How to appreciate a single line. 
 

There are two ways to escape an abstract design by a great painter – say, Paul Klee. One, pretend you understand everything about Mr. Klee and spend as much time in front of his cubes. Two, pretend you are a pundit who knows everything, still pretend you are a naïve country bum, and pretend you don’t know anything – which is as much as telling the truth. 

Funny, it is the abstract that elicits the loudest, strongest protests from people. How can something so incomprehensible so sweep people off their feet as to invoke hatred? Suddenly, it is a personal thing, like the existence of God. What happens here? 

Well, we can answer from our own heart, or we can turn to psychologists. From deep within, if you are a devotee of the abstract, you can say it is the basic design of the universe – the pattern on the fabric we all share. Those cubes we see in Paul’s work or the images that devour us in Dali’s paintings are suddenly married to our own sub conscious. Precisely where shrinks take over. Great seers like Jung and Rollo May had surmised that it’s a collective asset of the human race, these abstractions. Much like mathematics. Maths? 

Yes. Like a Zen Koan, we will have to learn to appreciate a single line before progressing to a full canvass. In fact it is the Japanese and the Chinese who do this famously. If they can create inspiring art with rocks and brush strokes, surely we all can learn to appreciate a single line… 

How does a single line look? Have you ever asked that? Everything has a character, even inanimate things. That’s why we call mountains and rivers by names. How do you describe a line? Is it a girl? A man? An uncle? Perhaps a stalker? Messiah? What name will you call it? How do you describe his or her personality? 

Or better, can you see its life? Like a tarot card reader or a palmist? What is this single line doing in a world of complexities? What will be its fate in a world where there are a lot of crooked lines? 

Use a little figure / ground gestalt here. What does the ground signify? In comparison with the ground, what is this line saying? Are all lines share the same fate of being limited by this canvass? Is infinity possible for a single line?

Questions, questions, manufacture them and feed them to our minds – let them come up with more koans, and revelations.