Problem: This paper argues for the inclusion of a cybernetic-constructivist approach to the art of painting and for an understanding of principles that coincide with constructivism that operate within the creation of paintings and other works of art. It argues that an understanding of cybernetic-constructivist principles improves creative practice rather than merely analyzes outcomes. Method: Written from the point of view of a longtime practitioner rather than from the point of view of an academic proponent of art theory or art history, the paper draws on insights of second-order cyberneticians whose principles help to understand what a painting is and to determine its status as an object among objects which communicates itself simultaneously as not-an-object. These principles form an outlook as they become enfolded in sensibility, and through this outlook, the problem of being a painter can be addressed, the range of invention can be apprehended and broadened, and creativity can be mindfully activated. It addresses how painting and explained and how painting can co-create meaning with a viewer. Results: It is proposed that inquiry into painting may be of value in teaching us more about constructivism, as paintings provide stable, manifest and accessible physical outcomes of constructivist praxis, and that an application of cybernetic and constructivist principles to painting can advance the understanding of painting. Implications: Understandings of painting as well as other art forms can be better understood through including a broad cybernetic perspective in examining painting as a process and as a medium through which conversation takes place between observers, These understandings may have value in improving creative effectiveness among viewers and producers of art works. These understandings may have value for practitioners of other creative enterprises, and have potential to expand understandings in art history and art theory by emancipating it from being in service as a cultural emblem.

Key words: Mannerism, impressionism, photorealism, plein air painting, style, sensibility, hallucination, Parmigianino, Raphael, Salvador Dali, Pierre Bonnard, Humberto Maturana, Gordon Pask, Giorgio Vasari, Jackson Pollock

About painting, cybernetics, and shared purpose, this article is partly a story, in part a memoir, an adventure in cybernetics, happening 30 years ago, in snow, in the small Swiss city of St. Gallen. A conference of the American Society for Cybernetics meets there. It is 1987. The author, a painter, searching for a new understanding of painting, encounters a convergence of the art of painting and the art of cybernetics through principles of second-order cybernetics in Pask, von Foerster and Maturana, dissolved in Kathleen Forsythe’s poetry. The form, as well as the content of this article, reflects cybernetics.

Key words: blue, conversation theory, cybernetics, gordon pask, harvey horowitz, journey to the east, kathleen forsythe, lavender, orange, painting, parable of the lost drachma, paul cezanne, penny colville, peter schjeldahl, pink, robert schoenholtz, salvador dali

Excerpt: We speak of self-organization whenever an operatively closed system uses its own operations to build structures that it can either reuse and change later on, or else dismiss and forget. Computers depend on external programming, although computer-generated programs may be developed eventually. By contrast, autopoietic systems produce their own structures and are capable of specifying their operations via these structures (structural determination). This mode of operation does not exclude causal environmental influences. Some of Munch’s paintings bear traces of water damage because they were left outdoors. While some people might consider this beautiful, no one would argue that the rain completed the painting. Nor would anyone try to prove the appropriateness of the rain’s decisions with regard to the altered formal structure of the painting. Rather, the impression is that a painting was not and could not have been painted in this manner. Self-organization owes its possibilities and its room for play to the differentiation of the system. Accordingly, art observes itself by means of the distinction between a reality “out there” and a fictional reality. The doubling of reality generates a medium of its own, in which the fixation of forms becomes not only possible but necessary, if the medium is to be reproduced. The opportunity and the need to do something go hand in hand. This conceptual model will guide the following analyses. In functional systems, we call the system’s basal structure – a structure that is produced and reproduced by the system’s operations – a code. In contrast to the concept of code in linguistics, we think here of a binary schematism that knows only two values and that excludes third values at the level of coding. A code must fulfill the following requirements: (1) it must correspond to the system’s function, which is to say, it must be able to translate the viewpoint of the function into a guiding difference; and (2) it must be complete in the sense of Spencer Brown’s definition, “Distinction is perfect continence,” rather than distinguishing just anything. The code must completely cover the functional domain for which the system is responsible. It must therefore (3) be selective with regard to the external world and (4) provide information within the system. (5) The code must be open to supplements (programs) that offer (and modify) criteria to determine which of the two code values is to be considered in any given case. (6) All of this is cast into the form of a preferential code, that is, into an asymmetrical form that requires a distinction between a positive and a negative value. The positive value can be used within the system; at the least, it promises a condensed probability of acceptance. The negative value serves as a value of reflection; it determines what kinds of program are most likely to fulfill the promise of meaning implied in the positive code value.

Excerpt: Everyone believes that artworks and other artifacts are constructed, i.e., made. With regard to artwork, artists are standardly credited with the feat of construction. By a constructivist, I mean someone who holds the view that artworks are constructed not merely by the artists, but also by other people who interpret these objects. This claim requires initial clarification because constructivists do not claim that interpretations add chapters to novels, lines to poems, notes to scores, or paint to canvasses. Interpretations do not create, add to, or alter the parts of artworks, though that is what artists need to do to make artworks. Typically, constructivists make one of two claims. One is that interpretations alter the properties (features, aspects) of artworks. To the fussy, this would suggest that the constructivist claim is a misnomer because literal construction requires the addition or alteration of parts. The alteration of properties is not enough to constitute construction; the passage of time alone alters the properties of objects without constructing them. I will ignore the fussy in what follows, assuming it would be accomplishment enough to show how interpretations alter the properties of artworks in interesting ways. The second claim made by some constructivists is that interpretation creates an(other) object that is the one that really gets interpreted. This claim obviously needs further clarification since this object is not, straightforwardly, another painting, poem, or musical piece. To the extent I am able, I will provide the clarification below (in sections i and iv). Constructivism holds no allure for me. However, I have in the past regarded this as a matter of temperament rather than argument. Hence, I have equally regarded it as a matter to be left alone. I know of no convincing constructivist arguments, but my assumption has been that attempts at refuting constructivism would be equally futile. Constructivists and their enemies have too little in common to really engage. I now think differently: that there are real objections to be put forward to constructivism. The purpose of what follows is to put forward such objections. I admit I may fail by importing too many anticonstructivist assumptions, but I have tried to guard against doing so.