Representation, a theoretical study based on Immanuel Kant, 1750s

The following reflection is taken from an introduction to the exploration of Representation based on the later works of Immanuel Kant, circa 1750s to 1780s.

Immanuel Kant was a truly amazing thinker.  It was through his work that set the ground and seeds of thought for the modernist movement to be established, perhaps some 100 years after his work was published.   Modernism arises from the cultural dimensions of the period between the 1850s to 1900s.  The modernist style almost es the cultural context of that period.

The impact of Modernism clearly had a further influence on later culture, in particular, the advent and stylisation of advertising in the 20th century.  We shall explore the theme of advertising later, but modernism's influence, through the exploration of new ways of achieving representation, its emphasis on clarity, clearness, and elegance on this essential part of our current culture in 21st century, can all be traced back to the almost epiphanic moments in late 19th century art.  What is interesting however, is that Modernism itself evolved from a culture that was entirely opposite, almost a chaotic situation, fed by war, revolution and extreme civil unrest.

Why is Modernism so versatile and able to manifest itself during this almost chaotic background?...  We will centre on Kant's innovation in that moment of history which took the form of four categories...   Those of  Noumenal, Phenomenal, Beautiful and the Sublime.

 Noumenal is the category used to represent the physical things that we know exist, but we cannot see.  Phenomenal is the perception or experience of the world that we see around us.  The beautiful being what we see and finally, the sublime being the world that we neither see nor touch, but which we think of (or in particular, dream of).

The Phenomenal perception is almost structured on the design convention of Kant.  He stated that we (humans) all perceive things in the same way.  This is  the geometry and mathematical rules of what we imagine as reality.  It is sometimes considered as the notion of the lens framing and structuring what we see as the real.  It is the interplay of our ideas with some mathematical blueprint or formula that kes our brain think of it as being real.

Along side that of the four categories that Kant had defined, he started a deeper look (in around 1790) in to the notion of ''creativity''. He tries to suggest that the stable views that Philosophers had been abiding by for years, based on 'experiences' start to change.

What Kant says is that the idea of Beauty changes.  -  When there is something appealing in an aesthetic object, he argues that it reflects our individual notion of our human system or pre-defined blueprint (he calls it a schema) of what is beautiful in the world.  It is beautiful because it models our perception of what is beautiful.  i.e. 'correct'....  This pre-defined schema is actually based on what we have learned.  It is not something that exists in our brain on its own...  It is a summation of what our parents, our grand-parents, our cultures and previous cultures have learned and influenced through each generation.

In Contemporary Art we move forward from beauty, into the area of the sublime.  The feeling (or inability) to capture something, like the sense of infinity of space, or at the opposite, the sense of the sub-atomic level.  So, in the sublime encounter or zone, onsider the enormousness of a cathedral perhaps, or the continuous reference of me of the minute details, but not the enormity of it... eg the wooden pughes or the woodcut of the figurines on them, or even the wood splinters which make up the seating.