This is not Worringer's thesis. wc
________________________________ From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2009 2:39:48 PM Subject: RE: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy Frances to Michael and others... It seems to me that the global value of the Worringer thesis lays with its account of abstraction in art. It is however not yet clear to me how many main kinds of abstract art the thesis claims might exist. It could be useful therefore to first agree that abstract art may be of three main kinds, which can roughly be called biomorphic abstraction and figurative abstraction and geometric abstraction. Biomorphic abstraction normally can be exciting, but when taken to its extreme it can also be very confusing. Figurative abstraction normally can be interesting, but when taken to its extreme it can also be very threatening. Geometric abstraction normally can be satisfying, but when taken to its extreme it can also be very boring. The thesis holds that the origin or cause and source of such abstract art is found in its ability to reflect the reality of a hostile and volatile world that is uncertain and inexact and unpredictable. Now, the power of any kind of abstract art seemingly might lay with its ability to evoke and force responses. It is claimed by the thesis that abstract art initially evokes in the percipient an apathetic sense of anxiety and a fear of reality that causes a stance of distance and distrust. It is then claimed by the thesis that this same abstract art subsequently forces the percipient to make some familiar order out of the apparent chaos or dissection or blandness of the art and the self and the world, and to make the unpredictable determinate, and to give meaning to life by motivating a need for ideality. This empowered looping from evocation to enforcement may account for the root core of abstraction, but in either art or nonart. This lack of differentia may hence be a problem for the thesis, at least if it attempts to account for some abstraction being art. There are after all objects of nonart that can evoke apathy and anxiety and distance, and also force order and familiarity and prediction, all as well as art or even better than art. While the thesis may be good at accounting for the cause of abstraction in general, and even in objects already deemed as art, it seemingly fails to classify objects as art by way of abstraction.
