Intermediate abstractions.

In art we have tended to focus on the most abstract of abstractions. I want to look at a subject that is slightly less abstract (and all the more fertile for being so).

At least this is inherited from the Modern Movement. And it seems that we accept these notions of the abstract, in so far as we still differentiate between abstract and representational art, as if abstract and representational were complete and mutually exclusive categories. The sculpture words for form include "mass, volume, void, surface, shape, texture, light and dark, etc." The thing about these words is that they are irreducible (except maybe to form) and they cannot get any more inclusive without becoming ineffective (referring to nothing or way too much). All things have mass or volume or a surface but not all things have a tip. And all tips can be discussed using these very abstract terms. These form words are useful... are needed to learn about sculpture, both seeing and making, but it seems hard to think new thoughts using these concepts and at this moment they seem restrictive, as if to use them is to think through and about the Modern Movement... or the tradition. "Tips", then are less abstract than the usual terms for form... (I guess that is one of the prerequisites that the abstraction, intermediate or not, must be a potentially formal category) but still abstract. Clearly more abstract than chair or stamen or knife or finial. (A different kind of abstract than "sharp" or "dull" because it is not qualitative, those are words that describe qualities... a tip can have any quality). More abstract than "box" but possibly equivalently abstract as "container". Lots of disparate items can be contained in the word "container" - a box, a cabinet, a vase, a refrigerator, a hard drive, a planter, a shell. And this seems different than another kind of abstraction which includes things of a similar nature - architecture, for instance... a dense and hetoerogenous category, for sure, but focusing on the built environment. Whereas "tips" brings together "stamens" and "corvettes", "bottletops" and "brains". The trick when searching for an "intermediate abstraction" is that it be satisfyingly abstract and suggestively specific and more than anything to bring together things that do not normally get thought in the same thought. "Tips" would be a much less interesting area of exploration if it only led us to consider "towers" and "penises" _____ and ____ but by bringing together "tusks" and "coathooks", "fingers" and "serifs", "arabesques" and "beaks" we do not know what thoughts we might come up with. Yet it is not an arbitrary combination, they all are "tipped". And so "tips" are an intermediate abstraction... on a spectrum quite abstract but not the most abstract of abstractions. Now that I think of it there is something visceral about the concept - to say the word "tip" is to conjer an image, is to feel a physical sensation, unlike mass or volume or plane.

What are other examples of "intermediate abstractions"? Aside from container. "Handle" seems too specific, "indentation" works but I feel I am searching too hard (tip is a common word and a common concept, easily grasped), perhaps a "wrinkle", a "fold", a "joint" (no...), a "corner" (that is getting close)... "Cracks" might be an interesting category... but will have fewer heterogenous connections than "tips".

The "tip" is less abstract, though, than "inside" and "outside".

Also refreshing is that "intermediate abstractions" do not seem to be part of a discipline. Who studies "tips"? No one particular field would focus on them for their tipness. Needless to point out, though, that there is a trend to think along these lines - Phillips with tickling, the book on miniatures, etc. So I am not alone.