Creating a Modernist Image and Mindfulness

I have written previously on how to use Mindfulness with Modernist artwork to help with Mindfulness. This time I take that process a stage further.

Mindfulness is essentially accepting that a troubled and stressed mind often cones from the mind spending time building up the negative elements by concentrating on thinking about things that have happened in the past, allowing these thoughts to grow and weigh down on the individual. The same is true of planning and anticipating the future - what might go wrong. Mindfulness encourages the mind to concentrate in the now - homing in on the realities of what is currently happening to your body and the environment it is in. A big part of this is what is visually happening right now. This is where this video comes in.

In my previous article I described how staring at a Digital Modernist image and really concentrating your thoughts on the detail of that image ( call it meditating if you like ) can help with mindfulness. The better option is of course to spend time concentrating on the visual as you create such a piece of digital imagery. Not everyone can do this, however. Lack of experience, skill and software are three obvious reasons why this is not going to be practical for many people. For many the solution will be for you to watch such a piece of artwork being created and concentrating on the changes as each step in the creation is worked through on the screen. You simply watch the changing image as it develops on your screen.

When doing such mindfulness activities it is important to do this in the right "frame of mind". This means getting your mind ready and open for the level of concentration that will be most helpful. 

• Make sure you start by breathing slowly and deeper than usual. 
• Try to notice where you are feeling the effect of this breathing ( on the chest as it expands, air going through the nostril or mouth, stomach rising and falling, etc )
• Keep this up for a minute or so.
• Now try to stay aware of the breathing but shift some of your concentration on the changing image on the screen.
• Watch the screen very carefully as the images slowly changes and develops
• Try to identify where there are changes - no judgements, just observation
• keep checking in on your concentration by picking up changes in colour, movements of elements of the image etc
• When the image stops changing you will see a black dot starting to appear. As that happens go back to really concentrating on your deep breathing.
• Keep this breathing going until you feel ready to go back to everyday life in a much calmer condition.

Here is the video ready for you to start being visually mindful....

To view in full screen go to the YouTube video in a new tab. 

Click here

(YouTube Video)

More of these videos will be created as time goes by. Please subscribe to keep up on all new Mindful videos from The Digital Modernist. See more articles on the Digital Modernist website

A Journey through (Modernist) Art History

A Journey Through (Art) History

Just as an exercise in taking an almost totally random approach to viewing some of the best pieces of art in the Modernist era, I have produced a video that highlights some of the best during the Modernist styles from Impressionism in the 1870s through to Bauhaus developments up to the 1960s.

The Covered Lane by Paul-Auguste Renoir

The Impressionists started a reaction against the orthodoxy by criticising the French Academy of Fine Arts because they consistently rejected their works by not allowing them into the Galleries. Eventually they created their own exhibition of "rejects". This started a lot of discussion about the hold that very traditional art "experts" were having on limiting creativity. It was also the start of Modernism - a movement to disrupt the centuries old stifling strangle hold on what was acceptable by a small elite of artists and dealers.

It was only a few years before art 

of the Cubist style was acceptable

Cubism was such a startling move away from the Classical "Realism" of the pre 1870s. Georges Braques and Pablo Picasso worked in partnership to create a completely new approach to art - Cubism was born.

By 1927 the Bauhaus movement had made

Design and Art very close and Art was seen 

as a way to influence the way people lived.

By the 1920s the De Stijl movements and Bauhaus had moved abstract artwork into the mainstream and popularised it. They built Bauhaus furniture, built Bauhaus buildings and created fonts for printing. It was Art for a purpose.

To see more pieces of artwork in this journey take a look at this short video :

Italian Futurists and Digital Modernism

Futurism was a style of art that grew in the early part of the 20th century and was centred on Italy, especially Northern Italy. It used techniques of abstraction in the same way as the earlier Cubists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had done, but it added a sense of motion. The way that it did this was by repeating the examples of a static object - usually some kind of machinery - to create the illusion of motion.

Here is an example of Futurist Art.

Tullio Crali  -  Bombardamento Aereo (1937)

You will see that in this picture there is another element of Futurism and that is the militaristic focus. The movement was very much a standard bearer for Power - both the power of machinery in all its forms and for the power of the state in a military conflict.

Felippo Tomasso Marinetti - Factory

Ivo Pannaggi - Speeding Train

When studying this group's work in the 21st Century I wanted to created a form of Futurism that used the same stylistic components, but applying them to the very much changed new century. At first I concentrated on the way that current methods of creating images had changed what is possible in terms of the artworks created. For example how could the manipulation of images using Photoshop make a difference to what could be created ?

Futurist 1 by Peter Leech

This image used Photoshop to create what are now called Fractals - repeated patterns of an image to create a composite image that adds to the original basic shape. There is a lot more cynicism about the effects of War in this century and people are far more sceptical about the benefits of State Power. That element has now, therefore, been played down.

Here is a further example of this :-

Futurist 2  by Peter Leech

The second part of the development of this early 20th century style was to concentrate the focus more on the power of machinery. The most common and easily recognisable piece of machinery is probably the car. Whilst these were not unknown in the original Futurist period, applying modern digital techniques allows the artist to consider single elements in a vehicle rather than simply the overall shape. Individual panels can be selected and manipulated to form new shapes, still deriving from the original automobile part. Lights are probably the biggest single design feature of the differences between modern cars and these also can create a range of new dynamic shapes to build into a total piece of artwork.

Here are a few examples :-

Audi A1 Exhaust Pipe and rear Lights by Peter Leech

Futurist Mini Cooper S by Peter Leech

Mitsubishi Mirage Fish by Peter Leech

Mitsubishi Mirage  by Peter Leech

My plan is to extend this idea and build up a whole collection of Post Modern Futurist Images of the power of the modern automobile as a classic piece of technology. Watch out for more details.

Please feel free to write comments to the blog about the ideas and the images shown in the articles.

Mindfulness Through Modernist Art

Modernism is, by its very nature an abstract set of art styles. It does not try to recreate a realistic view of visual reality. This makes it very useful for Mindfulness.

Throwing yourself into creating a piece of Modernist art can focus your mind on the changing detail that you see as you create. You are forced into concentration on both the big picture and the tiny details. They are not simply visual recreations of what you see around you - they are abstract shapes and relationships that appear on the page. You become immersed in in colour and shape and placement of these shapes.

This does not restrict Mindfulness to those who create Modernist art. You can study a piece of this art to allow your mind to set aside thoughts of the past and worries of the future. Make the artwork the "here and now" to get your mind into thinking about the present. Many sources suggest watching a brightly coloured butterfly to achieve the same thing. Modernist art has the additional advantage that it is not a moving creature in its own environment. It does not allow your mind to start to think things such as " Does this mean more caterpillars on my plants ? "; "Why are there less butterflies this year than last ?"  and so on.

Instead of a colourful butterfly, try concentrating on this Modernist image. 

( A larger version of this image can be found here. This can be downloaded for free.)

• Start by breathing a little slower than you normally would. Feel the breath come into your body. Breath through your nose and feel the breath come in through the nostrils and leave the body on the out breath through the nose too.

• As you are doing this start to really look hard at the image above. Look carefully at the centre and then let your mind slowly move the attention to the next shapes moving out from the centre. All the time keep trying to feel the slow breathing inside your nostrils. 

• As you are studying the image try to think of the colours. How many different ones can you see ? Do the colours feel calming or exciting ? Then concentrate more on the lines. First of all try to identify all of the patterns based on straight lines. Do the colours clash with the lines or do they compliment them ? Are the curved lines more attractive to you than the straight lines ? Which colour is your favourite ? 

 

• Ask your self other questions that come into the mind as you study it. 

• When you feel that you can't get any more out of it just carry on breathing slowly through the nose, but slowly let your eyes closed so that you can only sense the breath coming in and out of your body through the nose. 

• Count the breaths in and out - 1 for in 2 for out, 3 for in 4 for out, and so on until you get to 10. Then count breaths down from 10 to 0. Open your eyes and get on with the rest of your day - feeling calmer and more relaxed.

Modernism and Mindfulness

What is Mindfulness really about ? 

What on Earth has it got to do with Modernism ?

These are questions that I have struggled with in the past. I have always had very stressful jobs and have had more than my share of personal issues to deal with. Not surprisingly this led me to seek a way to keep myself calm and positive when things start to get on top of me. I now realise that the majority of people could describe themselves in the same sort of terms, if not permanently then certainly at various points in their lives. I am not alone.

Now my problem was that I have never been the sort of person who had any time for New Worldly or Other Worldly ideas. I am not religious. I can only view Tai Chi as something for very slim young ladies. Meditation is for Samurai Warriors before eating their Snickers bars. I am, to say the least, very sceptical.

A couple of years ago things were really bad for me. Stress, depression and anxiety were totally ruling my life. I could feel myself sinking. I was desperate. So desperate that I took a serious look at what mindfulness was really all about. I had heard about it and the use of meditation techniques to create the sense of calm that I was after, but to be perfectly honest I remained totally sceptical. But nothing else had worked so I dug into it.

Essentially the messages that I found when reading about it and watching various videos was that it was less paranormal psychobabble and more science. Having done a lot of work professionally on the study of the Brain I found that I could relate to the scientific background to what it was trying to achieve quit easily. Because of this starting point I approached it from a purely scientific rational point of view.

For me the big problem was that I was always dwelling on things that have happened that I did not want to have happened. Everything that had gone wrong was a major crisis for me. Thinking about it constantly just made it worse. Yet there was NOTHING that I could do to change it. It had happened and that was that. What made it worse was the fact that as soon as I began to feel like this I spent ever more hours worrying about what I might be able to do in the future and what effects the event would have on the future. Often I couldn't plan anything to mitigate the situation and I felt even more helpless and worthless. I realised that most of my thinking was negative thoughts about the past and about possible future actions.

With Mindfulness I realised that actually at the vast majority of single points in time Nothing negative was actually happening to me. I was just eating, sleeping, breathing, walking just like everybody else. What I began to understand was that somehow I needed to find ways to concentrate on all of those millions of moments instead of those where I had no control at all. That is the power of Mindfulness - finding was to force yourself to think "In The Moment". It wasn't trying to "Think about Nothing" - it was deliberately trying to think about the Present moment.

So what has all of this to do with Digital Modernism ?

I have been involved in Digital editing and Design for decades now. From study of Mindfulness I realised that using your sense of vision is a good way to concentrate your mind on what you are seeing right now. By really focussing on what you see in front of you, it stops your brain from being hijacked by worries about what you have got to do in the future and what negative things have gone on in the past. 

Digital Modernism allows you to do this over quite long periods when you are putting a piece of digital artwork together. You are forced to concentrate on every detail of what you are creating. Your concentration is purely on what you are working on.

Now the key thing about the science of Mindfulness is that not only does it have an immediate effect of stopping you from worrying about things you can't control, but it also makes you use the parts of your brain that deal with more mundane functions of the brain - the managing of the messages coming from your senses to be processed in the brain. What you are feeling emotionally and physically. What you can smell and hear. Also what you can see. The longer you can place the emphasis on this, the longer you are stimulating that part of the brain rather than the problem solving areas. The more you use that part the stronger it gets and the more your mind can deal with disruptions and use the calm inducing areas that the brain has to deal with "In the Present".

And here is the result of persisting with this. I never find myself swearing at the screen when something doesn't work ; I do not suffer from road rage ; I notice when people are nice towards me ; My temper is under control ; Most of all I feel calm the majority of the time. I cannot say that none of these things happen - ever - but they are much, much less frequent and far less serious when they do.

I have more to say about Digital Modernism - particularly for those who simply want to use the outcomes of the art as a way to develop mindful calm. I will be starting to produce a number of videos over the coming weeks to demonstrate this.

Who Are The Suprematists ?

When I first came across the term "Suprematists" I had a vision of extreme right wing politically motivated activists. Even worse was the thought that they would also be involved in racism of the worst kind - Cross Burning, murdering fascists. But NO. That was not the case, thankfully.

Suprematism is the name given to a group of mostly Russian artists of the 20th Century. The interest in being supreme was merely to do with their Art. What they were interested in was developing the most "pure" form of art. For them pure art was that which was a reaction to the previous Western ideals of getting  closer to "reality" in their work. Realism was, to them, the antithesis of art. It was a distraction from the nature of expressive art. The ultimate expression of artistic supremacy was a work by the movement's founder, Kazimir Malevich, which consisted simply of a painted black square.

The nature of Suprematist Artwork was that it was abstract. It was a development of the Cubist Style but also contained influences from the Italian Futurist movement. It went further than Cubism in the sense that it abstracted even further from any hint of "realism". Instead it concentrated on basic shapes - rectangle, triangle, circle, square - and with block colors. 

Whilst the movement was essentially established by Kazimir Malevich, it was an artist who was influenced by the Suprematist style, El Lassitzki, who developed it and made it more acceptable to the mainstream Abstract movements. The style was also a big influence on Wassily Kandinski, who went on to influence the Bauhaus  and the De Stijl movements.