The Scope of Existential Spatiality/Egzistencinio Erdviskumo Apimtys (Report)

Introduction: A Preliminary Note on Abstract Expressionism By the end of 1940s Willem de Kooning gave in his celebrated lecture "A Desperate View" a laconic formulation of what Abstract Expressionism is: It is the art whose only object is space. All things are fused in spatiality. The abstract artist tries to express his/her immersion in that spatiality, visualizing thereby the latter and the changes she/he may bring into play through the immersion. Short afterwards in another famous lecture entitled "What Abstract Art Means to Me" de Kooning displays his discontent with the "physicists' space". The artist declares that he is bored with this space. The optic lenses of science are so thick that when one is looking through them, one is seeing only a space that provokes a melancholy state of mind. The whole room that the artist needs--so de Kooning's confession goes--is formed by a simple procedure: When I extend my hands along the rest of my body, and put the question of where my fingers are I get the space I need as a painter and sculptor. It is body's dimensions and bodily actions that determine the relevant space. Abstract Expressionism provides a polymorphous "study" of the nexus corporeity-spatiality. To a certain extent, this style of modern art delineates what I am going to address in the present paper--the scope of existential spatiality.