Up Suprematism to the “supreMADIsm” on Saxon’s Paintings
Year: 2013 Authors: János Szász SAXON
Core claim
By iterating squares and crosses through scale shifts, Saxon argues that Suprematist geometry can visually model immaterialisation and poly-dimensional space.
Topics
Suprematism, fractal scaling, immaterialisation, poly-dimensional space
Domains
fractal dimension, iteration, geometry, painting, iconography, abstract art, monochrome composition
Methods
geometric iteration, scale shifting, visual deconstruction, conceptual experimentation
Media
oil on wood, acrylic on wood, tint-drawing on paper
Paper text
The text below is the locally extracted OCR/Markdown version of the paper. Raw PDF files remain local and are not published here.
Proceedings of Bridges 2013: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture
Up Suprematism to the “supreMADIsm” on Saxon’s Paintings
János Szász SAXON
Freelance artist
1034 Budapest
17 Timár Street, Hungary
E-mail: saxon-szasz@invitel.hu
Abstract
‘János Szász SAXON has created a coherent theory, that of ‘poly-dimensional universe’. This is a unified world explanation in which the point, the (straight) line and the various planar and spatial figures all play a crucial role and which does not contradict the scientific world view of our time either, albeit it is full of idiosyncratic formulations and attempts at a subjective expression. The artist tries to express the basic experience that an enthralling order governs the structures of the cosmos (Figure 1), whose system encompasses both the infinitesimal (nano) and the infinitely huge (giga) scale structures. (This is how he relates to the considerations of fractal and chaos theory present in science today.) We all are the distinguished parties in one and the same infinite process and the works are concretisations thereof as well.’ László Beke
Figure 1: SAXON, Universe 1979, tint-drawing on paper, cm
Saxon
Idea of Immaterialisation
It is a paradox indeed that the desire for immaterialisation is present in my art. My thoughts germinating while observing nature took the object form in my first work of art very early, at the end of the 1970s when I was 15. I called it ‘Universe’ (Figure 1). The image is made up very clearly by the possible permutation of halving the diagonals of the square. In order to get an idea of immaterialisation, we may set up a logical experiment: If there is a set of planes made up by at least two other sets of planes that in turn include two further sets of planes each, and so forth ad infinitum, then we may witness the termination of the plane as a form, as it becomes a set of points. If, on the other hand, we take space, then the same process leads to the depletion of space or an object, and the substance, after reaching a density of infinite fineness, is immaterialized, is transformed in our mind definitively.
Figure 2: SAXON, Immaterial Transit 1997, oil on wood, cm
Let us examine the plane sections of the footless chair in our logical experiment, and let us work with the square again (Figure 2). The direction of progress is inward-building (interior = taking some of the area away, leaving a gap), that is, diminution of the plane, since the aim is to decompose the form. We mark the corners as connecting points again, in each of which we leave the smaller black squares obtained from the 1:3 proportion of the sides of the previous scale. We follow the same procedure several times. It is obvious that in the first square there are four smaller elements left, and four more elements in each of them, up to infinity… In the meantime the area of the starting square has been diminished . times in three steps, while the number of squares will be . Further number of squares can be calculated by the formula and provided , the remaining form will be a cloud of dust made up of infinitesimal granules, invisible to the naked eye. In this fierce fight our black square has whitened, losing the last bits of its area.
This complete transfiguration, this absolutely transparent state, I could only model in painting by using such elements as even in themselves represent the supremacy of pure sensation. Thus two basic Suprematist elements, the square and the cross, through which the square is divided into four parts (see Malevich), have served as points of departure. In this case, the square bears a yellow colour symbolising existence, whereas its opposite, the cross is characterised by a white tone that creates an impression of
Up Suprematism to the “supreMADIsm” on Saxon’s Paintings
emptiness. I must mention that to me the yellow colour in relation to white reflects the sensations of being and non-being, something and nothing, in a more vivid contrast than, say, black and white would do. During the construction of the picture, i.e. the deconstruction of the yellow square, I came to sense total depletion, or, more precisely, to set up a poly-dimensional net. The net that connects micro- and macro-worlds, is the virtualisation of the absolute mind, which, stretched in infinite dimension structures as a hyper-filter, incessantly attempts to jettison the imperfect objects (yellow squares) of existence from its ‘body’. (SAXON, Immaterial Transit 1997, the last graphic in Figure 2).
Up Suprematism to the ‘supreMADIsm’
Figure 3: SAXON, Poly-dimensional Black Square 2000, oil on wood, cm
In the previous section I have referred to the Suprematism of Malevich. Generally it very seldom happens that a geometric form capable of iteration should be suitable as an icon on its own. If we find any, it is because it is formally related to the genre of the icon. One example can be the square, as it has the shape of the wooden board. On one occasion, studying the borderlines of the shading I had made on the shapes drawn in graphite, I did indeed take Malevich’s Black Square as a starting point, and gave my work the title ‘Poly-dimensional Black Square’ (Figure 3). The sides of this square are divided in a 1:5 proportion, and this is the scale-shift that
leads to the creation of the ‘fringes’ surrounding the central shape. I applied this division to the picture two times. In this case let us calculate the fractal dimension of the outlines. Here we have 11 length units for a change of 5 length units; the result is hence log [11/5], that is, 1.4898… By the deliberate fusion of the black tone of the different-scale squares our eyes are stimulated to see one poly-dimensional square, in contradiction to mathematical laws.
Figure 4: SAXON, CrossEye (My Mother’s Memory) I, II, III 2006-07, oil on wood, approx. cm
I did my next experiment during the ‘supreMADIsm’ festival organized in 2006 in Moscow. I embedded the white cross, one of Malevich’s basic Suprematist elements into the other basic Suprematist element, the black square, the former trying to deconstruct the latter (Figure 4). The confrontation of these two forms can be found in my earlier works of art, but in the present case transcending the geometric shaping did not take place in terms of some ‘Russian spiritualism’, but rather pragmatically. Before that we had been able to understand the scientific nature of my works in their fractal character described by the ‘dimension shifting’. Now, the main field of interest of mine included dividing the plane surfaces with the help of geometric figures and rearranging Malevich’s cross in a poly-dimensional way (Figure 5). During this work I created horizontal and diagonal constructions, poly-dimensional cross-icons, but in
Saxon
this case, as a result of the closed system of the form, there arose finite, only about a dozen of variations for each. Strict monochrome, or more unambiguously, the black and white contrasts produce a powerful psychological effect besides the variations of visual logical structures.
Figure 5: SAXON, ‘supreMADIsm’ icons (horizontal variations) 2006, acryl on wood, approx. cm
Figure 6: SAXON, Malevich Cross with Poly-Dimensional Spaces 2010, oil on wood, cm