Stefan Arteni

The Painting:
Determinism And Stochasticity

SolInvictus Press 2008

Before an object is defined as any particular thing it is a
cluster of random elements arranged in a unique order.
All else is an imposition of a learned or artificial
categorization.
www.ashejournal.com/eight/alamantra.shtml

Organization and Structure

…a system's organization specifies a category,

within which there may be many specifically-
realized instantiations. Specific systemic entities
exhibit more than just the general pattern of their
organization -- they consist of particular
components and relations among them. The
'particulars' of a given system's individual realization
make up its structure…

Humberto Maturana (1975) notes 'organization'

comes from the Greek and means 'instrument'…A
systemic unity's organization is specifically realized
through the presence and interplay of components
in a given space. These comprise the unity's
structure…Maturana (1975) points out the word
'structure' comes from the Latin meaning 'to build'.

Randall Whitaker Jacques Villon, the root-2 theme

A jigsaw or tiling puzzle: non-regular tessellations or tiling patterns
(tilings composed of non-regular polygons ) and the superposing of tessellations

Emergence is the process whereby by means of a small number of simple rules - such as first organizing the
surface into abstract areas with the help of the Golden Section and then constructing local-area networks within
these areas - one creates new unpredictable and surprising structures. The organization is realized through
structure…Form-ing is selectively contingent... relationship of parts to whole and of self-similarity. Robert Rosen
defines a formal system as syntax, symbols (in the Peircean sense), and rules of symbol manipulation. It is a
matter of mereotopological (parthood and connectedness) contingency: speaking about areas (the two-
dimensional regions or continua), the transformations allowed before the space is changed; speaking about the
image, the transformations of an image conceived as a diagram that may gain or lose parts and yet preserve its
identity. The flexibility of structure is the basis for the complexity of parts, wholes, boundaries, interpositions and
overlappings, nested regions, contact, separation, and transition (passage). But what of inner boundaries
combined with passages, a device used by El Greco? In this case of intrinsic vagueness, there is a degree of
arbitrariness about any particular choice resulting in trapping regions as inner boundaries – a sort of inner
vectorial graph - and creating indeterminate outer boundaries. Such an influence is visible also in Villon’s and in
other Western artists’ work, a fact showing that to remain in the background, which is the case for the procedural
memory of Byzantine practices, is not synonymous with unimportance. Procedural memory is also known as tacit
or implicit knowledge.

Figurative synthesis is responsible for the genesis of a determinate representation. ‘Schematism’ specifies the
conditions for recognition as well as the topological invariant within the abstract building…

Deleuze formulates the image as a “mobile assemblage”. This allows for shifting conglomerations of elements –
each image is contingent and evolving. Any figurative elements - re-cognizable configurational elements – are
grouped in clusters within the variable layout of the abstract areas that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. By
means of color-scheme, placement, and linking, natural spatial and dynamic categories are destabilized. Emerging
patterns convert image data into pictorial equivalents - fiat entities, that is, created entities - and construct a
pattern of configured non-emptiness and voids, an intense simultaneity.

Stefan Arteni
[http://www.stefanarteni.net/writings/Emergence/Emergence.html]
 Golden Rectangle in the square

[Diagram by Charles Bouleau]

Leon Battista Alberti’s musical ratio

diapason or octave (double square)
Golden Rectangle
 (Paysage)

Paul Sérusier: French standard canvas formats

 The root-2 Rectangle and
Golden Rectangle compared.

Armature of the surface (Jay Hambidge, The Elements

of Dynamic Symmetry, Dover, New York, 1967):

Continued subdivision
of a root-2 rectangle
into similar figures, with
a ratio of two.

Continued subdivision
of a root-2 rectangle Paul Sérusier’s figure format or
into similar figures, with double coupe d’or (double golden
a ratio of three. section).

Daniel Robbins Editor, Jacques Villon,
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976
A. Armature of the surface
B. Phi theme
C. Rabatment of the shorter sides
The diagrams suggest also the
possibility of superposing the various
themes.
Jacques Villon’s method

“First, I build up two squares,

one on the right and one on the
left…Once the squares are done, I
give each of them a color. For
instance, the left-hand square could
be red, the right-hand square blue.
I also choose a color for the picture
as a whole. Let’s say it’s going to be Rabatment of the shorter sides
yellow. This choice of color [diagram by Chales Bouleau]
constitutes the basic harmony and
represents three planes to me. The
red left-hand square is the
foreground, the yellow surface is the
middleground, the blue is the
background. All these colors act on
each other according to their place
in the picture, and their
planes…Now, each of [the local
colors] is affected by the color of its
corresponding plane in my structure.
So the [objects in the] foreground
will be affected by the red…”
Jacques Villon in Yvon Taillandier,
Jacques Villon: de la pyramide au
carre, in XXe siecle, May-June
1959.
Juan Gris (Jose Victoriano Gonzalez)
Jacques Villon
 Jacques VILLON (1875-1963) "Les
Bucoliques“. Five plates. Each about
20x48cm. Work written by Paul Valéry for
Scripta et Picta in 1942-44 for a book
envisioned by doctor A. Roudinesco. The
images were drawn on stone by Jacques
Villon. Printed by Mourlot.
Gino Severini
Preparatory study
by Gino Severini

Diagram by Piero Pacini

(Gino Severini, Dal cubismo
al classicismo, Marchi &
Bertoli, 1972)
Root-2 rectangle,
diagram by Gino Severini
(Gino Severini, Dal cubismo al
classicismo,,Marchi & Bertoli,
1972)
Study for a mural
 (Photos by Timothy Swope)
Montegufoni frescos

Combinations
of the circle
or phi theme
(Carlo Cresti,
Geometria per
Montegufoni,
in
Gino Severini,
Electa, Firenze,
!983)
Montegufoni frescos
(Photo by Timothy Swope)

Study for the mural

Root-4 theme: square and double square

(Carlo Cresti, Geometria per Montegufoni,
in Gino Severini, Electa, Firenze, !983)