| Summary: | This study offers a comparative investigation into selected figurative and nonfigurative,
monochromatic (and mainly monochromatic) artworks by Ad Reinhardt,
Ultimate Painting nr 39 (1963), Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu (IKB 3) (1956) and
The thin red line (1970) by Douglas Portway. The aim of this research is to examine
the possible subjective, meaningful function of the seemingly objective artworks. The
selected artworks represent the formalist tendency of the high-Modernist conception
of art-as-art, or the artwork as an autonomous objective object. At first sight the
objective artworks seem to refute the subjective intentions of the artists who present
them as both an externalisation of subjective experience and as possibly meaningful
to the viewer. The investigation into the possible subjectively meaningful artworks is
guided by an Existential approach to the aesthetic experience, as proposed by
Nietzche’s Dionysian and Apollonian concepts as well as Sartre’s conceptualisation
of néantisation and the imagination respectively. Both philosophers describe
aesthetic experience as a meeting between both subjective and objective elements
of their philosophy. The experience of the aesthetic (in the artworks) ultimately leads
to a subjective space within which the seemingly objective artworks function as a
subjective platform on which the Existential search for meaning can be considered
(and possibly relieved). === MA (History of Art), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014
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