The Age of Anti-Form

Light streams through the window in a very old photo. Calendar on the wall says March 1920. Fellow with a pipe and suspenders forms the stimulus of the bubbling question on the mind of the onlooker, before the observer actually sees the man.

As the uncertainty of the photo percolates to the surface of the onlooker's conscience, something fails to lock the forms into a happy conclusion. Lack of format of the photo plays havoc with defining form or content for the onlooker. Style and voice do not come out, or speak a language.

"Establish method of expression or practice; fixed way of proceeding; conventional or stated scheme; formula; as, a form of prayer." (Copyright 2007 BrainyMedia.com)

Artists have known for centuries how to format a still life and how to form its elements into harmonic composites, with a little disharmony in the work.

Recently an article explains the Mona Lisa's smile is a function of the onlooker's eye moving from other elements of the masterwork, back to her eyes. At some peripheral glimpse of the observer's a glimmer of recognition emerges from the face of M. Lisa to astonish and stimulate us. Message to art lovers: Most of us painters are in the business of just having a final product that: "Hey, see, made you look!"

D'Vinci is no exception. We are in a business to produce work that captures more than five seconds of a person's attention; then if there is a "double-take" artists know satisfaction a second look brings. Staring at our work, well that is more than compensation for us artists.

This photo is a real subject from a photo album of work and work places of my father's dad and uncles. The fellow in the shadows at the left, smoking his pipe is as yet unidentified. Could be Grandpa, or a Grand Uncle. Behind this shop is a lumber yard.

Now as I have described the photo as a snap shot, really from March 1920, it takes on form and contiguous meaning. Yikes; such large ambition from a simple art form.

"You must first clearly see a thing in your mind before you can do it. Alex Morrison But no work from a first rate mind is ever really second rate. Gerald Finzi"

Our minds are a function of natural power that conceives, judges, or reasons; if not for the mind we pretty much remain in the realm of "anti-Form."