Other ideas can be found on my Knol:
http://knol.google.com/k/keith-russell/keith-russell/
Affects and art
Geometry and colour are two primitives that appeal to our eye: they affect us with an immediacy that figurative art dare not deny. But, the power of colour and mathematically resolved shape can draw attention and satisfy the eye without necessarily engaging and holding aesthetic interest. We might look once but then we are done.
Abstraction is one way to extend the looking time. Or, more importantly, the shifting boundary between abstraction and figuration is an important affective space. As the eye is invited by the abstraction’s proximity to a formed figure, so the attention shifts from a semi-conscious immediacy of affect (just looking) to a more defined conscious realisation of effect (that looks like something). Keith Russell
Other ideas can be found on my Knol:
http://knol.google.com/k/keith-russell/keith-russell/