What is Gesture in Abstract Art?
Defining gesture + its implications in generative art | Meatballs as brush tips.
Content:
What is “Gesture” in Abstract Art?
The concept of gesture can be vague. It’s a term that means different things depending on context and scope. A basic understanding of gesture will:
Help you make sense of abstract art.
Reveal hidden tendencies in your own art.
Allow you to be more intentional about every detail in your work.
Let’s break it down:
The simplest definition:
Gesture in abstract art is the physical movement, arrangement, or conceptual use of materials to express emotions, thoughts, or narratives.
The 3 Categories of Gesture
Technique
Technical gesture focuses on the physical or digital application of materials to convey movement, emotion, and other mental perceptions.
We are very sensitive to physical movements in our environment. We’re programmed to have an immediate visceral response to symbolic gestures such as when a person waves their arms, points at something, or moves their eyebrows. Other symbolic gestures are in the form of signs, lights, depth, and varied degrees of energetic movement.
This sensitivity to certain movements and symbols can be invoked in many ways through simply alluding to their formal essence.
Examples:
Color Application: Consider the symbolism of a stop sign. If you see a piece of art with a large blotch of red, this is an intentional gesture by the artist to create a sense of alarm, urgency, or intensity, drawing your attention to that area first.
Brushstrokes, Drips, and Splatters: Size, direction, and pressure are used to convey a sense of movement and emotion. A quick stroke will be thin in texture and tapered, creating a feeling of high energy, maybe excitement or violence. Splatters feel spontaneous and active. Drips can feel still.
Layering: Varying types and amounts of layers create a sense of depth and texture.
Abstract Shapes: Geometric shapes can capture the feel of real world structural objects without the need to use real representation or impressionism. Organic shapes can capture the feel of elements in nature.
Composition
The arrangement of materials on a canvas will naturally evoke physical forces like weight and gravity, and emotional responses such as tension or calmness.
Think of how you feel when you see something like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The first thing you experience is a feeling of tension. It feels unstable. Now image a white canvas with a thick red diagonal line from bottom to top at the same angle as the Tower of Pisa. You’ve just created a basic piece of abstract art with a gesture of instability and tension.
Conversely, think of the calmness of a sunset on a horizon. Now imagine a blue canvas with a black horizontal line across the center with a black half-circle sitting on top of the line at the center. If you saw this piece on a wall, you’d get sense of grounding, of rest.
Conceptual
A conceptual gesture is the artistic use of elements to convey deeper ideas, themes, or narratives.
Examples:
Symbolic Shapes, Colors, and Actions: There are certain types of movement, color, and shape that carry deeper meanings. Consider the color combinations of a nation’s flag.
Material: The use of specific materials to convey messages or concepts.
Spatial Arrangement: Placing elements on the canvas to allude to a social construct.
Text: Incorporating words or phrases to build meaningful imagery in the mind.
Contextual References: Using materials that relate to history, culture, or personal contexts to add depth.
Personal Narrative: At a higher level view, an artist with an established persona (think: Warhol) will inherently make a broad gesture with every new piece they release. Their work becomes a reflection of a personal narrative, embodying their perspective and ideologies. The moment you see one of their pieces, your thoughts are pointed to a basket of feelings and ideas before even looking at the details of the piece.
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I hope this makes the idea of gesture more understandable. It was something I was unclear about for the longest time. After some research and personal observation, I wanted to created a document that I can easily reference in the future. I hope you find it equally useful.
I invite you to see what types of gestures you can find in the piece below. A few that I can see:
The black strokes convey a feeling of haste and stress while their layering gives a sense of thickness. The connected aggregate of these strokes create a large singular structure. The composition of the structure is a gesture of tension and instability by the way it sort of hangs from the ceiling and tilts slightly to the left.
The spattering and smears of deep red allude to blood. A violent gesture.
The shape of written language alludes to a secret message, alas, illegible. A possible gesture of mystery and fear.
The Implications of Gesture in Generative Art
If gesture is the primary means of communication in traditional abstract art, then what can be said about its role in generative art?
In traditional art, the communicative quality of every line and movement are presumably intentional by the artist. Even when paint is flung across the canvas in random fashion, it is done as a purposeful gesture by the artist to show a physical movement.
Furthermore, the limitations of the human arm in its flinging of consciously chosen materials, combined with the fact that a human brain is controlling such movements, ultimately results in a fairly deliberate, not-so-random composition.
Everything that is made by direct human motion is a gesture that connects you to the emotion and movement of the artist.
Now consider an output from a long-form collection, or an AI piece created through prompts. When the final piece is a result of mostly randomized events, far removed from the human arm, what is the effect on the viewer?
Is all communication lost?
Are the placement of lines, movement, structural gravity, and other gestures ineffective?
It goes without saying that the pure visual effect is exactly the same. Whether deliberately made by the artist or not, the medium doesn’t change the perceived weight and attitude of shapes, colors, and “strokes”. Likewise, if an artist wants to mimic the visual impact of real paint through digital technique, it can be done convincingly.
The Shift
There is an intimacy in traditional abstract art in the way the hand meets the canvas. An artist has the opportunity to produce a complete work purely by intuitive movements that tell a story of the subconscious. A physical performance of the human body leaves an impression on the viewer.
The generative artist doesn’t have the luxury of intuitive touch, nor the opportunity for precision in the inherent randomness of long-form and prompting. The emphasis then lies in the use of broader gestural concepts and the manipulation of the ‘possibility space’ through written language, whether code-based or linguistic.
This shift redefines the creative process, focusing on ideation and conceptualization rather than physical touch.
An obvious implication is that this type of creator requires no physical technique. Their skill is solely in the realms of communication and problem solving. In the case of exploration through randomness, the art of curation becomes a higher priority for the artist to properly formulate and convey their message.
Many artist-types are drawn to the medium of abstract art due to its ability to communicate ideas and feelings when words are not enough. The medium can also act as a sanctuary for shy, introverted types who often lack in other forms of communication.
If generative art is a medium for able communicators, planners, and problem solvers (not to say these don’t exist in the traditional world, but that they’re the primary skill set in the latter), does this give rise to a new category of artist? If so, and if this different skill set opens the world of abstract art to a wider variety of personalities, likely opposite what we’ve seen until now, what does the evolution of gestural communication look like? How is the abstract paradigm expanded and redefined?
These questions will remain open-ended as we watch the evolution unfold.
An Exploration of Objects by c_y_d_n
c_y_d_n’s Medium article about his process for his Mementos series is inspiring for the reasons mentioned in the 𝕏 post below. It is also very relevant to the topic of gesture in a way that transcends the application of a “brush” to the question of the brush itself. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I really enjoyed your article! Thank you for sharing a look into what may very well be another type of artist - so interesting to think about.