Sixth Cluster

Abstract

On the surface the four images constituting this small cluster do not look alike.¹ Enchanted Sicily is quite closely based on the photograph that served as its starting point and retains its natural space and recognizable objects; it seems to avoid all suggestion of stylized vision. Fruit Tree and Colors preserve much of the shape and rhythms of the persimmon leaf picture, while giving the surface a stylish consistency. Temple Cluster, on the other hand, transforms its flat, arid model into a bare suggestion of a lush, deep landscape with a flowing river. Granted, they are all three-dimensional to some degree, but that is not the quality our cluster analysis says they share.

The cluster consists of five images in fact, and meets the minimum size requirement for a solution based on five factors, as ours was. The fifth subject’s image is as close to the characteristics of cluster 4 as to this one, however; this ambiguity is best resolved by leaving him out of the discussion.

If we had opted for the minimum to be larger, forcing these five images into one of the other clusters, they would have all been assigned to cluster 3—another cluster composed mostly of artists. That one was characterized as bold in its approach and flowing in its process, underscoring the Flowing dimension as the one they all have in common. It seemed more meaningful, however, to attend to what sets these five artists apart from the others; these create formal images, while the others made loose, gestural ones. We believe that our choice was right in retrospect—except, as we say, for the marginal fifth subject.