
image of thought, as painting, needs to go beyond representation, if it is to have duration. In this thesis,
this will be discussed in Deleuzian terms rather than those of Bergson because Deleuze takes the
discussion into more figurative terms.
3
The Contribution of the Thesis to Knowledge
An account of abstract painting as philosophy of sensation is important because,
despite the strong discourse of the early 20th century, abstract painting has come, in
the late 20th and early 21st centuries, to lack a philosophical purpose from its own
point of view. Æsthetics is a field of study that has dominated the philosophy of
painting, even when the ideas that supported the foundation of æsthetics have long
since been overturned. This has left painting, as a field of knowledge in its own right,
in need of an account of its being. This might seem to be a strong claim, especially
given the popularity of continental philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze, in art theory.
However, much current theoretical work concerning art, especially painting, draws on
contemporary philosophical metaphysics, but does so in order to connect painting to
another field, such as politics.6 As such, art becomes instrumental within those fields
through its connection to continental philosophy.7 The question of what painting is, in
and of itself, has tended to become submerged due to its use as an agent for various
other interests, such as politics.
However, this is a relatively recent state of affairs for abstract painting. In the
writing of painters and theorists, from the early to mid- 20th century, connections
between painting and metaphysical philosophy are commonplace. It might be
assumed that the modernist style of self-critique in painting naturally takes the form
of philosophical enquiry. Yet, after the middle of the 20th century, painters fell silent
about their work, only reviving their discussion when new purposes for art were
found outside the direct practice and seeing of painting.
6
A brief survey of the journal of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand demonstrates the
trend towards relevance in art. The issues and topics important in art are almost all to do with history,
and are dealt with as “content” that may or may not have critical, social or political importance. Other
journals of art theory or, more rarely, theories of practice, deal with the critical consequences for art.
For instance, New Media Art is essentially concerned with the politics of technology, where
technology has become representational technology. This coincides with an increase in the number of
artists taking part in the AAANZ and other venues for critical thinking. Artists are bringing their work
into such institutions as intellectual activity. This thesis provides a basis for abstract painting within
this context.
7 The term continental philosophy refers to the non-analytic traditions of European philosophy, mostly
French, German and Anglo-American traditions. Continental is a term that refers to European
philosophy from Kant onwards, but from an English-speaking point of view. Its main concerns are
ontological and epistemological and stem from a range of thinking, form Neoplatonic to German
Romanticism. These concerns often drift into related areas such as politics, economics, psychology and
many more, both contributing to and drawing from these fields. According to the introduction of
William McNeill and Karen Feldman, Continental Philosophy: An Anthology, Blackwell Press, USA,
1998, the term is difficult to place precisely but appears to have emerged from the rapid increase in
translation of French and German texts in the mid to late 20th century.
4
For instance, the questioning of abstract painting as a form of thought, evident in
the work of early 20th century painters such as Malevich and Kandinsky, has been
displaced in favour of painting as a critique within other fields. This has left
abstraction at a disadvantage because it is easier, for viewers used to signification to
attach objective meaning to representational images than to abstraction.
Since Marcel Duchamp abandoned painting for “the concept”, abstract painting
has struggled to establish itself as a thoughtful practice. From Mondrian’s spiritualism
to Greenbergian surfaces, metaphysical interpretations of abstraction have been
advanced. However, in current theoretical practices there is little theory of painting as
a thoughtful practice with metaphysical importance. The aim of this thesis is to
address this lack.
Deleuzian philosophy is often used to argue for the “content” of painting rather
than the practice of painting itself. Concentrating on abstract painting and continental
philosophy reveals how to create theories of painting, as the image of thought, within
painting practice.
Even though Deleuze and Guattari are extremely popular in the late 20th and early
21st centuries with artists and art academics, it is still important to be clear about why
they are useful for painting. There are a number of reasons for appealing to the work
of Deleuze as well as Deleuze and Guattari when theorising painting.
First, Deleuze and Deleuze with Guattari, have been the most productive writers in
the philosophy of immanence, especially in their analysis of “becomings”. Becomingthought is that which moves and, as they have claimed, “thought demands only
movement that can be carried to infinity”.8 Thinking in terms of becoming is
necessarily a new and self-conscious way for modern western thinking. To change a
way of thinking requires an effort within self-consciousness that is not always
successful. The habit of thinking in terms of ideal objects before transcendental
subjects is deeply ingrained in western thinking and this is precisely what Deleuze,
writing independently and with Guattari, is addressing. They argue that traces of this
transcendent way of thinking remain in almost all activities, including painting. In
their work, however, they move away from transcendent thinking to immanent or
becoming-thinking. Becoming-thinking shifts thought from things as objects to things
8 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell trans.), What Is
Philosophy? Columbia University Press, NY, USA, 1994, p. 37.
5
as becomings. An example is the shift that Deleuze reveals in Kantian thinking from
phenomena as appearances to phenomena as “appearings”.9 This understanding,
alone, creates for Deleuze an entirely new way of understanding Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason. Applied to painting, immanent thinking gives painting a new and
constructive lease on life that modern theory of the mid 20th century and connected to
theory in a number of fields such as literature and philosophy, with its Nietzschean
attachment to declarations of the death of a range of activities, had apparently cut
short.
Second, Deleuze and Guattari assert that their work is best used in the production
of artistic practices, rather than in the academic mastery of texts. Their work is
intended, partially at least, to be used within fields of production, such as painting. To
this end, Deleuze and Guattari have described how the various disciplines with which
they have been concerned might exhibit a “rich tissue of correspondences”.10 In their
work, this is modelled as a diagram that shows a dynamic interplay between the three
general fields of art, science and philosophy. The correspondence between these fields
or practices complement various other theories about painting and reinforces painting
as a source of new assemblies of knowledge. Assemblies of knowledge are
interdisciplinary and, as such, the thesis is constituted by the paintings and the paper,
rather than the paintings or the paper. That is, the thesis, consisting of both painting
and text is a theory of painting practice as knowledge.
Synopsis of the Chapters
Chapter 1. The Darkened Room
Chapter 1 establishes the trajectory for the thesis and presents an explanation of the
title, The Darkened Room.11 The Darkened Room is dark because the effect of vision
is reduced within what is known in order to reveal that which is not known. This takes
place within a room that is familiar, homely and comfortable. Darkening the room
loosens the hold that familiarity has over thought and frees it to find new thoughts; for
thinking as movement from the familiar to the unfamiliar, the known room to the
9 See Gilles Deleuze (Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Haberjam trans.), Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The
Doctrine of the Faculties, University of Minnesota Press, USA, 2003.
10 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell trans.), What Is
Philosophy? Columbia University Press, NY, USA, 1994, p. 199.
11 The spatialisation implied in this thesis is “western” in the sense that it is principally discussed from
the European perspective. The Darkened Room, as title and an image, is essentially European.
6
unknown cosmos. The consideration of the known familiar room, the unknown,
darkness, light and the movement of thought are essential if painting is to constitute
an image of thought and form a philosophy of sensation.
The chapter opens with the movement of thought within modern thinking and the
effect that this movement has on painting. This focuses on a shift in the way that
interiority is comprehended. This shift corresponds to a shift in the critique of visual
metaphors in philosophy. The role of visual metaphors in philosophy is discussed and
brought to painting. This includes the role that the lens and mirror metaphors play in
thinking and how these metaphors gloss over the difference between actual physical
vision and the lens. Richard Rorty’s “mirror of nature” and Martin Jay’s explanation
of the critique of visual metaphors are especially important. Perspectivalism and antiocularcentrism are two of the keys terms associated with Rorty’s and Jay’s arguments,
respectively.
The move from perspectivalism and its reliance on lens-like systems of
representation, to a new way of seeing, means painting can be comprehended as
immanent. This is explained by closely examining the relevance of Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari to painting. The Deleuzo-Guattarian correspondence between art,
science and philosophy provides a model for immanent painting that places it among
other disciplines. This makes it possible to use philosophical explanations of painting.
At the end of the chapter, the work of Kandinsky is explained as an instance of the
use of darkness within painting. Kandinsky’s paintings are accounted for as silent
visual operations in which dark and light, line and colour form an image of thought.12
To comprehend how this occurs requires seeing both the surface and depth, or
“strange seeing”.
Chapter 2. Surface and Depth, Seeing As and Seeing In
Strange seeing, as surface and depth, is developed before moving to the DeleuzoGuattarian model of painting and proposition. Strange seeing is developed using a
transition from Ernst Gombrich’s position of “seeing-as” to Richard Wollheim’s
position of “seeing-in”. This transition builds a third, composite, position in which
12
In this thesis, “dark and light, line and colour” refer to the Deleuzian, “sense” of painting. The
manufacture or merely “facture” of the work is the organising of sense as material and as such it is the
“expressed” as Deleuze calls it. This is discussed in the Chapter 5.
7
strange seeing is both seeing-in and seeing-as, that is, a spatial twofold seeing of
surface and depth.
The result is used to investigate the technical and spatial aspects of Victor
Vasarely’s and Bridget Riley’s paintings. Aspects of Vasarely’s work are shown to be
concerned with a scientific approach to painting, in which a unity of pictorial space
with natural space is sought through the expression of concepts within geometric
abstraction. This leads to a codification of pictorial space as conceptual architecture
within which spatial concepts can be represented. Riley’s work is shown to be a space
that does not represent because it does not attempt to codify or determine dimensional
depth in pictorial space. This is done using a detailed analysis and, in some instances,
synthesis of Riley’s working process. Riley’s work requires a dual seeing of depths
through colour. Dual seeing, in Riley’s work, provides the basis for a connection to
Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming.
Chapter 3. The Image of Thought and Abstraction
Using strange seeing (of surface and depth), as developed in Chapter 2, painting is
positioned as the image of thought. Through abstraction, the thought-like qualities of
painting are revealed as a surface image of thought that creates depths. The image of
thought is described as an impure mixture of surface and depth. Impure mixtures are
those in which the surface assemblies and elements, from which depths are created,
remain present in the creation of depth.
In order to explain how impure mixtures can be found within abstract painting, two
forms of abstraction are analysed using the Deleuzo-Guattarian distinction between
reductive abstraction, which requires an exterior purpose, and constructive
abstraction, which does not. Reductive abstraction brings about the return of the
surface as a replacement for the excluded reality of representation, while constructive
abstraction is the operation of the painting’s assembly within its own world. This
leads to a discussion of the ways that painting can operate not only like philosophy,
but also philosophically, because painting uses, according to another DeleuzoGuattarian distinction, “æsthetic figures” instead of “conceptual personæ”, as
demonstrated in the work of Kasimir Malevich. For Deleuze and Guattari, æsthetic
figures and conceptual personæ can function in a similar fashion within their
respective practices, philosophy and painting.
8
Foucault’s notion of resemblance is then used to show how painting, as the image
of thought, can be used as a proposition. The merging of resemblance and
representation is undone so that abstraction can resemble, without being tied to the
transcendence of representation. This leads to a view of paintings as philosophical
propositions about spaces and events.
Chapter 4. Abstract Space
Chapter 4 begins with a brief discussion about the insistence on autonomy as a
feature of rebellious avant-garde abstract painting. This insistence is a corollary of the
demand by artists that paintings are there to be seen by passive and silent viewers so
that the inner natural subjectivity of the artist can speak through the painting in order
to instruct the world in natural reality. In this way of thinking, painting reaches an
end, as Hegel predicted, because having reconnected human individuals with nature,
there is nothing left to do. The problem is that nature remains unconnected because no
finalised image can express a becoming world. Rather, the image of thought and that
of painting as thought, is immanent. For painting to reflect each person’s being, it has
to reveal a multiplicity of spaces and events. As such, painting needs to be opened up
to seeing in such a way that it is a multivalent and multi-layered expression of spaces
and events.
This chapter is principally concerned with the ambiguity of planes of space within
abstract painting. The central idea used to explore this ambiguity is the flattening of
space according to a theory by Leo Steinberg (1920- ). Steinberg’s idea is that abstract
space flattens the picture plane thereby merging pictorial space and the surface. For
Steinberg, the merging of the two spaces creates tensions and dissonances when
seeing the work. Grids are used to show how this comes about. The pictorial grid is
tilted to the vertical position to become a single flat plane combined with the surface
compositional grid. However, the possibilities for events within pictorial space are
different to those upon the surface and, in blending the two grids, tensions between
the surface and the pictorial space emerge. The nature of these tensions and
dissonances reveals that seeing is no longer only beyond the surface but also in front
of it, between the viewer and the surface.
The chapter ends with Australian artist Robert Owen’s painting and architectural
work in order to show how multiplicity can be thought. Owen’s oeuvre has, among
9
other features, a split between colour grid paintings, which Owen calls a science of
consciousness, and his linear geometric architecture and sculpture projects. Between
these two strands of Owen’s work, there is a space that he does not seem to explore.
This is the ambiguous space of surface and depth, as indicated by the in-between-ness
of the steel frame of Webb Bridge and the shadows of that frame on the bridge’s
pathway.
How the coexistence of incompatible spaces can be understood as a painting, is the
next phase of the thesis.
Chapter 5. The Planets
In this chapter, the application of the Deleuzian model of proposition to painting is
explained. This model of a proposition consists of three mutually constituted parts
that overlap as “sense”. Sense is the expressive part of the proposition, in the same
way that the painting’s surface is the expressive part of a painting. Sense is made by
each proposition and, simultaneously, constitutes each proposition. Sense is balanced
against nonsense within each proposition, so that each actual proposition includes the
trace of nonsense, just as each pictorial space includes a trace of its surface. Strange
seeing is the interplay of sense and nonsense, as surface and depth and is an essential
ingredient for painting practice. Paintings are then discussed in terms of the way that
the three-part model is overlapped as sense while, at the same time, it constitutes a
proposition.
The use of the title in painting is discussed by referring to the importance that it
has for Bridget Riley and by comparing this to the term “denomination” in the
Deleuzian model of a proposition. Denomination is one of the three parts subtended
by sense. Propositions are the link, in practice, between painting and philosophy. The
Deleuzian model of propositions, in which three parts overlap to create “sense”,
matches the model of painting practice as an experimental practice. Through an
understanding of paintings as propositions, their contribution to knowledge can be
discerned as philosophy of sensation.
Deleuze and Guattari’s term, “nomad science”, is used to provide an approach to
techniques for making paintings as propositions. Propositions in abstract painting
primarily concern events in space, or space itself. Four series of paintings are used to
illustrate this approach. The first three series of paintings use different forms of
10
relationships between the three overlapping parts of a proposition, with the fourth
part, “sense”, evident in the painting, itself. Finally, The Planets are discussed in
detail, with special attention to the relationship that they have with scientific
representations of planets.
In conclusion, the aim of the thesis is to contribute to the perception of painting as
a careful, rigorous thinking practice that takes part in the creation and communication
of new knowledge: That painting, as the image of thought, as a philosophy of
sensation, takes part in the “conversation of the world”.13
13
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, USA, 1979, p. 394.
11