Fluidism Art: From Traditional to Transcendental Action Painting

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 (ie the painting) is constructed. “Subject” means the intellectual motivation from which a painting grows (ie meaning, representation, or purpose).

In the art of fluidism, 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 deep illumination.

Fluidistic painting, therefore, is the activity of mixing and manipulating real fluids, in order to discover, experiment and present fluid dynamic patterns as ephemeral forms of art.

Primary source of inspiration and intelligence

Throughout history, various artists have engaged in creative pursuits that fit the “fluidism” label. More than 2,000 years ago, Shinto priests in ancient China, for example, created sacred art by pouring ink into pools and transferring the resulting concentric patterns onto rice paper. Ancient Japanese artists during the 12th century refined this style of ink drop into what was later formally classified as suminagashi, meaning “floating ink.” Artisans in the Ottoman Empire, during the 15th century, developed a closely related style of painting called “ebru”, roughly meaning “cloud art”.

In modern times, a technique known as “marbling” became fashionable in the West, subsequently falling out of fashion periodically. Closer to the present, as the physics of fluid dynamics advanced, a number of science students discovered the beauty of this physics, resulting in some scientifically minded people turning their primary 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 with fluid parallels to artistic and scientific interests. The idea that life and reality arose from fluids, in fact, seems to be widespread in the various beliefs of the world, from the myths of Ancient Egypt to the 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 dynamic ideas, nearly all religions have revered fluids as the origin 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 the fluid in the special form of each field.

Consequently, a special word, “fluidism”, seems justified to help unify this pervasive human creative interest.

Transcendental Action Painting

The American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) could be considered the first fluidist artist. 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, with no formal intention of being either. Pollock realized that spontaneous actions could lead to pleasing patterns. His dry painted patterns 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 of his actions in the original painting medium, because these patterns were stable while still wet. Pollock’s fluid patterns dried into 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 either too transient or are destroyed by drying. In other words, some visually appealing moments of wet flow 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 be established to contain those patterns. Clearly, the idea of “frame” it extends beyond the dried 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 liquid sheet before the sheet crashes into its parent pool. A photographic artist can pin down a particularly attractive color collision 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 photographic artist’s ability to stop the action of the camera. Photography makes possible a class of action paintings that defy 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 become the modern quest to photograph manipulated liquids while they are still wet. Traditionally, only dry remains of stable wet patterns were possible artifacts. Virtual dry remnants (ie photographs) of ephemeral and undryable patterns are now possible. These are “transcendental action paintings”, deep extensions of the basic idea of ​​”painting”.

Copyright (c) 2011 Robert G. Kernodle