On Form

If an idea is really new, the artist can never predict how it is to be realised in a medium. A new idea will inevitably be modified through its impact on the resisting media and conversely impose entirely new uses on the medium. In the end, by the mutual impact both idea and medium will be realised in a more profound manner. The idea will be purified of preconceived and manneristic elements unrelated to the rest of the personality and become enriched by unconscious phantases that were excluded from the initial conception.

Anton Ehrenzweig

How we see has been a crucial aspect of art since its beginning. Cavemen knew that painterly gestures depicting a head, four legs and a tail would mean 'horse' if they were put together in a specific way. The invention of one point perspective in the renaissance provided illusions of depth for the first time. Three hundred years later the impressionists application of scientific colour theories yielded new sensations of colour and movement. The cubists sought to convey an even more sophisticated visual concept; the simultaneous representation of multiple facets of an object from different points of view. In out time, changes in attitudes about time and space brought about by new physics have radically altered our thinking yet again. These expanded attitude has resulted in an expanded notion of art; it is no longer an art of illusion of even abstraction but one that is possibly more human, because it takes shape only through the viewers directed perception.

Jan Butterfield