EMPATHY
However, these impulses bring about self-alienation in opposite ways: empathy does so by breaking down the boundaries that separate the individual from the rest of nature, while abstraction fortifies these boundaries
Since the more unlike reality an image appears, the more it reflects the artist’s individual consciousness
DISTANCE
And so, you could say, that the degree to which an artist’s work is abstract is in fact a measure of this distance
FIGURATIVE
REPRESENTATION
Consequently, empathy leads to more and more figurative representation as the artist increasingly more and more with the surrounding world and seeks to dissolve into it.
Abstraction & Empathy
(1907)
Once we conceive of ourselves as individuals, we project this understanding onto the things around us and this allows us to grasp the individuality of each thing.
SEPARATION
Max Weber
(1864 - 1920)
The sociologist Max Weber has a marvelous quote which summarizes this idea. He says that ‘man is a creature who lives in a web of signification that he himself has spun."
This projection from the mind onto the world is an abstraction. Consequently, abstraction is not as we normally think of it, a reduction from figurative into less figurative representation, but rather the origin of how we perceive reality to begin with.
PROJECTION
IRONY
The state of uncertainty that arises when these contradictory dimensions of consciousness are joined through language is what gives irony its characteristic quality of saying one thing and meaning something very different.
ABSTRACTION
Worringer discusses the opposing impulses towards abstraction and empathy which he argues are not only two of primary reasons why art is produced in the first place, but also have a profound influence on artistic style and architecture.
According to Worringer, both abstraction and empathy stem from the same psychological need to self-alienate in order to escape the apparent arbitrariness of one’s own existence.
Wilhem Worringer
(1881 - 1965)
The impulse to abstraction, on the other hand, results in art that avoids a perfect resemblance with nature, which in turn reflects the artist’s own sense of dissociation from the world around him.