Why I love abstract art

Circle Cone - personal art

The verdict

There’s no debate.

Abstract art is more truthful to life than realism, and hence more important. 

Realism vs. abstract art: what’s the main difference?

Realism is a celebration of the endless, ongoing scientific progress in optics and human anatomy, particularly the miraculous power of the eye and how light interacts with the retina to create a convincing image internally. The key word here is internally, because the implication is that the physical world exists only inside the person. Not outside, like much of the public would believe.

This is a radical idea to contemplate for spiritual Gurus and mystics such as myself, and which has profound yet unsettling philosophical implications. Despite scientific inquiry, however, much of how the brain manipulates and distorts reality is still a perplexing mystery. 

On the other hand, to make abstract art, any kind at all, is to consciously meditate on the absolute nature of truth—to see things as they are. Not as things look like on the surface level, but as things truly look like on a deeper level.

Personally, I find this spiritual exercise is a wonderful way to forget about social norms consciously and integrate my subconscious mind. By this conscious effort, I prioritize myself and choose to nurture constant positivity and self-acceptance within my existence. 

Realism is a misnomer!

Practically, however, the term “realism” is a misnomer. It’s abstract art which feels real.

By real I mean that abstract art is closer to Plato’s definition of truth which he introduced himself in his widely taught and popular book, The Republic. Plato’s Socratic dialogues which are revealed in the book mark the first exploration of the nature of enlightenment and what it means to know something.

In The Republic, Plato recounts Socrates’ (his former teacher’s) Allegory of the Cave, a dialogue in which Socrates imagines a gang of prisoners who have been chained in solitary imprisonment inside a cave since their birth. The cave’s design is hollow and the prisoners are chained such that they can only look straight at the dark shadows on the wall in front of them.

The allegory then goes on to suggest that the prisoners would inevitably and naively mistake the shadows for being the truth unless the prisoners became freed and were now able to go out and see the light and the animals and people who cast the shadows inside the cave.

The prisoner’s chains represent ignorance and the light external to the cave symbolizes the absolute truth—or enlightenment.

Therefore, what most of us perceive as “realism” with the naked eye in the physical world resembles by default the shadows inside the cave, not the real people and animals casting them on the outside.

According to Plato, the absolute identity of these life forms cannot exist in the physical universe, and only exists beyond the physical universe. Plato called these absolute identities Ideal Forms. But newer and newer or better and better copies of truth can be found in the physical universe first through enlightenment and then through continuous improvement.

Philosophically, the Allegory of the Cave demonstrates the true nature of both beauty and aesthetics in the creation and evaluation of artistry.

What much of the population perceives as real in the physical universe is never true, and therefore realism, not abstract art, is the furthest an artist can get from the truth, if truth is the goal for each work of art.

An abstract artist has the one absolute and real goal: to achieve the impossible. He’s on a mission to penetrate the nature of reality and understand it fully. He’s deeply involved in his universe, no matter his subject.

If it’s the smallest ant in nature, the artist is consciously walking around it, examining it closely, touching it, turning it upside down, left, right, poking it, smelling it, hearing it. Essentially, he’s playing like a baby around an unfamiliar object. Holding the living toy curiously close to his face and attempting to penetrate it fully with his pure eyes and body.

Through this meditative process, the artist forgets his crude and reductive assumptions about ants in general, understanding the true nature of the ant in front of him really.

Abstract art, at the most fundamental level, is the pure celebration of the joy of present existence in the here and now, a triumphant appreciation of life to the highest degree.

Scientifically and analogically, abstract art is akin to taking the smallest ant and examining it under the most powerful microscope.

If we do this powerfully enough, we can begin to apprehend the ant’s very soul—or the essence of every life in the universe.

Why realism insn’t the way

Realism, however, looks at life through the dark veil of distance.

But unfortunately and for some strange and unknown reason, the human eye cannot fully perceive physical phenomena as they really are without immediate and direct sensory interaction.

Realism is possible because light cannot begin to travel from the subject and strike the retina inside the eyes without any distance between the artist and the subject.

Therefore, to create realism the artist must keep the subject away from him at a reasonable distance—not too close to his face and not too far away either. So there’s a sweet spot for the distance between the artist and his subject to optimize realism and pleasure.

That’s the only manner in which the eyes can fully perceive the highlights, half-tones, and the shadows settling on the physical object.

In this sense, therefore, realism is actually not at all hyper-focused or truthful to life, at least not like abstract art, however much the image might try to persuade the mind otherwise.

The folly of the human mind

It’s a folly of the human mind to assume that the physical phenomena we perceive through the eye from a distance are truthful.

In truth, realistic art confuses the mind which is positively accelerated by the nature of human development within an established society.

Why is it that much of the population could not draw from observation, yet they possess fully developed eye sight and mind-body connection and therefore can see? The reason is because the majority of the people do not really appreciate language subjectively, which leads to abstract and impractical thinking.

We believe that simply looking at life in a detached manner from a distance is enough to grasp what really exists.

However, this is an assumption that’s significantly rooted in delusional thinking rather than conscious awareness, and an inability to question established and rigid assumptions within our minds.

Because of wide-ranging language deficits, when we perceive something absent-mindedly at a distance, we subconsciously make blanket judgements. “This is dark.” “This is a beautiful face.” “This is a big house.” But we don’t clearly define these words.

Why should anybody consciously name-drop the words “dark”, “beautiful”, and “big” just casually without qualification and description?

We may believe that we understand what these words mean in our minds, but all they truly represent are empty and weightless abstractions that other people have projected into our mind.

In other words, we only understand the dictionary (or denotational) definitions of these words, which are simply meaningless abstractions.

The lack of self-awareness implies that our reality shrinks down and becomes almost impossible to see fully—much like the false delusions created by empty and meaningless words we carry in our heads.

The world mirrors the mind and vice-versa

We must come to understand that words directly create our thoughts, and thoughts directly create and mirror our reality.

If we’re all truly capable of writing on paper, which is the case, then we’re also capable of drawing with detail and realism on command.

But I have heard that realism is a technical skill that takes most art students many years to master. The problem arises because most of us have not yet become spiritually awake to the truth that we don’t know as much as we think.

We don’t understand that for full comprehension to happen, every word we acquire must receive consciously personal subjective meanings.

Unfortunately, this conviction can only come from cultivating a growth mindset, which catalyzes enlightenment.

Subjective meanings of the things we see in the real world can make the otherwise rigid world feel more concrete, real to us, and more meaningful to live in.

The curse of osmosis

Since childhood, however, most of us acquire language naturally through osmosis—from our immediate family, extended family, and friends, and we never truly question whether we really know anything.

We never wonder, how do you truly know that you know something? Is the world a network of rigid systems, or can the rules that govern everybody change tomorrow?

But more importantly, we never put time aside to reflect on our lives in a meaningful way.

The consequence of this serious omission within all of us is that we’re always prone to making knee-jerk blanket judgments in life, thus entrenching delusional thinking in our mind, and by extension clumsiness in the physical world.

When we look, we overlook significant details about reality that are patched in blurily by the mind subconsciously.

This way of navigating life is potentially dangerous as it merely supports automatic dismissal of details, rather than conscious and deliberate awareness of the world around us.

The importance of diving completely into nature

Each time we observe the world, let us pay attention and sustain that attention to the world. Let us choose to live fully and presently in each moment by interacting directly with the world around us. We must play with the world like a newborn baby. Let us stay curious as babies beginning to study the world for the first time.

If we do that, then we’ll naturally become more conscious of our physical reality and unchain our latent ability to depict it on canvas with utter mental and manual dexterity. 

In other words, if we prioritize a higher level of awareness, it guarantees that we’ll always be ready to create powerful, truthful, and meaningful realistic art.

The Asaro head

In art school, this is why many scholars of realism are encouraged to train on the Asaro head to learn to draw light and shadow, or chiaroscuro, correctly and quickly.

Why does the Asaro head work? It works because of one simple reason: it improves the student’s awareness by tricking his mind.

In other words, the Asaro head takes a curved surface that’s mostly just dark or white to most students and divides it into many smaller, graspable, planes.

The effect of this trick is that in the mind, the unfamiliar head short-circuits the student’s subconscious impulse to generate blanket and dismissive judgments about the human face.

With the face divided into multiple clear surfaces, the student now methodically perceives the face consciously, rather than subconsciously. The student now sees the face not as a familiar dark or white oval, but as a composition of many different triangles. This induced radical shift in perspective forces the student to perceive the familiar face with a fresh perspective.

This is a more deliberate approach to the otherwise abstract face and generates a world of difference in the student’s ability to perceive and draw life with realism.

True creativity lies in abstract art

Beyond improved and simple awareness lies abstract art. Realism may be a test of technical ability, but ultimately it may not be the best measure of creative and truthful art.

As a result, realism should never be prioritized completely. To prioritize realism is a spiritual sin, if only because it’ll emphasize delusional thinking and by extension negativity or cognitive dissonance.

An abstract artist, through his work, absorbs and merges with the very nature of God, the Universe, the divine—whatever His identity—totally and completely.

That’s the nature of his radical and superhuman awareness.

To summarize:

A realist takes the Asaro head and places it on the table and studies it from a distance, but the abstract artist picks it up in his hands and immerses himself into it.

He attempts to realize and distill its true essence.

From the artist, this exercise demands a total sensory dissection of the head.

For him to succeed, he must seek to unite with the head consciously through direct sensory immersion. In his childlike mind, he experiences no trace of judgement, however little.

This exercise is purely meditational and creative, rather than technical or scientific. 

Why Picasso is considered the most celebrated artist in modern times

It’s no wonder that much of the world now perceives phenomenally talented Spanish artist Picasso as the single most creative artist in human history.

His style of Cubism, an abstract form that purely intends to capture its subjects as they might be by observing their features from different perspectives, captivated and transformed the world’s imagination. The reason for the man’s global artistic fame isn’t so difficult to see.

To be creative and meaningful in art, mediocrity and conformity aren’t useful virtues.

The real challenging necessity is for the artist to pay attention to life.

Picasso’s power in creativity was a signal to the art world that the artist should seek to penetrate his subjects clearly to deliver the truth, not merely observe the subject through the opaque lens of distance.

Cubism, with its strange newness, signalled to the world Picasso’s love and complete devotion to life and truth.

This is a profound and inspiring personal statement for the world to simply imagine and contemplate. 

That Picasso seriously meditated on the profundity of abstract art instead of realism (and succeeded spectacularly!) is no real coincidence at all.

Conclusion

Today, I am an artist who loves to meditate on abstract art.

Though, I cannot comment for certain whether or not I’ll keep up with this pastime.

But let this full meditation become my full prayer to the Universe:

In whatever I do, if I must observe from a distance, let me observe without making a blanket judgement.

And if I must discover the whole truth of life, let me be willing to pour my full body and soul into whatever lies in front of me.

That’s my one true wish and desire.