Art & Inspiration Blog

Post Conceptual Art marries the concepts of conceptualism with figurative art. The focus is on the strokes – and each stroke is a symbol, usually a letter from a text(s). The strokes are then used, as artists have always used strokes, to create a narrative image.

Thus, Post Conceptual Art unites the two streams of found throughout art history. One, usually considered more Western is representational and logical, using scientific and geometric understandings of perspective and form, perspective, light, anatomy, etc. The opposite stream is often referred to as Eastern and is symbolic, less concerned or not at all concerned with any realism.

The name, Post Conceptual Art specifically refers to contemporary Conceptualism; however the roots of that movement branch back to humankind’s first art.

A quick Google for the words: “opposite of conceptual art,’ turned up the Affordable Art Fair, coming in a couple of weeks to Bristol. Geared at new collectors it offers information about art movements and terms. According to the AAF, “The term figurative is now used as the opposite of abstract or conceptual, and extends to anything that depicts a subject taken from life, be it a landscape, objects (a still life) or the human figure.”

According to Wikipedia, “Conceptual Art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.” Thus the concept or idea behind the work is paramount.

In Post Conceptual Art the focus is on the stroke. The stroke is a symbol, and thus an idea, a concept. The concept may add up to create more and more concepts in the work, just as a letter (letters are symbols) can combine with other letters to create a word (thus a new symbol made of symbols) and then sentences, and so on. While the individual symbol-strokes in Post Conceptual Art may be letters that are from attributed texts (such as the Bible, a poem, a quote) or they may be from text’s created by the artist just as Conceptual Artists Lawrence Weiner and Jenny Holtzer create their texts.

However, in Post Conceptual Art the symbols may add up to create the additional meaning of texts the also visually combine to create imagery that may or may not have any obvious reference to the text(s).

Since the focus is on the stroke, whether or not the individual stroke can be seen or is semi or fully covered with other strokes and glazes, then the symbol used for a stroke, or the symbol set selected for a work is of paramount importance. Again, the strokes convey the conceptual significance of the work while also combining to create a figurative work.

Post Conceptual UnGraven Image uses the set of Torah Font letters. Originally the artistic experiment by Judy Rey Wasserman to use this symbol set began based on the Abrahamic theology of all Christians and Jews, whatever branch or denomination that when the Creator speaks the world into existence the letters of those words are the essences of the physical universe. Other attempts to paint the chemical symbols of atoms (nucleus, electrons, photons, etc.,) to somehow form an figurative image revealing the energy that was always present had proven not to be viable. The theology posited the idea of a set of letters that Wasserman thought she could try to use as strokes. At the time of the original experiment, Pissarro, Monet and the Impressionists who strove to paint the light, a specific form of energy were on her mind. The experiment worked, but Wasserman was “translating and inventing ways to use the new symbol-strokes as this was painting in a new way.

Wasserman knew that Hebrew Torah font letters are binary, meaning that each and every letter could be created using combinations of the one or more of two of the letters, yud and vav in the font. [Note: just like English, there are many other Hebrew fonts.] Binary means the Torah font letters not only elegantly serve to represent the strings of elementary physics, but also reference binary applications and concepts in the other sciences and mathematics. Binary is simultaneous for duality, thus important concepts in most of the world’s religions, such as good-evil, yin-yang, and holy-profane, thus adding more reference significance for the symbol-strokes.

Hebrew is a phonetic language, meaning sound vibration is also pictured in the strokes. Physicists describe the strings as energy or pre-matter (depending of the view of the experiment) and energy vibrates, thus also representing sound gives further relevance to the strokes. Plus, the Hebrew alphabet is used as numerals, also.

Is there another set of symbols that can pack this much information and reference, to science, spiritual teachings, sound and literature? So far, no other phonetic binary font has been found in any language. What has been discovered by the artist is that every Torah font letter can be made with one or two brush or pen strokes, something not possible with any font of letters in English, for example.

Post Conceptual Art using Torah font letters for each and every stroke is a renaissance of the origins of art, as it serves to combine the arts, science and spiritual healing.

Archeology, art history and anthropology agree that the original artists were the shamans of the group. They were responsible for the creation of the cave paintings, the masks and the artistic items used in the ceremonies and culture of the group. The shaman was also the basic scientist of the group. Another name for shaman is “Medicine Man/Woman” – a person who was a healer, using both spiritual and medicinal, even perhaps operational techniques, such as tooth pulling, bone setting and removal of objects embedded in a body by accident or warfare. Shamans were also the original physicists. They provided a context for how the world was and is created, linking the cosmos, other dimensions and we gather from aboriginal anthropology, a story about how the world, or physical universe, began. They conveyed their understandings through chants (music), story-telling (literature), and visual art. Their visual art depicts their visions of the universe, visions that were simultaneously about the origins of the world, healing, and spiritual growth.

For more download the booklet, “Manifesto of Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art Theory–A Painting’s Meanings are Inherent in its Strokes”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 am and is filed under Art Theory and Show Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.