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Sculptors often speak of Form Language when describing a piece of sculpture (Henry Moore, et.al).

What is Form Language exactly?

To parse this, let’s define both Form and Language:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Form in many ways. We all know form to be Shape, but form can also mean the Exemplar or Metaphor of an object (towards a form-ulation, or form-ulae), and it can mean the most agreed upon subjective expression (or definitional list) of an object (vis-à-vis Immanuel Kant).

Form can be akin to rows of matter, as in rows of atoms that grow beyond the point mass (like molecules). Form, when it becomes visible, can also be described as the summation of all the “faces” of a 3-dimensional object. Some etymologies also describe Form as being an outward trend of inner molecular forces.

A Language, in turn, is often understood to be a system of communication using defined symbols (lexicons, or alphabets) and grammar rules (syntax) to give those symbols meaning (semantics).

At first blush, a Form Language would be a system of visual communication to transmit Form knowledge vis-à-vis semantically provable truths.

Rather clinical.

Let’s sculpt the definition further:

Form is made up of smaller core Shapes found ubiquitously in nature and the cosmos: the point (dot), the circle (ovoid), the line, the parallelogram, the fractal, the corkscrew, the nebulae/blob, and all the 3 dimensional equivalents of those.

Cognate Forms, such as strings, molecules, modules, crystallines, organelles, organs, mounds, piles, craters, liquids, gasses, networks, fabrics, textures, trusses, arcs, etc. derive from adding these core Shapes together.

Core forms are modules for larger forms, like Lego blocks.

Forms tend to persist long enough as to be observable, and thus must cast a shadow (no matter how small), if not in space, then in the mind’s version of space: the mind’s eye. That is, trick the brain into believing it is identifying Form, and the trick becomes reality, even though it is mimesis.

Perception is Reality.

Certain Forms become known to us culturally, as humans, as animals, in utero. What we see, what we sense, are the shapes in our biological machinery, from the ovoid cell, to the retinal fractals illuminated by the sun, by the lines of veins in the eyelid, to the circles of the aureoles and eyes, to bilateralism of the body, the body itself and like bodies, trunk-like torsos combined with spheroid heads, reticulation, different animal bodies, roundness of oestrus organs, the roundness of pregnancy, stigma, stamen, ripeness, fecundity, flow-tear structures, sac-like structures, tissues, layers, folds, and ripples of tissue.

Our bodies (our modular parts) become, often unnoticed, the ultimate source of metaphors.

The landscape, too, has persistent plastic-like forms — the round sun and moon, the pebble, the portal, the window, the crater/pool, the horizon, the vertical tree trunk, branch and tap root expression, the verticality of stalks of plants, sinuous flows like rivers, winds and sands, balloons, gasses, and diaphanous pods, the sharp point, the mound, the pyramid, the cliff, the shelf, the cone.

Within this lexicon of body- and nature-derived core Shapes, we can add Shapes to create new expansive Forms, of greater complexity and size. We thus begin to make “things,” like strings, tools, machines, buildings, sculptures and so on.

When one attempts to define a particular “thing,” by listing all its attributes [Kant], we ultimately give the thing a one word label. This word is understood to represent a full description of its Form.

For example, suppose we see an Apple form for the first time, meaning we never have seen an apple before, or ever tasted one, as in the case of an infant. When the infant learns what Apple means, from its parents, and from its overarching culture, it learns the idiosyncratic grammar rules of what the thing should be. With its persistent juicy form, its waxy skin, its spheroid shape, its smell, the infant remembers this Form with the word-form equivalent APPLE.

That is, it creates a semantical word-form equivalent to the lexical form-shape itself.

As we map the universe of material objects with our full senses, we absorb, augment, and sometimes create wholesale a vocabulary of all the previous generations’ Form definitions. These word definitions of Form [invariants], exemplified by dictionaries, are very sturdy and will persist for a long time, sometimes hundreds of years, sometimes thousands.

Our vast dictionaries define Forms with precision: everything that is known in life has a Form-definition, even if the form lasts only milliseconds or is invisible, as in the case of particle physics.

Thus, a truck-form becomes “truck” since the time of its invention by the truck inventor, combined with enhanced variants of what trucks have become since then, augmenting earlier definitions. A truck is agreed upon, in society and codified in a dictionary, to be called TRUCK, until it becomes known otherwise by future generations.

MATCHING FORM TO FORM WITH METAPHOR AND NARRATIVE

In the vast dictionary of Forms, certain things share common definitional properties. They have similarities in “form.” It is a very human trait to copy forms and create derivative replicate forms vis-à-vis our penchant for mimesis. When certain duplicate forms attain meaning themselves (usually aesthetical ones) the complexity of the Form definition increases, as now the simple definition must now include metaphors, or connotative similarities, of other things related to it. Thus, families, kingdoms and taxonomies develop, where forms are ordered in relation to (and of) one another.

To make Forms even more complex, when a Thing has a history, has passed through that Einsteinian 4th dimension of time, it may have narratives, or stories, connected to the Form, so that, for instance, George Washington, the form, the humanoid, the corpus, was also a military general, also became a government president, is now dead, once owned slaves, etcetera — becomes a larger cultural Form than just a human form, a humanoid entity. GEORGE WASHINGTON, the general, of Virginia, circa 1776, who “lives” on in derivative forms (books, movies, statuary) describing his life, is in reality a very long and complex Form under the usual (deceivingly small) label of “George Washington.”

Form is the semantical expression of our senses to an object. Form has its roots in our vision and our touch and to some degree our taste and smell (please don’t lick the Rodin!).

FORM IS FORM: SO WHAT?

We seem to take Form for granted – a thing is evident, after all, therefore a thing is just a thing (tautology), and is forgotten when our senses move on to other things.

That white alabaster Form that we just saw in the museum, that Rodin statue, is long gone from our minds as we fly back to Seattle from New York. The real Form continues to exist in the New York museum, however: its gravity, its persistence, its location remains at the museum; it is our minds that have left the building. The alabaster stone, while breaking down every so slightly to erosion (age), persists long enough that we might think it sturdy and permanent. The Rodin is decaying, like all things, albeit slowly.

[Ponder this: imagine ALL the Rodin sculptures in existence around the world, displaying Shape and gravity, simultaneously, like beacons around the world, sculpting Space. The ultimate Rodin phenomenon!]

That, of course, is in our semantics of what, and who, Rodin-art is. This same Rodin statuary around the world is not as significant to birds, which use the available statues as perches, or to critters like mice, which use the statues as rain shelters. The lexical forms of Rodin’s sculptures are nothing more than stone objects existing in 3-dimensions, observed in 4-dimensions (the actual viewing event in Einsteinian time).

TOWARDS A GRAMMAR OF ART

How does culture imprint value and significance on a Form? That is, how does an Object, a Thing, become a Form that is to be labelled: Art?

This is where art history comes in. Art history is intimately tied to regular human history, as all sub-cultures are a subset of the greater Culture.

When populations were isolated, culture was limited to the tribe and the region. Art served a specific set of tribal functions, especially pre-vocal language, not known to others due to isolation. As migration took man across the continents, the definition of Art changed, adding elements of the other cultures encountered. When the king-warrior consolidated fiefdoms, to make kingdoms, his authority and decision-making thus defined Art (for kingly functions).

When the printing press was developed, and the middle class created, and higher education codified, the definition, and expectations, of Art changed, as culture and human expectations changed for a “quality of life,” “happiness,” and “utility.”

The rise of the individual (from Homer on through Timothy Leary) brought the individualization of Art and the expression on internal, psychological processes. In western Art, Rodin destroyed the formalism of aristocratic past, but it took 20 years of being castigated before his Truth in form, his Form Language [updated cultural definition of the greater reality] was to come to fruition – the advent of Expressionism and Modernism.

When Picasso finally was born, the expectations for Modernism were already laid down in general culture. Curators and art dealers, comprising the nouveau riche, not kings and royal transtate, defined what was good (thus valuable) Art. The world wars brought surreality to reality. Television made Form ubiquitous, and audiences became much savvier with visual Form. This gave rise to 2 golden ages of cinema — moving Form, with narrative, and music.

What does the above distillation of history mean to us, in terms of defining Form Language? That our expectations of objects, and Form, and Art, are radically different than those from the past.

IN SUMMARY

There is Form that is skillfully done, and there are rare Forms, both of which can alter the value of the object. Market makers can also affect the value, as can conventional wisdom on tastes. Taste is often defined, cross-culturally, as a function or product of the values and principles of a culture, so that by rank ordering the most popular Forms, one can tell a lot about the principles of the society.

Imagine today’s popular Forms as determined by most Google-image “hits.”

Form are all tokens of physicality of the universe, the microscopic stuff from which all cognate forms spring forth. The point mass, that first particle with no mass, and its implosion, which begot the Big Bang, in turn made matter, worlds, life, brains, culture, and art, in that order.

Form can be described formally, and culturally; first lexically, and semantically. Market makers, with market influence, using metaphor by use of Language, can define, or re-define, what Forms qualify as Art, if not under the Salvation motive, then the Profit one.

Form is what is, what can exist in the imagination, as a construct brought to life in the mind, with spatial inferences. It wills to be, and is, therefore, Logically Positive.

Form wills to be expressed within itself lexically, and also culturally — to diagram (parse) the metaphorical object-sets an Object infers is it’s Form Language.

THE FAILING OF RHETORIC WHEN DESCRIBING ART

Most critics do not bother to be apprised of the current state of all knowledge, just the memes of an art industry as defined by Art’s wealth-driven partners. Beyond this tragedy, Art, as an animal communicative function, is constantly reassessing and reclassifying the reality as it is known by Artists.

If a critic does not know, for instance, the current mapping of Superstring theory in physics, which gives rise to theoretical Forms in as many as 10 space dimensions, how can the critic analyze the works of an artist who has full knowledge of the provable aspects of the theory, and the skill to translate and display the reality in graphical terms?

He cannot. In this case, the Artist is ahead of the critic’s base of knowledge, which typifies the strong visual artist.

Yours in electronic form,

Michael
Beacon Hill, Seattle, Washington state, USA

March 8th, 2010 | Category: poetics | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL