Triptych Abstract

<p>Thought I'ld offer a challenge by getting you guys to pick out three of your abstracts that when combined together three in a row vertically or horizontally forms a different abstract that works together as one cohesive form.</p>

<p>There's no hard rules here. Use your imagination like blending them together as an option. Overlap. Just make sure three somewhat separate pieces can be distinguished.</p><div></div>

<p>Arranged the one above using Flip Horizontal/Vertical Transform in Photoshop to see if this changes the energy and cohesive fit of the three...</p><div></div>

<p>The challenge of making abstract triptychs is to succeed in making the forms/lines, shades/colors and textures play against each other and/or together in harmonies. Good theme for abstract image discussions.</p>

<p>If I look at the two to the right, the parallel diagonal lines are present in both variations, but I would prefer the less hard , straight lines of the second, creating a larger dark abstract space across the two. There you have already a diptych with a rebellion colour element in the image to the right <br>

The complications increase when you introduce a third image to create a triptych. I see, of course again the yellow/orange colour stripes in what is now the right and left images, where in the first triptych, they are parallel and in the second, not. Both works for me.<br>

However, the difference of textures between the two to the right and the new one to the left, as well as the sharp image to the left and the two blurred images to the right hurt my eyes and prevents unity between the three, as I see it. Furthermore, the large dark area created in the second version of your triptych, which I like, is abruptly broken in the second version.</p>

<p>In my eyes, you have created a very good diptych (to the right) in need of a third corresponding image to make a triptych, as I see it.</p>

 

<p>... or, to push Anders's suggestions from another direction, if you're going to make a visual sentence, think about a grammar: the visual quote, the visual echo, the visual retort; maybe a ground base throughout, etc.</p>

<p>If I get a minute, I'll try to make a triptych. Put my money where my mouth is.</p>

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<p>However, the difference of textures between the two to the right and the new one to the left, as well as the sharp image to the left and the two blurred images to the right hurt my eyes and prevents unity between the three, as I see it.</p>

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<p>I thought the same when I did further rearranging of the three and pushing the vertical/horizontal flip technique. The sharp soap bubble image with very few dark swaths of space that is unlike the other two just kept fighting me. I actually should have settled on the two you mentioned because I saw them dovetail visually as one image the more I spent fiddling with their orientation to each other. I'll have to work on that a bit more and maybe create a thread topic on diptych abstracts. But thanks for that helpful feedback, Anders.</p>

<p>Digital editing has certainly made this a lot easier and faster than when I did this kind of layout work arranging headline typography with body text, graphics and photo elements designing brochures and double page spread ads. </p>

<p>Julie, I understand your use of grammar as a visual sentence analogy for this kind of creative process but my mind just doesn't talk to myself that way when I create visually. In fact when I look at all my photos in my image browser, I don't hear words. Maybe you do with all images in general which for me creates an interesting way of seeing how another person interprets images. </p>

<p>However, with abstracts my internal dialog centers more around a philosophical appreciation of life as a big picture POV from the entire creative process of seeing, capturing and digitally enhancing reality as an abstract. So in a way it's a detached third person narrative that has no connection to the shapes and forms presented to me as the image unfolds in my image editor. I'm really not thinking when I'm making images, I'm feeling and it's too quick and fleeting to formulate words during the whole process.</p>

<p>Thank you, Julie, for your meaningful suggestions and take on what I've presented.</p>

<p>This one isn't very good, but it's what I'm able to get in about twenty minutes. I chickened out on color, which is really kind of lame on my part. I'll try to do a color one later, if I get to it. Fun, anyway.</p><div></div>

<p>Just a contribution to this interesting, but complex, discussion on triptych.<br /> This one is a very simply just a photo of a North Chinese mountain forest, flipped and change of colours.<br>

For Tao contemplations.</p><div></div>

<p>Color quickie #1. These are not very good, but I do claim them (i.e. I'm not quite ashamed of them):</p>

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<p>... and #2 (anything to avoid doing what I'm *supposed* to be doing right now):</p>

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<p>Julie, all nine abstract photos of your in these three triptychs are very good seen individually. Nice work.<br>

When it comes to using them in triptychs, it surely becomes more complicated.</p>

<p>The first triptychs, I fail to see the correspondence between the images, apart from by tones and colours. Looks more like a deck of cards, one partly hiding the other. I somehow could see them as a vertical triptych, more than horizontal, as now.</p>

<p>The two other triptychs, if you number the individual images 1-6, I would try with using images 1 + 5 + 4 - in that order (flipping image 4 horizontally). You then have a triptych with two images on the side with bright blue flash colours and convergent diagonale lines lines and a centre image in somewhat harmonious colour tones across the three (Image 1 deserves to be brighter).</p>

<p>The individual image, that I like most is number three in the second triptych, but it does not, in my eyes fit well with the others.</p>

<p>I think everyone's contribution looks fantastic and quite elegant.</p>

<p>But then my aesthetic standards on how I enjoy and define photo abstracts is directly related to my musical background as both a musician and CD collector of a wide range of musical styles. To put it simply as a jazz musician image abstracts are similar to vocal scatting style of jazz improvisation which comes across to most as gibberish, but to me a beautifully melodic and rhythmic form of gibberish. Even though there doesn't appear to be any corresponding relationship to the original song the listener can <em>feel</em> the gibberish is <em>emoting</em> something similar to what the song is about that can't be put to words. In a way there is a spiritual aspect to creating and viewing abstract imagery.</p>

<p>So everyone's posted visual gibberish here is quite compelling and pleasant to look at. I don't derive any narrative or philosophical statement being made in their relationship among each of the three groupings. But they are visually intriguing and would definitely make for some great interior design pieces.</p>

<p>So Anders, I'm not quite fully understanding your points of why you see this subject as complicated. You seem to know more about this genre of expressive imagery than I can grasp or can read from what you've pointed out. What am I suppose to feel or derive from assessing photo abstracts arranged in a triptych?</p>

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<p>The first triptychs, I fail to see the correspondence between the images, apart from by tones and colours. Looks more like a deck of cards, one partly hiding the other. I somehow could see them as a vertical triptych, more than horizontal, as now.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fascinating, Anders, how you see and describe Julie's first contribution and how different it is from mine. My first take was that it resembled a kind of ancient native language style of hieroglyphics written on different pieces of wood at various stage of decay conveying nuanced ancient spiritualism.</p>

<p>I just wished I thought of varying the size of each with my own triptychs which is a great idea as I now see how it changes the nuance of the overall relationships of the three in Julie's postings. Thanks for that, Julie.</p>

<p><em>"What am I supposed to feel or derive from assessing photo abstracts arranged in a triptych?"</em> (Tim)<br>

<br>

That's a good question which surely no-one can answer for you in a satisfactory way, but for abstract painters, as least those who have expressed themselves on the subject such as Pollock and especially Newman, abstract paintings are often made to provoke meditation and reflections more than feelings. <br>

<br>

Newman writes about the search for the "Sublime" - far away from what you refer to when mentioning interior design pieces. Kandinski referred to the force of colours and forms to exert direct influence on the soul and many abstract expressionists apart from being often politically active, and many were declared Marxists, they found there inspiration in Carl Jung's writings (the importance of archetypes as inherent in our collective human experience or in Existentialist philosophy (Pollock).</p>

<p>Triptychs, are indeed even more complex and complicated to make and analyse of the simple reason, that you do not only have one image to make and contemplate, but you have three which interact, reinforce or contradict each other. It is like appreciating three instruments playing different themes in different keys, but realising something more than just the addition of the three.</p>

<p>Tim, I can, as you, appreciate the first of Julie's triptych, if I see them of some kind of hieroglyphs. But, by doing that, I would miss the abstract dimension. If you see them as abstracts, they fail, for me, to communicate in a triptych. However, as with so many other works of its kind, if I had the triptych on my wall for some time, in bigger format, I might change my appreciation.</p>

<p>So you don't see or appreciate in Julie's wood triptych its making a connection or imposing a possible influence from the naturally formed hieroglyphic style writing in the wood on early man's ancient writing style? That's the first thing that jumped out at me and thought was a very clever way to communicate this idea.</p>

<p>What's complicated about triptychs? I quit art school before they covered the subject in art appreciation class.</p>

<p>I see triptychs as similar to comic strip panels that either express an idea in progression of each individual panel reading them left to right or top to bottom or as one entire statement or cohesive design. In Julie's wood triptych it starts out as a progression showing related wood textures and markings but then immediately at least to me communicates a connection to ancient writings, but that's just me.</p>

<p>You seem to see something different that appears to be influenced by preconceived notions, rules or early understandings of how triptychs are suppose to function.</p>

<p>An unexpected welcomed dynamic from grouping and arranging individual images to work as one image is that I noticed it kind of functioned similar to a mini-gallery. This is what got me interested in this subject.</p>

<p>When I started viewing individual thumbnail images in Bridge where I have them separated into individual folders so I can't see them together I noticed their impact seemed to be enhanced or amplified by viewing them all together opened in Photoshop. </p>

<p>But then my practical mind took over and started asking questions as to why this image should be grouped to the others and that "Like" feeling started to go away. It's like I had to go back to another part of my brain to where it would just say... "I don't know why, but I just like the way these look grouped together". What's that all about?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Per se there is nothing complicated in placing three picture-frames one beside the other and deciding that they belong together in one way or another.<br>

It's a free world, the term is available to as all and we can do with it what we like.</p>

<p>I would guess, that when artist put three paintings together, or separate a canvas in three separated parts, they have some idea about what make the parts fit together and how they relate. In representative art it might bean ongoing narrative, from morning to night for example, but in abstract art you don't, by definition, have identifiable elements so you have to look at the colours tones, forms, lines and what ever the images contain of abstract elements to see the connection between the three parts. I see that as more complicated to describe and analyse than a single frame<br>

Tim, when you mention, that you don't know why, but you like how three parts are grouped together, that's it ! that's what we should be looking for, or it is at least a beginning. It only becomes complicated, if you try to explain why you like it.<br>

In the case of Julie's triptychs, you mention: similar textures and markings, which are totally good reasons these three abstract images could fit together in an abstract triptych. Personally, I would however be looking for something more in the form of compositions, lines, perspectives, so that the three parts visually flow together in one triptych and not merely as three separate images put together because they reminds us of old writings. </p>

<p>When this is said, triptychs have indeed a history in the world of arts like this one of <a href="http://hoocher.com/Hans_Memling/Last_Judgment_Triptych_(open)_1467_71.jpg">Hans Memling, Last Judgement, 1465)</a> The main functional reason,in the early renaissance in Flandre, as this triptych, or elsewhere, why they were made as triptychs, was that they could be closed to be protected. We don't have that concern.</p>

 

<p>There are no rules. Find three pictures that work together and play with them. Geez, lighten up and have some fun.</p><div></div>

<p>and again</p><div></div>

<p>yet another</p><div></div>

<p>just one more</p><div></div>

<p>This one isn't really very abstract, but what the heck ...</p><div></div>

<p>... nor is this one very abstract, but we want to make this thread more fun, so here is another (my last for today, I promise):</p><div></div>

<p>Don't worry Julie, we do have fun, but tell us why you yourself declared concerning your first triptych:</p>

<p>"These are not very good, but I do claim them (i.e. I'm not quite ashamed of them):"<br>

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Why "not very good" then ? There are no rules, but there are appreciation, that can be explain and even justified. We can all learn from such formulations, I would think and still have fun.</p>

<p>Somehow your post doesn't sound very jolly to me. Smile. Relax. Unclench your sphincter.</p>