Attitude Map
An artist’s stance becomes Zensō (Pre-layer) / Kōsō (Post-layer)depending on how they choose to handle visual laws. This Attitude Map represents that stance.
- Adolph Gottlieb: The center as a symbol.[Kōsō : Symbolic Convergence]
- Kenneth Noland: Establishing the center as a starting point. [Kōsō : Structural Convergence]
- Josef Albers: The center is determined through the interaction of color. [Kōsō : Optical Convergence]
- Piet Mondrian: The center determined by composition. [Kōsō : Structural Convergence]
- Paul Klee / Joan Miró: Emergence as the birth of form. Zensō: Active / Not Converged]
- Robert Delaunay: Emergence generated by circular motion. [Zensō: Active / Not Converged]
- Frank Stella: Rejection of emergence; fixation of structure [Non-Generation Layer]
- Venetian School — Light continues to generate. Color continues to emerge.
- Pollock — The movement itself is the generation, continuing in the total absence of a center.
- Paul Cézanne: The suspension of judgment becomes emergence itself
- Hans Hofmann: Push and Pull.
- Post-war European Abstraction: Expansion of emergence without a center.
- Morris Louis: The direction of flow determines the structure.
- John Hoyland: Color planes that “reside”; lines that create direction without forming a center.
- Nicolas de Staël: The density of planes pushing out the structure.
- Bridget Riley: Visual motion causing the surface to shimmer.
- Henri Matisse: Equilibrium (Balance)
- Pierre Bonnard: Shimmering light filling the surface.
- Giotto — Narrative meaning dominates visual laws, forcing the field to converge.
- Flemish Painting — Details grow so intense with meaning that the entire screen is drawn toward and fixed by significance, before the gravity, direction, or tension of visual laws can even operate.
- Warhol — Repetition shifts the center of meaning, establishing the field of meaning itself.
- Barnett Newman: The tension of division (The Zip) creating the “Field.”
- Mondrian — The necessity of composition converges and stabilizes visual laws; the center emerges as a result.
- Lichtenstein — Mechanical structure (printing rules) fixes the field.
- Malevich — The zeroing of form.
- Reinhardt — Zeroing generation, meaning, and structure to converge the field.
- Stella — Rejects internal generation and establishes the field by fixing the structure from the outside. No wavering occurs. No breathing.
- Judd — Dimensions, materials, and placement are determined externally, so visual laws do not activate internally. No wavering of judgment. No conditions for a center to arise.
- Supports/Surfaces－Dismantles the support and the surface, destroying the very site of generation. The pictorial field does not form. The “site” where generative wavering could occur disappears.
- Mono-ha－ Prioritizes the mere presence of things; internal generation of visual laws does not occur. No center is born. No breathing..
- Fontana — Opens the canvas to produce an empty center. The void of the center is given through external action; internal generation does not occur. The center is not “born” but “assigned.”
- Viallat — Staining and irregularities are material phenomena, not internal generative wavering. The repeated form is externally determined. No center is born. Visual laws do not operate.
Ryuji Moriyama:Zensō (a center that does not fix the field)
The painting where the eye keeps swimming and traveling.
A state where the eye can never settle anywhere, and lights or shapes continuously demand the next judgment.
The painting where the eye is locked and frozen into a single spot (Convergence).
A state where the magnetic pull of structure or meaning is too strong, halting the gaze instantly.
The state where judgment never stops, continuously demanding the next choice.
The very action of the eye continuously feeling that “it is not yet settled.”
The spot where the eye is pulled first.
However, in the Zensō , it does not freeze the field; it generates movement.
A ： External Fixation by Meaning
“What is depicted” is too dominant, paralyzing the movement of the painting.
B ：External Fixation by Structure
The rules imposed from the outside by the artist are too dominant, paralyzing the movement of the painting.
A painter who finds stillness within generative wavering—delaying convergence and refusing to fix a center.
A painter who creates stillness through completed convergence—clarifying the center and stabilizing structure.