Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1977

Thesis Director

Cary I. Knoop

Abstract

In order to create a work of art that has, for an unknown observer, as great a variety of meanings and interpretations as possible; the work must be of the sort that will allow any random observer to project their own experience into the work as its meaning and/or interpretation. The work of art created must present to the viewer a rich experience of mutually exclusive associations. For the work to be unlimited in associations, it must be free from any intentionally representative imagery on the part of the artist. In other words, the work should be abstract to the degree of non-objectivity.

Non-objective art form is capable of conveying a wide variety of mutually exclusive sensations, meanings and abstract concepts by association in a single piece of work. The non-objective artist's concern is with the elements of visual art (color, shape, line, etc.) and with the creation of an art form that is merely the presentation of these elements. Associations are inevitable events, no matter how vague or indiscreet they may be. This is made possible by the way in which we see things according to their visual characteristics. These visual characteristics are synonymous with the elements of visual art. If they are used in such a manner as to have no direct orientation with the representation of some particular aspect of our environment or one's experience, then the work of art can be said to be non-objective.

Because of the close association between the visual characteristics of what we see and the elements of visual art, non-objective form is easily associated with some aspect of the viewer's experience even if only in the most elusive fashion of having been left in the emotive state, undefined and/or undefinable by reason. The variety of associations made possible by the work should be as infinite as the number of observers. Obviously, then, the artist whose goal it is to create such a work of art as this must concentrate his/her efforts on methodology by leaving meaning, interpretation, intellectual discourse, and the configuration of imagery to chance or accidental events. The artist must work according to a system that has absolutely nothing to do with the direct representation of anything in particular, but, has everything to do with something in general. This is non-objective expression and it is this expression that causes the work to communicate in the fashion of an art form.

I call this the Image of Chance. The Three-dimensional Image of Chance is that expression which exists in all possible dimensions.

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