Gorge, 2016
Baking tins, copper coated steel rings
190cm x 110cm x 110cm and 35cm x 235cm x 85cm
An un-mountain
Like a garment no longer worn
but slumped on the floor
wearing itself as only it could.
In 2016, I was beginning to feel bent out of shape after striving to build a monumental mountain. The tipping point was finding myself engorged by an un-mountain that had collapsed and concertina around me. Too consumed trying to conquer this sculptural obstacle, it was not until I began to loosen my grip and get to grips with the constraints that I had set myself, when I started to imagine how comical this impossible performance must have looked from the outside.
The turning point was reading The Split and the Structure’, published in 1996, which is a collection of 28 essays written by Rudolf Arnheim, wherein, Arnheim shares his views and perspective on the study of visual perception and the arts, applied using the principles of Gestalt psychology.[1]
Across this series of essays Arnheim makes more than one analogy to compare works of art with works of nature. Whether drawing upon knowledge, lived experience, intuition or the imagination, Arnheim considers the creative act of an artist as an act of personification, wherein, the artist attributes human characteristics onto something non-human, by ’embody[ing]’ the ‘dynamic’ nature of indeterminate events, and he defines the art work as a symbol of mental strength, in which, the viewer can confront life’s ‘mysteries and problems…challenges, threats’.
Illustrating the artist’s world as ‘a forest of symbols’, Arnheim states:
“Since forces are felt but are as abstract as electricity or gravitation, it is the artists’ task to make the strivings of the mind perceivable by seeing them symbolised in the behaviour of the environment.“
In the essay The Echo of the Mountain, Arnheim makes an analogy between the workings of nature and the work of art, describing the work of art as having the ability to reflect the ‘impediments of the body’ in relation to ‘the ease of the mind’s mobility’. [2]
Gorge (detail), 2016
Baking tins, copper coated steel rings
190cm x 110cm x 110cm and 35cm x 235cm x 85cm
Arnheim reflects on emotional patterns of behaviour which can have a tendency to fluctuate and ‘abstract feelings’ that are not easily defined, as being similar to the ‘peaks and valleys’ of a sublime landscape. Using the oxymoronic phrase ‘aspirations weakness’, Arnheim draws his readers attention to the precarious ‘edges of a precipice’ to consider the psychological drives that underpin ambition, in respect of a change of view that may be required, followed by another decision or immediate action to be taken when faced with danger. [3]
[1] Britannica. (n.d.) Gestalt psychology. Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/science/Gestalt-psychology. Source cited: 20th January, 2017
Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. That is, the attributes of the whole are not deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation. The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been “placed,” or “put together.” There is no exact equivalent in English. “Form” and “shape” are the usual translations; in psychology the word is often interpreted as “pattern” or “configuration.”
Gestalt theory originated in Austria and Germany as a reaction against the associationist and structural schools’ atomistic orientation (an approach which fragmented experience into distinct and unrelated elements). Gestalt studies made use instead of phenomenology. This method, with a tradition going back to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, involves nothing more than the description of direct psychological experience, with no restrictions on what is permissible in the description. Gestalt psychology was in part an attempt to add a humanistic dimension to what was considered a sterile approach to the scientific study of mental life. Gestalt psychology further sought to encompass the qualities of form, meaning, and value that prevailing psychologists had either ignored or presumed to fall outside the boundaries of science.
[2] Rudolph Arnheim. ‘The Split and the Structure’. University of California Press. 1996. p92-96
[3] Ibid.