[Abstract painting, a mental esthetic construction without exact correspondence with reality (José Guerrero: manuel and corporal expressions in his paintings)].
It is desirable that a truthful aesthetic experience should be the consequence of a complete observation detached from all sorts of commercial, social, political or cultural ties. If during this period of admiration of a work of art a personal concentration is reached, the admirer perceives a liberation from all sorts of limiting ties and a rewarding artistic feeling. A similar type of mental freedom must be reached by the artist and prevail during the process of creation which must reach its greatest dimension in abstract paintings because not being illustrations they demand from the spectator a well developed habit to detect its esthetic values, difficult to perceive because they are in the abstract order. The dimensions such as perspective, symmetry, lights and shadows, usually integrated in figurative paintings to create well defined tridimensional spaces are not included in abstractions because this type of geometrical composition is not needed. In contemporary abstraction the design itself has lost its formal meaning and its protagonist role. It is frequently replaced by abrupt gestures as it is the case in the styles named "action painting" (Jackson Pollack) or "abstract expressionism" (Antonio Saura). Other abstract painters close to "minimalism" simply drop the colors on the canvas without any attempt to design but full of aesthetic energy and even single colors uniformly bathe the surface of the linen (Rothko). Other american artists of the sixties (Monis Louis) are also to be admired. They allow that the deposited and sliding colors themselves initiate and finish interesting artistic compositions. They become esential creative agents in the painting without being forced to be figurative nor to follow the creative will of the artist who, is simply acting as the first observer and only intervenes "a posteriori" accepting or rejecting the results. Only the colors and under the single influence of their sliding density create the shapes and artistic ensembles where there are still perceived their slow original movements. The observers of these abstract styles must initiate a process of perception without specific norms and wait until the engaging game of the colors generate emotional rewards in their minds such as amazement or interest that invite them to continue their tuning with the painting. If these artistic attraction is not evoked, the observer must be sadly satisfied with a simple ocular vision of the painting and again wait until the mental perception participates and the aesthetic reward is completed. What the "eyes of the mind" see is not a copy of the painting. A mental copy would not include the artistic meaning that the work of art contains which only emerges during the mental aesthetic encounter between the painting and the observer.
Portera Sánchez
Alberto
A
D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D010151:Paintings / Q000266:history; D013030:Spain; D014796:Visual Perception