The

Human Being

as

Concrete and Abstract Form in Visual Art

Auguste Rodin, Bodhisattva Maitreya, Owusu-Ankomah and Victor Ekpuk

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge

Le Penseur

by Auguste Rodine
Picture by Nancy Steisslinger
Panoramio
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1869505


Le Penseur in the Jardin du Muse Rodin, Paris
Modeled 1880-1881, enlarged 1902-1904; cast 1919
http://www.rodinmuseum.org/collections/permanent/103355.html
Licensed under Attribution via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Penseur_in_the_Jardin_du_Mus%C3%A9e_Rodi
n,_Paris_May_2005.jpg#/media/File:Le_Penseur_in_the_Jardin_du_Mus%C3%A9e_Rodin,_
Paris_May_2005.jpg

A perennial challenge in the visual arts is that of how to depict the human being
in reflection.

How can the state of methodical or calm contemplation be
communicated through a medium that is accessible through the senses, which,
most of the time, can grasp only the physical form and not see into the mind?

Two of the most famous examples of how this challenge has been met represent
suggesting the mental state of a person through the appearance of the body.

This suggestion operates through depicting the body in a dynamic stance or in a
calm pose.


Auguste Rodin's Le Penseur, The Thinker

The premier example of the dynamic stance of the body as evoking reflection is
French sculptor Auguste Rodin's Le Penseur, The Thinker, in which a seated man
is shown with his hand curled in a fist and supporting his chin, as he bends his
back slightly, in the classic image of a person in deep thought.

His muscles bulge all over his body in concentrated tension as if they are about
to burst from his form.

The bulging muscles suggest dynamism, and are evocative of action.

This dynamism, however, is not kinetic, is not one of physical action, even though
physical dynamism is ordinarily associated with physical action.

This effect of non-kinesis is generated by the fact that the figure is not only still,
he is seated.

His body has assumed a position normally associated with rest but the idea of
rest is negated by the rippling bulge of his muscles.

The only logical conclusion, reinforced by the work's title, is that the dynamism
projected through the figure's body is mental dynamism demonstrated in terms
of deep and possibly anguished thought the figure is immersed in.

The rugged character of the stone composing the figure's body and the plinth on
which it sits as well as the pronounced undulations of the bones of the feet and
fingers amplify the sense of potent physicality projecting powerfully contained
energy.

The evocative force of the work is expanded by its original positioning
overlooking Rodin's Gates of Hell, his sculptural depiction of scenes from the

Italian writer Dante Alighieri's famous picture of Hell in Inferno, the first book of
his Divine Comedy, hell being in Christian understanding the place of everlasting
torture unredeemable humans go when they die, an idea Dante explores in terms
of commentary on the nature of human life, the relationship between the work
of the poet and that of the sculptor being beautifully described at the Rodin
Museum site on The Thinker in relation to the Gates of Hell .

Rodin's The Thinker, therefore, is engaged in reflection on the challenges,
tensions and negativities of human existence as dramatized by the sculptor's
recreation of Dante's cosmological image in Inferno.

The Bodhisattva Maitreya

The other most famous approach to depicting reflection through the body is
represented by sculptures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in Buddhist art.

Perhaps no more sublime evocation of the depth of peace, demonstrating a
cognitive penetration to the meaning of being, beyond the vicissitudes of
existence in pain and fulfilment, an ultimate Buddhist ideal, has ever been
created.

The beatific peace of the face of the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism
understood to have reached this cognitive state, or that of Bodhisattvas, beings
who are committed to helping others reach this state even as they either strive to
reach it or have reached it, is complemented in these sculptures by the physical
postures they assume, suggesting a concentration of energy within the
integration of body and mind, the figure placing one leg on his knee in calm poise
or seated in the yogic lotus posture, both legs curled in a delicate but firm pose
under the body, creating a pyramid with the legs as the base, the middle of the
body as the sides and the head as the apex, an image of physical concentration
and mental focus.

The lyricism of the slender form of the Bodhisattva Maitreya above resonates
with the stamp of profound contemplation on the face through the
correlative visual harmony of the body and the balance of facial features
suggesting what the English poet John Keats in his "Ode On a Grecian Urn"
describes as unheard melodies, an internal music vibrating, in this context, in
terms of the perfect alignment of all aspects of the self.

The balance of the body in its simplicity of form and yet majesty of manner
suggests the Buddhist ideal of transcendence of life's vicissitudes occasioned by
the subjugation of humanity by ignorance of the forces that define the nature of
existence, the statue embodying the majesty of kingship, not over any other
person or domain but over one's self and the course of one's existence.




Bodhisattva Maitreya

Asuka period, 7th century


Tokyo National Museum



http://webarchives.tnm.jp/imgsearch/show/E0010229



5

Owosu-Ankomah's Thinking the Microcron, No. 1.

Another approach to the challenge of correlating reflection and the human body
in visual art is that of the use of physical posture in relation to the character of
the physical environment, as demonstrated by the paintings of the
Ghanaian/German artist Owosu-Ankomah.

Ankomah, in a couple of his works, adapts the seated pose made famous by
Rodin, in others, the figure is seated in a different pose or is standing.

In those images which are most clearly expressive of reflection, the figure is
shown interacting with abstract forms in a contemplative manner, suggesting
reflection on those structures as other abstract patterns shape the space of
interaction, within an environment suffused by a calm blue amplifying the sense
of immersion in a reflective experience.

The blending of the human form with the symbol space, as these symbols are
imprinted on the human body in gradations of the colour that suffuses that
space, demonstrates interactivity between the human being and spatial
construction in terms of abstract symbols and colour harmony.

A unique kind of space is thereby projected, one demonstrating properties that
inspire profound reflection and the sense of the ineffable, a density of evocative
value suggesting the convergence of the cosmos at a particular point in space,
this being my interpretation, from personal experience in Nigeria, of Owusu-
Ankomah's description of the inspiration for his spatial depiction in the Akan
version of an understanding of nature pervasive across cosmologies that
emphasize the cognitive agency of nature, better known as animism.

This is the idea of "kusumadze" or "kusum", a " sacred site involved in the
performance of mystery rites... sacred, secret, mysterious places where we meet
for ritual exchanges with whatever protective spirits guide our culture"
as Owusu-Ankomah describes this in Owusu-Ankomah: Microcron - Kusum
(Hidden Signs - Secret Meanings).

This harmony of the figural, the abstract and the spatial thus suggests the
contemplative depth, and in consonance with the scope of abstract symbols
shaping the space, the range of cultural and multi-disciplinary engagement
required to grasp the constellation of ultimate possibility represented by the
band of multi-coloured circles the figure gazes on, the manifestation of cosmic
potential the artist names the Microcron.





Owusu-Ankomah


Thinking the Microcron No. 1


2011, Acrylic on Canvas


120 x 140 cm 25 / 44


http://www.owusu-ankomah.de/en/artworks.html

Owusu-Ankomah, Auguste Rodin and Michelangelo Buonarroti

Owusu-Ankomah is a heir, in terms of inspiration, of Auguste Rodin, and Rodin
and Owusu-Ankomah are inspirational heirs of the greatest master of the
depiction of the human form in Western art, the 15th-16th century Italian
polymath, Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Integrating various elements visible in the Renaissance master's body of work,
they have created their own unique visualisations.

Their achievement may be seen in relation to Michelangelo's Moses, a marble
figure that seems to contain a latent volcano through the palpitations of energy
suggested by the modelling of its form, even as the near mythic Biblical figure is
shown seated, and his Captives, emerging with agonising lyricism from the stone,
unfinished at their creator's death.

The depiction of power, at times at rest, and poetic motion, both at times related
to reflection, is what the master's disciples have created as their contribution to
the artistic dramatisation of the scope of possibilities of the human form.

Victor Ekpuk's The Thinker


Another example, demonstrated by Nigerian-US artist Victor Ekpuk, in his
drawing adapting the title of Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker, is that of
evoking rather than depicting the human form, dispensing altogether with its
concrete contours, and suggesting it's spatial actualisation through a basic
sequence of lines, the reflective activity evoked through inscriptions suggesting
semiotic space as well as the act of interpretation and reflection that semiotic
space involves.

Ekpuk achieves in this work one of his more exquisite explorations of
relationship between various kinds of visual forms as may be depicted two
dimensionally, in this case using the line or brushstroke and ideographic
patterns suggestive of lettering, in relation to the semi-circle, the circle or oval.

The human body is represented by nothing more than a curved line, the lower
curve perhaps suggesting the bend at the waist we see in Rodin's seated figure
and its adaptations, and the head by two semi-circles, one inside the other,
evocative of the brain inside the head, the red colour filling the semi-circle and
resonating with blood as nourishing fluid for the brain, the arrangement of white
dots on the red background possibly projecting the patterns that shape the mind.






Victor Ekpuk


The Thinker


2012, 12"x9.5"


Graphite, ink & collage on paper





http://www.aquaartmiami.com/PopUpObjectDetails.aspx?dealerid=27511&objectid=579924



The semi- circular forms are positioned within a square lattice of enigmatic
inscriptions demonstrating the structured progression and visual form of script
but ultimately uncorrelative with any known script, therefore dramatising
human symbol making as a primary means of relating with reality as well as the
challenges of creating and interpreting these symbol complexes.

The entire form is dynamic in the way it shapes space through the flourish of the
single line moving outward to complete the open ended formation of the central
semi-circle and the fluid brushstroke that defines the lower part of the form.

Rodin's sculpture or the idea it projects is here re-imagined, but in a manner that
distills an imaginative essence from the combination of physicality and evocation
of mental action through the concrete form of the body that makes Rodin's work
great.

Perhaps the fluid balance of the brushstrokes that define Ekpuk's thinker could
transport one to the dynamism of the daily walk of life enabled by the energising
power of nature and the understanding this journey may bring as the human
being moves in time but may aspire to eternity, this being a transposition of a
meaning of the spiral, a central, recurrent motif in Ekpuk's art, as understood in
the Nsibidi semiotic forms from which the artist derives his signature
engagement with the hermeneutic imperatives of script.

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