Abstraction and medium

The New York Times posted photographs of terrific Lego art from artist Christoph Niemann, depicting slices of life and iconic aspects of New York.

What's striking and inspiring is how he uses the simple shapes and colors of Legos to evoke city life. It reminds us that art is the abstraction of ideas, emotions and sensory experience using mediums that are lower fidelity than sensory reality. Writers used words. Painters paint. Children -- and in this case an artist father -- Legos.

My favorite of Niemann's Lego art is the Lego man carrying the giant pepper grinder. Neimann could have made the grinder smaller - using single bump Legos for the body for instance - but he chose a grinder that's in ridiculous proportion to the man. The size of the grinder makes the art sublime by raising it from simple imitation of reality to the level of satire -- how pretentious are those huge restaurant salt shakers anyway!?

This quote from Picasso, an artist who took abstraction to a new level, seems appropriate here: "Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth."