An essay for "Complex Curves and Plastic Shapes"

Three German philosophers, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, all grappled with the concept of aestheticism. At odds on other philosophical fronts, the three men converged on a similar vision of the symbolic meaning of art as an image of the essence of the world. Schelling viewed art as the “revelation of the harmony of the infinite and finite which shows us the essence and ground of all finite appearances.” Hegel saw the beauty in the arts as the “sensuous appearance of the idea” and Schopenhauer viewed artworks as “objectifications of the Will.” These metaphysical, even mystical, theories maintain that artworks are symbols representing a unity between the infinite and finite, the subjective and objective, or the idea and its appearance. The philosopher Max Rieser characterizes this as the Romantic theory of art, parts of which are echoed by nearly every artist we have covered this quarter.

In Carvings and Drawings, Barbara Hepworth writes that when the inside and outside of a form “are in special accord, as for instance a nut in its shell,” her attention is drawn to the effect of light which “reveals the harmony of the inside to the outside.” Georges Vantongerloo, too, is concerned with the infinite and the finite when he explains in Problems in Art that a work of art may “release and embrace the infinite, the incommensurable, by means of a non-objective finite.” In the essays Katarzyna Kobro wrote with her fellow artist and husband Władysław Strzemiński before the outbreak of WWII, she developed the theory of Unism, which insists that sculpture ought to be united with the fundamental laws of space despite the inherent nature of its materiality to “exist for itself and treat its interior space as something completely different from the exterior space.” To resolve this apparent paradox, Kobro, as we will later see, also invokes the harmonization of open and closed space. Hepworth, Vantongerloo and Kobro appear to attribute to works of art a similar romantic significance as the German philosophers had done.

Yet, in all these artists’ writings, there is a separate mode of thought paralleling contemporary philosophy, in which the artwork and more to the point, its method of projection, is not necessarily prescribed as a poetic symbol of metaphysical unity. Rather, under what Rieser characterizes as the Semantic theory of art, the artwork is construed as a symbol within a linguistic system. Where the Romantic theory of art has deep roots in the philosophy of aesthetics, the Semantic theory is tied to the philosophy of linguistics. It is within this context that Hepworth, Vantongerloo and Kobro develop the notion of a sculptural language. In fact, the arc of their work and writing in the world of art seems to follow the progression of prefiguring linguistic developments, specifically Ferdinand de Saussure’s “signifier-signified” model and his exploration of how meaning is generated through language.

Beyond superficial similarities, if a deeper homology were to exist between linguistic and sculptural semantics then some set of their constituent parts would be analogous. Regarding the most basic part, the semanticist Susanne K. Langer argues that “visual forms—lines, colors, proportions, etc.—are just as capable of articulation, i.e. of complex combination, as words.” This statement, that visual forms are sculptural analogs of words insofar as they convey meaning, seems trivial. Yet they only convey meaning working in concert, and with that addition, the answer to “what is the sculptural analog of a word?” effectively implicates a sculptural grammar, immediately posing quite a few big, new questions.

What is the sculptural analog of grammar? According to Langer, “the laws of this sort of articulation are altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language.” If that is the case, which laws govern visual articulation? Are they analogous to their linguistic counterparts or of a species unto themselves? If, on the other hand, the semanticists Charles W. Morris and Abraham Kaplan are to be believed, then the laws of syntax governing language do govern visual articulation. In that case, other questions spring to mind. If there is such a thing as a grammatically incorrect sentence, can there be grammatically incorrect sculptures? Since visual forms, unlike words read in a row, do not typically benefit from temporal spacing, would every possible ordering of a sculpture’s visual forms need to follow its grammar or just one possible sequence? No matter which theory you follow, the fact remains that in answering the original question many more have been raised, At this stage, we might reasonably doubt whether the strategy of searching for analogs is constructive considering it seems impossible to satisfactorily answer one question before spawning a branch with many more. However, the very phenomenon of repeated branching hints at the possibility of declaring sculptural and linguistic semantics homologous by induction. It may be impossible to point at a single analog and show homology directly, but the fact that we can keep stepping from one point of similarity to the next through examination might prove it indirectly. The rigor of a proof is even overshooting the mark; the question is not whether a sculpture is like language, but whether it is helpful to think of the way sculpture conveys meaning in terms of linguistic semantics. The following is therefore more of an inductive thought experiment than a full-blown proof.

In a typical proof by induction, the base case is established where the statement is proven for one isolated case ($n=N$, where $N$ is any natural number). The second case, or inductive step, assumes that if the statement holds for any given case ($n=k$), then it must hold for the following ($n=k+1$). The two together prove the statement for all cases ($n>=N$). In the mathematical proof, the sequence is defined as incrementing by one (+1) at every step. To better understand how to order the questions we want to ask of a sculptural language, it would be helpful to know what is incrementing when one question follows from another. As a starting point, we can drag the playback one step earlier and look at how the Romantic aesthetics put forth by Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer transmute into Semantic theories of art for Hepworth, Vantongerloo and Kobro. Albeit from different angles, they all grapple with Romanticism through the harmonization of the infinite with the finite. This common, metaphysical thread reaches its most mystical in Vantongerloo’s writings and yet perhaps because of this more extreme position, his is the clearest explanation of the connection between the Romantic and the Semantic:

Does the artist not wish to express his sense of the incommensurable? Does the spectator not wish, through the intermediary of a work of art, to feel the incommensurable? The means and the pretext for approaching it [are] a subject. Primitive peoples had recourse to fetishes. After this stage was superseded, the subject became mythological then religious. Through the development of science, the subject assumes a character of observation, comparison, reflection.

Starting with the impulse to express and feel the “incommensurable,” he lays out a rough sketch of art history that culminates in the impact of scientific development in contemporary art. What it means for an artwork to have the “character of observation” is far less obvious and while Vantongerloo provides some clarity in the rest of his essay, it is perhaps easier to get at his meaning by tracking science as the agent that imparts this quality to the art product. In The Semantic Theory of Art in America, Rieser points out that the Semantic theory offers at least one methodological advantage over the older metaphysical theories because it approaches art in an empirical and scientific manner. The older metaphysical theories are general conceptions. By contrast, the semantic theories benefit from a greater level of empiricism by dealing with the materiality of the art product, which is something the German philosophers neglected. If it seems out of place for science to be the incrementing “step” in our inductive though experiment, Friedrich Schlegel, another German Romanticist, foreshadowed it: “the Romantic imperative demands [that] all nature and science should become art [and] art should become nature and science.”

The history of science also supports this claim. In the early 20^(th) century, at or slightly before the time in which Hepworth, Vantongerloo and Kobro were producing their art, the scientific world made some leaps the likes of which have arguably not been seen since. Kobro named Einstein, who made the most giant leaps, as the progenitor of Dimensionism, which sought to provide symbolic representations of the newfound physical realities. While that art movement was greatly influenced by Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, the science referred to here as an incrementing step is not based solely on scientific content. In her essay titled “Functionalism,” Kobro outlines the three laws which to her mind govern the scientific process: 1) the division of work, 2) concentration and segregation (used interchangeably) and 3) harmony. Although they “require some changes with respect to [their] articulation,” Kobro argues these same laws govern the language of artwork and claims the way to translate them into the world of art is to decompose human action into “several elements or moments” corresponding “to a set of plastic shapes, which govern that particular action.” To make some sense of this, both the content and mechanism of the changes transforming the laws’ articulation need to be unpacked.

Apart from some references to a vague notion of “numerical expression,” Kobro never explicitly refers to Einstein’s theories in this essay. It may very well be that she was writing to a contemporary audience who would have tacitly understood the connection, but either way, Einstein’s theories lend the inscrutable quote above some legibility. A seemingly innocuous detail in Kobro’s argument is introduced when she claims that despite undergoing a translation in articulation, the laws governing art and science are one and the same. This detail deserves attention because, with direct relevance to our thought experiment, it changes the flavor of what it means for something to be analogous or homologous.

Whereas before we might have said that a human’s arm and a seal’s flipper are homologous because they are positioned similarly with respect to the spine and have certain analogous bone structures, now we can say they are homologous because from outer space they look the same. Although they may seem at odds, neither reason contradicts the other; they belong to the perspective (“reference frame” in physics-talk) in which they are given. The first postulate of Einstein’s theory of special relativity states that the laws of physics are identical in all inertial reference frames. Although she never explicitly calls science or art a reference frame, if we read that into Kobro’s writing then more clarity follows from the second postulate, which states that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers regardless of inertia. Einstein derived the Lorentz transformations, which are at the core of special relativity, from the two postulates of relativity and light-speed invariance. The Galilean transformations of classical mechanics were replaced by these transformations implying that space and time could no longer be defined separately because they exist together in a single spacetime continuum.

That unification, or at least a desire for it, is echoed in Kobro’s theory of Unism. Like Einstein, she derives her transformations from two postulates: the relativity of science and art and the constancy of human action. Regarding Einstein’s relativity, at first glance, light seems an improbable bridge between space and time. For a theory which was based on a radical centering of the observer, its effects (time dilation, relativity of simultaneity, length contraction, etc.) are initially completely counterintuitive because the speed of light is so much greater than what humans normally experience. In Kobro’s theory, which also radically reconsiders the observer’s relationship to the subject, it is neither clear what human action has to do with plastic shapes nor how this relationship shares any similarity with the scientific process. The consequences of her theory also share the same intuitional hurdles as Einstein’s; numerical expression seems to have as little to do with art as harmony does with the scientific process. While tracing these loose strands back to the original postulates does not necessarily make these things any more intuitive, it does at least make them understandable. At the core of her theory, the point on which Kobro’s whole derivation pivots, is the observation that both science and art are done by humans for humans. Afterall, it is almost always the case that science and art serve to uncover a piece of the universe that was already there (e.g. gravity or natural beauty). What scientific discoveries and works of art do is concentrate pre-existing laws, phenomena, entities, etc. into conduits through which we humans can newly interact with pieces of the universal puzzle. That is Saussure’s “signifier-signified” model by another name. As with language, these conduits need not necessarily involve an external audience although they often do. Just as we form unspoken thoughts with words, humans often create art and conduct experiments solely for their own edification.

Under Kobro’s transformations, the law of the division of work gets translated through geometric form. “A straight line,” she writes, “marks the shortest way to a production result. Which is why the way of proceeding from one action to another must be along the straight line and its corresponding geometrical shape.” Infused throughout Kobro’s essay is always her agenda of creating art with a “socially useful form.” To that end, she argues that sculpture should become a “laboratory experiment into methods of resolving space…using the possibilities offered by contemporary art, science, and technology. It should reflect the supra-individual organization of society.” The supra-individual organization of society acknowledges that societies are complex systems where patterns emerge from the interactions of individuals institutions, cultures, and various other elements. It implies that the functioning of society is the sum of individual actions plus those emergent properties that arise from collective interactions. By calling for sculpture, which is some mix of human action, art, and science, to reflect the society of which it is a part, Kobro establishes a positive feedback loop between sculpture and emergent societal properties. With respect to sculpture, the functional utility of human action is the driver that sets the loop in motion.

Through this lens, we can see Kobro’s transformation of the law of concentration/segregation more clearly. She argues that “human actions are rendered most productive after we have regarded each action separately and have abstracted from it some specific distinguishing elements.” Essentially, the means and ends of production are self-similar: the most productive means are those whose end is made in accordance with the means themselves. Put yet another way, in Kobro’s words, “the more rigorous the selection of characteristic elements, the greater the production result.” Under Kobro’s transformation this scientific law of concentration translates into art as the principle of contrasting forms. With the reference frame shifted, different components now comprise the feedback loop, but it still behaves the same way. Whereas before the subject was sculpture as a notion, the components included human action, science and art, and the emergent properties are societal, now the subject is a single sculpture, the components are its geometrical forms, and the emergent properties are visual. Just as the rigorous selection of characteristics in human action, science, and art lead to greater emergent properties in society, the considered contrast between geometrical forms leads to greater emergent properties of the sculpture. The law of concentration provides the sum of individual components. It is then the third law, harmony, that furnishes the emergent properties which make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Under Kobro’s construction, to pass harmoniously from one activity to another “all activities must correspond to the same numerical expression which defines the activity’s dimensions.” While Kobro never explains what this “numerical expression” is, by tying it in with harmony she does elucidate its function. Notice the pattern between means and ends on the societal scale and activities and dimension within this zoomed-in context of human action. It suggests that Kobro’s view of the supra-individual organization of society is fractal; as long as a given component can be further decomposed, the pattern of constituent parts reflecting their whole is exhibited at increasingly smaller scales. Society is not the only whole greater than its parts, each one of its parts also benefits from the emergent properties of its own subcomponents. Harmony, according to Kobro, is the set of rules which regulates the combination of individual parts at any given scale, but because the numerical expression binds components across all scales “in a common spatial-temporal rhythm,” the rules of harmony extend across all scales. Spatial-temporal rhythm, harmony abstracted by numerical expression, is an “a priori definition of the harmonious manner in which one set merges with another.” This is what Kobro names as the “plastic equivalent of the law of harmony applying to individual sections.” With the first transformation (division of work), second transformation (concentration and segregation), and third, transformation (harmony) established, Kobro has laid the basis for her sculptural language.

Geometric form and the principle of contrast, the first two laws governing her language, act in the same way the division of work and principle of concentration constitute analysis within the scientific process. Taken together, the first two laws can be seen as forming a sculptural vocabulary in her work. As the third law of harmony constitutes synthesis within the scientific process, spatial-temporal rhythm governs the interaction between the words comprising the sculptural lexicon. This rhythm in spacetime informs a sculptural grammar.

According to the art historian Yves Alain Bois, the inventiveness of Kobro’s work lies in the two methods she used to “prevent her sculptures being perceived as figures—two methods based on an extreme syntactic disjunctiveness.” This last phrase, “syntactic disjunctiveness” is interesting because it at once acknowledges the sculpture as containing or adhering to a linguistic code while simultaneously throwing the legibility of that code into question. The first method Bois identifies is the use of polychromy to destroy “optical unity.” Kobro wrote that “because space is not directly graspable,” her aim was to make it “palpable and plastic by breaking up its continuity and dividing it, partially closing some of it off.” To keep the sculpture exclusively in conversation with space, Kobro uses harshly contrasting colors to avoid chromatic unities that would read as separate and therefore distracting to the viewer. These considerations, which concern the legibility of space and the legibility of the sculpture itself, expose the problems that arise from applying the “signifier-signified” model to art.

There are two fundamental questions at play here, one relates to how the sculptural language is formed, the other to how it gets conveyed. In much of Kobro’s work the vocabulary comes across very strongly. For example, the coloring of the curved and orthogonal planes in Spatial Composition Number 4 exploits contrast to elevate the geometrical forms which make up the sculpture’s vocabulary. This is in clear, strong accord with the governing body of laws Kobro constructed for her sculptural language. The grammatical structure underlying the combination of these distinct sculptural words gives rise to two mutually opposing potentialities. In Kobro’s work, since no elevation resembles the next, viewers are forced to move around the sculpture. This mobilization of time is what Bois highlights as the second method of syntactic disjunction. The problem that is beginning to form is well encapsulated in this passage co-written by Strzemiński and Kobro:

Sculpture does not possess this kind of a priori natural limit. There are no predetermined boundaries that exist before the sculpture is even made, no natural restrictions. According to its natural law, sculpture should not close off limits it does not possess, that would isolate it from the rest of space and close down its mass, but should connect with all of space, with infinite space.

Here, there seems to be a contradiction of terms. If there exists a shared numerical expression that relates individual actions to a spatial-temporal rhythm, it is, by Kobro’s own definition, an “a priori definition of the harmonious manner in which one [word] merges with another.” Kobro even describes the numerical expression as binding human actions to the spatial-temporal rhythm of the sculpture which would certainly imply some natural limitations. The very presence of a grammar, in other words, implies limits that would make it seem incompatible with “infinite space.” Therefore, if sculpture possesses no natural restrictions and grammar, by definition, restricts the combination of component parts, how can sculptures possess grammar? Could there be a sculptural language without a grammar? Langer, Morris and Abraham give some interesting insight into this line of questioning, but before we turn to them it will be helpful to push this problem a little further. At the end of his essay, “Kobro and Strzemiński Revisited,” Bois suggests that this contradiction comes about because Strzemiński and Kobro clung to the principle of unity which “pulled their work back into the orbit of metaphysics at the very moment they believed they had escaped from it.”

There is a different read of the situation which may nevertheless yield the same result. In the Strzemiński-Kobro quote stating that sculpture has no a priori limit and the Kobro quote that discusses the a priori definition of a spatiotemporal harmony, there may be two different sets of grammar at play. Perhaps there is a grammar governing the combination of the visual forms in the sculpture and a separate grammar governing the spatiotemporal interaction between the viewer and the art product. If the latter were to impose natural limits (i.e. instruct how the sculpture is read) the legibility of the sculptural language would increase. So long as the former grammatical structure remained limitless, the mode-hop between these two grammars would, at least in theory, successfully “render space visible” through the medium of a visual, formal semantic code. In her writings, Kobro makes no explicit indication that such a “limitless grammar” exists, and the jury is still out on that question when you ask the semanticists. If we knew more about this opaque “numerical expression,” we might have a better idea of Kobro’s stance, but no further information was found on that subject. Yet, if the art product were the locus of a mode-hop between two grammars, this would serve as some indication that it was, as Bois argued, the principle of unity which pulled Kobro back into the sphere of metaphysics; a mode-hop would deny that the sculpture inhabits the same space as the viewer which is, fundamentally, what Unism seeks to allow.

As previously hinted at, the semantic theorists are split on the issue of grammar. Langer views art as a special form of cognition apart from the “discursive symbolic mode” we see in science. Art instead falls within a “presentational symbolic mode.” She contends that while “we admit only discursive symbolism as the bearer of ideas, ‘thought’ in this restricted sense…begins and ends with language” but she believes that in the physical, space-time world of our experience “there are things which do not fit the grammatical scheme of expression.” Confusingly, despite admitting that visual forms are “just as capable of…complex combination as words” she claims that while every language has a vocabulary and a syntax these non-linguistic forms have neither. According to Langer, art nevertheless carries conceptual content symbolically. Because visual forms are non-discursive, the laws that govern their articulation are “altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language.” These visual forms are what she dubs “unconsummated symbols” that do not present themselves successively but rather simultaneously. They appeal to “our purely sensory appreciation of…non-discursive symbolism, peculiarly well-adapted to the expression of ideas that defy linguistic ‘projection.’” Hers is a black-box theory in that the presentational mode becomes a catchall for everything that defies linguistic expression. This is what Morris, and his disciple Abraham, take issue with. Morris regards different art forms as unequivocal languages. He sees “no compelling reason for not regarding the arts as languages, dependent in part upon spoken language (so that works of art often become interpersonal post-language symbols).” In what is admittedly an oversimplification of both their theories, Morris differs from Langer primarily in where he decides to introduce a duality. Langer frontloads the split between language and visual form in her dualistic concept of discourse, denying the applicability of grammar to the combination of visual forms. Morris on the other hand affirms that art is organized as and therefore behaves the same way language might: “the icons of sound or pictorial representation form a vocabulary of signs which are combined “grammatically” according to the style of the artist.” Kaplan, far from settling the dispute, raises further questions. He rejects the “dualistic concept of discourse" by saying that it does not differentiate between the “mode in which a sign signifies the ‘use’ to which a sign is put.” In other words, the symbolism in science focuses primarily on the content of the assertion. In the arts, however, the analogous semantic structure instead focuses on the way in which the content is made, its form. Kaplan asks if a work of art is a sign, what is it a sign of? Where is the locus of artistic value? In the sign or elsewhere? Georges Vantongerloo, the Belgian sculptor, painter and founder of the De Stijl group, handles these latter questions more directly.

Compared to Kobro, Vantongerloo is, at least explicitly, far less focused on the issue of language. In Problems in Art, he makes the claim that “one can reason about objects” which hints that they might contain their own logical structure. What Vantongerloo grapples with primarily in his writing and his artwork is the question of creation. He claims that it is equally possible to reason about the laws governing the creation of the relations between objects, constructing a loose conception of a vocabulary and an organizing grammar. These laws are capable of engendering an object, but the resultant object is one that defies “the rules of measurement employed by man in order to make [it].” This represents Vantongerloo’s own sort of Gestalt process. In many of his works, he employs a pseudo-mathematical, geometric set of rules and these parts create a whole which is inconsistent with the original set of rules. In the two images below, the geometrical grammar Vantongerloo employs is made evident in his sketches for the sculpture and the painting respectively. Vantongerloo sketched multiple elevations of his sculpture (only one of which is included below) but the oval is a common feature from all sides as a sort of regulating shape. It is possible that the use of the oval is somewhat akin to Kobro’s numerical expression both in the sense that it is a mathematical, geometrical construct and in the sense that it is present in the sculpture only indirectly. The oval seems to be the relational structure informing the regulating lines that more directly interact with the object, setting the placement of the corners for the blocks that make up its vocabulary.

As the viewer, of course, if we were to encounter this sculpture in a museum setting the oval and its regulating lines are not legible which raises the question of private vs. public language. If the sculptural language used in and for the creation of an object is almost deliberately obfuscated, what purpose does it end up serving? Whether Vantongerloo intentionally tried to obfuscate the oval is another issue for another time, but it is worth mentioning that what appear to be straightforward geometrical constructions are not self-consistent. Look, for example at the four corners in the sketch above, the distance separating the two lines at the bottom left corner is not the same as the other three. In the following sketch for a painting, this apparent bending of the rules occurs even more flagrantly.

Here, arcs seem to inform the placement of the three lines and three curves on the canvas, yet the uppermost curve diverges from what would seem to be its defining arc near the left edge of image and the bottommost line does not appear to correspond to any arc-intersections as the other two do. Why go to the effort of drawing all those circles if you don’t actually use them?

Barbara Hepworth’s work raises questions equally as rich as Vantongerloo and Kobro, however, as many of these questions overlap and have already been brought to the table, I will focus on what is uniquely highlighted in Hepworth’s writing, drawings, and work. Of the three artists investigated in this paper Hepworth puts the greatest focus on the issue of materiality. In Carvings and Drawings, she recounts that after a chance encounter with an Italian master carver she immediately decided that “it was not dominance which one had to attain over material, but an understanding, almost a kind of persuasion, and above all greater co-ordination between head and hand.” Without the added notion of persuasion, this sentiment would be almost trivial; but because persuasion hints, as Vantongerloo’s reasoning-about-object did, at a deeper logical structure, the desire to understand the material can be recast in terms of a sculptural language. The development of a greater coordination between head and hand then takes on the connotation of learning and using the language.

The focus on materiality reopens the question of two or more grammars being present in the artwork at one time. In Hepworth’s own words, one of these grammars would appear to come directly from the materiality of the sculpture, an intrinsic grammar. At the same time, she explains clearly that the “color in the concavities plunged [her] into the depth of water, caves, or shadows…the strings were the tension [she] felt between [herself] and the sea, the wind or the hills,” implying a grammar that comes from without. If they coexist, there certainly seems to be a potential disconnect between grammar that is intrinsic and that which is imposed. The artist may understand how an object’s materiality aligns with its externalized grammar, the connection between concavities and deep water or tensioned string and longing. As with Vantongerloo’s oval, this is a private language no viewer could understand.

In a more conceptual, less geometric manner than Vantongerloo, the relationship between Hepworth’s sculpture and drawing points to a potential mode-hop between the artist’s language and their work’s. Hepworth made sculptural drawings that were more than guiding sketches; they were finished works of art unto themselves, sometimes made after the associated sculpture. The fact that her two-dimensional drawings correspond to three-dimensional sculptures presents a new edge case to Kobro’s supra-individual organization. The crux of the Kobro’s analysis was on harmonizing across magnifying scales and at first glance, a drawing in two-dimensions would seem to be a smaller scale (lower dimensional) representation of its sculpture. However, Hepworth would likely disagree that one is the subcomponent of the other. They may share the same imposed grammar, possess analogous vocabularies, and have what Kobro would call a “common numerical expression,” but because of the significance Hepworth attributes to materiality, the grammar intrinsic to a drawing necessarily gives rise to a very different language than that of a sculpture. They cannot be equated under any transformation of scale, yet they are nevertheless linked. How can that be?

Kobro’s positive feedback loop and Vantongerloo’s subversion of self-imposed rules are two remarkably different ways for the sculpture, in Kobro’s case, and for the artist, in Vantongerloo’s, to reference their governing code. By contrast, Hepworth’s governing code is a moving target. Using the example above, she does not concern herself with justifying the connection between strings and the tension she feels between herself and the sea. She instead uses different codes, be they extrinsic, sculptural materiality or two-dimensional materiality, to get at the core of her meaning. Hepworth wrote that “every shadow cast by the sun from an ever-varying angle reveals the harmony of the inside to outside.” It is in this sense that her drawings and sculptures can be different but linked; they are synonyms, lights that cast a shadow at different angles.

Regarding our inductive thought experiment, one clear benefit to thinking about art in linguistic terms is that linguistics can be distanced from its usual subject. It is easier to accept that an artwork conveys meaning beyond what the artist intended than to accept the same of a writer’s work. Linguistic notions must shift in accordance. For example, a synonym in art is less a different way to saying the same thing and more a different route through which to let the universe speak the same meaning. We might once again ask why the Romantic and Semantic modes of symbolism both feature in these artists’ writing. Even Kobro, who crusaded against Romanticism (or the “Baroque way of thinking” as she and Strzemiński called it) could not, as Bois points out, entirely rid herself of it. Thinking about philosophy, art and science in linear, evolutionary terms precludes the possibility of pluralism as it sees one theory superseding the next. These different theories might instead be different shadows cast by an ever-varying sun.