Every art form happens somewhere on relation between the extremes of complete reality and complete abstraction. Those extremes non inclusive, naturally, because in perception of authentic reality there is no artistic medium present (or at least not that we would know...), while the other end of absolute abstraction is the stage PAST the art and perhaps limited to medium alone (i.e. white paper), and work is unrecognizable as such. Everything in between those extremes is the interaction of medium (with all its specific attributes) and what flows through it - reality. That's why the recognition of abstraction levels also means understanding of the medium-specific attributes, necessary for our knowledge about it. The whole story begins with the old safe question: "what is that we see in an image?". Let's stay with photography for a moment. The lowest level of abstraction here is perception of an autonomous reality, "in which we are", but - it's all in the picture. Here interferes an noteworthy remark by S. Sontag. She says that in photography, every realism becomes surrealism. This, however, relates with secondary interpretation of something that was, despite the distance, primarily perceived as reality.

From this point there is no one clear next step upwards. There are many: lack of movement (which photography has taken care of to begin with), distortion of color, the limits of view (point and field of sight). But all these are still at level where our visual imagination has a death grip on reconstruction of the supposed reality - while perhaps getting more and more aware of the medium itself.

The first radical departure from this happens with the loss of spatial orientation, mainly by noting the frame and two-dimensionality of an image. That's where the foundation is changing: what we are looking is no more a reality; it's an image. The matter of objects is preserved, but they are removed from environment. If, going further, material attributes disappear, two substitutions can happen: if we recognize the object, our knowledge and experience will help perceive the wall as hard despite its wavy form. If not - we will make the physics up: water may end up being a hard polished reflective plate. After this level, objects loose any material aspirations and become some sort of metaphysical symbols, with attributes dictated by ideas of image and our emotions. This is already very close to the point of (traditionally) "non - figurative art", let's call it graphic abstraction (i.e. late Kandinsky). Since even here we can suppose that these forms may relate to a certain reality of imagination, there is a step closer yet to the abstract: suprematism (i.e. late Malewitch) - the most abstract phenomenon collected by the art history so far.

This whole path from real to abstract just described must not be confused with some kind of evolution, or any order in time. Even though it nicely corresponds to the history of human eye, and its relation to every new art form as they appeared and progressed, to understand it that way would be a discourse. What this rough attempt really tried to do is cross scan all the levels that simultaneously exist in viewing of an image, and whose unstable mixture forms the ground for all of our communication with that image.

On a completely different note, a concern prompts me to mention a whole another maze of ways in which our meeting with an image takes place. Deeper and more complicated, it is composited from evocations of our knowledge, memory, experience: the whole heritage of signs and symbols, personal and universal - but all very subjective and unstable. This complex, let's call it contentual (i.e. content originated), we'll better ignore here: its conceptual universality makes it non essential part of the visual media. It may just be useful thing to keep an honest eye on when judging the mass of forces and influences in the practical examples.
levels of abstraction




For the meaning here, it is important that the cypresses be perceived as something infinite, dark and powerful. This distortion of real attributes was achieved by purely graphic means: position in frame and in relation to other elements; distribution of sharpness; and tonality.