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Marek Bennett's avatar

In The Comics, we use Space as a Time element, too. There is no eternity, only the eternal present experience of reading, that is to say, moving through space, motivation, pure vitality.

Is that abstraction, or is it dreadfully concrete?

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Peter Joslin's avatar

Abstraction and Empathy is a dense, heavy read, one that requires rereading and clarification. Not your typical summer reading.

In the section “Naturalism and Style” (page 44), Worringer states:“The primal artistic impulse has nothing to do with the rendering of nature. It seeks after pure abstraction as the only possibility of repose within the confusion and obscurity of the world-picture, and creates out of itself, with instinctive necessity, geometric abstraction. It is the consummate expression, and the only expression of which man can conceive, of emancipation from all the contingency and temporality of the world-picture.” Wow, this is quite a statement. If I understand the above passage correctly, art created since 1900 is steeped in rendering nature. Perhaps I am missing something.

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