4.1.Plastic Elements According to Kandinsky

Kandinsky’s contribution to the study of the Basic Plane continues to be a seminal one today. But while it has contributed in an absolutely radical way to the transformation of the notion of pictorial field as well as to its perception, it has to this day never been seriously questioned by artists or art theoreticians.

Kandinsky was the first to consciously recognize the importance of this “organism” with which the artist is constantly in dialogue, and to try to describe its characteristics. However, on the basis of his approach to the analytical elements of the pictorial discourse, namely point, line, then color, the subsequent description of the Basic Plane is entirely dependent on the intuitions by which these elements are defined. But as Gestaltian psychology has shown, a gestalt is more than the addition of its parts. In the Kandinskyan approach, the material plane that exists as a whole is not permitted to be apprehended in its proper characteristics.

The principal difficulty in Kandinsky’s analysis lies in his use, when defining the basic elements of the pictorial discourse, of a geometrical or “logical” intuition, rather than a consideration of them in terms of their material, spatializing, and dynamic reality. His analytical approach can be readily discerned in the sort of qualitative leap indicated by the title of his major work which, as it has been already noted, should be read as: “Point and Line Related to Plane” (Sers, 1970; 33). With no accompanying explanations, Kandinsky effects a leap from the geometric domain to the material and sensorial field of space.

Euclidean geometry defines its basic elements as ideal concepts which do not have the same characteristics as material objects existing in space-time and which are not subject to the same laws. Kandinsky readily admits that his basic definitions are borrowed from Euclid’s geometry. His analysis begins as follows:

The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero.

Hidden in this zero, however, are various attributes which are “human” in nature. We think of this zero—the geometric point—in relation to the greatest possible brevity, i.e., to the highest degree of restraint which, nevertheless, speaks. . . .

The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence (1976; 25).

And Kandinsky develops an admirable meditation on the interior “walled-in by the exterior.”

Despite the poetic richness of the associations he makes between writing and plastic presentation, Kandinsky never explains the means by which this “incarnation” or materialization of the nonvisible geometric point came about, nor does he account for the essential transformations undergone by this notion, from the incorporeal to the verbal and then to the plastic context in which it is now postulated. In particular, its “immobility” becomes highly questionable by virtue of the continuous interactions which animate any matter in real space-time dimensions.

Kandinsky continues as follows to define the line: “The geometric line is an invisible thing. It is the track made by the moving point; that is, its product. It is created by movement—specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point. Here, the leap out of the static into the dynamic occurs” (1976; 57). In this context, only an “exterior force” can make this point move, creating the so-called absolute contrasts between ‘passivity’ and ‘activity’, as the primordial tensions between the plastic elements themselves. The generative link between the point and the line thus established on a geometric level will not be applied to the line and the plane by Kandinsky, despite the Euclidean precedent.

To begin with, the Basic Plane is set forth as “the material surface called upon to receive the work.” However, this “material surface” will not be considered concerning its possible three-dimensional aspect. It will be solely defined by the relation that it maintains with already-observed characteristics of the fundamental elements themselves; namely, the point and the line. Even the further description of colored elements will be entirely attributed characteristics of the point and the line, as well as the forms that these produce.

Moreover, from this point of departure in the field of Euclidean geometry, one could expatiate at some length on the multiple consequences of Kandinsky’s decision to consider the point and the line as the basic constitutive components of the pictorial discourse, at the expense of color which was only added later as a harmonious, but less structural, extension. This is surprising if one considers the enormous place that the color phenomenon appropriates in his landmark text The Spiritual in Art, published in 1911.

We may recall in this regard that, as early as 1918, Mondrian had suggested that color was the main element in the production of plastic phenomena through the principle of “determination,” since line was only an element derived from the affirmation of color. Determination, he wrote:

. . . is achieved in painting by determining the color itself as well as the color planes, this process consists of counterbalancing the fusion of the colors by establishing a given type of border—either by a plane having an antithetical value or by line. Line must in fact be seen as the determination of the planes (of color), and for this reason it is important in painting. Nevertheless, plastic art is created by planes, and Cézanne could say that painting consisted solely of contrasting colors with others. But plastic art can also be seen from the viewpoint of line: strongly contrasting planes produce lines” (1967a; 105).

This concept of the line, resulting from a consideration of visual reality itself, is structurally distinct from that which is based on the geometric universe, which is only a logical or mental universe.

Later, Russian formalism, as explained by Nikolai Taraboukine in 1923, presented simultaneously these two concepts of line, while emphasizing that the line as an autonomous arabesque was not an essential element of painting itself, but rather of the language of drawing: “Although line is not part of the series of fundamental elements of which painting consists, it does play an important role. Moreover, line is an essential element of drawing,” because it creates the spatial illusion of volume and because it serves as a “border between two contiguous colored surface-planes” (1972; 117-118).

This special emphasis placed on the elements of drawing as opposed to those of painting, the result of a long cultural tradition which influenced Kandinsky as he himself recognizes in his autobiographical texts (1970; 274), contributed to the complexity of the evolution of his work which cannot be explained in “pictorial” terms only. And despite Mondrian’s early declarations in the texts of the journal De Stijl, this tradition also influenced the evolution of his work, as he acknowledged in a letter to James J. Sweeney: “Only now (1943) have I become conscious that my work in black and little colored planes has been merely ‘drawing’ in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expression, in painting, the color planes” (Sweeney, 1961; 62).

But the chief drawback to Kandinsky’s approach lies in the conceptual gap it opens between a logico-geometrical definition of the pictorial elements and a spatial conception of these same elements, corresponding to the infra-logical intuitions basic to the construction of the sensorial space-field, as Piaget (1956) has demonstrated. These concrete spatializing processes do not, in effect, obey the same principles of organization and do not behave in the same way as those governing the elements of Euclidean geometry, which Kandinsky used. Other geometries, based mainly on topological intuitions, are better suited to account for their reciprocal modes of interrelation.

4.2.Plastic Elements and the Basic Plane

With respect to the Basic Plane, instead of describing the material energies contributing to its structure, Kandinsky ascribed to it various characteristics of its so-called constitutive elements (the point and the line), to which he added organizational principles based on the spatializing activity of the perceiver himself, such as concepts of left/right, cold/warm, and so on, which are not actually part of the Basic Plane itself but are transferred to it by a mechanism of projection.

Nevertheless, Kandinsky emphasized the importance of making a clear distinction between both these force-fields, the Basic Plane and the more commonly known Pictorial Plane: “a fact which is of immeasurable importance and which must be viewed as something independent of the powers of the artist is . . . the nature of the Basic Plane itself” (1976; 116). By virtue of their permanence and objectivity, the actual structures of the Basic Plane are constraints that exist prior to the beginning of any work of visual representation. They must be compared to those basic verbal and grammatical structures which determine the semantic function according to relatively fixed coordinates, such as linear sequences and positions of nominal and verbal syntagms, temporal forms, subordinate propositions, and so on (Chomsky, 1957). The expressive impulse of the individual must combine with these structures, even for description of nonlinear experience involved in duration, multiplicity, simultaneity, juxtaposition of levels of abstractions which verbal language seems remarkably unsuited to transmit within its own structures.

The Basic Plane is constituted by the meeting of two pairs of vertical and horizontal parallel lines, determining and limiting a portion of the real so that a planar material surface emerges. At once, the perceiver is confronted with a sensorial fact distinct from the spatial reality that surrounds him or her. Kandinsky noted this difference but reduced it to that which exists between a space which is in front of and a space which surrounds the individual: “It can only be briefly remarked here that these organic characteristics of the plane carry over into the realm of space. Here the concept of the space before the individual and the space around the individual—in spite of the inner relationship of the two—would, nevertheless, reveal some differences” (1976; 122).

Obviously the “space” which emerges from the Basic Plane cannot be said to be the same as that which the individual perceives and experiences normally in front of him. Because of the specific limitation imposed upon the visual field, creating a particular plane having a certain shape, this new object will organize a specific flow of its material energies toward an interior center as against the energy generated by the joining of the limits. This specific determination of an area in the surrounding reality is undoubtedly the result of a decision to constitute in a material place a different level of spatial representation. But this is not purely an illusory or imaginary game; the structuring of various modes of visual representations must make use of material elements and energetic, quantified, sensory energies.

It might be suggested that Kandinsky, in fact, has undertaken the description of those internal dynamisms inherent in the Basic Plane in only an indirect way, when he endows it with the specific energies which animate his discontinuous basic elements (point, line, and the forms engendered by line). These elements are understood as possessing internal tensions which will influence, by analogy and proximity, the plane itself which they produce and on which they are deployed. The term ‘tension’ refers here to “the more or less active force inherent in elements.” According to Kandinsky, the force of the movement which animates the elements results from the added load of “tension and direction.” The term ‘tension’ would designate, therefore, the variations in the energetic charges of elements, producing different qualitative and quantitative effects, but would not include the vectorial charge attached to these elements (1976;94).

The system of tensions which animates the plastic elements, and by association, the Basic Plane, is described by Kandinsky according to a list of antinomies which refer to various semantic fields such as thermic space (hot/cold), tactile space (heavy/light), kinesthetic space (active/passive), vertical space (horizontal/oblique), visual space (high/low), and psychological space (masculine/feminine). As Kandinsky did not stress the synthetic function of the notion of space, he mentions as a sort of accidental consequence the fact that all these factors produce sometimes an effect of nearness and at other times, that of distance in depth.

These tensions inherent in the plastic elements are transformed when they are integrated in the general context of a Basic Plane sharing analogous tensions, but in a structure of organization which does not vary. Thus the tensions of the elements are modified according to the position they occupy in the Basic Plane (being on top or on bottom, at the periphery or at the center), to the fact that their vectoriality is or is not in harmony with the tensions of the Basic Plane, or by the effect of their dimension in relation to that of the Basic Plane. Another level of tensions is added to those of the elements and of the Basic Plane through the action specific to the production of the primary forms, which is similar or contrasting to that of the Basic Plane. Primary geometric forms: the square, rectangle, circle, triangle, and so on, constituting strong gestalts, as noted earlier, will enter directly into relation with the general format of the Basic Plane, producing specific effects unrelated to the definition of their forming elements.

The principal antagonistic tensions considered by Kandinsky can be summarized as follows:

When juxtaposed on the Basic Plane, the visual tensions of the elements will either harmonize or produce a disequilibrium. The ultimate pole of equilibrium of tensions is attained by the reiteration of tensions of the Basic Plane in the organization of elements. When this overall harmony is not achieved, the representation is termed as ‘dramatic’.

As far as the notions of force, movement, and tensions are concerned, Kandinsky stressed that, if a materialistic approach to the structure of basic elements in the visual discourse is both necessary and fruitful, this did not by any means imply that the pictorial events should all be linked to “elements set in a solid way (material) on a solid Basic Plane, more or less strong and optically palpable.” Energy cannot be equated with a static notion of matter. Not only does there exist in visual language “elements without material weight” but the interaction of energies can lead to “a dematerialized surface” (1976; 188). He enumerates specifically three possible states of presentation for both the line and the plane: support plane, plane of accompaniment, and invisible planes (1975; 150). Some elements, planes, and tensions may be said to be invisible, in the sense that they are not made visible locally in signs inscribed on the pictorial plane, but rather result from the interrelations arising among other visible elements. Kandinsky notes that these elements, “invisible” but inferred by perception, do not play any less significant a role in the construction of the work. We have called these perceptual elements, potential or virtual forces according to their origin and their position in the Basic Plane.

Any system of construction or of production of a visual work will consist of injecting new tensions, expressive of human experience, into the energetic systems conveyed by the Basic Plane: “At all events, it may be repeated: each part of the Basic Plane is individual and has its own particular voice and coloration” (1976; 129).

These tensions, which are part of the isolated elements or of the Basic Plane, and which multiply as the relationships among them do, are perceived not only by the eye but also by the totality of a person’s perceptual capabilities. The term ‘voice’ or ‘sonority’ is used by Kandinsky to designate the resultant synthesis in this process by which a person senses the vibrations emanating from the totality of the diverse tensions of visual elements.

This understandable desire to link visual perception to the totality of the human organism may have prevented Kandinsky from fully addressing the semiotic requisite for a sharp distinction between the plane of expression and that of the content. His description of the Basic Plane still juxtaposes recognition of visual energies with semantic correlations which are no longer of a perceptual order. It seems doubtful, as we will discuss presently, that the notions of high and low, as linked to the concept of weight and gravitation, would be a universal objective phenomenon of the visual field. And if the difference between active and passive forces raises many problems, it is seemingly difficult to accept that characteristics of horizontality, passivity, and coldness have any objective links to the feminine, or their antagonistic traits, to the masculine.

One of the most problematic oppositions, but of the utmost importance according to Kandinsky, is that of tensions which differentiate left and right, in terms of density, lightness and vectoriality. We will examine them in more detail presently, but here note that Kandinsky is ambivalent and uncertain as to how to apply his subjective experience of left and right to the Basic Plane. He describes the problem as follows:

(. . .) which side of the Basic Plane is to be considered the right and which the left? The right side of the Basic Plane should really be the one which is opposite our left side and vice versa . . . If this were actually so, we could easily project our human characteristics upon the Basic Plane, and we would thereby be in a position to define the two sides of the Basic Plane in question. With the majority of people, the right side is more developed and, thereby, freer, while the left side is more inhibited and bound.

But the contrary is true of the sides of the Basic Plane: “The ‘left’ of the Basic Plane produces the effect of great looseness, a feeling of lightness, of emancipation and, finally, of freedom” (1976; 119).

Kandinsky’s decision is therefore to project upon the Basic Plane, as on a specular image, his own interpretation of the tensions proper to the left and right, disregarding the real plane of existence of the latter.

4.3.Neutral or Disequilibrated Plane

Yet the great paradox in Kandinsky’s dynamic intuition of the tensions inherent in the constitutive “lines” in the Basic Plane is to suggest that they can form an equilibrated and neutral Basic Plane, inert in the equilibrium of its contradictions. But he has specifically described them as radically asymmetric and producing a nonequilibrated Basic Plane.

According to Kandinsky, the ideal sort of objective Basic Plane is that of a square. This strongest gestaltian figure is the incarnation of perfect and neutral equilibrium, to which the drive of the artist adjusts in a positive or negative fashion: “The most objective form of the typical Basic Plane is the square—both pairs of boundary lines possess an equally strong sound. Coldness and warmth are relatively balanced” (1976; 115).

But it is this “relative” balance which is put into question by the oppositions of tensional resonance attributed to ‘lines’ (horizontal = cold and passive; vertical = warm and active), or the accumulation of the tensions of left and right and gravitational forces, which structure the Basic Plane along heterogeneous and unequal tensions which will, in fact, violently unbalance it.

Let us consider, in Kandinsky’s terms, the tensions linked to the notions of “above” and “below,” characterized by a gradual accentuation of the gravitational force: “The closer one approaches the lower border of the Basic Plane, the denser the atmosphere becomes; the smallest individual areas lie nearer and nearer together and thereby sustain the larger and heavier forms with ever increasing ease. These forms lose weight and the note of heaviness decreases in sound” (1976; 117).

Let us stress here that the “denser atmosphere” at the lower limit belongs to the Basic Plane itself, which thus exercises an action on the smaller “forms” which are placed there and, by reaction, on the weight of those “larger and heavier forms” situated toward the upper limit.

Kandinsky says that his “concept of weight” does not correspond to a material weight, but rather to an expression of an inner force “or, in our example, an inner tension.” He explains it further in a footnote: “Ideas like ‘movement,’ ‘climbing,’ ‘falling,’ etc. are derived from the material world. On the pictorial Basic Plane, they are to be understood as the tensions living within the elements, which are modified by the tensions of the Basic Plane” (1976; 117, n.l, our italics).

Thus, the lower part of the Basic Plane itself is animated by a specific internal tension, a density, a weight, a constraint increasing toward the bottom and resulting from gravitation, whereas the upper half is, by contrast, light and supple. This primary differentiation, constant at the tensional level of the Basic Plane, will produce a modulation of its spatial curve, since denser areas of the visual field appear closer to the spectator. Thus, the lower region of the Basic Plane will advance toward the front, while the upper portion, lighter and more mobile, will recede in the background, as demonstrated in the schematic curve of figures I and II.

Moreover, the opposition of right/left which, according to Kandinsky, is a property of the Basic Plane, offers a distortion analogous to that of above/below, and these two distortions furthermore are reinforced by each other. “The ‘left’ of the Basic Plane produces the effect of great looseness, a feeling of lightness, of emancipation and, finally, of freedom” (1976; 119), to a degree however, slightly less than that which is offered by the quality of ‘above’ in relation to ‘below’: “The ‘looseness’ of ‘above’ unquestionably exhibits a higher degree of loosening up. At the ‘left’ there are more elements of density, but the difference from ‘below’ is, nevertheless, very great. Furthermore, ‘left’ stands behind ‘above’ in lightness, although the weight of ‘left’ in comparison with ‘below’ is much less” (1976; 119).

Figure I: Below/Above Tension

Figure II: Right/Left Tension

The energetic level is reversed for the ‘right’ side of the Basic Plane, which possesses a stronger density than the above regions, less than the below, but stronger than the ‘left’. These variations in density result in the tensional ‘rippling effect’ of the Basic Plane from right toward left.

Indeed, Kandinsky recognizes the fundamental asymmetry that these various tensions lend to the square format of the Basic Plane when he describes the diversity of forces of resistance met by various lines or forms of the pictorial plane when approaching different limits of the Basic Plane:

The approach of a form to the border is, therefore, subject to a special influence, which is of critical importance in the composition. The resisting forces of the borders differ from each other only in the degree of resistance and this, for example, can be represented graphically.

Figure III: Displaced Angle of the Basic Plane (According to Kandinsky)

The forces of resistance can also be translated into tensions and be given graphic expression through displaced angles. (1976; 123)

Thus, the most “objectively” equilibrated format of the Basic Plane, that of the square, is at this point so distorted by the paired tensions of above/below and of right/left, that it gives the effect of possessing “displaced angles.” Kandinsky does not elaborate on the consequences of these distorted angles on the plane that they enclose. Nevertheless, this plane is offered thus: a large density or tensional activation of the lower right corner raises it toward the front and make it recede in the background in the direction of the upper left corner. It is an “organic” quality of the plane, which must be transmitted to the space, thus creating in a permanent way a strong “rippling” wave losing itself in the ethereal space of the upper left corner.

It follows logically that Kandinsky postulates a fundamental difference of the tensions between the diagonal which goes from the lower left corner to the upper right corner, which he calls harmonious because it links the corners between which the relatively least difference in density exists and the other diagonal, which ascends from the lower right corner to the upper left corner, which he calls disharmonious or dramatic, since it unites antagonistic regions and produces the maximum difference in internal tensions. The first will be more continuous, less transformed by the tensions which ripple across the plane at the juncture where it seeks passage, whereas the second will undergo more differentiated, dynamic variations along its path. This disharmonious diagonal, however, will undergo another sort of differentiation in that, starting in the “very dense” region and then ending “in the lightest” region, it will have a tendency, according to Kandinsky, to deviate in its direction, that is, to be deflected upwards at its point of arrival, compelled to follow a movement of ascension towards the top and center of the work (1976; 129).

If we attempt to visualize the internal structure of this Basic Plane, not only in terms of resistances of lines and angles, but on its very surface, we obtain an extremely complex sort of surface that is markedly nonplanar and permanently oriented according to its vectorial coordinates. There is a decreasing gravitational density from below to above, and a density of diminishing resistance from the right to left. The Basic Plane shown in figure IV is produced if we reunite these two groups of tensions:

This type of internal structure of the Basic Plane differs appreciably from the fictional pyramidal plane of representation modeled by the classical perspective of naturalist painting. This well known perspective emphasizes the position of maximum distance-in-depth on the upper central axis (or horizon line), whereas Kandinsky shifts it—on the Basic Plane—in the direction of the oblique leading to the upper left corner. But, as is the case with the naturalistic perspective (or Euclidean basic plane), the structure Kandinsky attributes to the Basic Plane has the drawback of establishing, as a permanent matrix of spatial representation, some fixed, asymmetrical and preoriented structures which considerably predirect the artist’s projective activity. The artist is constantly forced to struggle against this basic imbalance, developing palliatives, illusory corrections, superficial trompel’oeil, if he wants to develop different spatial structures, sometimes at odds with those offered by the Basic Plane itself. This changeless, unyielding, and constraining character of the Basic Plane renders the artist’s task, in effect, a proverbial Sisyphean task.

We maintain that this situation arises from the fact that Kandinsky incorporated into his description of the Basic Plane certain structural tensions which are not inherent in the plane itself, but rather in the connotative structures of projection on the part of the artist, as attested to by the experience of Kandinsky himself. They issue, therefore, from the various structures of interpretation of spatiality made by the subject himself, and not from the external objective characteristics of the Basic Plane. But even if these structural spatial data were universal and constant, acting as a dynamic potentiality of meaning or reference, they are not inherent in perception and do not belong to the material reality of the visual field.

Figure IV: Tensions in Kandinsky’s Basic Plane

More important, they limit the spatializing representation to a commentary on, a contradiction of, or a confrontation with a fixed, arbitrary and unbalanced “spatial ripple,” in order to satisfy its own needs of spatial structuring. But before trying to reestablish more objective foundations for the semiotics of the Basic Plane, let us here briefly examine the notions involved in the question of lateralization, gravity, and active and passive forces, which have played such an important structural role in the formulation of the Basic Plane by Kandinsky.

4.3.1.Laterality and lateralization

Recent developments in neurophysiology have confirmed the existence of a lateralization process in the human organism, stemming from the structure of the cerebral mass which is divided into two hemispheres united by the corpus callosum, the latter itself composed of more than two million neural fibers. Different experiments, notably those of the renowned Dr. Wilder Penfield, have confirmed the presence of a radical asymmetry in the functioning of these two sections which control, in their interaction, the neuromotor activities of the organism (Penfield, 1959).

At the level of psychic functions, three regions essential to the production of verbal language have been localized in the left hemisphere of the brain: 1) the supplementary motor region, at the top, presiding over articulation, 2) Broca’s region, behind the forehead, concerned with articulation, storing of vocabulary, grammatical function and voice inflections, and 3) the region of Wernicke, more toward the rear, which, if removed, results in a loss in vocabulary, syntax and semantic function. The centers of language production all seem to be localized in the left part, although, following an accident or sickness, certain regions of the right lobe could “learn” to fulfill analogous functions. But under normal conditions, the removal of these same regions in the right lobe do not impair any of the verbal linguistic functions and would cause only very minimal changes in mental functioning (Jaynes, 1976; 100-106).

On the other hand, when regions of the right hemisphere are electrically stimulated, they produce memories of visual images, voices, smells, spaces, patterns and places. And when these same regions are afflicted with lesions, there is interference in the construction of spatial relations, manipulation of shapes and patterns, recognition of dimensions, textures, solving of intuitive tasks such as orientation in a labyrinth, and so on. The right hemisphere seems able only to find meaning in an element if that element is situated within a context, whereas the left lobe is more oriented to treating discrete particulars outside of any context (Jaynes, 1976; 110, 112, 118). The fact that an individual may be right or left handed has no impact on the separation of tasks in the two hemispheres of the brain. Even frequent interchange between the two hemispheres, which J. Jaynes saw as the origin of consciousness, of mental health, and of “the end of religions,” effectively maintains the independent modes of action of each part. Thus there seems to exist a fundamental asymmetry in the functions exercised by each of the two hemispheres at the level of mental operations. This differentiation tends to become more marked from the first years of life until adulthood: “Lateralization—the consolidation of specific functions in one hemisphere or another—progresses gradually from the years of youth, in parallel with the acquisition of verbal skills . . .” (Edwards, 1979; 59).

This phenomenon of lateralization leads to a more radical asymmetry of the two hemispheres and to quasi-antagonistic characteristics between the operations effected by each. As J. Levy said: “The left hemisphere analyzes according to temporality, whereas the right hemisphere synthesizes in a spatial way” (Levy, 1974). One can produce the following table of functional differences between them:

Certain positive moral connotations have been culturally ascribed to the operations of the left hemisphere (good, just, moral, rational) and some less positive connotations to the operations of the right one (anarchic, bad, dangerous, elementary, slow). These connotations are undoubtedly developed and produced by the linguistic core, which is lodged in the left hemisphere. This ‘devalorization’ of right lobe functions by the left hemisphere is demonstrated as well by the left hemisphere’s active propensity to dominate and even to minimize in human behavior the effect of right-hemisphere functions.

It is obvious, according to the above data, that the left hemisphere seems to reflect the structures which have been attributed to verbal language by a host of linguists and semanticists. Conversely, it appears that visual language, or the spatialized and simultaneous representations of experience, would be the product of and essentially depend upon the satisfactory and full functioning of the right hemisphere. Methods of learning to draw and paint have been developed, which are predicated on freeing the individual from the many repressive constraints imposed by the left hemisphere and then dynamically actualizing the repressed right-hemisphere potential, which has been habitually put into check, rejected—if not stifled—since adolescence. This is particularly true in our society, by the prominence given to the left hemisphere (Edwards, 1979; 60). With respect to the art of voice, which depends simultaneously on the two hemispheres, the seminal research of Alfred Tomatis has emphasized a necessity of pushing to its limits the complete lateralization of the organism. Tomatis saw in the achievement of a complete lateralization, that is to say, in the awareness and systematic development of the specialized functions of the left and right, “one of the keys of humanization and there is no language without it” (Tomatis, 1978; 151).

This differentiation has never appeared marked to human beings who, in the course of their development, have difficulty in assimilating the simple concepts of left and right as designating a specific way of identifying what is located at their left or right hand side in the environment. The ever changing referents of these notions have made them problematic. Jean Piaget demonstrated that, far from being an elementary spatial category, the dialectical comprehension of the left of one’s own body and the left of other human beings requires a deliberate restraint of one’s own primordial egocentric point of view. One must imagine oneself as occupying another position, that of the other, in order to observe the true characteristics and dispositions of objects as seen from the other’s perspective.

Kandinsky commented on his own behavior which induced him to negate the other’s point of view in deciding, for instance, what is left and what is right: “. . . when, for instance, he [the artist] takes the position of an objective observer in respect to other artists’ works. The view that that which lies on my right is the ‘right’ may, perhaps, explain the real impossibility of maintaining a completely objective attitude towards the work and of entirely eliminating the subjective” (1976; 120, n.l).

Kandinsky’s decision to attribute to the canvas in front of him his own determination of what is at right and what is at left corresponds in fact to attributing to it a specular or mirror dimension, which it does not really possess. Contrary to some allegations, one’s reflection in a mirror does not inverse the position of objects as being on one’s right or left. It would only do so if one takes the paradoxical view that this is not one’s reflection but the emergence of another human being endowed with a different point of view from one’s own.

The wealth of metaphorical comments on the specular effect and the conspicuous absence of any hard analysis of this phenomenon perhaps result from a confusion with the left/right relation as used in mathematics. Mathematics does not recognize changes in elements from the simple fact of a change in position, since these elements are defined abstractly outside of any physical context. The similarity, if not the relative identity, postulated between elements in different positions, is the basis of the mathematical concept of symmetry: “An object. . . is symmetric in relation to a given plane E, if it coincides with itself by reflection in E” (Weyl, 1952).

This functional symmetry, which is a perfectly adequate concept in mathematics, does not exist in external reality. Already certain sciences like genetics have observed that a simple lateral difference in disposition for similar biological organizations involves a complete difference in functions (Monod, 1970; 63).

In the case of visual language produced by human concrete gestures, the question of lateralization remains confused because it concerns different levels which have not been sufficiently characterized. Let us take, as an example, the hypothetical case of a painter, draftsman, or lithographer who is working only with one hand, say, the right. Presumably this hand and the arm find themselves under the guiding influence of both hemispheres of the brain, even though the left presides over the right hand motor activity. One cannot conclude that this right hand acts only as an instrument of the organizational structures of the left section. If, in effect, Betty H. Edwards’ methodology of teaching art enjoins children to draw for long periods of time using only the left hand, so as to allow the right-hemisphere determinisms to intervene, her real purpose is to lead students to anticipate those spatial organizations already produced by artists who themselves may have used only the right hand. The intent of this exercise is therefore to attempt to free the student from the schemas of spatial representation dictated by the left hemisphere, because of their insufficiency and their links with schemas of verbal apprehension of reality. Eventually the right hand, or, should the case arise, the left hand, may become the sole instrument of production, apportioning the different and antithetical schemas from the two hemispheres of the brain. It is therefore not at the level of the gesture itself that one perceives the signature traces and influences of the left and right hemispheres, but rather in the ultimate equilibrium of the organization of the work.

But what are the parameters of this analysis? And is the Basic Plane itself endowed with a physical lateralization whose characteristics would be differentiated within its material structure? Kandinsky himself asked the question, since the ‘left’ side of the paper or canvas upon which the artist paints was made to correspond to his own right, and vice versa. Kandinsky answered by privileging the space of representation rather than the physical object. But in thus establishing a specular metaphor in the field of representation, he affirmed a reversal of the usual characteristics that he had assigned to left and right. Thus, the right side, in humans, characterized as “the more developed, therefore, the more free” and the left as “the more handicapped, therefore the less free,” reciprocally transform their respective traits in the Basic Plane: “The ‘left’ of the Basic Plane produces the effect of great looseness, a feeling of lightness, of emancipation and, finally, of freedom” (1976; 119). We would suggest that, instead of keeping to the consequences of a cultural conditioning which does not encourage ambidexterity, Kandinsky attributed to the space of representation the characteristics that neurophysiology ascribed to the right hemisphere as being connected to the “the left side,” and vice versa.

The crisscrossing of the modes of functioning of the two hemispheres of the human brain, added to the circumstances of gestural production and perceptual mechanisms, does not clarify this problem. And a supplementary question should be added of a possible lateralization not in the Basic Plane, but in the pictorial plane, that is, in the ensemble of visual variables effectively inserted by the producer at the core of the Basic Plane. One could summarize the main questions as follows:

(a) Given the lateralization of the functions of the cerebral hemispheres, how is this asymmetry reflected in the producer’s gestures of one arm?

(b) How can the objective properties of the Basic Plane be identified with the subjective characteristics of human beings?

(c) Is this lateralization an immanent facet of the Basic Plane or is it produced only by perceptual processes, necessarily linked to cerebral hemispheres?

(d) Is this differentiated lateralization a constant characteristic of any pictorial, architectural or sculptural plane?

We are not convinced that the qualitative/asymmetric differences of lateralization belong to the structure of the Basic Plane, which is made up basically of the material energies which enter into its constitution. However, it seems that Kandinsky’s observations, applied to the pictorial plane, can be largely confirmed.

Research in this domain undertaken by the contemporary abstract painter Guido Molinari (1980) tends to establish that one can observe a lateral division in a large number of paintings in the classical and contemporary traditions. This division is given in relations of 1/3 to 2/3. Thus, the ‘left’ of the work, which corresponds to the left of the spectator and may “represent” in some way the right hemisphere which directs this side, tends to occupy a third of the overall dimension of the work. It offers a thematically more synthetic organization, which is less clearly articulated, and is resolved in smaller regions where movements would be those of heavy and slow masses. The right side of the painting, occupying about two thirds of the work, offers a large number of circumscribed or closed regions, which move more rapidly and utilize to a higher degree the coded conventions of perspective at the core of a more circular envelopment. But certain exceptions, in both ancient and contemporary works, hinder us from recognizing this phenomenon as a ‘universal’ perceptual variable and from including it among the constant visual variables.

4.3.2.Gravitational push

We will spend less time on the notions of gravity, of the “push toward the bottom” and “lightness toward the top” that Kandinsky has strongly associated with the characteristics of left and right, in order to make these two categories structural elements of the Basic Plane. If density and ‘weight’ are linked to certain qualities of color saturation or of textural intensification, as well as to dimensionality and vectoriality, a gravitational push can only be attributed to them through an identification of visual elements with the material bodies in external reality. If material objects are subjected ineluctably to the gravitational attraction discovered by Newton, can the same be said of the visual variables through which eventually fictional objects will be constructed and represented on a linguistic level? And can a perceptual referent, both subjective and objective, such as the Basic Plane, be submitted to the same laws as matter itself? Constituted through the perceptual meeting of four antagonistic and dynamic vectors as the basis of a linguistic, representational context, the Basic Plane can no more be defined as a simple and material “thing,” but more appropriately as a psycho-physical structure. It is not a representation of external reality, but an energetic system allowing for different symbolic organizations of spatiality. As such, it possesses neither a left nor a right, nor a top nor a bottom, nor a propensity to fall, qualities which belong to nonlinguistic objects.

Inasmuch as they are constituted by a “sensorial” semiotic material, the pictorial, sculptural, and architectural planes are partially subjected to the law of gravity. Pigments, or other elements affixed to the pictorial Basic Plane, will fall under the effect of their own material weight if they are not adequately restrained by their support, but not the representational “objects” they construct. If this technical constraint is stronger still in sculpture and architecture, thereby limiting their spatializing potentialities, this characteristic does not play a syntactic role in the organization of visual language, but is only produced by semantic connotations, or paraperceptual interpretations. Just as purely optical laws cannot serve as foundations for a linguistic theory of color, neither are the laws of physics any more capable of accounting for the symbolic possibilities which certain materials are endowed with in a linguistic process. As a visual variable, vectoriality (or a movement upward, downward, or to the sides) cannot be arbitrarily predefined, but results from actual interrelations within the visual field.

Without stressing too much the semantically anthropomorphic character of Kandinsky’s further interpretations about what constitutes the ‘celestial’ or the ‘terrestrial’ in an artwork, we propose that the placement of an element at the ‘top’ of a given representation does not define it as being ‘lighter’ than another placed at the ‘bottom’, just as an element is not any lighter because it is placed at the left rather than at the right. The use of the principle of gravity leads, moreover, to the ambiguous use of notions of ‘full/empty’ where even the empty has a weight, since “any place in the Basic Plane carries weight” (1975; 139). Many of these ambiguities come from the persistence in Kandinsky’s theories of the Euclidean and Newtonian concepts of space, in spite of his intuition, as an artist, of a fully energized and somewhat ‘infinite’ spatial field.

The fact that a Basic Plane is extremely enlarged, by comparison with an average format, which corresponds to parameters of the human body, is a much more structurally significant question. In this case, the perceiver is seemingly obliged to undertake physical, kinesthetic locomotions in order to see it in all its scope, submitting it to the various points of view and perspectives with which “natural” objects, as well as sculpture and architecture, are apprehended. Similarly, when a pictorial work is very tall or very large, it is immediately subjected in relation to its external globality to the convergences of linear perspective, as is the case with any object apprehended in physical reality. This global apprehension of the Basic Plane, treated as a simple material object, may interfere with the fictional perspectives proffered by the internal visual variables. This characteristic of the very large format pictorial work is also pertinent to the difficulties of perception of sculpture or of architecture, as we will soon discover.

4.3.3.Active and passive forces

In his definition of the forces and tensions which animate the Basic Plane and which are drawn from its formative elements, Kandinsky used the notions of active force (that of the vertical) and of passive force (that of the horizontal) whose actions are propagated in the very plane itself. He did not hesitate, as did Piet Mondrian, to associate the passive forces with the feminine and the active forces with the masculine. Unfortunately, these semantic metaphors constitute the sole basis—of whatever slight value—offered for the use of these categories.

In effect, in a dynamic context—where Kandinsky quite rightly concentrated his efforts—these terms are inadequate and have very little descriptive merit. Passivity there becomes too easily an equivalent of a neutral force, an inert force, leading finally to a contradictory notion of a force-which-is-not-a-force. A passive force, even in Kandinsky’s vocabulary, must necessarily be a force of resistance to the action of active forces; it must therefore be provided with an equal and antagonistic energetic intensity. A movement is always active to the extent that it is actualized. Otherwise, it is potentialized. Thus the horizontal movement is an active force of the same order as the vertical movement. If the deployment or the actualization of a movement is halted by an equivalent antagonistic energy, the energy which caused the movement does not disappear; it is contracted and prolonged under the form of potential energy. Also, the meeting-place of two antagonistic forces does not constitute a neutral zone drained of energy but rather a zone where energy is maximized as a result of the interface of these two vectorially divergent forces. Even if it is not actualized, this new energy becomes a potential charge of tension and direction, radiating outward in its proximity and producing a plane of tensions as well as varied vectorial energies.

Given the emphatic role ascribed by Kandinsky to metaphoric, connotative references in the definition of his visual grammar and the description of basic elements producing the Basic Plane, we propose to revise his analysis through a reconsideration of the dynamic sources which produce this Basic Plane. This may help us to understand the syntactic role of this notion in the production of the spatializing, linguistic function of visual language.

4.4.Structure of the Topological Basic Plane

We acknowledge, with Kandinsky, that both the origin and structure of the Basic Plane result from the paired meeting of two parallel vertical and horizontal lines. These paired lines are straight lines, that is the oriented vectors, conveying maximal energy. In Kandinsky’s terms, straight lines are “the most concise form of the potentiality for endless movement” (1976; 57). When these paired lines come from maximal antagonistic directions to form a right angle, their energies reverberate in a potentialized form within the internal angles, making possible the emergence of a dynamic field called the Basic Plane.

However, in contrast with Kandinsky, we submit that this Basic Plane is a dynamic field and not an empty plane, simply confined by two paired and parallel lines. Along with his definitions of plastic elements, Kandinsky borrowed the notion of space implicit in Euclidean geometry, that is, of a box the interior of which is empty except for the objects which inhabit it.

By reason of its dynamic origin, this Basic Plane must be defined as an energy-charged portion of space, generated by the radiating energies produced by the angular intersections of the four straight lines. It is through this maximal energizing of right angles that a dynamic structure emerges and is propagated to form a Basic Plane. Irrespective of the physical characteristics of the material support which facilitate its deployment, the Basic Plane is defined as an ensemble of energetic phenomena, taking its point of origin in the peripheral lines and corners that envelop and contain it. This energetic and topological characteristic will remain the essential element which determines the spatial structure of the Basic Plane (see figure V).

The process of energizing produced by the angular meetings which form the corners of the Basic Plane develops in a continuous and diminishing centripetal movement toward the central part of this plane. This energetic structure is derived from the disposition of its vectorial components, producing a strong gestalt. The structural system of distribution of energy in the perceptual gestalts has been described by Köhler through a comparison with the diffusion of electrical energy in an orthogonal sheet:

Figure V: Formation of the Basic Plane

If one charges a thin square plate with electricity, the density of the charge will vary with the points contacted. It will be larger at the periphery than at the center, and will attain its maximum at the angles. But let us imagine that this plate constitutes a part of a relatively very large round cylinder, the charge will be equal at all points (Katz, 1955; 66).

While essentially describable as the interplays of various levels of intensity of energy, perceptual systems are animated by the different categories of actual, potential, and virtual energies offering a decreasing order of forces. The actual and potential levels are established by the contribution of both the visual elements and perceptual processes, the virtual being the unique product of perceptual activity.

Given the significant differences in the energetic densities which reverberate from the corners and formative sides toward the center, this Basic Plane cannot be conceived as an hypothetical bidimensional geometrical plane. Rather, it must be considered as a mass possessing a thickness or interior volume of variable density, forming an undulating curve. This mass is more dense and energetic in the region which borders on the corners and peripheric sides, and less dense and energetic when farther from them. In other words, this energy is proportionately less dense as it nears the central region.

The energy radiating from the corners, which is potentialized as a mass in the region of the Basic Plane where it is spread out, is at the same time both vectorial and decreasing. However, by virtue of its vectoriality, this energetic potentiality flows from the four sides and corners to coalesce in the center. It produces there a subsystem of diagonals, forming the backbone of the Basic Plane as a specific infrastructure in relation to which visual variables will acquire signifying functions in a coherent spatial linguistic system.

The energetic force emanating from opposite corners toward the center, reinforced in pairs, gives rise to potential diagonal lines or vectors which connect opposite corners. The two diagonals so formed constitute the first level of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane, in which the emergence of a structure in the form of an X reinforces the tensions at the center of the plane and serves as a major cohesive and dynamic link for elements in the visual field.

These two diagonal vectors produce two groups of two superimposed triangles whose dissimilar positions and orientations, as demonstrated by Gestaltian observations, involve different energetic characteristics for their various internal regions and for each of their sides, thus transforming the concave and convex pulsions of their surface.

For different reasons, since it depended on high/low and left/right antagonisms, Kandinsky was particularly sensitive to the dissimilar energetic qualities of the diagonals, but failed to point out their fundamental function of dividing the Basic Plane into two triangles. In order to avoid any psychologistic connotation, we will modify Kandinsky’s terminology slightly and call the diagonal which connects the lower left corner to the upper right one ‘harmonic’ and the other diagonal, which connects the lower right corner to the upper left one, ‘dysharmonic’. While differently oriented, these two diagonals, born of the same quota of energy, are endowed by the same intensity of vectorial and radiating energy (see figure VI).

By virtue of their structural properties, the four triangles formed by the diagonals of the Basic Plane each give rise to a virtual square plane which will differentiate their internal equilibrium. If one considers the two triangles formed by the diagonals, one is struck by the differences in their gestaltian stability, some resting on their linear basis and orthogonal corners, others on only one point. But they will all give rise to internal virtual squares (cf. figure VII, AEBF and BIHG in the case of the harmonic triangles), freeing from each side of these squares two other smaller triangular regions (ECB, FBD and CBI, DBH). These virtual disjunctions differentiate the Basic Plane into zones possessing very different and mobile energies, as a result of the positions/orientations of their formal gestalt. In the lower harmonic triangle (CDG), the two small triangles resting on their gestaltian base (CBI, DBH) assure this part a stronger stability than that of the two small triangles of the upper part (ECB, FBD).

Figure VI: Harmonic and Dysharmonic Diagonals: The Four Triangles of the Basic Plane

Figure VII: The Two Harmonic Triangles and Their Internal Squares

In their liaison with the square AEBF, these triangles will permit a more flexible and ‘informal’ spatial synthesis of vibratory interactions in the Basic Plane and, as a consequence, in the pictorial plane articulated by the artist. This is why, perhaps, so many artworks offer in this area connotations such as ‘more open’ and ‘further away’, as observed by Kandinsky, although this cumulative dynamism can eventually serve in the articulation of more complex spatialities located at closer proxemic distances.

The second structural armature of the Basic Plane, the cruciform structure, is constituted by the horizontal and vertical axes produced by the decreasing and confluent movement of the energies of the four angles toward the central regions of the plane.

These potential vertical/horizontal energies appear to us as an objective constant of the Basic Plane structure and not, as Kandinsky has claimed, as the product of the very first expression of a deliberate act of pictorial composition. Whether actualized or not by the artist, this central cruciform energy endows the Basic Plane with the capacity to sustain the diagonal thrust of the angular forces, instead of swelling or collapsing in the central region (see figure VIII).

The cruciform energy is reinforced in several ways: first of all, by the strengthening of the focal point at the meeting point of the horizontal and vertical, which had already emerged as a unique and most dynamic region through the crossing of the diagonals; secondly, by the interrelation established between the median points of the peripheral lines, that is, the points where the linear tensions diverge in two opposing directions. From the four median points so linked (see figure IX, points F, H, I, E) emerge potential energetic connections, confirming the tensions and directions of the cruciform axes.

Figure VIII: Vertical/Horizontal Axes

Figure IX: Cruciform Axes and Focal Point

This cruciform axis structures, moreover, the central region of the Basic Plane by way of two distinct energetic phenomena which combine to reinforce the tensions of the focal region. Firstly, the central meeting of the axes produces four right angles (figure X, angles EAF, FBH, ECI, and IDH) which oppose and sustain the pressures of the peripheral angles. Secondly, when the extreme points of the axes situated midway from the peripheral sides (E, F, I, and H) are linked by potentialized straight lines, they give rise to another energetic plane, that of the ‘lozenge’.

This lozenge is reinforced by the energies flowing from both the peripheral right angles and the focal right angles. This secondary lozenge plane is extremely stable since its propensity to circularity is held in check by the primordial energy of the four corners. It will be one of the most efficacious instruments for the distribution of angular and cruciform energies in the whole mass of the Basic Plane. It engenders, moreover, a series of triangles, more active and denser near the periphery and potentialized near the center, which are an internal source of energetic diversification of the mass.

Figure X: Lozenge of the Cruciform

The ensemble of energetic forces emanating from the periphery, both from the angles and the antagonistic linear vectors, constitutes the Basic Plane through the form of a mass animated by variable energetic densities in each of its points. The notion of mass refers topologically to a quantity capable of being organized in agglomerations of diverse densities, endowed with indefinite forms and producing variable qualitative effects.

Furthermore, the very dense tissue of this mass is activated by the redoublings, from one point to another, and in a continuous way, of the energy of the peripheral line tensions, establishing the completely generalized infrastructure of a grid, which one will perceive as more or less dense across the entire plane. In the same way, the regular crossing of these horizontals and verticals, ultimately derived from the formative sides and carried out over the entire plane, generates to the limit a point-like energetic potential of denser points which radiate across their immediate surroundings (see figure XI). In a certain sense, it can be argued that any place on which vision is focused on the surface of the plane is the meeting place of a vertical/horizontal energy, thus intensifying the dynamic effect of any perceptual centration.

Figure XI: Energetic Checkerboard Grid of the Basic Plane

4.5.Other Formats of the Basic Plane

The potential passage of peripheral energies from the corners and formative lines will vary considerably according to the establishment of different proportions between the peripheral vectors. In other words, the transformation of the format of the plane from the square or other gestaltian primary forms to the most idiosyncratic ones will produce less stable or neutral equilibrated types of Basic Plane.

In increasing the length of two of the parallel sides in relation to the other two, the rectangle will stress, to a greater degree than the square, the potentialized force of the vertical or horizontal axis, whichever the case, thus creating the instability of a circular movement of the longer axis on the other. While unbalancing the cruciform stability of the square, the rectangle will render more operative the vibrating forces of the diagonals which connect the opposite corners (figure XII, No. 1).

Figure XII: Various Formats of the Basic Plane

A striking example, in this regard, would be the very high and narrow rectangles which Barnett Newman produced in the early 1950s which effect a radical reduction of the concept of the Basic Plane, whereas this plane will “almost” identify itself with its peripheral energy. In this radical exclusion of the horizontal potentiality, the vacillation of the vertical axis, occupying in its reverberation all of the Basic Plane, is strengthened by its endless transformations into one or the other diagonal (figure XII, No. 2).

The Basic Plane of the circular format, the circle, seems in contrast the greatest antithesis to the fundamental Basic Plane in that it virtualizes all the energy of the peripheral corners and sides, while actualizing the focal energy very strongly. The four median points of the sides, where the diameters of the circle meet at a right angle, serve forcefully as parameters, imposing the cruciform energy which is not circumscribed and equilibrated by the antagonistic movements of the peripheral lines. This prominence of the cruciform structure and of the focal meeting point, whose energies will be diffused in a uniform, steadily diminishing way toward segments of the peripheral curves, produces in the circle a strong convexity of the Basic Plane. The elongation of the diameter which makes a circle an oval or an ellipse regenerates a more sustained interrelation with the energy of the horizontal or vertical sides of the subjacent rectangle (figure XII, Nos. 3-5).

Any triangular format is necessarily based on the infrastructure of the rectangle from which it virtualizes two angles and three sides, hence accentuating the actualization of the tensions of the base line in relation to its acute angles (figure XII, No. 4). As mentioned earlier, actual, potential, and virtual energies share a maximum function in the articulation of both the basic and the pictorial planes, but this level of energy is much weaker and more diffused when acting outside of the Basic Plane where it is confronted with the less organized, nonlinguistic forces of the natural environment.

The majority of irregular formats, or “shaped canvases” as they have been called, offer diverse variants which, as Kandinsky remarked, “must be classified under one basic form and, therefore, represent more complicated cases of the given basic form” (1976; 40). The virtualization realized by a shaped canvas of angular or peripheral vectors always corresponds to a stronger actualization of central, focal, or cruciform energies which are no longer subject to energetic countertensions from the periphery.

Beyond the shaped canvas or irregular format, contemporary pictorial thought has dealt with other aspects of format dynamisms which question certain properties of the Basic Plane. A first hypothesis of production, found in Pollock and later in Morris Louis and others, stated that the dimension and the final proportions of the Basic Plane would only be determined once the pictorial plane is produced. A second hypothesis, particularly defended by the support-surface movement in France, claimed that, if one refrains from using a stretched canvas in the production and presentation of the work, the representation would cease to be conditioned by the dynamics of the Basic Plane. In both cases, one could thus be “liberated” from the conditioning exercised by the format and its implications of context, limits, or predetermined energetic constraint.

In fact, Pollock’s decision to delay to a later stage the determination of proportions and dimensions which will permit the pictorial plane to function with maximal intensity and unity only reaffirms the functional role of the Basic Plane in the syntactic structure of the work. On one hand, even when disposed/deposed and worked on the ground, the unrolled canvas, whether or not cut, already offers, by the orientation of its surface in height or in width, by its dimensions or its proportions, a Basic Plane endowed with given functional characteristics. The definitive adjustment of the pictorial plane on a stretcher, of which one will carefully vary the dimensions by adding or taking out a few centimeters in height or width, has the aim of making more efficient, of strengthening and adjusting the type of insertion and interaction of the pictorial plane in relation to the energies of the Basic Plane. But the pictorial production itself, on an apparently less determined support, remains essentially linked to the structural axes of the Basic Plane, that is, the horizontal, the vertical and the diagonals, as well as to the energies of the sides. Even if they are not presented and perceived with the maximum possible intensity, these energies of the Basic Plane cannot be ignored by the artist in the course of production, since they represent the fundamental matrix in which pictorial traits are inscribed. The canvas on the ground, even when unstretched, retains the energy of the Basic Plane in relation to which the artist measures the dynamism of his pictorial trajectories. This is the profound meaning of Pollock’s dance, around his canvas lying on the ground, as documented by a renowned series of photographs by H. Namuth (1978).

However, when the artist refuses altogether to stretch his canvas, even in the final phase of production, and to actualize to the maximum the energies of peripheral vectors and of their angular conjunction, he removes a part of this actual/potential energy from the pictorial system. Only one part is actualized when the canvas is not entirely cut out in an irregular format. Sometimes, this canvas, hanging on the wall in a more or less loose or slack fashion, retains in the upper regions the energy of clear angularities which then dwindles in the lower regions along more or less pronounced waves. Through this actual volumetric production, the work tends to incorporate the mixed structures of bas-relief, borrowing from the pictorial and the sculptural. As a slightly irregular frontal format, it remains no less tributary, like the shaped canvas, to the ‘good form’ of the closest approximation of a Basic Plane. Yet, through certain of its regions, this work simultaneously calls for a sculptural dialectic in a context more linked to the production of external than of inner volumes. In addition, when these polychromatic canvases are hung far from the wall, in the ‘real’ space with which they enter into interaction, they are inscribed, all the more, in the syntactic organization of sculpture. We will return to this point presently.

Any element of the pictorial plane actualized outside of the ‘force-field’ defined by the strong gestalt of the Basic Plane cannot satisfy a dialectic as intense as that of the pictorial field’s tensions and countertensions, because it would be grappling with unorganized, nonlinguistic energies of the spaces of reality. More often, occasional extrapolations from the main format summon the perceptual projection of a second, somewhat larger virtual Basic Plane, encompassing the first in a field of more subdued energy.

4.6.The Pictorial Plane and the Effect of Periphery

Beyond the dynamic structure which constitutes it, the Basic Plane undergoes at its physical and plastic boundaries an ensemble of interactions with the field of forces surrounding it. In a proxemic manner, this field of surrounding forces—even if it sometimes takes the angular form of corners—is essentially constituted by a level plane, a wall, or a portion of a wall on which a work is affixed or hung. Before any inscription of visual variables, but even more so when the work is begun, the pictorial support (canvas, masonite etc.) undergoes a particular effect in its interaction with the surrounding wall, which we will call the “effect of periphery.” It consists, first of all, for the still-unpainted canvas or monochrome canvas, of a tonal contrast. This is established through the action of a more luminous or darker environment which illuminates or darkens, by contrast, the peripheral layer of the Basic Plane. These tonal contrasts will either be accentuated or not by the specific action of textures offered by the surrounding wall in relation to those of the pictorial support, as well as by the closest position of the pictorial plane to the lighting source, since it is situated in front of the wall on which it is hung.

Added to this effect of periphery, there is a second specific factor modifying visual variables placed on the pictorial support and rising from perceptual interpretation. We allude to the particular contrast between the relative homogeneity of the surrounding wall and the heterogeneity of the plastic components or, again, between the least energized state of the wall and the most energized state of the pictorial field.

The confrontation of the system of the pictorial plane with the system of the wall is strongly marked in the area of transition between the peripheral layers of the basic or pictorial planes and the surrounding wall, producing a maximum or a minimum of antagonisms which will be reverberated perceptually as a constituent of the pictorial plane.

A minimum of antagonisms results from smaller differences between the plastic components of the wall and those of the pictorial plane, for example, a white peripheral layer, of a texture similar to that of a whitish wall. A maximum of contrast can be obtained by the use of large and ornamented frames, separating the fictional linguistic system from its factual surroundings. But this new intermediary zone of the frame will have a strong interaction with the chromatic, formal, and vectorial components of the representation.

More specific effects of separation between the pictorial plane and the surrounding surfaces result from the pictorial decision to activate the energies on the peripheral layers of the Basic Plane, on one, two, or all the sides of the plane (figure XIII).

Figure XIII: Pictorial Effects of Periphery

This peripheral effect is strongest when all sides are markedly differentiated from a uniform wall. This has led some artists, such as Seurat and Mondrian, to extend their painting to the very frame, and other artists to substitute for the framing device the chromatization of that part of the canvas covering the side thickness of the stretcher. This liaison of the pictorial field to the environment outside of the dialectic of the Basic Plane tends to give a sculptural or architectural/environmental dimension to the physical support of the work.

When the wall is itself invested with plastic energies, such as textures, chromatic contrasts, and so on, the energy within the pictorial plane will become less perceptible or will be interpreted in a sort of indefinite interaction with the stimuli offered by surrounding walls, more as a sensorial than a linguistic experience.

At its limit, this generalized integration of the pictorial plane in the colored reality would relieve it of all linguistic function to make of it only an object, a thing, in external reality. Its apprehension would resemble that of a closed book, resting somewhere on a table, still existing, but at another level than that of a linguistic proposition.

To summarize, the energy of the peripheral layers of the visual representation is influenced by: (1) the vectorial infrastructure of the Basic Plane; (2) the effects of the visual variables produced by the pictorial activity; (3) the various simultaneous contrasts of color and tonality, of textures and vectorialities, produced by the interaction between the pictorial plane and the surrounding walls.

The effect of periphery will be particularly noticed in a monochrome work, that is, a pictorial work which presents one single color in an homogeneous and smooth texture, which excludes any potentiality of plastic structuration. The peripheral layers of a totally red work, for example, appearing on a surrounding field, be it white, grey or another color, would immediately be subjected to: (a) the effect of tonal contrast and (b) the effect of simultaneous and successive chromatic contrasts which will lighten, darken, or somehow tint this peripheral layer in relation to more central layers which constitute the overall work. The specific energies of the central regions are relatively protected from interferences from the surrounding wall. But still the central region will differentiate itself from intermediary layers serving as a connection between the center and the periphery by a more moderate activation or vibratory modulation. Thus, when perception recognizes the transformation of visual variables in the periphery and the greatest density of the region stabilized by the cruciform energy, the intermediary layers will remain the place of the greatest mobility; this will apply in relation to both the infrastructure of the Basic Plane and to the general structure of envelopment which characterizes this pictorial plane.

Most often, however, such monochromes are not presented under the aspect of the above-mentioned condition of an ideally smooth and homogeneous texture, but are characterized by the production of a pigmentation which offers, even finely, effects of texture. Their specific tonal and chromatic vectorialities will become determinants for the organization of the work. Despite its peremptory affirmation of a color, the monochrome organizes itself not only through its chromatic aftereffects, but also through the infrastructure of its format and its dimension in relation to the surrounding wall and its textures.

4.7.Energizing of the Pictorial Plane

The syntactic organization of visual language is thus defined as a network of various intensities resulting from the interaction of the energies of the Basic Plane and those of the visual variables of the pictorial plane. As accrued intensities are determining factors in the positioning of regions more or less distant in depth, the grammar of visual language is to be understood as covering the rules of production of specific spatializing effects.

The energies carried by visual variables operative in the production of the pictorial plane are multiplied when they are anchored in the reservoir of the actual, potential, or virtual energies of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane.

This reaffirmation of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane is carried out according to the dictates of diverse modalities that are more or less efficacious and important. They are called:

—Accentuation: when the regions of the pictorial plane are inscribed precisely and in a large expanse, on a component element of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane.

—Punctuation: when a region of the pictorial plane is inscribed in a smaller expanse on an element of the Basic Plane.

—Redoubling: when a region of the pictorial plane repeats, in a large expanse but in a shifting position, an element of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane.

—Reiteration: when a region of the pictorial plane repeats, in a smaller expanse and in a shifting position, an element of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane.

—Punctuation of Corners: the formative corners are punctuated when a neighboring region reiterates one of its formative sides or when there is a formation of a virtual triangle through the orientation of a neighboring element in the pictorial plane.

—Virtual Division: when the vertical and horizontal axes of the Basic Plane are virtually inferred from several puntuations of the pictorial plane.

—Virtual Reiteration: when an element of the infrastructure of the Basic Plane is inferred from a position or a connection between shifting regions of the pictorial plane.

4.8.Specificity of Various Visual Linguistic Fields

The various types of visual language (painting, photography, drawing, video, sculpture, architecture, and so on) do not differ in the utilization of the visual variables which are in fact common to all. They are rather differentiated in their syntactic and semantic structures by analytical hypotheses which provide them with particular infrastructures. These are: the Basic Plane in the case of painting, photography, or other visual representations carried by a so-called two-dimensional support, the Virtual Cube in the case of volumetric sculptures, and the Environmental Cube in the case of architectural installations.

As seen above, the proposition of Kandinsky concerning the Basic Plane is as fundamental to the development of visual semiotics as Troubetskoy’s phonology, establishing the differences between sounds in general and phonetic sounds, was for verbal linguistics. It is in effect only through the structure of a Basic Plane that the visual variables contributing to various forms of visual representations cease being pure material data and acquire linguistic functions.

It is important in each case to distinguish sharply between the Basic Planes of painting, sculpture, and architecture and their pictorial, sculptural or architectural planes, the latter referring to the level of the effective material production of a work in these fields.

As an energetic infrastructure antecedent to any actual production of the visual discourse, the Basic Plane presents a potential spatial distribution of energies allowing visual variables, which are physical quantities/ qualities belonging to any visible reality, to be inserted in a context where they can contribute to the elaboration of a “fictional” linguistic representation of a variety of organic spaces: visual, tactile, postural, kinesthetic, thermal, and so on.

By contrast, the pictorial or sculptural planes are terms used to designate the level of energetic material organizing various visual variables according to topological and gestaltian rules, but in interaction with the structure of the Basic Plane.

In painting, sculpture, or architecture, the Basic Plane or Virtual Cubes are derived from the dynamic structure of their gestalt, as manifested by their support or format, or by the closest approximation to a unifying gestaltian figure.