[Art-is INDEX]    [Syllabus]
Art-is:  DESIGN:  Line by Line
See also:  [Design: Form (line)]
           [Art Materials]
           [Art Technique]
           [Art Terms]
           [Art THINGS] (sort of a catch-all)




On this page:  {What is Line?}
                                             

Art-is:  DESIGN:  Line by Line

Stuff

We take a blank surface (it could be the side of
the train "box" cars in the opening credits of
"Police Academy: Back in training" where the words
CAST (in very computer-deko font) *just* happen
to appear onto)...

A canvas, a wall, a piece of paper - that humblist
of all "art tools"....

and onto it we place lines. If we adhere to the strictly
geometric, we end up with a "geometry lesson"....

   Franz Kupka
   Frank Stella 
   Piet Mondrian 

(and note that in these particular artists in their most
*known* styles, i need not mention *precise* reference works)

If we soften (just a bit) the hard geometries into a bit on
the organic, then we get "soft geometry" (the actual title
name of the bed sheets that i bought once) and ....

   Sonia Terk-Delaunay (The Trans Siberian and of poets' relams)
   Jackie Winsor (scultpures not-quite in the round)
   Piet Mondrian (his soft tree grid-like springs to mind)
 
and of course Paul Klee

And softer still we get,

   Helen FrankenThaler (The Magji)
   Franz Kline (Brooklyn Bridge)
   Eva Hesse (those "L" people walking across the gallery floor)

And note that in all of this we have STAYED in the world of ONLY 
line - not surface, nor really colour our intent of focus.

And then against that we do the "pick up sticks" thing 
-- the bundle tossed on flat plane gains its strength
(as test of skill) from:

   its BUNCH-NESS, 
   it's GROUPED ON TOP OF EACH OTHER
   it is a MOUND (burial? wind-swept sand dune? or bower bird?...

Stark into the space may come the line like the shreiking
siren in Pendereski's "Threnody",

Or almost silent as the Mona Lisa's dress bodice - possibly the
only real "thing" of line in the entire painting
   
This thing called LINE.

Enter the abstract

There are two meanings to the word 'abstract' --

  1) A distillation of a paper into a few words
     as a summary or an over-view.

  2) To translate into the abstract realm.


In one sense the abstract of a circle is a plus sign 
in another, the fractions of a crecent moon (or better
yet the sun in ALMOST TOTAL eclipse).

So, is a "rough sketch" or a "fractional representation"
abstract?  We have only to look at a cartoon drawing of
a brick building - only a few actual rectangles are 
drawn, for the most part courses with a few verticle
stripes - and even in impressionist paintings; but almost
never in architectural drawings - the lines though faint
mimic faitfully the stretchers in their courses, and the
soldiers lining the top of the wall.....


Thus, what many mistake for abstract is in fact *merely*
"in-exact" or "softly translated" phantoms that are in fact
as hard pressed into representation as a crystal focus
snap shot - we read a Kathe Kolowitz "face in agony" or   ??sp??
THAT TREE by van Gogh as readily as the blind read a face
or a tree with their hands; as if embossed or reliefed into
the realm of the exact. 

The curve of a curve IS a curve; a straight-ish line IS a
line Euclid and even ovals yield pi's ratio to infinite
precsion; hence: IMPRESSIONISM.

And of text? Lines to be sure, but not abstract except in
forgoten lines of poetry; viz, Eugenio Montale's discription
of his wife flitting in and about a room of Intelectuals
(captitalised by diplomas, documents, and dogma) as 
"a little fly pipping in and they not even know they've
been exposed' - by no means an exact quote..
   : an EXPRESSIONISTIC INTERPRETATION.