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Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure in 20th-Century Art: Insights fromNeuroscience, Ethology and PerceptionAuthor(s): Derek HodgsonSource: Leonardo, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2005), pp. 55-58Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577646 .

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GENERAL ARTICLE

Graphic Primitives and the

Embedded Figure in 20th-Century

Art: Insights from Neuroscience, Ethology and Perception

Derek Hodgson

DEFINING ART

Twentieth-century art is invariably taken to be derived from a former tradition of picturing, whose previous norms were ac- commodated within a contemporary genre. The value ac- corded to it is therefore determined by how modern art relates to current cultural practices in the light of previous traditions. The argument I wish to pursue in this essay is that this art, rather than being self-defining, can be understood either from the point of view of neuroscience or in terms of certain long- standing determinants that have been ignored by the vast ma-

jority of interested parties. The case I intend to make will show that the factors to be reviewed have important implications for our understanding of how and why abstraction arose. By way of illustration, I will examine some of the most influential movements in the art of the 20th century and demonstrate how these can be explained from a fundamentally different

standpoint.

ABSTRACTION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY

During the beginning and middle of the 20th century there seemed to have been a growing predilection for the nonfigu- rative in art, as manifest either in the simplification of basic forms or the use of complex arrays of tones, colors and marks. This was a turning away from unambiguous representation toward the implied, distorted and tacit. The tendency toward

pure abstraction began in the early years of the 20th century in various movements, with a gathering of pace as time went on, ultimately culminating, for different reasons, in either Neo- Plasticism or Abstract Expressionism.

Kandinsky is credited with producing the first truly abstract

painting, a watercolor in 1910 [1], which appears to have derived from a previous stage of figurative and semi-figurative work. A corresponding but more clearly defined develop- ment from representation to pure abstraction can be seen in Neo-Plasticism (as found in the work of De Stijl). The pinna- cle of this group's artistic achievement centered on the ex-

clusivity of the simple horizontal and vertical line. In many respects the Neo-Plasticists, by paring form down to its essen-

Derek Hodgson (independent scholar), 2 Belle Vue Street, York, North Yorkshire YO10 5AY, U.K. E-mail: <[email protected]>.

ABSTRACT

Recent investigations into both cognitive science and the functional derivation of the visual brain as well as evolutionary dynamics have led to new and exciting ways of interpreting art. Abstract art has often been regarded as beyond the purview of such interpretations because of the very fact that it is abstract. However, as a visually guided activity, abstraction is eminently suited to an analysis from this perspective. This essay will demonstrate how

tials, anticipated what neuroscien- such an approach can reap rich tists, later in the same century, were rewards in the understanding to discover about the architecture of why and how art came to

progress from an earlier repre- of the visual brain: They found sentational phase to one of that the process of seeing is indeed abstraction by examining some composed of primitives. That is, of the 20th century's most recognizable form is derived from influential trends.

successive layers of more simple elements, and it is the complex hierarchy of layers that leads to the illusion of form as consciously experienced.

These coordinates seem to constitute the initial cues the brain picks up at the first port of call, at the level of the primary visual cortex (also known as the VI or striate cortex), as raw visual information cascades through the visual hierarchy. This has recently been borne out by what is known as the "oblique effect": unlike the sites of subsequent processing stages, the primary visual cortex contains more neurons for encoding horizontal and vertical lines than for oblique ones; humans therefore have a higher sensitivity to the former than the latter [2,3].

Incredibly, this point parallels the dispute that ensued between Mondrian and the rest of the Neo-Plasticists, especially Van Doesberg, leading to the former's resignation from the

group in 1924. Mondrian was content to persevere with the exclusive use of the horizontal and vertical line, as defined in the Neo-Plasticist credo, but Van Doesberg and the rest of the De Stijl group insisted on the necessity of including oblique lines to achieve more dynamic effects [4]. In this sense, Mon- drian can be said to be the ultimate purist, as the preference for the vertical and horizontal line parallels the orientations favored at the elemental stages of the primary visual cortex. Interestingly, as Zeki has noted, when an observer views Mon- drian-like paintings, brain scans reveal that only the prelimi- nary processing areas of the visual cortex seem to become active [5]. Van Doesberg and his followers, in depicting oblique lines, seemed to have been more interested in a slightly more complex stage of visual processing typical of succeeding stages in the brain (in the extra-striate regions) in which no oblique effect is observed (i.e. horizontal, vertical and oblique lines are equally represented).

One reason these artists might have been able to tap into the inherent dynamics of earlier-stage processing systems is that, although we are not overtly conscious of what occurs at

LEONARDO, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 55-58, 2005 55 ? 2005 ISAST



these levels, the underlying processes involved remain implicit to this experience [6,7]. In other words, full conscious awareness is made up of and dependent on all the sub-processing stages that in- form overtly experienced seeing. Indeed, full conscious awareness of these preceding stages would be a hindrance, as it would lead to a "swamping" of the "out- put" stage with an unwieldy mass of sur- plus data. According to Crick and Koch, it is possible these earlier-stage pathways "can produce vague feelings of some sort of awareness" [8]. This accords with the finding of Kosslyn et al. that the primary visual cortex is activated, along with higher-order areas, when lines are sum- moned up in the mind's eye [9].

Thus, although the mechanisms at lower levels of processing and their out- comes (perception of line orientation and basic feature extraction, including coordination of Gestalt grouping) are not openly available to consciousness, this does not mean that these areas do not exert an influence or have effects on higher-order processing. This supposi- tion accords with the notion that the primary visual cortex is particularly active, and is more sensitive to line primitives, when an image requires detailed inspec- tion [10-13]. This kind of focused in- spection seems typical of the interaction that occurs when an artist is engaged in depicting regular geometric patterns that have a special resonance in the earlier stages of visual processing [14]. Because of this heightened but implicit sensitivity, artists such as the Neo-Plasticists may have been drawn to those configurations that are most effectively processed by our visual system [15]. Artists whose main preoccupation was with lines and edges will therefore have been inordinately ex- ercising the most ancient regions of the visual brain, which helps explain how and why such paintings came about. The process was a successive retrogression that sought to discover the "elementary particles" of form from which all raw visual data is composed. A similar case can be made for other artists who evince a predilection for simplification and geom- etry-Albers, Malevich, Frank Stella, Rothko, Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Victor Vasarely and Max Bill are some examples.

Kandinsky's work, despite its lyrical appeal, does not escape a comparable analysis. For example, his most abstract paintings completed during the 1920s, such as Yellow Accompaniment (1924), are a compendium of phosphenes-lattices, checkerboards, spirals, circles, zig-zags, etc. These features may represent the

basic geometric motifs that arise out of an interaction between short- and longer- range structures underlying the primary visual cortex that connect it to later processing areas [16-18]. In fact, Bressloff and Cowan et al. [19] have confirmed, through mathematical modeling, that these early stages of cortical processing are indeed responsible for such phe- nomena. In this regard, Kandinsky was exploring a slightly more complex array of basic forms that also appear to be a function of how the early stages of visual processing coordinate incoming information. Orphism can be similarly interpreted. In fact, a later work by Robert Delaunay, Rhythm 579 (1934), copies almost exactly the way that a neuroscien- tist might diagrammatically represent the neural processing for enhancing the perception of lines that occurs between the retina and the primary visual cortex.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND REPRESENTATION

That representation has played such a prominent role in art throughout the ages is probably because the recognition of objects constitutes an up-front, fully fledged, conscious experience that is derived from a preceding stage of the processing hierarchy. After all, as far as evolution is concerned, what the visual brain is primarily interested in is the rapid and unambiguous recognition of an object rather than the lower-order stages from which this perception is derived. This could explain why abstraction as manifest in 20th-century art took such a long time before becoming a serious focus of attention for artists.

One of the predominating influences leading the way from representation to abstraction in the 20th century took the form of Abstract Expressionism. Like Mondrian and Kandinsky, many Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock, started out as representational painters whose work gravitated toward abstraction by way of a succession of intermediary semi-abstract stages. Although initially greeted with hostility by the public at large, Abstract Expressionism eventually came to be an accepted norm. The received wisdom on the value of this art was that, through the intuitive gestural tech- nique of action painting, both subcon- scious urges and pure emotion could be accessed and therefore represented. It is this generally accepted reading that I seek to question by showing how these paintings were more concerned with ma- nipulating the perceptual boundary of

what constitutes figure and ground in the context of camouflage.

One of the defining attributes of camouflage is the overlay of tones and color, exploited by predators and prey alike, to mimic different kinds of foliage or undergrowth, thus helping the hunter and the hunted, for different reasons, to remain concealed. Deception of this order, known as coincident and disruptive camouflage [20], helps prey remain hidden in the presence of predators and helps stalking predators to remain unnoticed by prey through breaking up the contin- uation of the outline contour that delin- eates form. The visual systems of both predators and prey would have been shaped by the ability to rapidly identify potential animals in ambiguous situations by separating figure from ground by searching for tell-tale signs of an animal's true contour. The effectiveness of any camouflage thus depended on how well it matched the environment in which an animal usually lay hidden. Vi- sual systems would have evolved in order to defeat these clever tricks, leading to the survival of those species flexible enough to accommodate this dynamic.

As part of the same ecological process, our distant and not-so-distant ancestors would have been subject to the same con- tingencies. Our forebears' survival would have been intimately connected to the same determinants by which the game of cat-and-mouse was played out amongst fauna throughout time. It is to be noted that the visual system is the most sophisticated of the human senses, with a large part of the brain taken up in the processing of visual information. A primary function of the visual brain, then, would have been the ability to discern animal forms in confusing and complex textural arrays involving various types of foliage or scrub. Most of the predators and prey significant to the survival of humans as a species would have exploited the failures of this ability to their advantage and our detriment.

Many of the Abstract Expressionists' "field" paintings have an uncanny re- semblance to patterns that constitute the basis of camouflage. Pollock, for example, produced a corpus of large-scale paintings, some of which look surpris- ingly similar to the arrays found in different kinds of foliage and undergrowth, which begins to explain the appeal of this kind of abstraction. Here, as in the work of other Abstract Expressionists, representational forms have been partially ob- scured by an intervening pattern. This directly parallels the perceptual context in which our visual systems had to evolve.

56 Hodgson, Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure



The attraction of pure abstract paintings of this genre therefore probably derives from the fact that we constantly scan the presented field searching for forms that could be potentially hidden within the kaleidoscopic array. This is supported by the fact that in many of Pollock's abstract works subtle suggestions that a form might be present are made through the use of darker splashes of tone or color, for example in Alchemy (1947), Blue Poles (1952) and Convergence (1952). Hunter makes the point that in Pollock's purer abstract paintings there is a reversion to suggested "presences and near-imagery" [21]. A painting completed in 1946, en- titled Sounds in the Grass: Shimmering Sub- stance, actually makes explicit reference to forms concealed in vegetation.

The recent observation that Pollock's paintings can be interpreted in terms of fractals is pertinent to this thesis [22,23]. As fractal patterns are common in nature, particularly in vegetation, it corroborates the notion that foliage and the fine- branch lattice structure of undergrowth are being mimicked in these canvases. As Pollock's work progressed, these fractal patterns systematically became even more dense and overlaid.

It seems that the Abstract Expression- ists may have been more representational in outlook than they might have first sup- posed, as these depictions were not about the pure emotions of creative expression. Rather they were concerned with the various arrays of texture, tone and color typical of different kinds of branching foliage where a threatening form may have lurked as an embedded figure. The emo- tional aspect of this is to be found in the anxiety that comes with being unable to identify indeterminate figures that could potentially constitute a danger. This probably excites us because we know at the same time that no threat actually exists. Consequently, the emotion we feel is a sense of consternation mixed with pleasure in the knowledge of being one step removed.

This sustained curiosity in the face of a possible danger may have something in common with the response that monkeys sometimes display at the sight of a snake -although initially fearful, it subse- quently turns into an ongoing fascina- tion. This may be because, having been spotted as a danger, the snake no longer poses a threat and can be viewed from a relatively safe distance. The snake's camouflage may also be relevant here, as its outline will seem to disappear and mys- teriously reappear according to its per- ceived movement. A similar but more impressive example is found in cephalo-

pod displays. Cuttlefish, which feed on crabs and shrimps, approach their prey with extreme care, blending themselves with the immediate surroundings. At close proximity, however, the cuttlefish takes on a raised pose by extending two of its eight short arms, while at the same time generating an extraordinary display of colors, which mesmerizes the victim. An incredible changing kaleidoscope passes down its body in the form of zebra stripes, longitudinal and transverse bars, spots and blotches. At this precise mo- ment the cuttlefish elects to pounce and the crustacean is no more. Here, patterns are exploited first to deceive by disguis- ing form through a blending with the immediate environment (coincident camouflage), and then, at close quarters, to seduce and captivate through the use of more regular shapes.

Many of the Abstract Expressionists seem to have followed the same trajectory as Pollock in progressing from representation to abstraction, often exploiting textural and tonal arrays in one form or another, for example, Willem de Koon- ing, Riopelle (e.g. Encounter [1956]), Sam Francis (e.g. The Whiteness of the Whale [1957]), Arshile Gorky (e.g. Golden Brown Painting [c. 1943]), Mark Tobey (e.g. Tropicalism [1948]) and Philip Guston (e.g. Voyage [1956]). Some even passed through a biomorphic stage expressly based on living organisms. Furthermore, Behrens [24] has drawn attention to how camouflage may have been an important aspect of 20th-century art (he makes the interesting observation that many artists, such as Picasso and Matisse, actually ad- vised naval authorities on camouflag- ing military vessels during wartime). A common theme in Abstract Expression- ist paintings is some undefined shape cut short or occluded by the imposition of a similar or different sort of form. These kinds of cues automatically trigger the form-detecting mechanisms of the visual brain, which, because it cannot abide uncertainty, constantly strives to make sense of the apparent ambiguity. But as form remains unspecified, the visual brain is prevented from coming up with a likely candidate, so a never-ending circle of possible interpretations ensues. The effort involved in this struggle may serve to add to the aesthetic interest these kinds of paintings afford. This is a sort of problem solving that the visual brain has been specifically "designed" by evolution to perform, as uncertainty would have represented a possible threat-the need to quickly determine the cause of the ambiguity would have been fundamental. It is no coincidence, then, that the artists

of the Blaue Reiter group, such as Franz Marc (e.g. Deer in the Forest II [1913- 1914]), August Macke (Landscape with Cows and Camel 1914) and the earlier Kandinsky, were disposed to depict animals in the context of semi-abstract arrays of trees and undergrowth and that they later came to have such a strong influence on the Abstract Expressionists.

The Cubists, in attempting to represent the multiplicity of form, also made the recognition of objects more problematic. The difficulties of trying to represent the reality of an object from several different angles led to obvious contradictions that could not be re- solved, and the project foundered. Not- withstanding their stated aims, the real effect of the dissolution of the bound- aries of figure and ground through the fragmentation of pictorial space was to create an abstract array in which the perceptual system of the observer needed to actively search for clues of what was being represented. It was left to Neo-Plasticism and Abstract Expressionism to begin where the Cubists had left off. Through their investigations of the essential in- gredients of form and the merits of the embedded figure, the potentialities of these distinct levels of processing came to be fully exploited by two of the century's most controversial artistic movements.

ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION: TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

These observations are corroborated by the research of Treisman and Gelade [25] andJulesz [26], which demonstrates how the visual brain's pre-attentive early- warning system discerns any changes in the overall pattern of a visual array from texton primitives (line segments of given width, orientation and length together with both their endings and intersec- tions) from which figure and ground can then be extracted. The pre-conscious system provides a link between Neo- Plasticism and Abstract Expressionism, because the texton-detecting mechanism is derived from the evolutionary imper- atives that dictate how form is dealt with at later, more sophisticated stages, after figure and ground have been assigned. Neo-Plasticism concentrates exclusively on specifying the pre-conscious compo- nents typifying the beginning of the visual stream preceding the allocation of figure and ground. It therefore embod- ies the most fundamental units the brain employs to inaugurate scanning pro- cedures. Abstract Expressionism, on the

Hodgson, Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure 57



other hand, exploits both the pre-attentive texton/primitive channel and the more attentive intermediate stages that scan for specific forms by searching for figure and ground. Both ends of the processing cascade are intimately related to the extraction and encoding of form, that is, the need to discern decisive coordinates efficiently and promptly as part of an early warning system that promotes survival. The pre-attentive system is concerned with the rapid detection of many targets appearing simultaneously over an extended space, while the attentive system specializes in pinpointing a selected target by zooming in with precision for continuous monitoring. Hence, the pre- attentive system allows almost instanta- neous detection of textural changes in the environment that flag the occurrence of objects, whereas the attentive system is serial and so can shift focal attention to any of the objects detected through pre- attentive coordinates. The pre-attentive process is therefore able to distinguish textural changes in a brief flash (less than 150mscs) throughout the entire visual field, but is unable to tell apart individ- ual objects that appear very different when inspected with focal attention. Artists in the first half of the 20th century might have been intrigued to learn that much of their work may have derived from the visual brain's early warning system for potential danger.

CONCLUSION

The conclusion to be drawn from these observations is that some important man- ifestations of art in the 20th century were nurtured by the underlying perceptual/ recognition processes that promote the detection of forms in various situations- especially those where camouflage or degraded viewing conditions make this problematic. Visual processes, as manifest in different hierarchical stages of the

visual brain, can help to defeat such ad- verse conditions by suggesting possibil- ities for the recognition of indistinct forms. Both the early primitive-based and intermediary figure/ground stages of the visual pathway play a pivotal role in this process. These systems, which evolved as automatically defined mechanisms tuned to pick up the regularities of the natural world, were focused upon by several influential 20th-century artists through the agency of painting. Artists actually tended to justify their work in vague, sometimes irrational terms, yet the paintings themselves testify to how neuro- scientific, ethological and evolutionary considerations are paramount to a proper understanding of their derivation.

References

1. M. Seuphor, Abstract Painting-From Kandinsky to the Present (London: Prentice Hall, 1962).

2. C.S. Furmanski and S.A. Engel, "An Oblique Ef- fect in Human Primary Visual Cortex," Nature Neu- roscience 3, No. 6, 535-536 (2000).

3. See also R. Latto, D. Brain and B. Kelly, "An Oblique Effect in Aesthetics: Homage to Mondrian (1872-1944)," Perception 29 (2000) pp. 981-987 re- garding the implications of the oblique effect for understanding abstract art.

4. Seuphor [1].

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6. N.K. Logothetis, "Vision: A Window on Con- sciousness," Scientific American 281 (November 1999) pp. 45-51.

7. F. Crick and C. Koch, "Are We Aware of Neural Activity in Primary Visual Cortex?" Nature375 (1995) pp. 121-123.

8. Crick and Koch [7] p. 122.

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Adaptation ansd Tilt After-Effect fromn Invisible Pat- terns," Nature 411 (2001) pp. 473-476.

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22. R.P. Taylor, A.P. Micolich and D. Jonas, "Fractal Analysis of Pollock's Drip Paintings," Nature 399 (3 June 1999) p. 422. See also R.P. Taylor, A.P. Micolich and D.Jonas, "The Construction ofJackson Pollock's Fractal Drip Paintings," Leonardo 35, No. 2, 203-207 (2002).

23. R. Taylor, "Splashdown," New Scientist 159 (25Jutly 1998) pp. 30-31.

24. R.R. Behrens, False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (Dysart, IA: Bobolink Books, 2002) pp. 213-223.

25. A. Treisman and G. Gelade, "A Feature-Integra- tion Theory of Attention," Cognitive Psychology 12 (1980) pp. 97-136.

26. B.Julesz, "Textons, the Elements of Texture Per- ception, and Their Interactions," Nature 290 (1981) pp. 91-97.

Manuscript received 14 August 2003.

Derek Hodgson is an independent scholar who has recently published a number of papers in academic journals on the origins of art and the psychology of representation in art.

58 Hodgson, Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure

