new art category
The word “fluidism” can be used to label a distinctive category of fine art painting in which both the substrate and the subject matter are the same. “Substrate” means the actual material from which a painting (i.e., the paint) is constructed. “Theme” means the intellectual motivation from which a painting grows (ie meaning, representation, or purpose).
In fluidism art, the substrate (ie what the painting is made of) and the subject (ie what the painting is about) are inseparable. The substrate IS the subject, and the subject IS the substrate. The visual and verbal appeal of fluids extends directly from the physical properties, chemical characteristics, and dynamic patterns of fluids in motion. In the art of fluidism, both the perceptual and conceptual appeal of fluids interact to produce profound illumination.
Fluidist painting, therefore, is the activity of mixing and manipulating real fluids, in order to discover, experiment with, and present fluid dynamic patterns as ephemeral forms of art.
Primary source of inspiration and intelligence
Throughout history, various artists have engaged in creative activities that fit the label “fluidism.” More than 2,000 years ago, Shinto priests in ancient China, for example, created sacred art by pouring ink into ponds and transferring the resulting concentric patterns onto rice paper. Ancient Japanese artists, during the 12th century, refined this ink drop style into what was later formally classified as suminagashi, meaning “floating ink.” Craftsmen in the Ottoman Empire, during the 15th century, developed a closely related style of painting called “ebru”, which roughly means “cloud art”.
In modern times, a technique known as “marbling” became fashionable in the West, subsequently falling out and periodically coming into vogue. Closer to the present, as the physics of fluid dynamics progressed, several science students discovered the beauty of this physics, which resulted in some scientifically minded people shifting their main interests towards the art of fluid dynamics. . One such scientist-turned-artist, for example, is Chris Parks, who originally studied engineering at Imperial College London.
Most of the world’s religions seem to have always had a close connection to parallel fluids of artistic and scientific interests. The idea that life and reality arose from fluids, in fact, seems to be widespread in the world’s various beliefs, from Ancient Egyptian myths to modern Judeo-Christian creation stories.
While select artists throughout history have found great inspiration in fluids, and while modern science has made extensive use of fluid dynamics ideas, nearly all religions have revered fluids as the source and foundation of reality as we know it.
Modern astronauts have played with flowing water in the weightlessness of outer space. Contemporary painters have played with fluid paints in the minimum gravity conditions of parabolic aircraft flights. Don Petit is one of those astronauts, and Frank Pietronigro is one of those painters. Both metaphysics and physics now revere fluid in the special way of each field.
Accordingly, a special word, “fluidism”, seems justified in helping to unify this pervasive human creative interest.
Transcendental Action Painting
The American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) could be considered the first artist of fluidism. Art critics of his day referred to him as an “abstract expressionist” or, more specifically, as a “drip painter” or “action painter”. Pollock, however, probably fully understood that he was not expressing anything intentionally. Rather, he was the expression itself, both the substance and the action of the expression, without any formal intention of being either. Pollock realized that spontaneous actions could lead to nice patterns. The dried painted patterns of his were frozen echoes of his once liquid actions. Pollock, therefore, was an extension of the active flow of his chosen substrate (ie paint). He was able to record residual patterns from his actions on the original painting medium, because these patterns were stable while still wet. Pollock’s flowing patterns dried in almost exactly the same appearances as his wet counterparts.
The advent and advancement of photography has clearly shown that some fluid patterns cannot dry on their original substrates. These flowing patterns are too transient or are destroyed when they dry. In other words, some visually attractive wet flow moments cannot be preserved in the original substrates where they emerge. A bubble, for example, bursts. A sheet of splashing liquid moves rapidly from the air toward the mass from which it splashed. A particular collision or streak of liquid layers dissipates, before the mechanics of drying can set in to contain those patterns. Clearly the idea of “chart” extends beyond dry painted artifact substrate.
Photography has shown that painting is, or can be, an action in which certain patterns cannot be captured unless an artist transcends the medium in which those patterns originate. A photographic artist, therefore, can capture an impression of a bubble before it bursts. A photographic artist can virtually freeze a flying sheet of liquid before the sheet crashes into its mother pool. A photographic artist can immobilize a particularly attractive collision of color or a particular streak of colored liquid bands, before they dissipate into a homogeneous solution. Patterns that were once invisible due to the speed of particular actions can now be made visible thanks to the ability to stop the action of the photo artist’s camera. Photography makes possible a class of action painting that challenges the traditional static definition of the word “painting.”
Fluidism, then, has evolved from various traditions that involve handling wet liquids and allowing these liquids to dry. Fluidism has evolved into the modern quest to photograph manipulated liquids while they are still wet. Traditionally, only the dry remains of stable wet patterns were possible artifacts. Virtual dry remains (ie photographs) of ephemeral and impossible-to-dry patterns are now possible. These are “transcendental action paintings”, deep extensions of the basic idea of ”painting”.
Copyright (c) 2011 Robert G. Kernodle
