100 trapèzes Vera Malnár

The work is an adaptation of Vera Molnár’s work “100 trapèzes”, where instead of 100 trapezoids, only 20 are shown, the first 10 of the first row as the first 10 of the second. The first row swings from left to right, while the second row swings from right to left. In both cases it is done slowly and relaxed.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

Nowadays each person is a world, and that also applies to thinking about abstract art as well as any other. The subjectivity of each work depends more than on the author, but on the consumer, with no need for the painter to do more than capture something on the canvas so that someone can find the deepest meaning in it. Paul Valéry develops this in his text “The Conquest of Ubiquity” from 1928, exemplifying the music industry, but the work of Mitchell W. J. T on abstract painting will also be discussed.

Thus, Paul Valéry addresses the issues of the appropriation of each work, where each person internalizes the art, the concepts, and makes them their own. A work can have an infinite amount of meanings for each person on the planet who sees it. Art responds to our call when we want, it is not necessary to go to a museum and appreciate the work in a certain way as was done in another era, today a large number of works and museums have their works available as virtual tours and galleries so that it is not necessary to go to the physical place, one can enjoy and consume art from home without having schedules or appearances.

W. J. T. Mitchell announces in Ut Pictura Theoria: abstract painting and language: “the fewer verbal clues the painter provided by way of title, narrative clues or theme, the more the viewer was required to fill the void with language” (Mitchell, 1994)1. Observing a work of art in this way becomes an almost Freudian activity where each person creates their own meaning, searching the depths of their subconscious to find meaning in the work. The author says about the abstract work: “It is not that we have nothing to say about it, or that it has nothing to tell us, but that we can feel overwhelmed and ashamed by the amount of things we can say to it”2. The infinity of meanings and concepts that can result from an abstract work are as many as the possible viewers there are for them. As long as there is a spectator there is a meaning, and thus each one reaffirms the content of the work. Nowadays art can be at any time and place, giving people an infinite number of meanings, but also ways of consuming it, as Valéry refers to the evolution of music consumption.

You do not need a background, a literature or a story behind the work to understand it, to consume it “as it is supposed to”, because there is no supposed single answer. Unlike other types of artistic avant-garde, abstract work breaks with this system of literature-work.

The work presented as an adaptation of Vera Molnár’s work is an example of this. Just as there are so many trapezoids in the work, there can be so many meanings that the viewer gives to each of them.

Biography

1. Mitchell, W.J.T., p. 192.
2. Mitchell, W.J.T., p. 196.