Succulus by Robert Pepperell
Robert Pepperell, the Head of Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art & Design, is interested in the phenomenon he calls visual indeterminacy: you see the scene before you clearly, but you don’t know what it is. His article Seeing without Objects: Visual Indeterminacy and Art has helped me put together another piece of the puzzle of what is compelling to me about abstraction and what I mean by abstraction in my own work. Pepperell comes at the question through art history, psychology/neuroscience, and his own drawings and paintings. For example, his painting Succulus is very evocative for me of the figures, draped clothing, and sky on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, yet I can’t actually recognize any of that in the picture. As described on his web page:
Pepperell’s paintings and drawings are the result of intensive experimentation in materials and methods designed to evoke a very specific, though elusive, state of mind. The works induce a disrupted perceptual condition in which what we see cannot be matched with what we know. Instead of a recognisable depiction the viewer is presented with … a complex multiplicity of possible images, none of which ever finally resolves.
Monochrome 1 by Robert Pepperell
Most people cannot turn off their ability to segment their visual field, distinguishing objects based on experience. Undifferentiated visual sensation generally exists in the conscious mind only for occasional brief moments, or as a consequence of brain injury or the repairing of congenital blindness (normally by removing cataracts). But Pepperell discusses drug-induced and aesthetic states of altered consciousness, much as June did here recently.
Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, describes the appearance of the world as modified by mescaline: “Visual perceptions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood, when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept.”
Pepperell invokes the 19th century aesthetic development of Impressionism, which he links with the artist Turner and the critic John Ruskin, who
argued that the power of the artist lay in suppressing cognitive preconceptions in order to recover
what might be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness of what they signifiy–as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight.
Not only do I find these ideas fascinating in themselves, but they have helped me clarify for myself some of my hazy ideas about the nature of abstraction in my photography, which is something I’m groping toward both stylistically and intellectually (pace arguments on artistic intuition vs. verbal rationality). There are a number of parts to that, but one is that I enjoy and would like to create pictures that are not purely abstract, but appeal as abstract designs even before you identify clearly what they are. Pepperell’s ideas on visual indeterminacy show how a picture could be both abstract and realistic. His pictures, however, unlike the ones I feel myself aiming for, never do resolve into recognition, but hover tantalizingly on that edge.
Have you ever experienced a strong sense of visual indeterminacy? Did it have artistic significance for you? Do you find it disturbing when captured in a painted picture?
Sorry, Steve, I see a bloody cow gnawed on by Star War characters – succulent.
Googling, I learned: The succulus, also known as the red steel cruncher, closely resembles a wild boar in appearance.
Thus, bloody boar, not cow.
Birgit,
Try it again tomorrow?
I wonder if Angela has seen some of these works in person. She is/was studying at the art school where Pepperell teaches.
I’ve experienced this during group critiques and lectures -tiredness probably being the main factor. My mind starts pulling strange figures from paintings that aren’t supposed to be abstract at all. It’s quite jarring until I can recognize what I’m really looking at.
Anyway, I find this fascinating and I was wondering if you could suggest any other (contemporary) artists exploring this concept?
I’ve seen this kind of work somewhere, but my memory of it is indeterminate.
Now I remember, some of Roberto Matta’s things look like this.
Jaime,
Sorry, I don’t know of other artists specifically pursuing this, but I’m sure Pepperell himself may know of some and would be happy to tell you. He is actively interested in collaborating in this area.
Jay,
Thanks for the lead on Matta. Some of his work certainly has a Pepperell-like indeterminacy, for example this one.
Jaime,
I forgot to mention, some current examples of paintings that at first seem very abstract, but then at least partially resolve into recognizable things, are those of Mark Illingworth, who posted on A&P about them here and here.
Steve,
I’m made terribly uneasy by Pepperell’s images, although I’m also fascinated by them. The goriness makes me gag a bit a feeling not relieved by having any “narrative” or “reality” to hang onto.
I realized that even when I look at abstract paintings, I think — Oh, abstract expressionism or oh, Dali. The ability to name not only helps me to understand but also to resolve my own uneasiness. I wonder if Rothko gave people the gags when he was first becoming known.
Is the last photo Pepperell also?
What a surprise to see Professor Robert Pepperell here at Art & Perception.
So everyone knows, he is my lecturer at University and I had the opportunity to hear one of his talks about his own work before.
I have to say that after hearing how elaborated his research is to support the paintings, that I changed my mind about how to experience them. Pepperell paintings are very eye catchy, you have got to have a second look instantly, and the more you stare and study them, the more you get lost in this psychotic dream state of imagination…
Pepperell said in his talk that brain scans demonstrate much higher activity when watching visual indeterminacy and that psychiatric mental patients engage visually for longer periods with his paintings than the original black and white cards we used to see.
The theory about a man suddenly gaining sight and not recognizing the world around him contrasts with the theory of children with brain imprinted shapes like the “house effect”. Studies say that children from all around the world, even children who always lived in indigenous homes, have drawn pointing red roof on a square/rectangular shaped house. This just chains our necessity to evoke shapes and forms when what we see cannot be matched with what we know.
Although personally, I feel Pepperell supports a totally different world of technique and psychology different to my own style, I find these paintings really festive and sublime, sometimes leaving me in a state of anxious insecurity facing my own fears.
I could see one of this sophisticated Robert Pepperell paintings hanging in the home of Sir Anthony Hopkins, in the wicked movie Hannibal, psychological disturbing madness yet extremely entertaining.
Steve:
That’s my man. Pepperell’s paintings also remind me just a little of El Greco.
Pepperell does have a certain something. I am impressed by the way that he manages to get close to a recognizable image, but no further.
But the first painting, especially, exhausts me. It’s like looking at a Barnum and Bailey Circus through a bubble machine, and the restless clutching and grabbing that my eye and mind experience makes me want to look at something more definite for awhile. That’s not a critique, as my reactions are not qualitative.
June,
I also find the images disturbing. I think it’s partly the nature of these: they’re such that when you can’t identify them based on expected features, for example human figures, you shift to things you know are messy and unrecognizable, like Birgit’s guts (I mean the ones she implied).
So that aspect of their disturbingness is not related to the general concept of forestalling recognition, though that is also potentially disturbing in its own way.
Pepperell took several years to develop his particular painting style. He found that he had to work to not make recognizable objects.
The last image is a Durbin photograph. I’m guessing it didn’t resolve for you. Did others recognize it?
Angela,
Thanks for the firsthand info, I thought you might know Pepperell. I agree it’s a learned taste. I find the pictures very interesting to look at, especially in light of the ideas behind them, but I can’t say I’ve come to like them. Having one on Hannibal’s wall sounds just right.
Steve, I was glad to be introduced to the work of Professor Pepperell. Yes, Jay was right – it has shades of Matta here, but this is definitely more solidified. It also looks like he worked hard to make the images indeterminate. Indeterminacy gives a feeling of incomplete comprehension which on which you overlay your imagination and understanding and the results can be fascinating. Yes, Mark I. also dabbles in similar kind. For that matter a lot of ab-ex art in a way has strong shades of visual indeterminacy although not necessarily this defined.
Does anyone want to contribute a statement about color?
For me, the colors make the nightmarish. The picture turned into greyscale feels more comfortable.
Is it just the bloody red or is the interaction of all the colors?
Sunil:
More solidified, but I must say that the introduction of drawing in Matta’s paintings makes for a more satisfying visual experience. In Matta there’s a dialog going on which I don’t tend to see in Pepperell. His images make me think of the conjurings of a Tibetan monk on a bad day.
In terms of emergent qualities Pepperell’s work reminds me a little of Jack Levine.
Birgit:
Looks like El Greco’s paintbox to me.
Wow. This stuff does nothing to me or for me. Other than a mild annoyance that a 21st century artist would rip off Michelangelo.
Steve:
I’d say a horse’s head lowered in the act of eating grass near a fence post.
I guess comparisons to giants like the ones mentioned above would be very difficult to hold, but I must say that the intent behind the Professors work – that of visual indeterminacy is explored well in his works. Not too sure if Matta expressly set out to try and plumb visual indeterminacy. The same goes for Greco and Michelangelo…
Contextually, the Professor is very far ahead…
…the more you get lost in this psychotic dream state of imagination…Pepperell said in his talk that brain scans demonstrate much higher activity when watching visual indeterminacy and that psychiatric mental patients engage visually for longer periods with his paintings than the original black and white cards we used to see.
Psychotic yes!
I suggest that visual indeterminacy has to be coupled with something else for the strong activation of our brains.
The color painting succulus is nightmarish and the monochrome 1 is nightmarish as well. I already had my emotional outburst about succulus. Looking now at the monochrome, I see hands holding round objects – cut-off heads or cabbages? I also see helmets. For me, the monochrome depicts ancient warfare.
Our brain must have evolved to recognize signals of danger embedded in visual indeterminacy. An ancient battle must have had plenty of visual indeterminacy.
I find Steve’s photo attractive. Again, my attention could be due to ancient signals. Is this round, furry mammal a horse? Can it carry me to safety?
I would like someone perform the experiment of presenting visual indeterminacy lacking signals that evoke an emotional response in the ancient parts of our brains. Do such images capture our attention or are they too boring?
Birgit,
You’re right, the fairly saturated color, and of course the red, have a lot to do with its effect on you. The black and white image was presented that way by Pepperell, not changed by me; I think it may be a drawing.
Jay,
Yes! except the apparent fence post is actually a combination of horse’s leg and out-of-focus grass.
Do such images capture our attention or are they too boring?
That’s what I’m really interested in. One would like to tantalize the viewer a bit and deliver the satisfaction not only of recognizing the image before too long, but also of understanding why it was at first hard to “see.” If the viewer turns away too soon, all is lost. Of course, there are a number of things that could engage the viewer that aren’t evident in these web images, for example luscious brush strokes.
Steve,
Your “indeterminate” piece is much more peaceful than those by Pepperell (well, I guess I get to say the obvious some days). I don’t turn away from it, and when I was looking at it, I tried, and failed, to make a human body out of the horse’s whatever.
Trilling, James Trilling,in the “Language of Ornament,” maintains that modes of artistic “ornament” (he is looking at architectural and textile ornamentation) in the 21st century are indeterminate and that this is _the_ third age of ornament. Don’t ask me what the other two were…..
This reminds me of those 3-D posters that were so popular in the 90s. I didn’t see anything in those either. I did however find Waldo on numerous occasions, so maybe I’m not totally hopeless.
Seriously, I just don’t “get” it. It’s a smeary Michelangelo. Maybe I’m too literal.
Tree,
Well, I think you got the picture per se, at least as much as I did. The fact that it looks like Michaelangelo, but doesn’t in fact show anything recognizable, is rather a feat in itself — though probably not one that makes you want to hang it on your wall.
But rather than the picture, it’s the psychology and neuroscience behind it that’s interesting to me, something Pepperell has only begun to explore. He has created something that’s a never-ending tease (until you quit on it), whereas I’m more interested in understanding and using to advantage the way the perceptual system tries to grasp something that is unusual or difficult for some reason, but that does in fact have a real meaning in the world.
Steve:
Did I say “fencepost”? I meant “horse’s leg”. It’s just a case of lingual indeterminacy.
This is another loop off the main subject, but I have seen the likes of this in the geology here and there around Pa. One will encounter slabs of rock that contain shapes that should look like proper fossils, but don’t quite. Some are identified as fossilized lifeforms from the preCambrian or thereabouts, and are blobs that lack any sense of axial symmetry. Pepperell’s paintings have for me a similar sense of something boiling along toward a greater resolution, but fairly far from achieving it.
Other references: Rodin’s Gates of Hell, Correggio’s Assumption of the Virgin at Parma cathedral.
I think that there are certain length-to-width proportions that we as humans instinctively associate with legs, arms, torsos.
Throw in loss of gravity and you get Renaissance/Romanticism Heaven and Hell.
I wonder if there really is such a thing as visual indeterminacy, or if we are programmed, for survival’s sake, to categorize everything we see as friend or foe.
Birgit:
You might want to try something. Save Pepperell’s first painting in your computer and rotate the image ninety degrees. The colors take on an entirely different quality and the whole thing begins to look a little like Ricci’s “Rape of the Sabine Women”. I suspect that Pepperell might begin with something recognizable and “detune” it.
Martha, I recently read in the New York Times that humans are “programmed” to recognize faces, which may explain why so many people see faces on windows, toast, puddles, where there are none.
Martha’s comment about friend or foe makes me wonder what falls under “indeterminacy” as a term. Op art could be quite specific in its color and spatial relationships, but an enigma otherwise. Same could be said for virtually anything made under the banner of abstraction. I would think that most of the artists involved would agree that “indeterminacy” describes an attribute of their work, but might not want that as a definitive descriptor.
I can see a nice bottle labeled “Indetermination” next to the stand oil, to be opened and poured in when things are getting a bit pat.
Simon Schama, writing in the latest New Yorker, has a nice description of the viewing process in relation to Turner’s work.
Jay, I take “indeterminacy” to refer to perceptual conflictedness as the mind attempts to interpret the visual field in some meaningful way. We may not know what op art means, but we’re having trouble understanding it at a higher cognitive level of meaning, not at a more basic and almost unconscious perceptual level.
Martha,
I believe we are programmed to categorize first at a survival level (danger or not), then at a familiar feature level (e.g. faces, as Tree mentioned), then at more conscious levels. In general, our minds are always trying to make sense of experience in some way. I guess indeterminacy can be anywhere along the line, so I’m re-stating my last comment to specify that “visual indeterminacy” refers to the perceptual, visual processing level. Admittedly these things are somewhat fuzzy.
Interesting approach to mixing abstraction and recognisable forms. :-)
Simon