Gestalt
Gestalt is a German word meaning “essence or shape of an entity’s complete form.” One wonders how the word might translate into our own language. It is a word of many complex meanings but they all have to do with how our mind perceives disparate visual stimuli and organize these into a single and whole interpretation.
The closest word the Maker can think of is “gets.” Not “gets” the way it is understood in ordinary English but “gets” the way Cebuanos use it in the streets. Is there a complex idea that requires a bit of effort to understand? One “gets” it when one understands. Who does not understand does not “gets.” Is there a joke being told? One “gets” it when one sees the humor and laughs. “Gets” is when the picture or idea forms itself in the mind in the moment or singularity of understanding.
In the 1920s a whole school of psychology was built on the study of the process of perception. They called themselves the Gestalt school of course. And one of the most beautiful ideas to have come out of this school of thought is that “the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.” It is not unexpected that this would be a concept around which artists and designers could build their practice.
All cars will have more or less the same elementary parts. But a Volkswagen Beetle gestalts into an entirely different picture of a car than a Toyota Corolla. You might say they have different meanings even though they are just cars having more or less the same practical purpose, which is to transport humans from one point of the planet to the next but we expect the experience of travel each will offer would be different. A chair is just a chair. Take two chairs offering more or less the same degree of comfort, which chair will have the greater chance of being bought? Surely the one that offers something beyond what all chairs offer. Most likely it will be the chair that gestalts into something more than a chair. The chair from which we can “gets” something more than just the sum of its parts.
The Gestalt psychologists proposed principles that may be applied in the perception especially of visual stimuli. The principle of similarity simply states that if you put a number of similar shapes alongside each other, humans will perceive a pattern from them. They will perceive this pattern even when these shapes are randomly placed. The mind provides the pattern even when it is not there. And so even the slightest suggestion of a pattern will be readily perceived and interpreted. There are other principles. There is continuation, closure, proximity, anomaly, etc. These are easy to google if you are inclined. But the wonder of it is how the human mind is so designed to look for something to understand and interpret from all the stimuli that surround it. And one should see as well the surprising quickness, sharpness and predictability of its capacity to gestalt or “gets.”
One does not have to be an artist to see if a portrait-drawing looks like the person being drawn. People see the degree of “likeness” whether or not they know how to draw. A drawing of a cube on a piece of paper has actually none of the elements of a cube. What we see in fact are parallelograms. And yet people will “see” the cube and differentiate it from a rectangular solid. A drawing is merely a mass of lines and shades on a piece of paper when ones looks at it up close. Yet as one moves a bit away the paper seems to disappear. The mind interprets the mass of lines and shades into a whole picture, a gestalt, having if it is a good drawing all the qualities of solid form, mass, volume and surface texture.
Any discussion of gestalt always brings a recollection of Martino Abellana’s watercolor paintings. One would think these watercolor paintings were finely detailed. But in truth the fine details are really few. Just a few leaves drawn here and there if he were making a painting of a whole tree. Indeed, a close inspection reveals that the sense of fine details is only an illusion. The mind of the viewer puts the details in, not the painting itself.
One does not need to draw anything completely, warts and all, to make a complete picture that people can “gets.” The really great artists draw just a few beautiful lines to describe anything. They use the fewest lines possible to bring about the moment of gestalt and understanding. But the few lines that they do are so designed for a particular moment in the act of viewing. The drawing is a picture that doesn’t move. But this does not mean it has no time. The good artist knows the act of viewing is not instantaneous. There is a predictable amount of time between the instant the viewer first views the artwork and the moment the viewer finally comes to an understanding of it. The good artist builds for this moment. The good artist knows that the moment of gestalt brings about a singular sense of pleasure in the viewer’s mind. To “gets” is joyful. It is the true magic of art.
