On Space and Time in Art

Leonardo, Vol. 5, pp. 329-331. Pergamon Press 1972. Printed in Great Britain ON SPACE AND TIME IN ART Albert Garrett* 1. SPACE AND TIME IN PICTURES A man inflated a balloon while walking betweentwo points. The expanding balloon illustrates a changing aspect of form with time, for the balloon underwent a transformation in spatial dimensions. The man changed position in the same time but his change in form was very slow. Both kinds of changes with time have been introduced into the visual arts. The visual perception of space and of time depends on the manner and magnitude of their change. Changes in the human form with time, for example, cannot be perceived except after weeks to years have elapsed whereas the change of the form of the balloon mentioned above is perceived immediately . The movement of a second hand on a clock iseasilyperceivedwhereasthatof the hour hand is not. An interesting discussion on space and time in music and the visual arts by E. de BCrtola was published inLeonardo recently [11. It deals especially with the objective and psychological perception of time. Space is perceived in an accurate manner by the eye by means of reflected and refracted light rays. The painter who uses opaque paints has available colours resulting from the reflected or refracted components of the light rays impinging on the painted surface. This is a subtractive process and, as Cezanne said in a conversation with E. Bernard and K. X. Roussel [2]: ‘Light is something that cannot be reproduced. It must be represented by something else, by colour, for instance. Light, either radiated from the Sunorproduced electrically, may be used as, forexample, in stainedglasswindows and in kinetic art of the Lumia and Lumidyne kind [3-61. Here transparent colours are employed. Cezanne in his later drawings and watercolours broke shapes into small planes. This segmentation idea proved to have important repercussions on painting. Klee used colour values and texture to give an illusion of space on a two-dimensional surface [7]. He did not attempt to reproduce effects of light as did the Impressionists, whose approach led to form taking on a secondary aspect in their paintings. The Cubists, expanding on the idea of * Artist living at 10 Sunningdale Ave., Eastcote, Ruislip HA4 9SR, Middlesex, England. (Received 2 January 1971). 329 Cezanne, introduced into their compositions the different facets of an object that can or cannot be seen from one viewing point [8]. Later even internal aspects of an object were incorporated, leading to more and more complex arrangements that become more and more difficult to grasp [9]. The Italian Futurists decided to introduce visualideas ofmotion into their compositions. Their objective was described by the poet Marinetti in the ‘Movimento Futurists’ [lo], which I find is characterized by emotional excesses more than by reasoning. The so-called ‘lines of dynamism’ in their painting and sculpture gave structure to their compositions. Facetted images were woven into this framework. As in the case of the Cubists, their work was initially characterized by dominant lines and images and later became more detailed and finally mosaic-like. Balla’s drawing ‘Leash in Motion’ attempts to give an illusion of motion that, I feel, is out of context with good form. I believe attempts to give illusions of motion by means of multiple static images is bound to lead to a ‘powdered’ kind of composition. 2. CONSCIOUSNESS OF TIME IN STATIC PICTURES De BCrtola has discussed some of the aspects of experiencing time in static pictures [l]. In order for a viewer to obtain a sense of time in a picture, the pictorial idea itself should be capable of stimulating such a reaction or the viewer must know the time process involved in the technique used to make it. I find that one can be particularly aware of the time process of technique when viewing the works of, for example, Klee and Hayter. ‘Taking a line for a walk‘ is Klee’s description of his method of making a picture [7] and I find that when I contemplate one of his pictures I can sense the passage of time from the way his linesaredrawn. Hayter’s colour etchings give me both...