John Stephens : Post Minimalist and Abstract Painting
Introductory Text

Notes for readers:
This preface provides a form of introduction, links and notes on abstract and minimalist painting to work as a preface for the exhibitions of John Stephens ‘Pure’ and Deb Covell ‘True’. ATELIER MELUSINE Fr. Nov. 2022.
*As such it is duplicated on each of the artists exhibition pages.

Post minimalist painting and sculpture emerges from but has more freedoms and indeed technological influences in its working methodology that its precursors; Suprematism, Minimalism and Abstraction and is tied continually into conceptual art practice.
The science of sight, language and metaphor as it is currently understood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpq5RQfSYaA
(1) George Lakoff on consciousness, mind and colour, please follow the link above.

Post Minimalist Abstract Painting seems to some to be simple and to others inaccessible.
In fact the philosophies it embraces are some of the most complex and sophisticated discourses of humanity. The practical and philosophical concepts and fields of knowledge it addresses are fundamental and evolving and include; science, technology, sight, consciousness, language, mathematics, religion and identity alongside art practice. There is constant paradox between the contracted and the expanded.
The current real-world show at ATELIER MELUSINE is entitled ‘Pure’ by John Stephens and is supported by a virtual exhibition of Deb Covell’s works, ‘True’. Both are contemporary British post-minimalist abstract painters.

Preface
No art form lives in a bubble; there is overlap, exchange and continual evolution.
It is useful to provide a general overview of the fields of both abstract painting and minimalism as artistic canons before discussing the art exhibits in detail as many readers may not be familiar with the emergence and aims/expressions of the canons.

Notes and expanded glossary for ‘Minimalism, , Abstraction, Hardedge and Geometric painting and Conceptual art’
Abstract art can be described as artwork which use shapes, forms, colours, materials and gesture/gestural marks to access and create a non-representational, visual art outcomes, it uses abstracted elements or essences to avoid direct references, literal or realistic representations of reality.
It is, by nature and linguistic terminology ; ‘abstract’.

Classic Abstraction often includes:
Geometric shapes
Hard-edged painting techniques where colours butt up against each other with clean lines and it uses specific ‘colour fields’ or planes/areas of colours.
Geometric Abstraction
·      Simple geometric forms in non-illusionistic space – examples of early pre-runners to abstraction are Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian
·      Uses Colour as definition – which does not correspond to real objects or symbols
·      Often uses unmodulated tone – ie. It does not have heavily textured/gestural surfaces – rather flat planes of colour (colour fields)
·      Can contain dynamic/structural correspondences – often varying in scale and direction of shape or using pattern, repetition, asymmetry, harmony, equilibrium
·      Influences such as music can be re-represented in the works
·      Has high colour saturation
·      Each artist has a tendency to develop their own style or visual language, sometimes with a strict working methodology, for example although technically a Suprematist rather than a minimalist abstract painter, Malevich always used a white background which he described as a “Boundless state of the ideal’.
·      There is a rejection of organic or natural form

Minimalism
The roots of Minimalism are generally located in North American in the late 1950’s into the 1960’s, it is as much a philosophy as method of practice and contains dis-associative, industrial, conceptual and often reductive shapes. Whilst the form may appear simple, the thinking behind it is not. It springs from the traditions of the ‘ready mades’ of Dada, of Cubism (although it avoids the impasto and directionality of cubist paint application) and of Russian Suprematist painting. But has religious, scientific, cultural and influences which are much earlier. It follows the iconoclastic, non-representational traditions of Orthodox Jewish, Islamic and some sectarian protestant, (including Lutheran), faiths with no figuration or reference to the natural world permitted. It also demonstrates visual comparisons to the Buddhist and Hindu geometric mandalas, used for mediation, contemplation and prayer.
It evidences the influence of early modern philosophers, notably Kant and his ‘transcendental idealism’, whose thinking is still felt in the world of arts, ethics and science. There is an irony that the world of scientific ethics still looks to the writings of an 18C Pietist, who additionally studied Hebrew and (allegedly, like Spinoza) was a Kabbalist. Indeed Nietzsche, said ‘Kant's success is merely a theologian's success…’
An underlying Jewish influence is also marked in 20C Minimalist and Abstract art.
There is a deep but masked interconnectivity and spiritual/religious motivation in these works, which develop out of a socio-political background of upheaval, the creation of new ‘empires’ and terrible wars.

Minimalism
·      Has a lot of ‘rules’ and stratagems - these ‘rules can include mathematical, random or chance based progressions.
·      Minimalism in painting was described by Frank Stella as “What you see is what you see” – it has no superfluous decoration or information
·      No emotion – as opposed to abstract expressionism which is full of emotion and gesture – it could be often described as still or static in its being. It demonstrates presence as opposed to movement.
·      The presence is of an ‘Object’ not a painting or sculpture : it is the physical presence of the art object which is important
·      Contains simple, minimal numbers of elements or those which repeat
·      Is often Geometric or contains geometric elements
·      Shows order/systems – e.g. The protractor series by Stella (* these do have religious or pagan influences looking at Hiraqla, the ancient Syrian City which is designed on the circle: therefore contravene the ‘rules’ because they contain historic references ) or the instructed wall drawings by Sol LeWitt
·      Are self referential – no symbols or messages
·      Presentation; paintings are wall hung, sculpture is free standing with no plinth
·      Uses colour as material
·      Uses repetition
·      May use pattern
Has ambiguous relationships between the mechanical and hand created
·      May contain architectural elements
·      Offers no reflection/reflective surfaces
·      Great attention is paid to pre-preparation of materials and process:
Colour mixing
Colour matching
Choice of Support
Choice of paint
Implements of fabrication: roller, brush, knife, type of application – masking,
line drawing by hand, use of grids or constructed with mechanical aids e.g. protractor, compass or rulers
Pure Minimalism
·      Sometimes called ABC art = fundamentals
·      Aims to remove any sign of the hand of the artist, of the human and natural, it is intellectual, mechanical and obsessive.
·      No suggestion of a depth
·      No expression of feeling
·      No psychological idea impact
·      No organic materials
·      No biomorphic shape (circle is problematic)
·      No base/pedestal if it is a sculptural object
·      Aims for neutrality, blankness
·      Is non-romantic/non heroic
·      Aims for ‘Objecthood’
·      Is often manufactured or prefabricated in an industrial manner – ordered, manufactured, delivered – the artist has never touched the work of art themselves

Hard-edge abstract painting ; general constraints :
·      Sharp clear transitions
·      Areas of flat colour
·      Economy of form
·      Fullness of colour
·      Impersonal execution
·      Smooth surface planes
·      Designs and structure
·      Rules and regulations of making
·      Geometric shapes, predominantly squares and rectangles but also (targets, chevrons, stripes, trapezoids, grids and circles)

Mixing up the ‘rules’
Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings fall into the category of ‘hard edge’, ‘black and white colour field’ and contain abstract and true minimalist elements. He did not execute the works himself; there are pre-prepared written instructions which are posted to the proposed venue(s) to be installed by their teams or by volunteers. The intention is that they can be made by any one in any space and each one is different and altered by the size of the room/space into which they are installed adding another element of depersonalisation.

Problematic intentionality:
Because the ‘objects’ are placed in gallery, museum and public settings, with a value of ‘art’ attributed to them, it is arguably impossible to remove direct meaning from them, or at least to avoid paradoxical problems, for example, many works are called ‘untitled’ in a further attempt not to overlay meaning on to the works. Or retain a title which relates directly to the materials or colours used to make the work. There is profound complexity in attempting to reduce things to their essence as this essence is rarely without meaning.
And even an everyday object, such as a brick, even left at the side of the road, discarded, has meaning and a narrative which is attached to it, in the past, present and future. It seems it is very difficult to escape meaning and metaphor.
As Mircea Eliade wrote, “either everything is sacred or nothing”. (2.) ( Eliade 1968) it can be argued that ‘either everything is art or nothing’ and it is only our human system of values and language that denote categorisation and division.

The phrases ‘God is dead’ and ‘painting is dead’ are very familiar and (often wrongly attributed) reflect changes in memetic thinking rather than fundamental shifts in reality and are considered very differently across cultures. In reality, neither are dead, but attitudes towards them have altered radically, along with a permissions of freedom of thought, belief and difference.
Abstraction is what our brains do to filter information and construct our (shared) realities, it allows us to work collectively as a species and is not a new phenomenon. Alphabets as metarepresentations use abstraction, and we can build on them, our worlds are built on language and therefore as homo-aestheticians we comprehend symbol and colour at a fundamental level. We teach small children through colour, shape and number and are designed to cue into pattern, we learn through repetition. Abstraction therefore does not represent naivety, but a comprehension of the essential. It is here that artistic abstraction and minimalism appeal not to our lower but our higher natures. The movements are undoubtedly influenced by religious understandings as well as political, often Marxist values. The value an artefact it holds for the viewer is often based on concepts of labour, temporality and medium; how long has it taken to make, does it require skill to make, what is it made from and what these things mean to the view. It can then invert or deliberately reject these values, in an attempt to make us question our, profound value systems and understanding of our own worlds. The question, ‘what does it do?’ then raises other value judgements, not least about our individual needs and desires.
Photography radically altered humanity’s view of itself. Allowing it a completely different perspective. Photography is not a mirror but rather a slice in time, created through a mechanical process which distances the ‘artist’ from the medium and abstraction and minimalism must surely owe a debt to this technology. It presents a moment rather than a process and an abstraction of time. Photography morphed into film and then with the evolution of human technology the grand-meta-narratives of the internet, where all and everything is permitted.
Abstraction represents the root or foundation of all development of the evolution of the fundamentals of language, metaphor and potential and offers us the same theological question as the Kabbalists of old, reminding us that everything is ultimately ‘no-thing’. From the seeds of abstraction the possibilities are endless, it is up to us to decide what they become and whether we need ‘more’ than we already possess.

Reciprocal Autonomy and Contemporary Abstract Painting
Jason Hoelscher (3)
Hoelscher writes, “Abstract painting was presented across much of the 20th century as a pinnacle of Western artistic progress, resulting from a long-term dialectical drive toward purity. This teleologic, endgame mode of abstraction reached its discursive distillation with Clement Greenberg’s 1960 essay "Modernist Painting," then fell from favor as other artforms rose to prominence.”
He tells us, “Today abstract painting is back—bigger and glossier than ever, and no longer bounded by all-encompassing theories or metanarratives. Now post-discursive, post-teleological and post-specific, contemporary abstraction raises two major questions: lacking an overtly articulated, top-down imposition of boundary conditions, what disciplinary or organizational tendencies allow abstract painting to maintain a coherent identity as a recognizable category of contemporary art? Further, how does abstraction today reconcile openness of potential with its inherited continuity of tradition? ‘Hoelscheher compares its development to that of Wikipedia’s; highlighting similarities in its model of growth, in put and flexibility. He compares the similarity of the language of computer coding, software creation to the language around art and abstraction.

Colin A Low on Abstraction : (4)
On Hod (Kabbalistic Sephiroth)

It is also an absolutely basic characteristic of the world that it is bigger than my nervous system. I cannot possibly create *accurate*, internal representations of the world, and one of the meanings of the verb "to abstract" is "to remove quietly". This is what the nervous system does: it quietly removes most of what is going on in the world in order to create an abridged representation of reality with all the important (important to me) bits. This is the world "I" live in: not in the "real" world, but an internal reality synthesised by my nervous system. There has been a lot ofphilosophising about this, and it is difficult to think about how our nervous systems *might* be distorting or even manufacturing reality without a feeling of unease, but I am personally reassured by the everyday observation that most adults can drive a car on a busy road at eighty miles per hour in reasonable safety. This suggests that while our synthetic internal representation of the world isn't accurate, it isn't at all bad. Abstraction does not end at the point of building an internal representation of the external world. My nervous system is quite content to treat my internal representation of the world as yet another domain over which it can carry out further abstraction, and the subsequent new world of abstractions as another domain, and so on indefinitely, giving rise to the principal definition of "abstraction": "to separate by the operation of the mind, as in forming a general concept from consideration of particular instances". As an example, suppose someone asks me to watch the screen of a computer and to describe what I see. I have no idea what to expect.

"Hmmm...lots of dots moving around randomly...different colour dots...red, blue, green. Ah, the dots seem to be clustering...they're forming circles...all the dots of each particular colour are forming circles, lots of little circles. Now the circles are coming together to form a number...it's 3. Now they're moving apart and forming another number...its 15...now 12..9..14. They've gone..........that was it..3, 15, 12, 9, 14. Is it some sort of test? Do I have to guess the next number in the series? What are the numbers supposed to mean? What was the point of it? Hmmm..the numbers might stand for letters of the alphabet...let's see. C..O..L..I...N. It's my name!"
The dots on the screen are real - there are real, discrete, measurable spots of light on the screen. I could verify the presence of dots of light using an appropriate light meter. The colours are synthesised by my retinas; different elements in my eye respond to different frequencies in the light and give rise to an internal experience we label "red", "blue", "green". The circles simply do not exist: given the nature of the computer output on the screen, there are only individual pixels, and it is my nervous system which constructs circles. The numbers do not exist either; it is only because of my particular upbringing (which I share with the person who wrote the computer program) that I am able to distinguish patterns standing for abstract numbers in patterns of circles e.g.

o o
o o
o
o
o
o
o
ooooooooo

And once I begin to reason about the *meaning* of a sequence of numbers I have left the real world a long way behind: not only is "number" a complex abstraction, but when I ask a question about the "meaning" of "a sequence of numbers" I am working with an even more "abstract abstraction". My ability to happily juggle numbers and letters and decide that there is an identity between the abstract number sequence "3, 15, 12, 9, 14" and the character string "COLIN" is one of those commonplace things which any person might do and yet it illustrates how easy it is to become completely detached from the external world and function within an internal world of abstractions which have been detached from anything in the world for so long that they are taken as real without a second thought.      In parallel with our ability to structure perception into an internal world of abstractions we possess the ability   to communicate facts about this internal world. When I say "The cup is on the table", another person is able to identify in the real world, out of all the information reaching their senses, the abstraction "chair", the abstraction "cup", and confirm the relationship   of   "on-ness".   Why are the cup   and   table abstractions? Because the word "cup" does not uniquely specify any particular cup in the world, and when I use the word I am assuming   that the listener already possesses an   internal representation of an abstract object "cup", and can use that abstract specification of a cup to identify a particular object in the context within which my statement was made.
We are not normally conscious of this process, and don't need to be when dealing with simple propositions about objects in the real world. I think I know what a cup is, and I think you do too. If you don't know, ask someone to show you a few. Life gets a lot more complicated when dealing with complex internal abstractions: what is a "contract", a "treaty", a "loan", "limited liability", a "set", a "function", "marriage", a "tort", "natural justice", a "sephira", a "religion", "sin", "good", "evil", and so on (and on). We reach agreement about the definitions of these things using language.   In some cases, for example, a mathematical object, the thing is completely and unambiguously defined using language, while in other cases (e.g. "good", "sin") there is no universally accepted definition. Life is further complicated by a widespread lack of awareness that these internal abstractions *are* internal, and it is common to find people projecting internal abstractions onto the world as if they were an intrinsic part of the fabric of existence, and as objectively real as the particular cup and the particular table I referred to earlier. Marriage is no longer a contract between a man and a woman; it is an estate made in heaven. What is heaven? God knows. And what is God? Trot out your definitions and let's have an argument - that is the way such questions are answered.Much of the content of electronic bulletin boards consists of endless arguments and discussions on the definition of complex internal abstractions (what is ritual, what is magic, what is karma, what is ki, what is...).
A third element which goes together with abstraction and language to complete the essence of the sephira Hod is reason, and reason's formal offspring, logic. Reason is the ability to articulate and justify our beliefs about the world using a base of generally agreed facts and a generally agreed technique for combining facts to infer valid conclusions.   If reason is considered as one out of a number of possible processes for establishing what is true about the world we live in, for establishing which models of reality are valid and which are not, then it has been phenomenally successful: in its heyday there were those who saw reason as the most divine faculty, the faculty in humankind most akin to God, and that legacy is still with us - the words "unreasonable" and "irrational" are often used to attack and denigrate someone who does not (or cannot) articulate what they do or why they do it. There is of course no "reason" why we should have to articulate or justify anything, even to ourselves, but the reasoning machine within us demands an "explanation" for every phenomenon, and a "reason" for every action. This is a characteristic of reason - it is an obsessive mode of consciousness.”

However, it may never be possible to make anything which is totally meaningless, the act of making and designing always happens in a socio-cultural context, and the objects are fabricated for public display rather than private use or absorption. Art almost always provokes a response even when it is disguised as the everyday as Brendon Lyons sculptural and illusory painting is. It is ‘thing’ rather than ‘nothing’ and humans have reactions to things.

(5) Calloway writes (2021); “Empathy is what art does. The domain of art is inducing some sort of empathetic response to the piece of art and the world beyond.” Continuing,
“We often think of art as something that’s decorative, a beautiful afterthought that operates on a surface level. But this ignores how foundational our aesthetic experience of the world is to our psychological and spiritual experiences of the world. Aesthetic experience is not only a pathway to spiritual understanding, the two are inextricably linked. We build our ethical and spiritual understanding of the world first through our understanding of beauty, the traditions and structures of religion come later.” Dr. Callaway emphasizes the centrality of art to the human experience by referring to our species not as homo sapien, but instead as “homo aestheticus”, explaining, “Our experience of beauty is central to the way we understand our reality physically, psychologically, and spiritually. This centrality makes the work of measurement all the more important. Art moves us deeply, and we need tools to understand how.” The links between vision, consciousness, language and aesthetics remain entangled and only slightly more understood in the early 21C. (6)

In Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Xenakis, Arnellos, Spyrou and Darzentas suggest, “Our knowledge regarding the genesis of the aesthetic judgment in cognitive agents (especially, in humans) is minimal. Most of the studies in aesthetic philosophy have been focused on philosophical questions concerning the nature of aestheticexperience, or on aspects of aesthetics pertaining solely and directly to art, beauty, and sensitivity (i.e., Kant, 1914; Matravers, 2003; Matravers & Levinson, 2005; Carroll,2004)…”
Adding, “Piaget (1956) claims that it is sufficiently well known that every intellectual operation is always related to all the others and that its own elements are controlled by the same law. Every schema is thus interrelated with dynamic structures of other schemata and constitutes itself a totality that exhibits new emergent properties (Piaget, 1956)…”
They also present a ‘Semiotic View of an Aesthetic Experience’; “In the perceptions of art and in most of the creatively designed products, aesthetic experience is intentionally enhanced by the aesthetic artifact because artists or/and designers have intention to manipulate their materials and create signs (Brandt, 2005). Artifacts have their intended uses built into their design and therefore carry historical, social and cultural information in that design (Lier, 2004). “

Nothing exists in a vacuum.
Sally ANNETT Novembre 2022

Links and references:
1. Closer to Truth. George Lakoff - How Does Philosophy Illuminate the Physical World? (2021) Available on line @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpq5RQfSYaA

2. Eliade. M (1968) The Sacred and the Profane. Harvest Books Harcourt Inc.

3. Hoelscher. J. (2014) Reciprocal Autonomy and Contempoaray Abstract Painting. SECAC Conference, Sarasota Fl. USA Available on line @ https://www.academia.edu/37699851/Reciprocal_Autonomy_and_Contemporary_Abstract_Painting

4. Low. C.A. (2001) Hod and Netzach on Abstraction. Available on line @ http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/nok/q6.txt

5.Callaway. K. Ph.D., (2021) Measuring the Spiritual Dimension of Art. Available on line @ https://templetonreligiontrust.org/explore/measuring-the-spiritual-dimension-of-art/

6. Arnellos. A, Darzentas. Spyrou. T, J, Xenakis. I, (2012) Modelling Aesthetic Judgment .An Interactive-semiotic Perspective. Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 25-51