Let me clarify before I begin anything by saying that the word “art” in this post will be used exclusively to denote art that involves shape and color. I acknowledge that art as a whole encompasses everything that is expressed by creative minds, but I am making use of a limited scope of this term just for simplicity.

Looking at abstract art last week, and discussing what I saw with a friend, there were several things that came to my mind. Some of it I have known already, some I had suspected, and then some new perspectives; Not everything related to what I was seeing though.

Art being primarily made up of shape and color, the abstractness comes from taking out some clarity, on purpose. Deprived of the clarity that might have given a particular scope to a piece of work, the viewer fills in the missing information from experience. Trying to understand what the artist meant it to be might be a hard exercise, especially when the information provided is too little. That is why I consider that a piece of abstract work transcends the ordinary when the viewers are made to think and are wilfully using their imagination without being forced to do so. An abstract artist thus has to make sure that he does not say too much or too little.

And with me being partially colour blind, I was always going to be less informed (or ill-informed) than others. I was vary that I may not understand the full significance with this handicap. But I wanted to give it a try and see what sense these paintings made to me since I love everything abstract. I love the way that a single piece can be interpreted differently from the viewers perspective. But if anything made sense to me, it was thanks to the good list (see Note 1) I had looked at, and was in great company.

I had made good sense of the paintings by just considering the shape, even though it may not have been what the artist intended. I really liked some of them (see Notes 2 and 3). Given the fact that I enjoyed these paintings even with the handicap of not considering color (atleast consciously), my mind started to wander. I was thinking of other things abstract, abstract verse, abstract poetry, abstract algebra?!

I was stuck at the last part, abstract algebra. It fascinated me more than anything I had seen so far. Surely algebra can be abstract. I was imagining polynomials with different roots, different solutions, different interpretations!. I was imagining the infinite numbers such equations could throw up, and the relationship between them. My mind went back to my high school days when a simple equation was used to describe a wide range of shapes and sizes. (see Note 4). Truly it could be used as an art form, given the right history and emotional identifications. This was not possible for humanity, we depend a big deal of our lives on visual inputs and most of our emotional identities are manifested in colour (and as music).

But if we started over would a culture evolve (or has it already at some point in our history?) where numbers are identified with emotion, and playing with those numbers artfully with mathematics, could those cultures invoke the same memories and emotions, as pictures and sounds do to us ?. It may not be possible for us; Our sensory input is what drives most of us, we may never lose our dependence on them for emotional stimulation.

But what about an alien civilization ? What kind of unique characteristics in their evolutionary history would drive them to this humanly insane, yet beautiful perspective of algebra ? Would they be a society of blind mathematicians ? Or would they be robotic remnants of our own society.

Any of these possibilities would make an interesting first contact!

Notes
1: The list of images I had looked at can be seen here at the following link from time magazines website.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1929315_1965180,00.html

2: Look at the following link before you read the rest of this note.
http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/kandinsky_okeefe/kand_keefe_05.jpg
I loved the intersecting shapes and lines. Given my perspective as a member of the millenial generation, I saw a world that is coming closer, by the sheer volume of connections.

3: Look at the following link before you read the rest of this note.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1929315_1965217,00.html
It is hard to explain why I thought of this, but what came to my mind, after some imagination is the following line.
Some things come to an end, while others continue.

4: For many high school math students conics are already familiar. For those who are unfamiliar see the following link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conic_section
I was fascinated back then, as now, how tremendously simple it was to describe anything in algebra.
That is why it has always been one of my favorite subjects!