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The O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe has become one my favorite museum. It is case of I am not the most educated appreciators of art, but I know what I like. And I like the abstractions of hers. The dilation, the deformations, the non representational.

Here are one thing that she says that I absolutely agree with. One has to paint what you see in such a way that the feeling, not the object, is conveyed. This is the source of the abstraction. One is communicating a reaction, a feeling, not what simply what one sees. I would argue that in this sense all drawing, or any other description, is abstract. No one can represent every detail of every object. The artist has to pick and choose the key aspects of that will be used to define the overall object. Each of us, the viewer, will add out own experiences to complete the image.

This, to me, is a universal in art, math, science, and engineering. in science we cannot recreate the universe. All we can do is create models and allow the viewer to create concrete instantiations from the model. The more trained the viewer, the more the model means. For instance, if I say the e²=m²c⁴+p²c² this means something very specific, if a particle has a mass then the inherent energy is related to square of the speed of light in a vacuum, and additional energy is created by the momentum.  It is a radical idea, that mass and energy are the same thing. Like poetry, the codes must be unpacked, and those that are willing to do the work are greatly rewarded.

Something similar happens in technical drawing.  In such drawing, an object is generally reduced to two dimensional representational sketches.  An untrained viewer is not going to be able to relate those sketches to the object, except in trivial cases.  This, however, is what is needed to define the object, not in a representation form, but in a mechanical form.  In teaching this drawing, the student must learn to choose the relevant details of the object that will create an ideal case.  For instance, in a oversimplified case, if one were to draw my computer, one would not draw the dents.  If one were to do a drawing of a molded plastic object, one may leave out the mold line.

This idea of our personal experiences interacting will all fields of study is getting traction.  One reason for public school is provide a common base of experiences so that when we go into the workplace we have some hope of communicating with each other.  In college, much of the course work is to provide a common set of experience, either my reading a canon of books, creating a standard set of devices, or solving the requisite number and type of equations.

This of course is double bladed sword.  Neither Daphne Odjig or O’Keeffe we interesting in the standard canon of visual art.  They were then both free to go and do what was wanted to do because they did not know any better.  Philo Farnsworth and his team of amateurs were able to make significant advances in the television because they simply did not understand all the forces against it’s invention.  I think we as a society, then, needs to understand the importance of a common perspective, but also understand that, for some people, such a common perspective is not very useful.