All 2 entries tagged Abstraction

Research Notes: Multiplicity, co–involution, Being abstract but not generalized

Follow-up to Research Notes: Singularity/continuum, a multiplicitous event from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

More clarification of Deleuze's post-Kantian theory of multiplicitous singularities.

"They say: look at chaos, death and by implication life, right in the eyes, get to know each individual chaos, each death and each life on its own terms."

There's no need for a generalized chaos or passage into chaos (death) in this theory. Every passage into chaos is singular, belonging to an individual or perspective, but the specific chaosmos into which it moves (and from which it is generated) is shared by individuals, deteritorializing together with relative degrees of seperation and involution. The singularity, the perspective, is therefore multiple.

In The Fold Deleuze is concerned with a second dimension (level) to these sensii communis. A superfold that traverses across the individual passages into a shared chaos, formed by the non-linear inter-relations between individuals passing into and out of a shared chaosmos. Or to be more precise, there is an iterative series of levels, from pre-individual singularities, connected up transversally by individuals, and the individuals connected up in other ways such as a socius and capitalist axiomatics.

It could be said that an abstracted Being is shared by each level, and between the levels. This being the plane of consistency or immanence. Is this just their virtuality, their shared principle or movement?

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: 13 Jul 2005 08:04 |  Tags: Abstraction Being Body-Without-Organs Chaos Co-Involution Deleuze Immanence Multiplicity Philosophy Research Plane Of Consistency Singularity The Fold Transversality |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Klee and the separation of painting and music

Follow-up to Van Gogh and painterly diagrams from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Note – this is academic work. If you know about Deleuze's aesthetics, Klee, Bacon etc, you are very welcome to comment.

Painting, as with Van Gogh, establishes a rhythmic pattern. Through an additive synthesis, painting intensifies the body, leads it into chaotic relations with the rest of the material world, provides it with a depth of simultaneous connections, nearing chaos.

For some time painters have been concerned with the relationship between the rhythmic essence of painting and that of music. Deleuze, in a consideration of Cezanne and Bacon, attempts to clarify this relation:

Rhythm appears as music when it invests the auditory level, and as painting when it invests the visual level. Francis Bacon:Logic of Sensation, Continuum, 2004, p.44

Certainly music traverses our bodies in profound ways, putting an ear in the stomach, in the lungs, and so on. It knows all about waves and nervousness. But it involves our body, and bodies in general, in another element. It strips bodies of their inertia, of the materiality of their presence: it disembodies bodies. In a sense, music begins where painting ends, and this is what is meant by the superiority of music. It is lodged in lines of flight that pass through bodies, but which find their consistency elsewhere, whereas painting is lodged farther up, where the body escapes from itself. ibid p.54

Music then acts to disembody, make abstract, deterritorialize onto a distinct plane. As if pulling the spirit out of the body . The incessant seriality of music acts to concentrate and overwhelm the body in anticipation of perception.¹

Paul Klee was concerned with this distinction. As both an accomplished violinist and a painter it would necessarily be an issue. Duchling seems to claim some connection between Klee and the ideas of Nietzsche and Bergson on rhythm in fine arts. Did Klee read Bergson? Anyhow, in the face of attempts by critics to say that Klee's painting was musical, used the same structure as music, Klee responded strongly by emphasising that both arts are rhythmic, but in entirely different ways. Deleuze also had an interest in Klee (will look into that more).

This is the starting point for Duchling's book on Paul Klee, Painting Music. I've just discovered this, and it seems to be fascinating.

In comparison to the Romantics, Klee sought the actual basis for the analogy in the most inner being of music – rhythm – which in his opinion not only marks the movement of time in music, but also in art. Paul Klee: Painting Music, Hajo Duchting, Pegasus, p.14

Notes:

¹Consider here Klee's rejection of Hausenstein's Kantian analysis of finality and purposiveness in Klee - Paul Klee: Painting Music, Hajo Duchting, Pegasus, p.12.

Robert O'Toole : 01 Oct 2004 08:24 |  Tags: Abstraction Bergson Deleuze Deleuze And Art Deterritorialization Diagram Disembodiement Figuration Finality Francis Bacon Hausenstein Kant Logic Of Sensation Music Nietzsche Painting Paul Cezanne Paul Klee Philosophy Research Rhythm Transversality Van Gogh |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem