Uli
Bohnen
INTER DIMENSIONES -
MIND AND NATURE IN THE ART OF GERARD
CARIS
Gerard Caris succeeds
in combining his basic visual elements: regular pentagons
(two-dimensional) and pentagonal dodecahedrons
(three-dimensional) into complex structures with apparent
ease, but that ease is illusory. Anyone who might attempt to
build a mega-structure from such components will soon find out
that they cannot be joined smoothly into harmonic patterns -
unlike regular hexagons, for example.
For a long time the
conclusion seemed justified that the involvement of this
artist with precisely these forms with such problematic
combinatory properties was of an extremely artificial
character and might even be termed 'un-natural'. After all,
the search for phenomena in the natural world (including the
polymorphous world of crystals) with underlying regular
pentagons had always proved in vain. Pentagons in fact do
occur from time to time, as in pyrite, but never in the
regular formation we know from the (hexagonal) honeycomb or
from crystals, which are based on different fundamental
patterns.
When, in 1984,
complexes of regular pentagons were observed in a rapidly
cooled alloy of aluminium and manganese for the first time,
these were referred to as 'quasi-crystals', as they had been
synthetically contrived by scientists. However, practically
nobody then saw reason to consider such products (or attempts
leading to such results) as unnatural- unless one were to go
as far as to consider all research by man as an expression of
our essential inadequacy towards nature: the celt as the fall
of man ... But seen in that light all of the history of our
culture and civilization is nothing but an accumulation of
unnatural manifestations, following our exile from
paradise.
Once arrived at the
insight that our mind divides us from nature and binds us to
her at the same time, the sculptural manipulation of
ostensibly unnatural elements like the pentagon no longer
presents itself as idle play disconnected from natural
reality, or as mere dilettantism.
This observation is not
only true because, in all our civilized and cultural
activities, it is inevitable that we are occupied with nature
in a mediatised role only; it is probably also true in a much
broader sense - surprising in its perspectives - when we
question ourselves to what extent nature itself may contain a
'mental' stratum.
After all, the world of
forms to which Gerard Caris has been devoted for almost 40
years - first as a conceptual world, speculatively put on
paper, later spherically elaborated - possibly proves so
'difficult to grasp' because the combination of pentagonal
elements touches on the limitations of our familiar
three-dimensional understanding of the
world.
Since Einstein's theory
of relativity has confronted us with the problematic
conception of space and time as a coherent four-dimensional
continuum, our popular view of (two-dimensional) plane and
(three-dimensional) space has equally become open to
fundamental doubt. The system of logarithms as developed in
the 17th century, and the non-Euclidian curvilineo-spheric
geometry devised in the 18th century by Karl Friedrich Gauss
and its continuation by Bernhard Riemann in the 19th century
(with important consequences for the natural sciences) might
well have inspired, not only a revision of our everyday
vocabulary, but no less of the vocabulary commonly used by
artistic circles up to our days. But this has hardly been the
case.
It is already quite
surprising to find Robert Lebel reproducing the following
reflection from such a relatively common-sensical aphorist as
Marcel Duchamp: 'A three-dimensional object will cast no more
than a two-dimensional shadow. From this he (i.e. Duchamp)
concludes that a three-dimensional object must in turn be the
shadow cast by an object of four dimensions.' 1 Thus, with the
help of this clever analogy, an attempt is made to bring
closer to our imaginative understanding something we cannot
visualize (though we can conceive of it in thought) with the
help of something we can visualize.
It seems inevitable to
point out this close association between an artist and the
issues confronting the scientists of his time in relation to
the work of Gerard Caris, not least because the long-term
struggle of this Dutchman with an element that is so 'unruly'
from an artistic point of view as the regular pentagon can
also be observed among scientific crystallographers - cloaked
in an idiom which typically differentiates their profession
from the activities of Gerard Caris. Since the time when their
microscopic view was directed to the aluminium-manganese alloy
mentioned, and surprised by the fact that its crystalline
structure was composed of regular pentagons, scientists have
pained themselves with the question of how this structure can
be reconciled with our understanding of three-dimensionality.
After all, a spheric combination of these elements that is
without either apertures or inner cavities cannot be realized
in any model as Caris was also forced to
recognize.
Of the theoretical
hypotheses brought forward so far to explain the occurrence of
the quasi-crystals mentioned above some are of special
importance, namely the ones suggesting the possibility of a
gradual transition between the even-numbered dimensions, or,
to put it differently, the ones implying that our reality is
of a hyper-dimensional nature. What does this
mean?
It was said before that
the extension of mathematics and geometry to the arithmetical
and graphic manipulation of interdimensional and
supra-tridimensional functions has advanced at a forceful pace
since the 17th century, but that the artists of the same
period, with very few exceptions, have nevertheless remained
caught in their conventional conception of plane and space. In
this we can discover a deplorable detachment of the plastic
arts vis-a-vis the problems discussed, whereas the
relationship between man and the natural world surrounding him
may well essentially depend on a more adequate understanding
of them. The very significance of this relationship today can
be demonstrated by the calamities which we are calling forth
on a global scale as a result of our conception of reality and
the technologies based on it, including everything in their
wake.
Would it not be
plausible to assume, therefore, that the simple construction
models and the mechanical violence of our practical approach
to nature (independent of the fact that research, production
and exploitation may have become largely computerized and
electronified) are nothing but the consequence of an essential
lack of understanding? In space travel at any rate we have
learned to take speed-dependent shifts of time and the related
shifts in destination setting into account as part of our
calculations. In particle research, too, we can adequately
handle the complex relationship between space and time, or
mass and energy, respectively, when extremely high velocities
come into play. But whether and how this insight holds the key
to a more adequate understanding of our daily life still has
to become manifest - thereby perhaps fully contradicting
Einstein's claim that the worldview of Newton suffices for our
understanding of the reality directly open to our
perception.
In the context of a
reflection of this kind the uncertain hypotheses with which
crystallographers have responded to the pentagonal structure
of the rapidly cooled aluminium-manganese alloy may possibly
be attributed a much wider significance than might be surmised
at first sight from the limited scope of their object of
research. This, however, is then equally true of the plastic
art of Gerard Caris.
His graphic 'pentagonal
complexes' (as he calls these structures him self), as much as
their sculptural counterparts, are the functional outcome of
an exponential multiplication process, which might be
translated into logarithmically winding helixes, or - in
abstract arithmetical terms be represented as logarithmic
numbers. And what can be claimed for the latter: that they
symbolize the gradual and endlessly differentiated transition
between arithmetically representable dimensions, can also be
claimed in a specific and therefore more illuminating sense
for the world of forms of Gerard Caris.
But there is more to it
yet. When an artist uses his formal vocabulary to create
objects of everyday use and so enters the domain of applied
art we are witnessing aspects of an age-surpassing modernity,
showing consciousness of continuity.
More specifically: It
may be true to say that the radical attitudes of some of the
most important representatives of modern art in the present
century became manifest precisely in the fact that they
attempted to expand their metaphysical claims - partly
borrowed from the distant past, partly inspired by the
scientific and social issues of their time - to include the
reform of daily life, and that, as a consequence of these
attempts, they wished to end the separation between free and
applied art. In contrast, however, the popular view has
doggedly persisted that art and day-to-day life are
uncorrelated (and non-relatable) domains - with the dominant
preference for free or applied art generally falling now this,
now the other way. In the face of this continuing
anti-modernism Caris adheres to modern
principles.
Let us call to mind
that when the founders of modern art appealed to existential
forms and modes of thought of a distant past, they did not
necessarily intend to provide a new basis for hidden intuitive
skills. Often enough they felt forced above all to establish
links with manifestations of a differently oriented
rationality. Vice versa, the appeals of many modern artists to
the scientific theories of their time were not only made
because for example these might provide the rational support
they were looking for; after all: physicists, more than anyone
of that age, experienced the excitement of witnessing the
unexpected escape of profound entities such as space, time,
mass and energy from the constraints of human imagination
precisely when research conditions were strictly
respected.
Thus an apparently
paradoxical situation arose: From philosophers like Nikolaus
Cusanus (1401-1464) or Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who had
each radicalized the mathematical thinking of their days with
the object of proving the existence of God, and who had, since
the age of Leibniz, been made to serve e.g. infinitesimal
calculus, immanent in nature, or (in the case of Spinoza) the
comprehensive construct of the increasingly God-estranged
Enlightenment - precisely from such philosophers
transcendental needs were kindled afresh in the 20th
century.
There is the example of
an artist like Georges Vantongerloo (1886-1965) 2 who, with an
explicit appeal to Spinoza but without in any way wishing to
revitalize the belief in God, attempted to reattach
metaphysical implications to the rigour of mathematical and
physical thinking and to develop sculptural symbols both in
the domain of free art and in that of applied art. From this
impulse can be explained the early object-less paintings and
sculptures by Vantongerloo, but also his office furniture and
architectural designs - among them a model for an airport,
dated as early as 1928.
After World War I the
socio-revolutionary turmoils in Europe for a while fuelled the
hope that the synthesis of free and applied art would soon
come about as part of the general society-wide abolition of
the division of labour. In retrospect, nothing of this has
remained but a knot in the handkerchief of history - and the
intention of many artists to use their artistic arsenal to
effect subversive changes in mindless modes of
perception.
In view of what was
said before on the special dimensional properties which
characterize the 'pentagonal complexes' of Gerard Caris it
cannot be dismissed offhand that their attempted
transformation into objects of everyday use may be accompanied
by perceptual irritation, the consequences of which cannot be
estimated at all just yet.
Clearly, the
metaphysical 'hallowing of planes' by Mondrian has not put a
stop to the persistent adherence on the part of any of the
architects who appealed to him to the questionable
distinction, in their practical work, between
'clear-cut-two-dimensional' plane surface and
'clear-cut-three-dimensional' space. But the examples of later
space/plane paradoxes (for instance in Op Art, or the work of
M. C. Escher) overtly display the problems which Mondrian left
behind and whose dimensional complexity is symbolized with
focal clarity by the work of Gerard
Caris.
Caris, of southern
Dutch origin, is intimately familiar with the work of
Mondrian, Vantongerloo and Escher.3 But the traditions of
Holland and Flanders cannot exclusively explain his persistent
involvement with regular pentagons, which cannot be copied and
joined smoothly one to the other in plane or space without
producing intermediary planes or cavities of different formal
properties.4 Caris received his artistic training in the US,
as can be learned from the illuminating biography in his
catalogues. One of the artists whose courses he followed may
have been of British descent - i.e. David Hockney - but his
other teachers, including Richard Diebenkorn and, above all,
R. B. Kitaj (with whom he has kept contact in writing), were,
or are, native Americans; their involvement with the relations
between space and plane have also considerably contributed to
Gerard Caris' sense of identity as an artist, in spite of all
outward differences in their modes of
expression.
In Diebenkorn's
'seascapes', for example, which are constructive and sensitive
at the same time, the problem of spatial depth, of sphericity,
no longer presents itself to us as narrowly objective, but
rather as filtered through a process of subjective
observation, resulting in a synthesis with the atmospheric. In
the figures of Kitaj, which are nurtured from a variety of
sensory and intellectual sources and are thus truly 'assembled
forms’, it is self-evident that the heterogeneous elements -
or 'visions', with a double bearing - are associated with
heterogeneous perspectives. And in Hockney's colourful
telescopic constructs, with planes juxtaposed under carefully
calculated angles (which sometimes convey an ornamental
impression) the conviction of the artist becomes manifest that
the cubist rebellion against the spatial conception with
central perspective has not as yet led to the detection, or
invention, of all imaginable - possibly even required -
alternatives.5
This is a heritage
which Caris does not so much stretch to the limit as adopt to
select what can usefully symbolize conceivable correspondences
between nature and mind - in the modality of a visual
vocabulary minimized by mental discipline. That this
correspondence cannot be expressed without conflicts has
always been our anthropological fate. And the problem which
both Caris and the crystallographers have in trying to explain
the 'dimensional unruliness' of the regular pentagon
ultimately illustrates the very similarity between them in
this context. In fact, the efforts of the human race to break
free from its relationship with nature through explosively
uncontained overcrowding appear to result in the history of
nature becoming the functional outcome of the history of
mankind - up to the point where, as a consequence, the latter
finds its logical end.
In the light of such
perspectives it is important to steer clear of unsound
alternatives, i.e. the violent escalation of human demands on
nature, or the naive illusion of total harmonious integration
with her, and reflect on the conception of mind as mediated
nature and nature as mediated mind.
Great effort may be
required for this task; but, in counterbalance, gratifying
insights are beckoning us from afar. To both perspectives the
works of Gerard Caris expressively
testify.
1. The original
quotation can be found in: Marcel Duchamp, Readymade. 180
Aussprüche aus Interviews mit Marcel Duchamp. Serge Stauffer
ed., Zürich 1973, p.11.
2. Cf. e.g.: Angela
Tomas, Denkbilder. Materialien zur Entwicklung von Georges
Vantongerloo. Düsseldorf 1987.
3. It is extremely
interesting to read books on artists whose views on dimensions
fascinated Caris, with Caris' own comments scribbled in the
margins - as the publication described in footnote 2, or the
chapter on M.C. Escher in: J.L. Locher, Vormgeving en
Structuur. Amsterdam 1973.
4. Cf. Gerard Caris.
Exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle Bremen 1993, in particular p.
29 ff.
5. For this summary of
Hockney's objectives we again made use of a commentary by
Gerard Caris on David Hockney: in Art&Design Vol. 4, no.
1/2, London 1968. In this source Hockney criticizes the
central perspective (invented in Italy) as the parameter of
European art of the last 300 years, clearly losing sight of
the fact that, at the same time, completely different
traditions in spatial representation were developed,
particularly originating from Flanders. Also cf. Erwin
Panofsky, Die Perspektive als 'symbolische Form'. In: Erwin
Panofsky, Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft.
Berlin 1985, p.99 ff.