Bob Kalivac Carroll — Apophatic Art Practice and Research

Disruption and Apophasis: Ineffability and the Object Conundrum in Nonobjective Abstract Visual Art

Disruption and apophasis reveal a confluence flowing through humanity’s ontological heart. This flow ultimately becomes a unity, much as confluent rivers flow into each other, which metaphor also signals river of art. On a personal note, while attracted to both apophatic and cataphatic orientations, what takes me deeper in visual art are forms of apophasis. This led me decades ago (several years in the sixties in New York with a library research job at Parsons School of Design) to studies of nonobjective abstract art. Artmaking in abstract imagery is apophatic through the very nature of abstraction. The central argument here is that nonobjective abstract art offers an apophatic rendering and thus an apophatic aesthetic. While some representative art may reflect apophatic elements or intentions, Michaelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, for example, appears cataphoric with it many stories from the Bible and the human hand of God extended to Adam. Apophasis says language is inadequate, too limited to presume one can unveil or directly participate in Ultimate Reality or Consciousness Itself. A famous remark by Ludwig Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, stated that “Where of one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Similarly, French artist Georges Braque said, “There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.” Disruption is related to apophasis, and sometimes a disruption that seems negative is not bad or evil, but nonetheless clearly disruptive or interfering with one’s ability to stay within ordinary awareness. Disruptions are endless in life and thus in art as well. In that context, encountering the Sublime is examined herein. Topics to be explored herein include apophasis and disruption, the object and the object conundrum, consciousness studies, silence, phenomenological renderings, nothingness, sacred geometry, spiritual teachers, and more. This multitopic theme centers on abstract visual art, emphasizing nonobjective abstraction.

Bob Carroll is known professionally by his nom de plume Bob Kalivac Carroll. Besides scholarly resources, Bob uses a variety of life experiences as resources. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, newspaper columnist, freelance writer, schoolteacher, truck and heavy equipment mechanic, prison teacher, welder, steelworker, librarian, copper refinery worker, bookseller, and woodcutter, among other professions. His background also includes several years as a sergeant in the U.S. Army paratroopers, 101st Airborne, several years as a boxer. He also spent five decades as a formal spiritual practitioner, including seven years of meditation and koan study with Rinzai Zen Buddhist master, Roshi Walter Nowick, and another 50 years as a member of The Way of the Heart, the community of practitioners who recognize and formally acknowledge spiritual adept, author, and artist Adi Da Samraj as their spiritual teacher. After earning a BA in literature at the State University of New York, Bob earned an MFA degree in art writing and an MA in Art Theory at the New College of California in San Francisco, and a PhD with IDSVA (Institute for Doctoral Studies of Visual Arts), an international program. He lives in Northern California.