Zensō (Pre-layer) and Kōsō (Post-layer) are concepts of my own creation, distinguished by how visual laws operate within a painting. They are not traditional art historical terms, but rather classifications based on the physical and perceptual operations of sight.
Visual laws represent the total force of the automatic operations of the eye—such as focus, figure-ground relationship, direction, convergence, stability, and gaze-leading—by which sight anticipates the world and imposes order upon it.
Art history can be remapped according to how these visual laws have been treated:
E.g., Egyptian art, Indian miniatures, Ukiyo-e, etc.
The surface is governed and determined by symbols, iconography, and stylized forms; visual laws remain unactivated. Outside Zensō (Pre-layer) and Kōsō (Post-layer)
E.g., Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio.
Visual laws are treated as absolute constants; the pictorial space achieves convergence, and the center is established. →The Prehistory of the Back Layer: Visual Laws as Stability
E.g., Titian, Tintoretto.
Light continues to be generated, the center weakens, and the pictorial space begins to fluctuate.
Here, for the first time, visual laws are treated as something that can be fundamentally shaken.
- The focus vanishes.
- The figure-ground relationship destabilizes.
- The gaze drifts.
- Judgment is suspended.
- Monet: The fluctuation of space
- Cézanne: The fluctuation of form
- Pollock: The generation of motion
- Rothko: The generation of light
A state where visual laws never achieve convergence and generation continues expands to engulf the entire surface.
Note: Because visual laws fluctuate and converge within the artist themselves, a single painter may move back and forth between Zensō (Pre-layer) and Kōsō (Post-layer) (e.g., Monet, Cézanne, Pollock).
Before the 19th century, visual laws were merely “utilized”—they were never destabilized. Visual laws were treated as absolute constants, and the image inevitably achieved convergence.
With Manet, however, visual laws were treated for the first time as something that could be fundamentally shaken.
- Visual laws are activated,
- Yet they never converge;
- Judgment remains suspended,
- And generation continues.
This specific state is Zensō (Pre-layer), and the late 19th century marks the exact moment in history where this layer was first established.