Art is a questionable enterprise at times. Artists suggest an expertise in abstract notions, of identifying a thing and presenting it back to the world in a meaningful way. Ideally they manipulate it in a novel way, change it, challenge it and present it back to us in a way that creates meaning.

At the least they should be interesting, at the worst they are in bad faith and pretentious.

Art has many categories in which to define the undefinable. It may need to be liberated of category to perform its function best.

You could guess that celluloid diminished realism in art, but even pre-photography works grasp at unreal but beautiful concepts, icons, symbolism and narratives. Whether images are representational or real we find consensus when great works reveal themselves. The image has something within it, something that is unknown and undefinable that speaks across the ages. How? It must speak to something super-cultural and beyond fashion. It must speak to something human.

Pre-agrarian man was at ‘IT’ in Europe, (~) 35,000 years ago. Given the lack of biological evolution in 200,000 years, our shared static biological state challenges the suggestion of a universal humanity that is reflected in mere culture and we struggle to find the things that give us our supra-national, supra-culture common bond.

Century after century of complications estrange us from universal humanity as we struggle to reconcile war, religion, politics, morality and the competitive story-telling inspired by our reflective consciousness.

After recently watching a documentary about the rock-art from Chauvet Cave in France I was struck by the beauty of the images.

I initially suspected romantacisation of the story and dismissed my instinct. It was probably good, it was ancient and depicted historical scenes without clear motive. It is without the kind of context that we need today, being addicted to the very narrow interpretation from our own time. We desire information to rationalise the full story and package our piqued interest away, neatly. In these images the cultural abyss allows for infinite possibilities. We prefer to imagine not just that we know, but that we could know.

I wasn’t completely sure that it was good outside my bias of the story and I asked my girlfriend what she thought.

Presumably created via the light of fire, the wall was busy, sketchy, possibly overwhelming, possibly confusing but considering the images carefully she affirmed my instinct towards the images.

Hmmmm – what to do?

Enter Plato and his ‘theory of forms’.

The laymans explanation of Platos idea is that we might acknowledge that no perfect circle exists in the world, in fact we have never seen one. But we can imagine and even relate a ‘true’ (perfect) theoretical circle with a strict definition (math notation) and use a perfect, mathematically definable template of a circle to judge whether or not we come across ‘something like a circle’ in the physical world. We will likely allow the fallible, corrupted, imperfect circle-like thing that we come across to be imbued with perfection, perceiving with and applying our unconscious and perfect template of a circle. These template ideas have a perfection inherent in them that exist abstractly in our mind through a proposition of universality.

Picasso may be said to be experimenting with this universality in his art.

Teenage Picasso had a type of talent with the brush that I may never enjoy, not with any level of passion or dedication. At age 15 he saw and executed his self- portrait thusly.

An artist with this skill produces emotional and personal characteristics within their study. We appreciate Picasso’s ability to perceive favourably (or dis favourably) and use the virtuoso’s precocious talent to exaggerate and accentuate features within their physical capabilities and perceptual inclinations.

It is inconceivable to be granted this gift at age 15. In later productions we can only guess that such a talented artist prefers to be challenged by representations that become less physically similar but closer to the essence of what the abstract thing really is. What is lost in realism is gained in abstraction.

Picasso steps forward at age 25 to deliver

Some abstraction has occurred from physical reality, however this is clearly the same man. He has matured. He has evolved artistically in a way that is less recognisable as a real thing in the world. What would Plato say about this with his theory of forms? Because the physical relationship is clear. We perceive the same man.

Picasso gives us a cartoonish portrait that removes hard realism. In making it less real (physically) and more *real* (abstract), he seeks to do a kind of artistic alchemy. He has less to give more. Perhaps the *real* is even obscured by the real?



For Plato, the universal, ‘true’ reality is at the level of the theoretical perfect circle that doesn’t exist.

Picasso antagonises the limits of Plato’s idea at age 56, and 90

We can see that the portrait on the right is

We can see that the portrait on the right is of a man. He first gives us a minimalised image at age 56. A fully abstracted and distinctly un-minimalised portrait turns up at age 90. It is a very busy collection of lines without much clear shape, inconsistent colour or features and yet it emerges as a portrait. It is a head of a man. What was he like at that age? If you were told in words you would associate it with something you already knew. What do we know about 90 yr old Picasso from this picture?

The takeaway is that Picasso became an expert in reductions of the physical world. He abstracted hard reality, representing images to add character. But something is retained, even in his most abstract image.

Here is the question – Are the things he retains the universal, abstracted and perfect images that Plato suggests exist in his ‘theory of forms’

Picasso was an expert in deviating from physical reality by staying faithful to the abstracted reality and he stretched the limits of the relationship between the two things to the absolute extreme. Many other people have tried and failed to do the same thing.

Picasso shared a study with the ~35,000 year old Paleo-lithic artist of Chavet cave. Their study was – The Bull.

The ‘Theory of Forms’ suggest a type of perfection in a shared, collective unconscious abstract world that is a super-cultural, super-identity, common experience. The human thing that second-layer cultural inventions cannot achieve.

Picasso’s abstracted bulls are simple and beautiful. Is Plato’s theory how we see less detail, but experience it as more iconic?

Is the paleo-lithic artist from ~35,000 years ago discovered in 1994 achieving an abstracted bull that was detailed by Picasso in 1945, a master of abstraction?

Is Plato’s explanation (or its modern equivalent) the reason why such simple cave-art makes such a big impression?