Pictorial Abstractions
/
Visualizing Space in the Eras of 
Modernism and Information
Uršula Berlot Pompe

Correspondences
Representations of space in art history reflected philosophical as well 
as scientific tendencies of any given historical period. Artists invented 
models that corresponded to their own understanding of the world, 
and though they mostly did it intuitively, it was sometimes done con-
sciously by applying their knowledge of the physical and mathematical 
laws governing the empirical world. A significant corpus of contempo-
rary research in the history and theory of art focuses on the problem of 
scientific ideas influencing both representations of space and strategies 
of constructing space in the works of visual arts.
1
 The appropriation and 
individual interpretation of scientific discoveries have led to new visual 
definitions of space, especially during the periods of scientific paradigm 
shifts. For example, the rise of abstract art and of the various modes of 
avant-garde transformations of space has been closely connected to the 
introduction of the theory of relativity, as well as to the new concept of 
the time-space continuum which substituted Euclidean geometry and 
Newton’s substantivalistic ontology of space. In the post-war works of 
abstract expressionism, especially in their decentralized gravity-defy-
ing space defined as a field, one can see traces of quantum mechanics 
and its idea of reality as an invisible elastic matrix, i.e. an energy field. 
On the other hand, the basis for the experimentation with light and 
space which appeared in the works of California based artists in the 
1960s (Light and Space Art) was undoubtedly their understanding of 
the phenomenology of human perception and particularly the con-
ception of space as materialized light, which implied a specific tactile 
dimension of light. In their work, they explicitly drew on the findings 
of experimental psychology and phenomenology in two ways, by de-
veloping the idea of the subjective space of perception and by structur-
ing the ‘position of the viewer’ in the open form of the artwork. At the 
same time they showed a particular interest in technological aspects of 
their work by introducing new materials and industrial processes. At 
present, with the growth of information technologies, abstract painting 
conforms to the development of digital media, fractal geometry, and 
nonlinear dynamics with the theory of complexity and chaos theory. 
Contemporary abstract art creates its images of space also un-
der the influence of a technologically expanded reality using various 
1   
The problem of the relation between art and 
science was the focus of research by Martin 
Kemp, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Stephen 
Wilson, Tony Robbins etc.
The appropriation and individual 
interpretation of scientific 
discoveries have led to new visual 
definitions of space, especially 
during the periods of scientific 
paradigm shifts.

171 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
Representations of space in art history reflected philosophical as well 
as scientific tendencies of any given historical period. Artists invented 
models that corresponded to their own understanding of the world, 
and though they mostly did it intuitively, it was sometimes done con-
sciously by applying their knowledge of the physical and mathematical 
laws governing the empirical world. A significant corpus of contempo-
rary research in the history and theory of art focuses on the problem of 
scientific ideas influencing both representations of space and strategies 
of constructing space in the works of visual arts.
1
 The appropriation and 
individual interpretation of scientific discoveries have led to new visual 
definitions of space, especially during the periods of scientific paradigm 
shifts. For example, the rise of abstract art and of the various modes of 
avant-garde transformations of space has been closely connected to the 
introduction of the theory of relativity, as well as to the new concept of 
the time-space continuum which substituted Euclidean geometry and 
Newton’s substantivalistic ontology of space. In the post-war works of 
abstract expressionism, especially in their decentralized gravity-defy-
ing space defined as a field, one can see traces of quantum mechanics 
and its idea of reality as an invisible elastic matrix, i.e. an energy field. 
On the other hand, the basis for the experimentation with light and 
space which appeared in the works of California based artists in the 
1960s (Light and Space Art) was undoubtedly their understanding of 
the phenomenology of human perception and particularly the con-
ception of space as materialized light, which implied a specific tactile 
dimension of light. In their work, they explicitly drew on the findings 
of experimental psychology and phenomenology in two ways, by de-
veloping the idea of the subjective space of perception and by structur-
ing the ‘position of the viewer’ in the open form of the artwork. At the 
same time they showed a particular interest in technological aspects of 
their work by introducing new materials and industrial processes. At 
present, with the growth of information technologies, abstract painting 
conforms to the development of digital media, fractal geometry, and 
nonlinear dynamics with the theory of complexity and chaos theory. 
Contemporary abstract art creates its images of space also un-
der the influence of a technologically expanded reality using various 
1   
The problem of the relation between art and 
science was the focus of research by Martin 
Kemp, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Stephen 
Wilson, Tony Robbins etc.

Correspondences

173 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
imaginaries of reality fed by medicine, biology, physics and optics. 
Contemporary art also evokes images of space as a fluid, malleable 
or curved entity that is essentially arranged by the principle of coin-
cidence. By understanding the changes in scientific models of space, 
we can begin to understand the basic difference between modernist 
and postmodern models of abstract painting. The former are root-
ed in reductionist strategies of simplifying space by focusing on what 
seems to be elementary and universal, while the latter—with their 
geometric and formal clarity—stem from an awareness of global com-
plexity, and the interdependent and dynamic relations of reality.
IMAGELESS SPACE AND MULTIDIMENSIONALITY
The beginning of the 20th century bore witness to a radical change in 
the understanding of space in physical science. In 1905, Albert Einstein 
formulated his theory of special relativity. Einstein’s idea of space-time 
subverted the traditional representation of space based on Isaac New-
ton’s theories defining space as an absolute and a passive container of 
matter. Einstein’s conception of the constant speed of light and of the 
relative nature of time and space also subverted the traditional belief in 
the existence of objective reality, independent of human consciousness, 
as his theory postulates that reality depends on the perception of the 
observer. The theory of relativity presupposes a “plasticity” of the world 
in which shapes change their color and size according to the position 
from which they are observed. Only the speed of light is invariable in 
such a system, i.e., independent of the observer’s speed and direction.
The theory of special relativity alters the relations between the 
four basic concepts of Newtonian physics, i.e., mass, energy, space and 
time, reformulating them into two binary entities, namely the entity 
of energy-mass and the distorted continuum of time-space. They are 
connected by the energy of light. In 1907, Einstein suggested the re-
ciprocal agency of both entities, but did not manage to offer any math-
ematical proof of their interconnection until 1915 when he proposed 
his theory of general relativity. Using the Riemann curvature tensor, 
he defined the speed of light as an element that binds these two en-
tities. Einstein’s theories enabled further research on space, e.g., the 
understanding of the principle of black holes, the illusory nature of 
gravity and especially the specific curvature of time-space. The con-
cepts of the theory of relativity and its models of reality (according 
to which reality is defined by the curvature of time-space) extend far 
beyond any common experience and understanding of reality, and can 
be precisely defined only in the language of mathematical symbols. 

Correspondences
Modernist painters focused on 
the ideas and structures of space, 
and by investigating new spatial 
relations they created alternatives 
to existing reality. 

175 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
For descriptions of the geometric nature of space, which was defined 
by masses in motion, Euclidean tools had become inadequate.
When the scientific community appealed to Einstein to provide 
a visual metaphor or at least a verbal explanation of his findings that 
would be comprehensible to common people, he responded that he 
could offer neither. (Baldwin 1962, 32) The failure of language to explain 
the new physical paradigm of reality coincided with the appearance of 
the first abstract, non-representational forms of art. The painters of the 
early avant-garde art strived to express visual equivalents to the intel-
ligible ideas of nature, space and time; some of them tried to come up 
with a visual representation of abstract ideas of infinity, emptiness and 
non-objective reality (K. Malevich, El Lissitzky), others created geo-
metric models in pictorial space (Mondrian), the Cubists and Futurists 
designed structures in space that simultaneously expressed the temporal 
dimension, while Gabo, Pevsner and Rodchenko constructed demate-
rialized spatial volumes where mass reflected forms of energy states.
The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry and the multidi-
mensionality of space, i.e. its fourth dimension, was based on the 
insight that Euclidean axiomatisation, with its rational derivatives, 
was nothing more than an abstract premise which did not refer to 
reality. Einstein’s continuum of time-space, which depends on the 
position of the observer, cannot be adequately described by Euclid-
ean perpendicular coordinate systems. The notion of curved space 
abolished the Renaissance linear perspective based on straight lines, 
and consequently also abolished the manner in which objects had 
been depicted, since the theory of relativity subjected shape to con-
stant deformations depending on the position of observation.
The non-Euclidean concept of the constantly shifting appear -
ance of an object moving within a curved time-space stimulated the 
imagination of modern artists, inspiring them to form alternative, 
imaginary conceptions of ‘reality’ (Henderson 1983). It was precisely 
this ‘new ability to make imaginative assumptions about other reali-
ties that ended the hegemony of Euclidean geometry and Renaissance 
perspective in painting. ’ (Dunning 1991, 152) Modernist painters 
focused on the ideas and structures of space, and by investigating new 
spatial relations they created alternatives to existing reality. They drew 
upon the notion of time-dependent space (the Cubist simultaneity 
of gaze), creating illusions of movement (Futurism) or using kinet-
ic elements in three-dimensional works (Constructivism); they also 
suggested ideas of a moving space-time infinity (Suprematism).
The thought of intelligible, multidimensional and non-objective 
moving space inspired Suprematist compositions by Kasimir Malevich. 

Correspondences
In a series of flat, but dynamic abstract compositions, Malevich attempt-
ed to save art from the “tyranny of objects” in order to enter a reality of 
“sensing rhythmic vibrations and movements” . By veering away from 
objective representation, Malevich left behind the idea of the relations 
between objects as the cornerstone of spatial dimensions. “When ob-
jects got substituted by non-objective forms, space surrounding them 
lost its finiteness, as it could no longer be subjected to measuring. 
Nonetheless, this space—as the surrounding of non-objects—kept its 
identity like the sea which surrounds an island and clearly differs from 
it. The thus defined space can extend either in front of the pictorial 
plane or lies behind it. Space is therefore infinite, but maintains the 
distinction between the figure and the background. ” (Ženko 2000, 103)
In Malevich’s ‘supremats’ series (1915 – 1925), the figure of a black 
square in the painting ‘The Black Square on White Background’ (1915) 
is probably the most famous one. Due to its formal, geometric reduc-
tionism and its allusion to the iconography of absence, the painting is 
often understood as emblematic in the context of avant-garde mod-
ernism. The absorbing power of black color in the figure of a square 
renders the absence of light through suspension of the gaze, thus sug-
gesting the interpretation of space as negative space, i.e. emptiness. 
Gerard Wajcman reads Malevich’s Square as a result of his attempt to 
approach the world without using images: as an attempt “to aim at the 
world, at the real, without putting a surface in front of it, a screen of 
representation in between /…/ The Square aims at a particular type of 
object, it actually aims at a totally new object which I call Absence. ” The 
square may be compared to an optical instrument that makes absence 
visible; in the same way as all 20th-century landmark works, the Square 
attempts to “inscribe lack into the absolute core of the work, to re-
veal an emptiness, an absence, to reveal a hole” . (Wajcman, 147 -148)
Eugene Thatcher interprets the black color of Malevich’s Square 
as an icon of the invisible and the infinite, putting it in close connec-
tion with alchemical texts and illustrations from the past. He draws 
our attention to the richly illustrated books of the occult philosopher 
Robert Fludd;
2
 in Fludd’s work we can find a diagram of eternity in the 
shape of a black square, with a side annotation ‘Et sic in infinitum... ’ 
(and so on infinitely). Commenting on his picture, Fludd explained 
that the square represented a speculation of a spatial dimension as 
extant prior to the birth of Cosmos, depicting ‘pure voidness, pure 
nothing’ , a kind of ‘pre-universe’ , a ‘non-space’ . According to Thatcher, 
Malevich’s image of a black square is created at a point when the indi-
vidual becomes aware of their limited ability of perception, as well as 
their limited ability of representation. In this context, it is interesting 
2   
Robert Fludd (1574 –1637) lived in the age 
of the Renaissance, he was Paracelsus’ 
student, a scientist, mathematician, physician, 
astrologist, but also a connoisseur of the 
occult and esoteric practices. His most widely 
known work is the ‘Utriusque Cosmi maioris 
salicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque 
technica historia (The Metaphysical, Physical, 
and Technical History of the Two Worlds, 
the Major as well as the Minor (1617–1619)), 
a summary of his philosophy of nature and 
cosmology which was evidently influenced by 
mystical practices. 

177 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
In a series of flat, but dynamic abstract compositions, Malevich attempt-
ed to save art from the “tyranny of objects” in order to enter a reality of 
“sensing rhythmic vibrations and movements” . By veering away from 
objective representation, Malevich left behind the idea of the relations 
between objects as the cornerstone of spatial dimensions. “When ob-
jects got substituted by non-objective forms, space surrounding them 
lost its finiteness, as it could no longer be subjected to measuring. 
Nonetheless, this space—as the surrounding of non-objects—kept its 
identity like the sea which surrounds an island and clearly differs from 
it. The thus defined space can extend either in front of the pictorial 
plane or lies behind it. Space is therefore infinite, but maintains the 
distinction between the figure and the background. ” (Ženko 2000, 103)
In Malevich’s ‘supremats’ series (1915 – 1925), the figure of a black 
square in the painting ‘The Black Square on White Background’ (1915) 
is probably the most famous one. Due to its formal, geometric reduc-
tionism and its allusion to the iconography of absence, the painting is 
often understood as emblematic in the context of avant-garde mod-
ernism. The absorbing power of black color in the figure of a square 
renders the absence of light through suspension of the gaze, thus sug-
gesting the interpretation of space as negative space, i.e. emptiness. 
Gerard Wajcman reads Malevich’s Square as a result of his attempt to 
approach the world without using images: as an attempt “to aim at the 
world, at the real, without putting a surface in front of it, a screen of 
representation in between /…/ The Square aims at a particular type of 
object, it actually aims at a totally new object which I call Absence. ” The 
square may be compared to an optical instrument that makes absence 
visible; in the same way as all 20th-century landmark works, the Square 
attempts to “inscribe lack into the absolute core of the work, to re-
veal an emptiness, an absence, to reveal a hole” . (Wajcman, 147 -148)
Eugene Thatcher interprets the black color of Malevich’s Square 
as an icon of the invisible and the infinite, putting it in close connec-
tion with alchemical texts and illustrations from the past. He draws 
our attention to the richly illustrated books of the occult philosopher 
Robert Fludd;
2
 in Fludd’s work we can find a diagram of eternity in the 
shape of a black square, with a side annotation ‘Et sic in infinitum... ’ 
(and so on infinitely). Commenting on his picture, Fludd explained 
that the square represented a speculation of a spatial dimension as 
extant prior to the birth of Cosmos, depicting ‘pure voidness, pure 
nothing’ , a kind of ‘pre-universe’ , a ‘non-space’ . According to Thatcher, 
Malevich’s image of a black square is created at a point when the indi-
vidual becomes aware of their limited ability of perception, as well as 
their limited ability of representation. In this context, it is interesting 
2   
Robert Fludd (1574 –1637) lived in the age 
of the Renaissance, he was Paracelsus’ 
student, a scientist, mathematician, physician, 
astrologist, but also a connoisseur of the 
occult and esoteric practices. His most widely 
known work is the ‘Utriusque Cosmi maioris 
salicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque 
technica historia (The Metaphysical, Physical, 
and Technical History of the Two Worlds, 
the Major as well as the Minor (1617–1619)), 
a summary of his philosophy of nature and 
cosmology which was evidently influenced by 
mystical practices. 

Correspondences
“that only a self-negating form of representation would be able to 
suggest the nothingness prior to all existence, an un-creation prior 
to all creation. ” (Thatcher, 2015) From the recipient’s point of view, 
such an understanding of the Black Square requires a substantial cog-
nitive and perceptual investment, since in the form of the square the 
viewer is supposed to see a “shapeless shape” , and in the black col-
or they should perceive neither fullness nor voidness. (Ibid.) [1-2]
El Lissitzky addressed the question of representing the Suprema-
tist multidimensional continuum in his series Proun.
3
 Proun is an 
acronym that supposedly stands for the Russian ‘proekt utverzhden-
ya novogo’ , ‘a project for the affirmation of the new’ , and can thus be 
interpreted as ‘a project of progress’ . As a combination of geometric 
bodies and flat surfaces, it merges architecture and painting, which 
creates a new sense of space. In his own essay (in 1922), Lissitzky de-
fined Proun as a turn from painting to architecture:
4
 indeed, Proun 
surpasses the limits and the static nature of painting with its pro-
gressive spatial and temporal conception that includes movement. 
The creative process becomes an art of mastering space, a process of 
“transforming emptiness into space. The observer is thus included in 
the process, as he observes the given forms from various points of view 
and is consequently overtaken by a sense of movement. This is why 
Lissitzky decided to abandon the two-dimensional space in favour of 
a truly physical space created with Prouns. ” (Vrečko 2009, 80) [3]
Paintings in Lissitzky’s Proun seem fluid, non-material; the present-
ed geometric shapes, circles and parallelograms give appearance of 
rectangles sloping in space. It seems as if shapes were floating in a 
vague space that is itself defined by the circling spatial axes. The use 
of axonometric projection makes the diminishing and the deepen-
ing of perspective impossible, and the position of forms in space 
is ambivalent. Size and shape themselves become relative due to 
transparent and interpenetrating planes that do not allow for the 
distinction between the foreground and the background plane.
In his essays as well as his praxis, Lissitzky explored the idea 
of ‘pangeometry’ , a kind of an alternative system of spatial relations 
that substituted the notion of linear perspective. Distinguishing 
between the planimetric space based on perspective and the irra-
tional, i.e., imaginary (Suprematist) space, he articulated a dynam-
ic expansive space whose main constituent is precisely the notion 
of movement. As Vrečko puts it: “It is a dynamic space which in-
cludes an element of time and thus adds a fourth dimension. Lis-
sitzky differentiates between the three-dimensional physical space 
and the multidimensional mathematical space. ” (Vrečko 2009, 81)
3   
Proun is the title given by Lissitzky to a 
series of works created in the years after 1919 
(mostly in the early 1920s). Proun consists 
of objects, lithographies, and a later spatial 
intervention which includes paintings and 
three-dimensional objects; the latter is often 
defined as a proto-installation (see e.g. Claire 
Bishop or Brian O’Doherty). Combining two-
dimensional and three-dimensional geometric 
bodies, Lissitzky merged painting and 
architecure to create a new sense of space.
4   
See his article Proun, published in 1922 in the 
6th number of the magazine De Stijl. 
1  Robert Fludd, an illustration of a black square 
with the annotation ‘Et sic in infinitum...’ from 
the work Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et 
minoris metaphysica, ... (1617)
2  Kasimir Malevich, The Black Square on White 
Background, 1915
1
2

179 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
“that only a self-negating form of representation would be able to 
suggest the nothingness prior to all existence, an un-creation prior 
to all creation. ” (Thatcher, 2015) From the recipient’s point of view, 
such an understanding of the Black Square requires a substantial cog-
nitive and perceptual investment, since in the form of the square the 
viewer is supposed to see a “shapeless shape” , and in the black col-
or they should perceive neither fullness nor voidness. (Ibid.) [1-2]
El Lissitzky addressed the question of representing the Suprema-
tist multidimensional continuum in his series Proun.
3
 Proun is an 
acronym that supposedly stands for the Russian ‘proekt utverzhden-
ya novogo’ , ‘a project for the affirmation of the new’ , and can thus be 
interpreted as ‘a project of progress’ . As a combination of geometric 
bodies and flat surfaces, it merges architecture and painting, which 
creates a new sense of space. In his own essay (in 1922), Lissitzky de-
fined Proun as a turn from painting to architecture:
4
 indeed, Proun 
surpasses the limits and the static nature of painting with its pro-
gressive spatial and temporal conception that includes movement. 
The creative process becomes an art of mastering space, a process of 
“transforming emptiness into space. The observer is thus included in 
the process, as he observes the given forms from various points of view 
and is consequently overtaken by a sense of movement. This is why 
Lissitzky decided to abandon the two-dimensional space in favour of 
a truly physical space created with Prouns. ” (Vrečko 2009, 80) [3]
Paintings in Lissitzky’s Proun seem fluid, non-material; the present-
ed geometric shapes, circles and parallelograms give appearance of 
rectangles sloping in space. It seems as if shapes were floating in a 
vague space that is itself defined by the circling spatial axes. The use 
of axonometric projection makes the diminishing and the deepen-
ing of perspective impossible, and the position of forms in space 
is ambivalent. Size and shape themselves become relative due to 
transparent and interpenetrating planes that do not allow for the 
distinction between the foreground and the background plane.
In his essays as well as his praxis, Lissitzky explored the idea 
of ‘pangeometry’ , a kind of an alternative system of spatial relations 
that substituted the notion of linear perspective. Distinguishing 
between the planimetric space based on perspective and the irra-
tional, i.e., imaginary (Suprematist) space, he articulated a dynam-
ic expansive space whose main constituent is precisely the notion 
of movement. As Vrečko puts it: “It is a dynamic space which in-
cludes an element of time and thus adds a fourth dimension. Lis-
sitzky differentiates between the three-dimensional physical space 
and the multidimensional mathematical space. ” (Vrečko 2009, 81)
3   
Proun is the title given by Lissitzky to a 
series of works created in the years after 1919 
(mostly in the early 1920s). Proun consists 
of objects, lithographies, and a later spatial 
intervention which includes paintings and 
three-dimensional objects; the latter is often 
defined as a proto-installation (see e.g. Claire 
Bishop or Brian O’Doherty). Combining two-
dimensional and three-dimensional geometric 
bodies, Lissitzky merged painting and 
architecure to create a new sense of space.
4   
See his article Proun, published in 1922 in the 
6th number of the magazine De Stijl. 

Correspondences
The construction of Proun Room shows the transition of the ideas 
concerning Proun into the actual three-dimensional space.
5
 A spa-
tial installation required the viewer to move around, since there was 
no intended ideal position of observation. In designing the exhi-
bition space, Lissitzky exploited the basic elements of architecture: 
space, mass, color, and rhythm; compared to Malevich’s Suprematist 
ideas, all these elements were redeveloped.
6
 With the installation 
of Proun Room, Lissitzky completed his turn from Suprematism to 
Constructivism. The whole of his Proun projects thus surpasses the 
pictorial medium; due to Lissitzky’s use of new spatial and tempo-
ral representations, the Prouns became a “station where painting 
changed to architecture” . (Lissitzky, in Vrečko 2009, 78). Lissitzky 
was inspired by the idea of combining art and science (of contribut-
ing to scientific research by means of art), and by Einstein’s theory of 
relativity, according to which measures of space and time depend on 
the movement of the given system. Correspondingly, Lissitzky used 
paintings as a building material for his constructions, beside con-
crete elements installed in space, and the resulting moving, dynamic, 
open structure implied spatial and temporal multidimensionality.
The abstract art of the early historic avant-garde created new geomet-
ric and spatial compositions, consciously or subconsciously reflecting 
Einstein’s idea that void space is not emptiness, but rather shows all of the 
characteristics of something real; yet these characteristics could only be 
defined by a new, non-Euclidean geometry. The idea of associating space 
with geometry and the concept of gravitational attraction as a result of 
the time-space interaction echoed in a series of modernist paintings 
treating space as a geometry invested with qualities of a tensor field.
The pioneers of abstract painting in the first decades of the 20th 
century came from various philosophical and theoretical backgrounds, 
yet they all shared a reductionist paradigm. Reductionism expressed 
itself either in spatial abstractions that strove to render the simplified 
aspects of the phenomenal world using basic geometric structures, or 
in the desire to create visual correspondences with intelligible princi-
ples, but in both cases it acted as the basis of modernist abstraction. 
To give but a few examples: Kandinsky spoke of a microscopic analysis 
of the basic elements of painting, such as shape, point, line and plane; 
Mondrian’s ascetic language consisted merely of lines and three basic 
colors; František Kupka and Robert Delaunay used exclusively dynamic 
circular compositions and spectral colors. Methods of reduction, trans-
position of rational concepts into art, and the prevalence of geometric 
shapes in fine arts corresponded to the era’s dominant scientific par -
adigm as incorporated into the various fields of science. The splitting 
5   
Proun Room/ Prounenraum was 
originally created for the Grosse Berliner 
Kunstausstellung (1923) and was later 
reconstructed in the Hannover Museum (Room 
of the Abstracts/ Prouns, Hannover 1927/28). 
The reconstruction was commissioned by the 
manager of the museum who saw the earlier 
installation in Dresden (1926). Proun Room 
was also reconstructed after the 2nd World 
War, in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven 
(1965). The installation consisted of a space 
in the form of a cube into which light entered 
through a semitransparent window on the 
ceiling. The walls of the cube were covered 
with two- and three-dimensional geometric 
elements: horizontal and vertical rectangles, 
sticks crossing each other, a small sphere etc., 
which occupied the whole surface of the walls. 
A mirror was included to reflect and double 
the view. Two black lines were marked on the 
transparent part of the ceiling in order to unify 
the space into a whole.
6   
Due to the incorporation of geometric shapes 
into spatial relations and due to a variety of 
perspectives used by Lissitzky, one can see 
the Prouns as a contrast to the Suprematist 
use of two-dimensionality and the Suprematist 
idea of simplifying shapes. The Proun projects 
seem to be a research into the Suprematist 
visual language, yet with an emphasized 
spatiality. In Suprematism, one cannot find 
circling spatial axes, the use of diagonals or 
multi-perspectivity. Suprematism was at the 
time limited almost exclusively to flatness, 
i.e. to two-dimensional shapes. With his taste 
for architecture and fresh three-dimensional 
concepts, El Lissitzky wanted to expand 
Suprematism beyond the edges of the plane. 
(Bishop 2005)
3 El Lissitzky, Proun G7, 1923
3

181 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
The construction of Proun Room shows the transition of the ideas 
concerning Proun into the actual three-dimensional space.
5
 A spa-
tial installation required the viewer to move around, since there was 
no intended ideal position of observation. In designing the exhi-
bition space, Lissitzky exploited the basic elements of architecture: 
space, mass, color, and rhythm; compared to Malevich’s Suprematist 
ideas, all these elements were redeveloped.
6
 With the installation 
of Proun Room, Lissitzky completed his turn from Suprematism to 
Constructivism. The whole of his Proun projects thus surpasses the 
pictorial medium; due to Lissitzky’s use of new spatial and tempo-
ral representations, the Prouns became a “station where painting 
changed to architecture” . (Lissitzky, in Vrečko 2009, 78). Lissitzky 
was inspired by the idea of combining art and science (of contribut-
ing to scientific research by means of art), and by Einstein’s theory of 
relativity, according to which measures of space and time depend on 
the movement of the given system. Correspondingly, Lissitzky used 
paintings as a building material for his constructions, beside con-
crete elements installed in space, and the resulting moving, dynamic, 
open structure implied spatial and temporal multidimensionality.
The abstract art of the early historic avant-garde created new geomet-
ric and spatial compositions, consciously or subconsciously reflecting 
Einstein’s idea that void space is not emptiness, but rather shows all of the 
characteristics of something real; yet these characteristics could only be 
defined by a new, non-Euclidean geometry. The idea of associating space 
with geometry and the concept of gravitational attraction as a result of 
the time-space interaction echoed in a series of modernist paintings 
treating space as a geometry invested with qualities of a tensor field.
The pioneers of abstract painting in the first decades of the 20th 
century came from various philosophical and theoretical backgrounds, 
yet they all shared a reductionist paradigm. Reductionism expressed 
itself either in spatial abstractions that strove to render the simplified 
aspects of the phenomenal world using basic geometric structures, or 
in the desire to create visual correspondences with intelligible princi-
ples, but in both cases it acted as the basis of modernist abstraction. 
To give but a few examples: Kandinsky spoke of a microscopic analysis 
of the basic elements of painting, such as shape, point, line and plane; 
Mondrian’s ascetic language consisted merely of lines and three basic 
colors; František Kupka and Robert Delaunay used exclusively dynamic 
circular compositions and spectral colors. Methods of reduction, trans-
position of rational concepts into art, and the prevalence of geometric 
shapes in fine arts corresponded to the era’s dominant scientific par -
adigm as incorporated into the various fields of science. The splitting 
5   
Proun Room/ Prounenraum was 
originally created for the Grosse Berliner 
Kunstausstellung (1923) and was later 
reconstructed in the Hannover Museum (Room 
of the Abstracts/ Prouns, Hannover 1927/28). 
The reconstruction was commissioned by the 
manager of the museum who saw the earlier 
installation in Dresden (1926). Proun Room 
was also reconstructed after the 2nd World 
War, in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven 
(1965). The installation consisted of a space 
in the form of a cube into which light entered 
through a semitransparent window on the 
ceiling. The walls of the cube were covered 
with two- and three-dimensional geometric 
elements: horizontal and vertical rectangles, 
sticks crossing each other, a small sphere etc., 
which occupied the whole surface of the walls. 
A mirror was included to reflect and double 
the view. Two black lines were marked on the 
transparent part of the ceiling in order to unify 
the space into a whole.
6   
Due to the incorporation of geometric shapes 
into spatial relations and due to a variety of 
perspectives used by Lissitzky, one can see 
the Prouns as a contrast to the Suprematist 
use of two-dimensionality and the Suprematist 
idea of simplifying shapes. The Proun projects 
seem to be a research into the Suprematist 
visual language, yet with an emphasized 
spatiality. In Suprematism, one cannot find 
circling spatial axes, the use of diagonals or 
multi-perspectivity. Suprematism was at the 
time limited almost exclusively to flatness, 
i.e. to two-dimensional shapes. With his taste 
for architecture and fresh three-dimensional 
concepts, El Lissitzky wanted to expand 
Suprematism beyond the edges of the plane. 
(Bishop 2005)

Correspondences
of inorganic nature into molecules, atoms and subatomic particles, the 
discovery of cells and chromosomes as the basic particles of the body, 
and defining indivisible sensory elements of perception in the then 
experimental psychology all determined creative methods employed by 
the artists. It was especially the latter that influenced some of the early 
avant-garde artists, as it used pictorial diagrams including geometric 
shapes and primary colors to explain the psychology of visual percep-
tion, i.e. the laws of perceiving colors, shapes, space and movement.
7
THE NON-MATERIALITY OF THE FIELD
The peaks of non-representational post-war painting can be seen in 
American abstract expressionism with its various currents, name-
ly Color Field painting, Post-painterly abstraction and minimalism. 
Within the dynamics of political and social changes, science put for-
ward new perspectives and models of reality, inspired by the already 
decade-long unifying of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. 
The idea of the field as an energy foundation of reality determining the 
movement of particles reoriented the focus of the social imagination 
away from material reality (i.e. particles) to the more fundamental 
non-material, energy dimension. The model of reality in which matter 
is understood as merely a ‘perturbation’ in the perfect state of the field 
draws attention away from objects or the material towards the under-
lying non-material energy matrix that determines the appearance and 
the arrangement of the phenomenal. Time-space and energy-mass 
are subjected to the field of light or energy oscillations defining the 
appearance of the material already in Einstein’s theory. The field as a 
non-material energy sphere cannot be an object of qualitative mea-
surement, but is rather an invisible intelligible ‘imageless’ reality, a 
tensor that reveals itself only through the effects of energy on matter. 
Abstract expressionists, who focused on ‘images of the invisible’ or 
created ‘imageless art’ , reflected the idea of the intelligible dimension of 
reality that determines visual phenomena. The conception of space which 
is not defined by object relations, but which manifests instead as a field 
of energy oscillations, led painting away from depicting objects and into 
the search for new artistic—formal, conceptual and aesthetic—strate-
gies for capturing and registering the invisible ordering spatial matrix.
Jackson Pollock subjects pictorial procedures to the invisible gravity 
force and leaves the shaping of the form to the ‘order’ of coincidence. 
His non-object compositions created with the dripping technique (drip 
paintings) suggest the invisible tension which permeates the painter’s 
body in motion and which structures the abstract pictorial image. The 
7   
See Paul Vitz and Arnold Glimcher. 1984. 
Modern Art and Modern Science: The 
Parallel Analysis of Vision. New York: Praeger 
Publishers. 

183 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
of inorganic nature into molecules, atoms and subatomic particles, the 
discovery of cells and chromosomes as the basic particles of the body, 
and defining indivisible sensory elements of perception in the then 
experimental psychology all determined creative methods employed by 
the artists. It was especially the latter that influenced some of the early 
avant-garde artists, as it used pictorial diagrams including geometric 
shapes and primary colors to explain the psychology of visual percep-
tion, i.e. the laws of perceiving colors, shapes, space and movement.
7
THE NON-MATERIALITY OF THE FIELD
The peaks of non-representational post-war painting can be seen in 
American abstract expressionism with its various currents, name-
ly Color Field painting, Post-painterly abstraction and minimalism. 
Within the dynamics of political and social changes, science put for-
ward new perspectives and models of reality, inspired by the already 
decade-long unifying of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. 
The idea of the field as an energy foundation of reality determining the 
movement of particles reoriented the focus of the social imagination 
away from material reality (i.e. particles) to the more fundamental 
non-material, energy dimension. The model of reality in which matter 
is understood as merely a ‘perturbation’ in the perfect state of the field 
draws attention away from objects or the material towards the under-
lying non-material energy matrix that determines the appearance and 
the arrangement of the phenomenal. Time-space and energy-mass 
are subjected to the field of light or energy oscillations defining the 
appearance of the material already in Einstein’s theory. The field as a 
non-material energy sphere cannot be an object of qualitative mea-
surement, but is rather an invisible intelligible ‘imageless’ reality, a 
tensor that reveals itself only through the effects of energy on matter. 
Abstract expressionists, who focused on ‘images of the invisible’ or 
created ‘imageless art’ , reflected the idea of the intelligible dimension of 
reality that determines visual phenomena. The conception of space which 
is not defined by object relations, but which manifests instead as a field 
of energy oscillations, led painting away from depicting objects and into 
the search for new artistic—formal, conceptual and aesthetic—strate-
gies for capturing and registering the invisible ordering spatial matrix.
Jackson Pollock subjects pictorial procedures to the invisible gravity 
force and leaves the shaping of the form to the ‘order’ of coincidence. 
His non-object compositions created with the dripping technique (drip 
paintings) suggest the invisible tension which permeates the painter’s 
body in motion and which structures the abstract pictorial image. The 
7   
See Paul Vitz and Arnold Glimcher. 1984. 
Modern Art and Modern Science: The 
Parallel Analysis of Vision. New York: Praeger 
Publishers. 

Correspondences

185 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
dripping technique puts forward the application of colors in the wet 
on wet manner, lines of color merge creating “cellular structures, laby-
rinths, webbings, nets, and membranes, thus losing their autonomous 
separateness. This complex use of line strengthened the shallowness of 
the sensation and created a unified single image. ” (Dunning 1991, 180) 
Lines do not appear like outlines of objects or edges of shapes, they seem 
to have a mass of their own and are creating an interwoven mesh as 
a visualization of the invisible force field. The color structures of Pol-
lock’s compositions take shape as the trace of the painter’s movement 
above the horizontally lying canvas, presenting an abstract, non-mate-
rial imprint of his corporality and simultaneously revealing the effects 
of the energy field permeating matter. The paintings are decentered, 
spatial hierarchies between the foreground and the background, below 
and above they are suspended, the grids of lines convey the energies 
and tensions of the field limitlessly expanding in space. According to 
his painter colleague Robert Morris (Anti-form, 1968), Pollock is one of 
the few painters who considered the work’s autonomous creation pro-
cess and the movement of material in the work’s final form, by which 
he showed an understanding of the truly fluid nature of painting.
Metaphors from physics are also evoked by the abstract composi-
tions of Barnett Newman; the large color surfaces act as a tensor field 
uncontrollably expanding outside the confines of the painting’s mate-
rial medium. It is broken off by vertical lines, the so called ‘zips’ , which 
simultaneously demarcate and link color fields: “Zip prevents routine 
perception as it cannot be spatially located, due to the constant exchange 
with the color tissue: both elements support each other and work simul-
taneously and inseparably, thus the zip is read as a positive and a nega-
tive, surface and depth, a cut and a seam, where the effect of the sublime, 
which the painter aims at, is implemented with invisible, but intuitively 
felt pulsation, expansion and condensation, in the uncontrollability of 
the pictorial space. ” (Gnamuš 2008: 285) It seems that Newman’s paint-
ings depict the expansibility of space as the light waves of energetically 
charged quantum particles; they suggest a sense of an elastic field con-
necting pictorial space with the immediate space of the viewer. Newman 
claims that he has come to understand the value of zip gradually, through 
emptying the space instead of filling it: “The streak was always going 
through an atmosphere. I kept trying to create a world around it ... Sud-
denly I realized ... that I had been emptying space instead of filling it and 
that now my line made the whole area come to life. ” (Auping, 2007: 146). 
Newman’s ‘spatial emptying’ suggests the imagination of non-space and 
the original emptiness the moment before the creation of time and space, 
energy and matter. His works are new renditions of the sublime, which 

Correspondences
now does not refer to nature but to the heroic sublimity of the moment, 
a manifestation of the consciousness of pure presence and the present.
8
 
The dematerialized ‘color field’ of Mark Rothko offers a sense of the 
sublime and the metaphysical. Although Rothko was aware of the meta-
physical and spiritual aspects of his atmospheric color abstractions, he 
emphasized his primary interest in creation of space. He was conscious 
of the fact that art does not merely reflect the perception and conception 
of spatial relations, but is also, above all, creating space. He distinguished 
between painting that enacts tactile space and one based on images of 
a space of illusory plasticity, and just as many contemporary abstract 
painters, he tried to connect illusionist pictorial space with the actual 
space of the viewer. His paintings composed of softly intermingling color 
spatial forms evoke associations of the transcendental nature of space, 
as found in the tradition of the sublime—the landscape-related sub-
lime—belonging to romantic painting (Caspar David Friedrich, Frederic 
Church, William Turner), but Rothko creates the sense of the exalted 
using abstract means and by forming dematerialized and immeasurable 
spatial dimensions, which absorb the self-consciousness of the perceiver 
and bring about a sense of fusion with the universal and the absolute. 
In the analysis of pictorial space, Rothko distinguishes between 
representations of space and things which suggest the sense of touch on 
the one hand and those which are perceived solely though the eyes on the 
other: “Tactile space, or, for the sake of simplicity, let us call it air, which 
exists between objects or shapes in the picture, is painted so that it gives 
the sensation of a solid. That is, air in a tactile painting is represented as 
an actual substance rather than as an emptiness. ” (Rothko, Space (1947) 
in Auping 2007, 21) He illustrates tactile space with an image of the 
volume of jelly objects are submerged into?, presenting the idea that the 
otherwise invisible or barely perceptible volume of air gets some ‘weight 
and presence’ . Rothko warns about neglecting this ‘airy’ dimension in the 
case of illusory space that focuses only on the illusion of appearance and 
creates a feeling of things moving within emptiness. The means employed 
by illusionist painters in the past to move past the conception of space as 
an empty container of things used to be representations of clouds, smoke 
and haze (in landscape painting) or the use of atmospheric perspective.
Rothko subjected his own pictorial procedures to the idea of rep-
resenting spatial tactility. He strove towards the abstract, more accom-
plished ethereal image and considering possibilities of remodeling and 
expanding the tactile pictorial space into the immediate physical space, 
in which both the painting and the observer are placed. (Auping 2007, 
141) In 1949 he created his first ‘color field’ , a pictorial space based on 
the virtual exchange between hazy rectangular shapes or color ‘clouds’ , 
8   
See: Newman Barnett, The Sublime is 
Now (1948), where Newman claimed that 
European art was not capable of reaching 
the sublime, as it had remained ‘inside the 
reality of sensation (the objective world 
rather distorted or pure) /.../ and was unable 
to move away from /.../ an empty world of 
geometric formalism - a pure rhetoric of 
abstract mathematical relationships, became 
enmeshed in a struggle over the nature of 
beauty.’ New American art, on the other hand, 
was free of the weight of European culture, 
and was the only one which could create 
sublime art at that moment, as American 
artists used their ‘own feelings’ in their work...’ 
(Excerpt from ‘The Ideas of Art, Six Opinions 
on What is Sublime in Art?, Tiger’s Eye (New 
York), No.6 (15 December 1948), pp. 52-53.).

187 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
now does not refer to nature but to the heroic sublimity of the moment, 
a manifestation of the consciousness of pure presence and the present.
8
 
The dematerialized ‘color field’ of Mark Rothko offers a sense of the 
sublime and the metaphysical. Although Rothko was aware of the meta-
physical and spiritual aspects of his atmospheric color abstractions, he 
emphasized his primary interest in creation of space. He was conscious 
of the fact that art does not merely reflect the perception and conception 
of spatial relations, but is also, above all, creating space. He distinguished 
between painting that enacts tactile space and one based on images of 
a space of illusory plasticity, and just as many contemporary abstract 
painters, he tried to connect illusionist pictorial space with the actual 
space of the viewer. His paintings composed of softly intermingling color 
spatial forms evoke associations of the transcendental nature of space, 
as found in the tradition of the sublime—the landscape-related sub-
lime—belonging to romantic painting (Caspar David Friedrich, Frederic 
Church, William Turner), but Rothko creates the sense of the exalted 
using abstract means and by forming dematerialized and immeasurable 
spatial dimensions, which absorb the self-consciousness of the perceiver 
and bring about a sense of fusion with the universal and the absolute. 
In the analysis of pictorial space, Rothko distinguishes between 
representations of space and things which suggest the sense of touch on 
the one hand and those which are perceived solely though the eyes on the 
other: “Tactile space, or, for the sake of simplicity, let us call it air, which 
exists between objects or shapes in the picture, is painted so that it gives 
the sensation of a solid. That is, air in a tactile painting is represented as 
an actual substance rather than as an emptiness. ” (Rothko, Space (1947) 
in Auping 2007, 21) He illustrates tactile space with an image of the 
volume of jelly objects are submerged into?, presenting the idea that the 
otherwise invisible or barely perceptible volume of air gets some ‘weight 
and presence’ . Rothko warns about neglecting this ‘airy’ dimension in the 
case of illusory space that focuses only on the illusion of appearance and 
creates a feeling of things moving within emptiness. The means employed 
by illusionist painters in the past to move past the conception of space as 
an empty container of things used to be representations of clouds, smoke 
and haze (in landscape painting) or the use of atmospheric perspective.
Rothko subjected his own pictorial procedures to the idea of rep-
resenting spatial tactility. He strove towards the abstract, more accom-
plished ethereal image and considering possibilities of remodeling and 
expanding the tactile pictorial space into the immediate physical space, 
in which both the painting and the observer are placed. (Auping 2007, 
141) In 1949 he created his first ‘color field’ , a pictorial space based on 
the virtual exchange between hazy rectangular shapes or color ‘clouds’ , 
8   
See: Newman Barnett, The Sublime is 
Now (1948), where Newman claimed that 
European art was not capable of reaching 
the sublime, as it had remained ‘inside the 
reality of sensation (the objective world 
rather distorted or pure) /.../ and was unable 
to move away from /.../ an empty world of 
geometric formalism - a pure rhetoric of 
abstract mathematical relationships, became 
enmeshed in a struggle over the nature of 
beauty.’ New American art, on the other hand, 
was free of the weight of European culture, 
and was the only one which could create 
sublime art at that moment, as American 
artists used their ‘own feelings’ in their work...’ 
(Excerpt from ‘The Ideas of Art, Six Opinions 
on What is Sublime in Art?, Tiger’s Eye (New 
York), No.6 (15 December 1948), pp. 52-53.).

Correspondences
4  Mark Rothko, No. 61 (Rust and Blue), 1953
4

189 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
which are suspended in the field of another hue. The spatial relation 
between the ‘figure’ and the background as an undefined spatial field 
became ambivalent. Rothko created atmospheres that evoke a sense of 
the emanation of gas. He thus suggested a dissolution of the material 
pictorial medium and at the same time illusionistically connected the 
virtual pictorial space with the perceptual, physical space of the viewer.
Rothko did not consider himself a colorist, as he was not primarily 
interested in the intrinsic value of color, but in creating various kinds of 
spaces. His paintings were often based on darker and muted color values, 
chromatic dimness is particularly characteristic of his late works, whose 
culmination was the cycle of fourteen murals created for a chapel in 
Houston, Texas, which was later dubbed The Rothko Chapel. The spatial 
arrangement of these paintings indicates an extraordinary harmoniza-
tion of painting, architecture and space, while the linking element of 
this constellation is light. Rothko, who normally paid attention to the 
contrast between light and dark as well as the perceptual conditions of 
experiencing paintings that depended on ambient light in a space (he 
recommended subdued and diffuse lighting of the exhibition space), in-
sisted on the presence of natural light in the case of the Chapel. Daylight 
is supposed to dynamize space and sensitize the viewer’s perception, as it 
is perpetually shifting due to weather changes and temporal cycles of day 
and night; the space is supposed to be ‘breathing’ with light and ‘living’ 
in the heightened perceptual states of the viewer’s self-consciousness. [4]
The works of post-painting abstraction, deconstruction, hard-edge 
painting and minimalism in the nineteen-sixties represent an extreme 
form of reductive procedures of abstract painting; these works deal with 
exclusively formal questions both in theory and practice. The famous 
tautology by Frank Stella “What you see is what you see” expresses the 
understanding of painting corresponding to an extremely materialist, 
objectivized approach; painting is identified with the pictorial medium 
and does not refer to anything external. The extreme form of non-refer -
ential art appears as a ‘pure signifier’ , which does not open up transcen-
dent spatiality, but evokes its own immanence, the presence of ‘things 
among things’ . Formal reduction corresponds to reduction in meaning; 
this is the painting of painting, which does not express social, political 
or philosophical meanings, but rather addresses the propositions or the 
deconstruction of its own practice. These are rational and controlled 
pictorial procedures, where the blurredness of the visible strokes of the 
hand abolishes the presence of the ‘subject’ , attention is drawn to the 
minimal differences among hues, and the effects of simultaneous color 
contrasts, suggested by the sharply delineated color shapes; attention is 
drawn to a painting covered in colors, where—in the ideal form—the 

Correspondences
distinction between the medium and the image is negated. Works that 
are exemplary in this aspect are the shaped canvases of Ellsworth Kelly 
or Frank Stella. With regard to minimalist reduction and ‘primary or 
analytical painting’ , we need to mention the geometrically conceived 
works by painters such as Brice Marden, Robert Mangold, Robert Ryman, 
Jo Baer, Agnes Martin or works of the art group BMPT (Buren, Mosset, 
Parmentie and Torroni). The group Support-Surface (Devade, Cane, 
Pincemin, Viallat, Bioules) undertook the structuralist deconstruction 
of painting to the medium – canvas, color and the frame, where the 
painting’s status is reduced to the signifier of the painters’ practice. 
TACTILITY OF LIGHT AND PHENOMENOLOGY 
OF PERCEPTION
Reality as described by Einstein is founded on the premise of the con-
stant value of the speed of light and the relativity of space, time and mass. 
The speed of light is constant for all observers regardless of the velocity 
and direction of their movement. At the same time Einstein’s theory 
postulates that the deformations in the appearance of objects in space 
and time, which are always the same, take place during movement at the 
speed of light.
9
 The field of light determines the structure of space and 
time, actually it represents their origin, it is independent of observers and 
as such it has a special place in the theory of relativity. Light, with its con-
stant speed, functions as a connective glue between the binary categories 
of space-time and mass-energy. The famous energy equation (E = mc²) 
treats the relationship between mass, energy and the constant speed of 
light in a vacuum, explaining how mass turns to energy at the constant 
speed of light and vice versa. Energy contained in a sheaf of light rays 
can be converted into weight – we can calculate the weight of light.
Such insights into the reality of the interconnection of light and 
matter are reflected in many procedures concerning light in modern 
painting, directed at the shifting color effects in dependence on light 
conditions (impressionism) or the dematerialization of form (lumi-
nism, orphism (Delaunay, Kupka, Feininger), etc.). The 20th century 
witnessed the blossoming of the art of light in kinetic or optic art, in 
the light art installations Art & Space, which made light autonomous 
as a concrete, real artistic medium, and veered away from the tra-
ditional pictorial ‘representation’ of light. Light became the central 
medium of expression in phenomenologically oriented artworks in-
vestigating the potential, and role of (optic and bodily), perception in 
the formation of a work of art. Despite the fact that art interventions 
bound to concrete space (location-specific installations) represent the 
9   
See Schlain, Leonard. 1991. Pp. 119 - 137.

191 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
distinction between the medium and the image is negated. Works that 
are exemplary in this aspect are the shaped canvases of Ellsworth Kelly 
or Frank Stella. With regard to minimalist reduction and ‘primary or 
analytical painting’ , we need to mention the geometrically conceived 
works by painters such as Brice Marden, Robert Mangold, Robert Ryman, 
Jo Baer, Agnes Martin or works of the art group BMPT (Buren, Mosset, 
Parmentie and Torroni). The group Support-Surface (Devade, Cane, 
Pincemin, Viallat, Bioules) undertook the structuralist deconstruction 
of painting to the medium – canvas, color and the frame, where the 
painting’s status is reduced to the signifier of the painters’ practice. 
TACTILITY OF LIGHT AND PHENOMENOLOGY 
OF PERCEPTION
Reality as described by Einstein is founded on the premise of the con-
stant value of the speed of light and the relativity of space, time and mass. 
The speed of light is constant for all observers regardless of the velocity 
and direction of their movement. At the same time Einstein’s theory 
postulates that the deformations in the appearance of objects in space 
and time, which are always the same, take place during movement at the 
speed of light.
9
 The field of light determines the structure of space and 
time, actually it represents their origin, it is independent of observers and 
as such it has a special place in the theory of relativity. Light, with its con-
stant speed, functions as a connective glue between the binary categories 
of space-time and mass-energy. The famous energy equation (E = mc²) 
treats the relationship between mass, energy and the constant speed of 
light in a vacuum, explaining how mass turns to energy at the constant 
speed of light and vice versa. Energy contained in a sheaf of light rays 
can be converted into weight – we can calculate the weight of light.
Such insights into the reality of the interconnection of light and 
matter are reflected in many procedures concerning light in modern 
painting, directed at the shifting color effects in dependence on light 
conditions (impressionism) or the dematerialization of form (lumi-
nism, orphism (Delaunay, Kupka, Feininger), etc.). The 20th century 
witnessed the blossoming of the art of light in kinetic or optic art, in 
the light art installations Art & Space, which made light autonomous 
as a concrete, real artistic medium, and veered away from the tra-
ditional pictorial ‘representation’ of light. Light became the central 
medium of expression in phenomenologically oriented artworks in-
vestigating the potential, and role of (optic and bodily), perception in 
the formation of a work of art. Despite the fact that art interventions 
bound to concrete space (location-specific installations) represent the 
9   
See Schlain, Leonard. 1991. Pp. 119 - 137.

Correspondences
culmination of light art, I will now limit myself to examples that ex-
panded the concept of painting through engaging light technology and 
light-sensitive materials as practiced by the Californian movement 
L.A. Glass & Plastic and Light & Space in the nineteen-sixties.
10
Artists who were, due to their use of glass, plastic and other 
(then) new industrial materials, such as fiberglass, polyester or epoxy 
resin, acrylic plate etc., united under the designation L.A. Glass And 
Plastic or also L.A. Look, Fetish Finish and L.A. Cool School, creat-
ed works in which the boundaries between painting, sculpture and 
design became blurred. Their experiments with new materials and 
light technologies were not motivated by the formalist questioning 
of the medium, but rather by sophisticated engagements with per-
ception, light, color and space. Glass and plastic enabled a focus on 
non-material optic and tactile effects of works, which induced subtler 
perceptual states by including light shifts, translucence, illusionist 
effects of depth, shadows and reflections. Nonetheless, the empha-
sis was not on the material, but the idea that material was only a 
means for achieving the goal, which was transcending the material.
Artists such as Ron Cooper, Craig Kauffman, Ed Moses, Helen 
Pashgian, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, DeWain Val-
entine, Doug Wheeler and Larry Bell, created sculptural, pictorial 
and spatial works which were, due to specific materiality, sensitive to 
the environment and light in space. Due to effects of dematerializa-
tion, generated by smooth and light-responsive surfaces, these works 
stressed the reciprocity between light, matter and shape, and estab-
lished new forms of phenomenological relations with the viewer. 
The artistic appropriation of design procedures from the aeronauti-
cal and automobile industry, and the introduction of light technologies 
and new techniques of processing materials (vacuum treatment, dyeing 
and sterile chambers, mechanical cuts, bending etc.) led to connecting 
art with science and technology. Artists participated in inter-institu-
tional projects, art residences and research platforms that connected 
artists with scientists and engineers. We need to point out that cre-
ative exchanges between art and industry were not directed towards 
examining pragmatic functional solutions or toying with technology 
per se, but rather involved subtle explorations of the range of artistic 
experience, established via the relation between object and perceiver.
Paintings created by Craig Kauffman, Helen Pashgian, Peter Al-
exander or De Wain Valentine, may elicit associations to nature due to 
special atmospheric effects, though the resemblance with the materiality 
of water, air, clouds, vapors, the vastness of the sky or the remoteness 
of the ocean horizon was mediated in the abstract, purified form in an 
10   
A group of artists, whom we join under the 
name of the movement Light & Space Art, 
worked, though loosely connected, in the 
nineteen-sixties and seventies in California. 
In terms of ideas, their work presents a 
phenomenological alternative to minimalism, 
whose centre was in New York. Beside the 
pronounced focus on perception and space 
in relation to light effects, the Light & Space 
artists differ from minimalism by conceiving 
space in more non-material, discreet and 
occasionally distinctly conceptual terms. 
This distinction could be summarized in the 
difference between ‘art as an object’ and 
‘art as an experience’ , or, to use the words 
of Craig Kauffman – the first are interested 
in perception, while the second are more 
interested in material procedures. (See: 
Berlot Pompe, Uršula. Space and light in art 
installations of 20th century. / Prostor in 
svetloba v umetniških instalacijah 20. stoletja. 
Praznine 08/2015. Ljubljana: Umetniško 
izobraževalno društvo Praznine, 2015.)

193 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
culmination of light art, I will now limit myself to examples that ex-
panded the concept of painting through engaging light technology and 
light-sensitive materials as practiced by the Californian movement 
L.A. Glass & Plastic and Light & Space in the nineteen-sixties.
10
Artists who were, due to their use of glass, plastic and other 
(then) new industrial materials, such as fiberglass, polyester or epoxy 
resin, acrylic plate etc., united under the designation L.A. Glass And 
Plastic or also L.A. Look, Fetish Finish and L.A. Cool School, creat-
ed works in which the boundaries between painting, sculpture and 
design became blurred. Their experiments with new materials and 
light technologies were not motivated by the formalist questioning 
of the medium, but rather by sophisticated engagements with per-
ception, light, color and space. Glass and plastic enabled a focus on 
non-material optic and tactile effects of works, which induced subtler 
perceptual states by including light shifts, translucence, illusionist 
effects of depth, shadows and reflections. Nonetheless, the empha-
sis was not on the material, but the idea that material was only a 
means for achieving the goal, which was transcending the material.
Artists such as Ron Cooper, Craig Kauffman, Ed Moses, Helen 
Pashgian, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, DeWain Val-
entine, Doug Wheeler and Larry Bell, created sculptural, pictorial 
and spatial works which were, due to specific materiality, sensitive to 
the environment and light in space. Due to effects of dematerializa-
tion, generated by smooth and light-responsive surfaces, these works 
stressed the reciprocity between light, matter and shape, and estab-
lished new forms of phenomenological relations with the viewer. 
The artistic appropriation of design procedures from the aeronauti-
cal and automobile industry, and the introduction of light technologies 
and new techniques of processing materials (vacuum treatment, dyeing 
and sterile chambers, mechanical cuts, bending etc.) led to connecting 
art with science and technology. Artists participated in inter-institu-
tional projects, art residences and research platforms that connected 
artists with scientists and engineers. We need to point out that cre-
ative exchanges between art and industry were not directed towards 
examining pragmatic functional solutions or toying with technology 
per se, but rather involved subtle explorations of the range of artistic 
experience, established via the relation between object and perceiver.
Paintings created by Craig Kauffman, Helen Pashgian, Peter Al-
exander or De Wain Valentine, may elicit associations to nature due to 
special atmospheric effects, though the resemblance with the materiality 
of water, air, clouds, vapors, the vastness of the sky or the remoteness 
of the ocean horizon was mediated in the abstract, purified form in an 
10   
A group of artists, whom we join under the 
name of the movement Light & Space Art, 
worked, though loosely connected, in the 
nineteen-sixties and seventies in California. 
In terms of ideas, their work presents a 
phenomenological alternative to minimalism, 
whose centre was in New York. Beside the 
pronounced focus on perception and space 
in relation to light effects, the Light & Space 
artists differ from minimalism by conceiving 
space in more non-material, discreet and 
occasionally distinctly conceptual terms. 
This distinction could be summarized in the 
difference between ‘art as an object’ and 
‘art as an experience’ , or, to use the words 
of Craig Kauffman – the first are interested 
in perception, while the second are more 
interested in material procedures. (See: 
Berlot Pompe, Uršula. Space and light in art 
installations of 20th century. / Prostor in 
svetloba v umetniških instalacijah 20. stoletja. 
Praznine 08/2015. Ljubljana: Umetniško 
izobraževalno društvo Praznine, 2015.)

Correspondences
5 Craig Kauffman, Untitled, 1968
5

195 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
entirely artificial medium. One of the first artists to use plastic and its 
industrial treatment was Craig Kauffman, who tested the boundaries 
of the pictorial after 1963 with a series of paintings presenting abstract, 
biomechanical forms on Plexiglas. He became famous especially for his 
hybrid painting-objects in bubbly shapes, which he produced with the 
vacuum treatment of plastic and the layered sprinkling of the deposit. 
When explaining the motive for creating these works, he said that he 
was looking to create a sense of ‘a bubble sculpture as “art you can ride 
in” and as a “hover form which moves around [the) room and bumps 
into walls. ” (Kauffman in Clark 2011, 57) The soaring and ethereal 
‘capsules’ of various pastel tones were attached horizontally to the wall; 
due to optical effects of shining through, reflecting color and glimmer-
ing, effects which were changing according to the observer’s position, 
these works produced a floating and immaterial impression. The artist 
experimented with materials and light with the intention of incorpo-
rating the effects of ambiental phenomena into the perception of form, 
while the viewer’s experience became the work’s basic element. [5]
The light-responsive works of Peter Alexander are distinctly as-
sociative, as they resemble the depth of water, the softness of clouds, 
haze and similar ethereal atmospheric phenomena, due to transparen-
cy and color gradations. Formally educated as an architect, he trans-
ferred his pronounced feeling for space and ambience into sculptures 
and paintings he made in the 60s and 70s by casting artificial resins. 
(What followed was a period of returning to more traditional painting 
techniques and, a decade ago, to the use of acrylic materials.) His first 
works were abstract landscapes made of plaster set in Plexiglas boxes. 
In 1971, he commented: “The idea was that you would project yourself 
into these landscapes by looking into the box. ... It never worked in 
plaster so the extension of that was to try to work it out in some oth-
er medium. ” (Alexander in Clark 2011, 59-61). The works he created 
by molding polyester resin (1965 - 72) produced a sense of minimalist 
reduction and formal homogeneity. The central event is created by light 
refracting and passing through a translucent material; it seems that these 
works materialize light or some other ‘vaporous’ substance; the object 
manifests as an optic, changeable and mutable natural phenomenon. 
Simultaneously ethereal and sensual, the works of Peter Al-
exander function as a metaphor for the momentary suspension 
in time, or images of ‘a wave caught in a moment’ . The later works 
made of polyurethane resin are mood affecting and associative as 
spilt fields of color; it seems that they represent a state when the wa-
ter reaches the shore and disappears in the sand. They suggest a 
sense of soft transition of the substance of water into the air, and, 

Correspondences
when exhibited in a gallery space, tend towards transcending the 
physical medium and merging with the surrounding space. [6]
Although James Turrell and Douglas Wheeler were known es-
pecially for their light and space installations, I would like to—in the 
context of analyzing transformations of pictorial space—highlight two 
types of their work which offer new pictorial spatiality. Turrell’s first 
light works (Light Projections (Afrum), 1966-67; Stuck Red and Stuck 
Blue, 1970) were produced, as the painter claims, in reference to paint-
ing: “What happened then is that I got more interested in the plumbing 
of hypothetical space and the idea of the presence or quality of light. 
Afrum ... was more of a painting in the sense that you have painting 
on a two-dimensional surface that alludes to perhaps three dimensions 
or unsolvable three-dimensional things. This work was about taking 
three-dimensional space and making the same kind of allusions to the 
space beyond that-you don’t need to call it fourth dimension but just 
one that does not solve up in three. So in that way, my work does have 
a lot more to do with painting than it does with sculptural or architec-
tural senses, because the first thing that is important is that the light is 
used as material, and that it has a physical presence as such, and that 
space is solid and filled and never empty.... Let’s call painting our con-
cept of three-dimensional space ... then from that, create paintings that 
don’t solve up in that space-rather they are that space. They become 
like little ‘holes in reality. ’” (Turrell in Butterfield 1993, 72). Regardless 
of dealing with the illusion of the three-dimensional volume brought 
about by intense light projection in a suitably deformed geometric 
shape (Afrum), or with shallow space constructions (Stuck Red and 
Stuck Blue, 1970
11
), which work in the opposite manner by flattening 
some parts (the actual holes in the wall) from 3D into apparent col-
or two-dimensionality, these works revolve around the idea of light 
as a tactile substance which gives a feeling of being touchable. [7]
Light paintings from the series ‘light encasements’ (1969)
12
 
by Doug Wheeler stress more directly the concept of painting as 
the materialization of emptiness. His works— with the help of 
the vacuum treated acrylic light tubes that he sprinkled with lac-
quer—radiate in soft diffuse light and give a sense of light sur-
rounding non-material emptiness. [8] The artist thus comments: 
“I want the spectator to stand in the middle 
of the room and look at the painting and feel 
that if you walked into it, you’ d be in another 
w o r l d .”
11   
In Stuck Red and Stuck Blue, rectangular 
apertures are cut out of additional walls, 
which are covering the room’s real walls. 
Fluorescent colour light bulbs are hidden in 
the slits behind these temporary walls. Due to 
the intense colour glow of rectangular shapes 
in an otherwise dimmed space, negative 
spaces of apertures seem full or material, 
while the walls seem to dematerialize. 
Emptiness and fullness are optically 
subverted; the colour gains a sense of weight, 
and the painting represents the materialization 
of light in a tactile manner.
12   
Doug Wheeler was originally a painter who, 
after starting with the processes of formal 
reduction of abstract (combining biomorphic 
and mechanical) geometric shapes in more 
or less monochrome imagery (1962-63), and 
continuing with a series of ‘chip’ paintings 
(1964), gradually arrived at introducing real 
light elements into painting (fabricated 
pieces, 1965-68), where canvas was replaced 
with Plexiglas and neon light bulbs placed 
in the interior. What came next were ‘Light 
encasements’ (1969), which combined vacuum 
processed elements of Plexiglas and light 
technology to create softly rounded linear 
rectangular light shapes.
/ Wheeler in Clark 2011, 31
6 Peter Alexander, Royal Blue Drip, 2011
6a
6b

197 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
when exhibited in a gallery space, tend towards transcending the 
physical medium and merging with the surrounding space. [6]
Although James Turrell and Douglas Wheeler were known es-
pecially for their light and space installations, I would like to—in the 
context of analyzing transformations of pictorial space—highlight two 
types of their work which offer new pictorial spatiality. Turrell’s first 
light works (Light Projections (Afrum), 1966-67; Stuck Red and Stuck 
Blue, 1970) were produced, as the painter claims, in reference to paint-
ing: “What happened then is that I got more interested in the plumbing 
of hypothetical space and the idea of the presence or quality of light. 
Afrum ... was more of a painting in the sense that you have painting 
on a two-dimensional surface that alludes to perhaps three dimensions 
or unsolvable three-dimensional things. This work was about taking 
three-dimensional space and making the same kind of allusions to the 
space beyond that-you don’t need to call it fourth dimension but just 
one that does not solve up in three. So in that way, my work does have 
a lot more to do with painting than it does with sculptural or architec-
tural senses, because the first thing that is important is that the light is 
used as material, and that it has a physical presence as such, and that 
space is solid and filled and never empty.... Let’s call painting our con-
cept of three-dimensional space ... then from that, create paintings that 
don’t solve up in that space-rather they are that space. They become 
like little ‘holes in reality. ’” (Turrell in Butterfield 1993, 72). Regardless 
of dealing with the illusion of the three-dimensional volume brought 
about by intense light projection in a suitably deformed geometric 
shape (Afrum), or with shallow space constructions (Stuck Red and 
Stuck Blue, 1970
11
), which work in the opposite manner by flattening 
some parts (the actual holes in the wall) from 3D into apparent col-
or two-dimensionality, these works revolve around the idea of light 
as a tactile substance which gives a feeling of being touchable. [7]
Light paintings from the series ‘light encasements’ (1969)
12
 
by Doug Wheeler stress more directly the concept of painting as 
the materialization of emptiness. His works— with the help of 
the vacuum treated acrylic light tubes that he sprinkled with lac-
quer—radiate in soft diffuse light and give a sense of light sur-
rounding non-material emptiness. [8] The artist thus comments: 
“I want the spectator to stand in the middle 
of the room and look at the painting and feel 
that if you walked into it, you’ d be in another 
w o r l d .”
11   
In Stuck Red and Stuck Blue, rectangular 
apertures are cut out of additional walls, 
which are covering the room’s real walls. 
Fluorescent colour light bulbs are hidden in 
the slits behind these temporary walls. Due to 
the intense colour glow of rectangular shapes 
in an otherwise dimmed space, negative 
spaces of apertures seem full or material, 
while the walls seem to dematerialize. 
Emptiness and fullness are optically 
subverted; the colour gains a sense of weight, 
and the painting represents the materialization 
of light in a tactile manner.
12   
Doug Wheeler was originally a painter who, 
after starting with the processes of formal 
reduction of abstract (combining biomorphic 
and mechanical) geometric shapes in more 
or less monochrome imagery (1962-63), and 
continuing with a series of ‘chip’ paintings 
(1964), gradually arrived at introducing real 
light elements into painting (fabricated 
pieces, 1965-68), where canvas was replaced 
with Plexiglas and neon light bulbs placed 
in the interior. What came next were ‘Light 
encasements’ (1969), which combined vacuum 
processed elements of Plexiglas and light 
technology to create softly rounded linear 
rectangular light shapes.
/ Wheeler in Clark 2011, 31

Correspondences
7 James Turrell, Stuck Red and Stuck Blue, 1970
8 Doug Wheeler, Untitled, 1969/2014
7
8

199 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
Light paintings ‘light entrapments’ (1968) by Ron Cooper were created 
by layering artificial resin and fiberglass. Cooper produced paintings 
that create, on the brink of the visible, ‘traps for light’; he was inter-
ested in the effect of color suspended in space. In the late 60s Helen 
Pashgian also made acrylic paintings and three-dimensional objects, 
where the key element was the interplay between light and transparen-
cy. By molding resin and inserting solid acrylic elements into simple 
geometric (rectangular or round) shapes, she created illusory effects, 
which depended primarily on the angle of observation, i.e. the posi-
tion of the viewer and the shifts in ambient light. In contrast to many 
artists, who in the 60s began their career as painters but gradually 
dropped canvas and turned to the use of the light medium (D. Wheel-
er, R. Irwin, L. Bell and others), Mary Corse, despite her experiments 
with materials, kept her primary interest in painting. By mixing glass 
micro-grains into color surfaces, she created a dynamic sense of refrac-
tion, condensing and reflection of light in paintings (the end of 60s), 
while later she introduced light-electric elements to create light-boxes 
which gravitate towards the ‘technological sublime’ (Clark 2011: 55). 
Despite the variety in formal expression or the philosophical 
background of the artists who introduced light as a medium into 
their works in the 1960s, they share a common emphasis on the cen-
tral importance of perceptual and situational experience in a work 
of art. Their art experiments with new materials, light technology 
and industrial productions reflected their interest in the psycho-
logical and perceptual dimension of the aesthetic experience which 
is supposed to expand the viewer’s scope of self-consciousness.
COMPLEXITY AND NON-LINEARITY IN THE 
ABSTRACTION OF THE INFORMATION AGE 
Modern science, which established models of reality on the basis of Ein-
stein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum physics, also generated 
a particular gap between the experiential and the theoretical, mathemat-
ically described model of space. This duality was actually introduced by 
analytical geometry (Descartes), which was not based on the space of 
perception (unlike the classical Euclidean geometry), but rather on the 
mathematical space of algebra and arithmetic. Classical geometry reflect-
ed relations found in natural space; geometric symbolization served rep-
resentation (the relation between the geometric sign and thing was based 
on similarity), while analytical geometry used signs per se, which did 
not mirror perceptual space, but relied on functional equations. While 
the 20th century physics, on the basis of unifying the theory of relativity 

Correspondences
with quantum mechanics, offered a consistent explanation of physical 
space; mathematics established a whole specter of different geometries 
and multiple mathematically provable, intelligible space dimensions. 
The predominant paradigm of postmodern science has been 
founded on the basis of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamic systems. 
In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, fractal geometry started to describe 
the reality of phenomena belonging to complex systems and nonlinear 
dynamics, beside which Euclidean geometry seemed useless. Euclidean 
space was based on the abstract geometric systems of coordinate axes, 
straight lines and basic geometric bodies; it treated natural phenomena 
(physical, biological...) in abstract terms, using reduction and specializa-
tion. It was founded on the search for linear processes in nature, i.e. the 
search for rules and patterns of the behavior of a particular system along 
the principles of cause and effect. Euclidean space was conceived in an 
abstract manner and did not correspond to the revelations of reality as 
described by chaos theory, which was founded on the finding that even 
the simplest systems could generate chaotic behavior. The accumulation 
of input information did not improve the understanding and predic-
tion of nonlinear and chaotic dynamics, as the latter confronted us with 
non-periodicality and complex phenomena with which ‘mistakes’ tend 
to increase.
13
 Research on the behavior of chaotic systems has revealed 
that reality is established through the relationship between order and 
disorder (chaos); it has led to the demand for new scientific methods that 
would be able to discover and examine the inherent order and behav-
ior of seemingly totally chaotic and unpredictable natural or artificial 
structures. What is essential for studying nonlinear systems therefore is 
not linking causes with effects, but rather the identification of patterns 
and certain irregular repetitions (semblances, non-coincidental iter-
ations). Space, which is curved, deformed, coiled, cut, undulated and 
dynamic is fittingly described by fractal geometry (Benoit Mandelbrot), 
which recognizes resemblances in the structure of fractals (not complete 
identity), iterated at different scales; the micro scale of the fractal struc-
ture reflects the macro structure, each minimal particle of the system 
reflecting the order of the whole to which it belongs. Chaos theory does 
not limit itself to fractals, but deals with nonlinear phenomena, which are 
characterized by variety, ephemerality and dynamism. Precise research 
on chaotic systems and nonlinear dynamics was made possible only by 
digital technology with algorithmically generated virtual simulations.
Modern art movements were often inspired by science; many 
avant-garde artists were led by the desire to use artistic means to visu-
alize relative space, multidimensionality and other scientific visions of 
reality according to the new scientific paradigm. Deformed topologies, 
13   
Nonlinearity can be illustrated by playing 
cards where the rules of the game would be 
changing on the spot, due to the process of 
playing, or with the example of a labyrinth, 
whose walls and paths would be rearranged 
with each step of the way.

201 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
with quantum mechanics, offered a consistent explanation of physical 
space; mathematics established a whole specter of different geometries 
and multiple mathematically provable, intelligible space dimensions. 
The predominant paradigm of postmodern science has been 
founded on the basis of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamic systems. 
In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, fractal geometry started to describe 
the reality of phenomena belonging to complex systems and nonlinear 
dynamics, beside which Euclidean geometry seemed useless. Euclidean 
space was based on the abstract geometric systems of coordinate axes, 
straight lines and basic geometric bodies; it treated natural phenomena 
(physical, biological...) in abstract terms, using reduction and specializa-
tion. It was founded on the search for linear processes in nature, i.e. the 
search for rules and patterns of the behavior of a particular system along 
the principles of cause and effect. Euclidean space was conceived in an 
abstract manner and did not correspond to the revelations of reality as 
described by chaos theory, which was founded on the finding that even 
the simplest systems could generate chaotic behavior. The accumulation 
of input information did not improve the understanding and predic-
tion of nonlinear and chaotic dynamics, as the latter confronted us with 
non-periodicality and complex phenomena with which ‘mistakes’ tend 
to increase.
13
 Research on the behavior of chaotic systems has revealed 
that reality is established through the relationship between order and 
disorder (chaos); it has led to the demand for new scientific methods that 
would be able to discover and examine the inherent order and behav-
ior of seemingly totally chaotic and unpredictable natural or artificial 
structures. What is essential for studying nonlinear systems therefore is 
not linking causes with effects, but rather the identification of patterns 
and certain irregular repetitions (semblances, non-coincidental iter-
ations). Space, which is curved, deformed, coiled, cut, undulated and 
dynamic is fittingly described by fractal geometry (Benoit Mandelbrot), 
which recognizes resemblances in the structure of fractals (not complete 
identity), iterated at different scales; the micro scale of the fractal struc-
ture reflects the macro structure, each minimal particle of the system 
reflecting the order of the whole to which it belongs. Chaos theory does 
not limit itself to fractals, but deals with nonlinear phenomena, which are 
characterized by variety, ephemerality and dynamism. Precise research 
on chaotic systems and nonlinear dynamics was made possible only by 
digital technology with algorithmically generated virtual simulations.
Modern art movements were often inspired by science; many 
avant-garde artists were led by the desire to use artistic means to visu-
alize relative space, multidimensionality and other scientific visions of 
reality according to the new scientific paradigm. Deformed topologies, 
13   
Nonlinearity can be illustrated by playing 
cards where the rules of the game would be 
changing on the spot, due to the process of 
playing, or with the example of a labyrinth, 
whose walls and paths would be rearranged 
with each step of the way.

Correspondences
decompositions, fractured and curved spatial representations reflect 
broader scientific and social concepts of modernism. The pictorial 
procedures of rationalization, the abstraction of visible reality and the 
gradual formal reduction of elements of pictorial space coincide with the 
dominant scientific tendency to count and deconstruct reality to elemen-
tary particles or indivisible elements, which are regulated by universal 
laws. Just as the micro-reality of scientific world reveals the workings 
of energetically charged particles (physics, chemistry), cells and chro-
mosomes (biology) or the indivisible elements of sensory perception 
(experimental psychology), modern art leans towards pure abstraction 
with painting focusing on elementary art concepts – pure colors, lines 
and reduced geometric shapes. The prevailing reductionist method and 
paradigm of understanding reality permeated both the scientific and ar-
tistic strategies of modernism. (Manovich 2007; Vitz and Glimcher 1984)
Since the 1960s, we have witnessed the emergence of a new epis-
temological paradigm in numerous scientific and technical fields, 
including chaos theory, nonlinearity and the dynamics of complex 
systems, self-organization and autopoiesis, research on artificial life 
and intelligence, mirror neuron networks and genetic algorithms. 
The study of nonlinear dynamics of complex systems sheds light on 
the articulation of spontaneous order, which is not determined by 
the characteristics of the system’s elements, but rather the emerging 
and unpredictable features that appear from chaos and coincidence 
in the process of simple interaction between elements. The paradigm 
of complexity, which has come to replace linear reductionist models 
of reality, does not merely reflect the new scientific and social reality, 
but can be traced also into the field of contemporary art production. 
In abstract art of the information age, the aesthetics of complexity 
have appeared most explicitly in digital and new media arts, comput-
er generated ‘software’ abstractions or (interactive) video simulations, 
which often use the same algorithmic bases as scientific animations 
of chaos and artificial life. As noted by Manovich, software artworks 
(moving computer simulations) demonstrate the aesthetics of complex-
ity in the interactive parts, where the user, with the help of a particular 
interface, brings to life abstract dynamic patterns. These moving visual 
systems no longer evoke ideas of order and simplicity, and their behav-
ior is neither linear nor random – instead they appear to change from a 
state to a state, swinging between order and chaos, in a similar manner 
as complex systems found in nature. (Manovich 2007: 349) Manovich 
clarifies the aesthetics of complexity using examples of digitally generated 
software (interactive) abstract works
14
, which show the dynamic move-
ment of changing linear structures. He emphasizes that the line used in 
14   
Manovich illustrates his hypothesis on 
the complexity aesthetics with examples 
of moving computer generated (software) 
simulations, which were – beside more 
traditional art forms – incorporated into the 
exhibition Abstraction Now (Kunstlerhaus 
Wien, 2003). When considering the works of 
artists such as Golan Levin, Manny Tan, James 
Paterson and Amit Pitaru, Peter Luining, 
Return and James Tindall, he notes the formal 
similarities between these and the tradition 
of modernist abstractions (composition based 
on the grid, combinatory aesthetics, colour 
and formal geometric reduction etc.). Despite 
this, the analyzed works express an entirely 
different logic: instead of the systematic play 
of variations of a small number of elements, 
these computer generated works constantly 
subvert possible configurations, without an 
inclination to discover or stabilize ‘the right 
form’ (modernism). They present a continuous 
process of the dynamic reshaping of forms 
which are not linked hierarchically. Unlike 
the works described here, which render 
complexity through the dynamic behaviour 
of considerably minimalist linear patterns, 
some artists use algorithmic processes for 
creating dense and complex fields which 
are often covering the whole screen (Glen 
Murphy, Casey Reas, Dexto, Meta, Ed Burton 
and others).

203 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
decompositions, fractured and curved spatial representations reflect 
broader scientific and social concepts of modernism. The pictorial 
procedures of rationalization, the abstraction of visible reality and the 
gradual formal reduction of elements of pictorial space coincide with the 
dominant scientific tendency to count and deconstruct reality to elemen-
tary particles or indivisible elements, which are regulated by universal 
laws. Just as the micro-reality of scientific world reveals the workings 
of energetically charged particles (physics, chemistry), cells and chro-
mosomes (biology) or the indivisible elements of sensory perception 
(experimental psychology), modern art leans towards pure abstraction 
with painting focusing on elementary art concepts – pure colors, lines 
and reduced geometric shapes. The prevailing reductionist method and 
paradigm of understanding reality permeated both the scientific and ar-
tistic strategies of modernism. (Manovich 2007; Vitz and Glimcher 1984)
Since the 1960s, we have witnessed the emergence of a new epis-
temological paradigm in numerous scientific and technical fields, 
including chaos theory, nonlinearity and the dynamics of complex 
systems, self-organization and autopoiesis, research on artificial life 
and intelligence, mirror neuron networks and genetic algorithms. 
The study of nonlinear dynamics of complex systems sheds light on 
the articulation of spontaneous order, which is not determined by 
the characteristics of the system’s elements, but rather the emerging 
and unpredictable features that appear from chaos and coincidence 
in the process of simple interaction between elements. The paradigm 
of complexity, which has come to replace linear reductionist models 
of reality, does not merely reflect the new scientific and social reality, 
but can be traced also into the field of contemporary art production. 
In abstract art of the information age, the aesthetics of complexity 
have appeared most explicitly in digital and new media arts, comput-
er generated ‘software’ abstractions or (interactive) video simulations, 
which often use the same algorithmic bases as scientific animations 
of chaos and artificial life. As noted by Manovich, software artworks 
(moving computer simulations) demonstrate the aesthetics of complex-
ity in the interactive parts, where the user, with the help of a particular 
interface, brings to life abstract dynamic patterns. These moving visual 
systems no longer evoke ideas of order and simplicity, and their behav-
ior is neither linear nor random – instead they appear to change from a 
state to a state, swinging between order and chaos, in a similar manner 
as complex systems found in nature. (Manovich 2007: 349) Manovich 
clarifies the aesthetics of complexity using examples of digitally generated 
software (interactive) abstract works
14
, which show the dynamic move-
ment of changing linear structures. He emphasizes that the line used in 
14   
Manovich illustrates his hypothesis on 
the complexity aesthetics with examples 
of moving computer generated (software) 
simulations, which were – beside more 
traditional art forms – incorporated into the 
exhibition Abstraction Now (Kunstlerhaus 
Wien, 2003). When considering the works of 
artists such as Golan Levin, Manny Tan, James 
Paterson and Amit Pitaru, Peter Luining, 
Return and James Tindall, he notes the formal 
similarities between these and the tradition 
of modernist abstractions (composition based 
on the grid, combinatory aesthetics, colour 
and formal geometric reduction etc.). Despite 
this, the analyzed works express an entirely 
different logic: instead of the systematic play 
of variations of a small number of elements, 
these computer generated works constantly 
subvert possible configurations, without an 
inclination to discover or stabilize ‘the right 
form’ (modernism). They present a continuous 
process of the dynamic reshaping of forms 
which are not linked hierarchically. Unlike 
the works described here, which render 
complexity through the dynamic behaviour 
of considerably minimalist linear patterns, 
some artists use algorithmic processes for 
creating dense and complex fields which 
are often covering the whole screen (Glen 
Murphy, Casey Reas, Dexto, Meta, Ed Burton 
and others).

Correspondences
the context of modernist abstraction presents the basic visual element 
of the abstract structure of the world, while in the context of the moving 
virtual abstract composition it evokes the richness and complexity of 
reality: “In other words, if modernist abstraction assumes that behind the 
sensorial richness of the world there are simple abstract structures that 
generate this richness, such a separation of levels is absent from soft-
ware abstractions. Instead, we see a dynamic interaction of elements that 
periodically leads to certain orderly configurations. ” (Manovich 2007: 348)
A significant portion of the production of contemporary ab-
stract painting is based on the processual logic and formal aesthetics 
of complexity. We can observe pictorial strategies of direct appropri-
ation of algorithmic processes, ideas and techniques of visualizing 
complexity, or less direct references to the dynamism and nonlin-
earity of abstract structures that reveal—in seeming chaos—a cer-
tain sense of order. In the context of the so-called contemporary 
‘post-media’ art production, paintings are created through processes 
of passing between digital tools and analogue techniques, while the 
resulting spatial structures include the experience of both media.
The line of contemporary abstract painting explores the visual po-
tential of a grid with contemporary means of visualization and creation, 
thus reinterpreting the grid as an emblematic compositional principle 
of the modernist abstract painting.
15
 Works of Esther Stocker construct 
variations of the grid linear orthogonal structures, where the abstract 
semantic content (the event of painting) is developing in the field of 
distinctions between order and deviations from order. Although the 
paintings suggest comparison with the modernist tradition of abstract 
painting (or centripetally and centrifugally directed compositions of 
grid), in this case the perception of singular formal units (color, line 
etc.) is not highlighted, but instead we are dealing with turning away 
from ‘objects of perception’ to ‘perception itself’ (Röbel 2004: 79). In 
the same vane the abstractions of Günther Selichar or Doris Marten 
express the aesthetics of digital visuality, which is determined by the 
reality of screens, pixels, dots, lines and the logic of binary numerical 
relations. The grid constructions of Sarah Morris, which refer to the 
transformation of modernist architecture, appear more spatial. [9-10]
Contemporary abstract pictorial representations seldom stress 
the notions of emptiness, absence and the depiction of the undepict-
able, which were characteristic of modernism. More often they are 
created on the bases of the scientific imaginaries of contemporary, 
technologically expanded reality: seemingly abstract organic (bio-
morphic) or geometric structures originate from the phenomenal but 
until now invisible dimension of reality, which has become accessible 
15   
See: Rossalind Krauss, Grids (1979) in The 
Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other 
Modernist Myths.
9 Esther Stocker, Untitled, 2001-2003
10 Sarah Morris, National Archive, 2002
9
10

205 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
the context of modernist abstraction presents the basic visual element 
of the abstract structure of the world, while in the context of the moving 
virtual abstract composition it evokes the richness and complexity of 
reality: “In other words, if modernist abstraction assumes that behind the 
sensorial richness of the world there are simple abstract structures that 
generate this richness, such a separation of levels is absent from soft-
ware abstractions. Instead, we see a dynamic interaction of elements that 
periodically leads to certain orderly configurations. ” (Manovich 2007: 348)
A significant portion of the production of contemporary ab-
stract painting is based on the processual logic and formal aesthetics 
of complexity. We can observe pictorial strategies of direct appropri-
ation of algorithmic processes, ideas and techniques of visualizing 
complexity, or less direct references to the dynamism and nonlin-
earity of abstract structures that reveal—in seeming chaos—a cer-
tain sense of order. In the context of the so-called contemporary 
‘post-media’ art production, paintings are created through processes 
of passing between digital tools and analogue techniques, while the 
resulting spatial structures include the experience of both media.
The line of contemporary abstract painting explores the visual po-
tential of a grid with contemporary means of visualization and creation, 
thus reinterpreting the grid as an emblematic compositional principle 
of the modernist abstract painting.
15
 Works of Esther Stocker construct 
variations of the grid linear orthogonal structures, where the abstract 
semantic content (the event of painting) is developing in the field of 
distinctions between order and deviations from order. Although the 
paintings suggest comparison with the modernist tradition of abstract 
painting (or centripetally and centrifugally directed compositions of 
grid), in this case the perception of singular formal units (color, line 
etc.) is not highlighted, but instead we are dealing with turning away 
from ‘objects of perception’ to ‘perception itself’ (Röbel 2004: 79). In 
the same vane the abstractions of Günther Selichar or Doris Marten 
express the aesthetics of digital visuality, which is determined by the 
reality of screens, pixels, dots, lines and the logic of binary numerical 
relations. The grid constructions of Sarah Morris, which refer to the 
transformation of modernist architecture, appear more spatial. [9-10]
Contemporary abstract pictorial representations seldom stress 
the notions of emptiness, absence and the depiction of the undepict-
able, which were characteristic of modernism. More often they are 
created on the bases of the scientific imaginaries of contemporary, 
technologically expanded reality: seemingly abstract organic (bio-
morphic) or geometric structures originate from the phenomenal but 
until now invisible dimension of reality, which has become accessible 
15   
See: Rossalind Krauss, Grids (1979) in The 
Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other 
Modernist Myths.

Correspondences
11 Ross Bleckner
12 Ross Bleckner
11
12

207 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
with the help of various contemporary medical technologies (X-ray, 
ultrasound and magnetic resonance), microscopic or telescopic in-
struments, nanotechnology etc. For example, the pictorial abstractions 
of Ross Bleckner incorporate the experience of the technologically 
revealed complexity, which points to the invisible bodily geometry; 
the invisible realms of bodily, cellular and organic structures create 
bodily topologies, visualized in an utterly abstract manner. [11-12]
While the technologization of nature characterizes the works of 
Ross Bleckner, the abstract works of Fiona Ray or Tomma Abts are 
marked by greater fusion between technology and nature, which is 
described by Paul Crowther with the term ‘techno-nature’. Crowther 
believes that “the relation between contemporary sensibility and the 
natural world, in general, is thoroughly mediated by technology. (...) 
We have, then, three vectors—the naturalization of technology, the 
technologization of nature, and the continuum wherein these tenden-
cies intermingle in a very close way” (Crowther, 2012:  219). The ‘floral’ 
motifs in Fiona Ray’s paintings give an impression of vegetative growth 
creating new, unprecedented, nature-like vegetative forms, while the 
works of Tomma Abts produce a technological hybrid between the 
natural and the artificial through intense trompe l’oeil effects of sim-
ulation: orbital, curvilinear and sharp angular forms are seemingly 
superimposed and perforating undifferentiated backgrounds. [13-14]
Such pictorial images question blurred distinctions between the 
real, virtual and abstract, visible and invisible, natural and artificial 
in the contemporary world; they open up a complex field of ques-
tions, which, in abstract painting, highlight the delicate and constantly 
changing relations between reality and (its) representation in art. The 
appropriation of scientific and technological images of the natural in 
artistic abstraction is leading us to reflect on the epistemological di-
mensions of scientific visualizations developed by Horst Bredekamp. 
Bredekamp emphasizes that scientific and technological images do not 
function merely as passive illustrations, but in fact actively participate 
in the epistemological production of knowledge. (Bredekamp, 2015: 
1-5). This raises the question to what extent do artistic (abstract) im-
ages, created on the basis of appropriating and intertwining techno-
logical, scientific and aesthetic aspects of imaging the real (natural), 
also possess the generative and transformative epistemological power 
in art research, and in what ways does such artistic production con-
tribute to the expansion of knowledge with its means and methods.

Correspondences
13
14
13 Fiona Rae, Don’t make skies fall down!!!, 2007
14 Tomma Abts, Stilf, 1999

209 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
Modernist abstraction related to the scientific and technological par-
adigm of understanding the then reality and used its own, artistic 
medium, to reflect the cognitive, epistemological and aesthetic val-
ues of the broader social sphere. The abstract art of the information 
(postmodern) era, which is affected by contemporary scientific mod-
els of reality, communication technologies, social networks and the 
digitally expanded concept of the everyday, is likewise a reflection of 
the world which is based on a more complex, virtually connected and 
dynamic mesh of relations. Contemporary abstract images rarely in-
voke notions of void, absence or non-objectness, since their geometric 
or biomorphic constellations reflect the symbolic forms of contem-
porary social, technological and virtual complexity, which generates 
a fragile and dynamic oscillation between order and disorder.
Regardless of the formal and content-related variety of contem-
porary pictorial abstraction, the strength of contemporary abstract 
or non-objective pictorial forms can be seen in providing a form of 
art that encourages, in a particular manner, the viewer’s freedom of 
interpretation. Studies of the sensory and cognitive dimensions of 
aesthetic experience in contemporary neuroscience show that the 
observation of the visually undefined, ambivalent or abstract forms 
and patterns, or those indeterminate in terms of meaning, intensify 
imagination and intuitive (pre-cerebral) dimensions of aesthetic ex-
perience, due to the lack of a coherent semantic (narrative or figura-
tive) expression. The vital force of abstract art stems from its ability 
to trigger an individual sensory and emotional experience before the 
cerebral (rational) response; it can thus in a unique way inspire the 
viewer’s creativity and imagination in experiencing art and reality.

Correspondences

211 /  P ic t or i al Ab s t r a c t ion s
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