Abstraction was a reaction to artists’ fulfillment of the pursuit of the Aristotle’s aesthetic, “Art as the successful the imitation of nature”. Until the mid-19th century western painting was preoccupied with imitative art , art which mimicked a 3-dimensionally staged space unified and filled with flora, architecture, characters, weather and objects as perceived by vision, especially a vision mediated by a fixed, single, immobile, all-focusing eye. It’s not how we see, it’s how we think we see. Painting as imitation was a marriage of symbolic representation(mapping, categorizing and itemizing) to a memory of space, texture, color and value. Photography helped reinforce the myth of the all focusing eye. But, we don’t see like a camera sees. Our natural focal area deteriorates markedly outside of a very small circle of focus in the center of our vision. We scan and build our imagery in our brain. From materials to palette, from design to motif, from painting tools to narrative content our cultural memory plays the determining role in making art. As we reassess our needs we also reassess our identities, our memories and, our markets. We constantly update ourselves. We reprioritize the cultural purpose of everything from the role of breakfast food to role of music or painting. New goals and purposes for painting were required because, by the mid 19th century painting had sufficiently proved it could imitate photography and vice versa. Western artists began their redefinition artistic intention by borrowing the decorative aesthetics of other cultures from Africa to Asia and, by examining the biology of vision and the operation of the brain as it generated a vision of the world. By the end of the 19th century In Vienna there was a new drive to reveal realities beneath the surface as Eric Kandel explains in his new book , Age of Insight. In Paris, artists pursued the nature of biological vision as experienced in a single glance in full sunlight; these were the impressionists. As an artist, I started where the mid-19th century artists started. I tried to imitate the drama of nature as inspired by 19th landscape painters. And, like those artists I eventually turned to the nature of biological vision as a source of inspiration but, coupled to techniques, traditions and forms from art history. This was Cezanne’s quest. Today we know more about biological vision. Today we have more colors and new technologies. I am applying this added knowledge and technology to Cezanne’s agenda as you will see in the following examples. In example one, I have a traditional-styled seascape with a low horizon and large sky which I painted 8 years earlier. Through my use of large squeegees, brushes and a reliance on the foreshortening power of linear perspective I modified this painting to become example 2 .
example 1. 
example2. 
In example 3, I have reversed the proportional relationship of sky to land. The motif is a tide-pool I painted 8 years ago. In example 4, I modified the painting considerably using the traditional zigzag pattern within a compressed and foreshortened layout and, let a linear perspective arrangement of shapes gather in the lower half of the painting pushing them beneath the receding zigzag above.
example 3. 
example 4. 
In example 5 I have taken one of my older rather dull landscapes of a Tuscan hillside which ( in example 6) I have broken down in a geometry of surface and recession. I heightened the contrast in both color and value, deepened the space using a concentrated medley of converging recessional shapes, and unified the composition with a simpler design.
example 5.
example 6. 
Finally, If you have an interest in painting in plein air with me this summer. I have two multi-day workshops. The first is from June 26-30( $725. Tuesday-Friday) painting a variety of forest, river and garden settings in the Brandywine River Valley in Pennsylvania. Stay in an 18th century village. We visit the Wyeth collection in the Brandywine River Museum and local Gardens like Longwood. Interested? call Silvermine School of Art at 203 966 6668.
elaine finsilver
love the idea of squeegees. miss you
Fredric Neuwirth
It is good to know that paintings can be saved and revived into a new statement; the big question is courage to see differently.
Sandy Garnett
David,
Highly enjoyable post on what pushed the 20th century creators into new areas that included ‘abstraction.’ ‘Conceptualizing’ art reaches its apex in the late 60’s NYC, when all art making implements had been removed so you had index cards with some writing on it that nobody could buy pinned to the gallery walls as the ‘art’ (BS). When high criticism and intellect meddle art becomes something else. I have been thinking about ‘Reconstructionism’ for 15 years as the art world has been ‘reconstructing’ itself after a century of deconstructing itself to the point of thinking and non-art making. Whenever intellect dominates art art goes away.. an interesting paradox.