Equally dramatic events were occurring in the social, political and economic arenas, so that by the time Haydon reached college, one new world had burst forth, while another had come crashing down. So many fundamental preconceptions had been proven false, or at least dramatically altered. Haydon became deeply immersed in both physics and philosophy, reading works by Alfred North Whitehead, Sir Arthur S. Eddington, Sir James Jeans, Werner Heisenberg, and others, as well as psychology, art and aesthetics. He was particularly interested in the principle of indeterminacy, which he took from physics and applied to art and developed in a paper entitled "An Approach to the Unitary Analysis of Nature." The new physics demonstrated that all matter is seamless. There is no theoretical perfection, and no absolutes because there is no defined beginning or end in reality. Our view of reality, that objects have clear-cut, sharp edges, is just an illusion, a limitation of our minds. And, according to Haydon, because our minds have been restricted to the concept of a hard-edged world, they have also focused our language in the same manner.

...language is impregnated with the notions of the precise, absolute, ideal unitary analysis; conceptions of flux, indetermination, indefiniteness, are very rare and obviously, mainly derive from their opposites, determination, definiteness, etc. Consequently it is nearly impossible to give a direct description of indeterminate factors.

In physics, Werner Heisenberg had put the principle of indeterminacy forth in 1927. It says that "a particle may have position or it may have velocity but it cannot in any exact sense have both."7 In Haydon's words: "It was the 'position' of a moving object that first raised the question as to the validity of the assumptions of the precise unitary analysis of reality. There seemed no logical manner in which a body in motion could have a position and still move."8 Indeterminacy is an extremely esoteric concept, which deals with the infinitesimally small parts of atoms, and on first reading, is not immediately apparent as to its application in art. What Haydon did was to extend this principle, intended for the sub-microscopic world, into the macroscopic world. So, just as an atomic particle can never be precisely defined, Haydon argued that an exact definition or description of any object could never be reached. What we can measure is all that we can know, and no matter how precise our measurement, we can never reach a theoretical absolute because one does not exist.

Applied to art, Haydon was proposing a revision to our understanding of how art represents the world, as demonstrated by the new developments in physics, and to do that required an expanded use of language. Since ideas can only be as complex as the language used to describe them, the more complex language becomes, the more creative and varied the concepts it expresses. But beyond all the challenges of expanding the language of words, there is the language of visual art, and Haydon's binocular vision painting was his effort to expand the artist's visual vocabulary and open new levels of creativity.

The visual language of art, in Haydon's view, is just as or even more conventional than that of words. Art conventions in western civilization, such as perspective, are generations old, dutifully being passed down from master to student since it was formulated in the Renaissance. Not only are depictions of spatial conventions old, but time and motion are even more ancient conventions, going all the way back to our earliest images. Instead of depicting the blur of an object in motion, a runner is conventionally shown in mid stride, forever frozen in an instant of time. Haydon gives several examples of art conventions, many used to identify religious or mythical characters, while others are tied to art processes or techniques, but those that interested him most were the formal ones. On the conventions of art, he said:

"However free and irresponsible art may be in one sense, it is also the home of formalism, far more prone to convention than science because every line and melody is an arbitrary statement. Confusion, indefiniteness, haziness, obscurity make bad art; good art rests in clarity of structure, "significant form," "perfect expressiveness." Beauty resides in form, not formlessness. To introduce the idea of indeterminacy into the relations of art to the world would seem contradictory and impossible for art has insisted on treating nature formally, arbitrarily, deterministically. Yet significant results perhaps may be secured by attempting this seeming impossibility."

With difficulty, artists have been able to revise some conventions. Perspective, line, color, etc. began to be modified as time passed and the artist's individual viewpoint grew in importance. For instance, the Renaissance use of atmospheric perspective and even Giotto's use of blurred edges were significant departures. Haydon mentions, for example, that Velasquez intentionally blurred objects represented outside the point of focus, and the Impressionists used color and light to convey indefiniteness. Cezanne and Matisse were given as examples of artists who "consciously distorted forms to express their relations."10 Haydon's point was that change happened: "Progress in painting meant escape from old thought forms and renewal of viewpoints and attitudes toward the world. But this is a slow process since old thought forms and their influences are rarely obvious or easily detected."11 And more importantly to this discussion, they could only occur within the realm of current scientific knowledge about nature. As he would later say, "The philosophy of relativity, of probability, of flux and continuity, which has superseded the absolutism of an earlier day, has permeated all phases of contemporary life, including painting. The often noted tempo and speed of modern living naturally finds expression in art and quite obviously this art grows out of a range of experience unlike that of previous ages."

Haydon wrote several papers on the philosophy of science and the new physics and kept abreast of new developments in both. What is important in reviewing these interests is not to find an exact translation of modern physics into painting, but to realize how deeply he understood the subject and how central it was to his developing art theory. By the time Haydon was writing and formulating his artistic theories in the early 1930s, the first three decades of the 20th century had undergone dramatic changes. Notions of time, space and motion had been completely turned upside down, and he felt strongly that the dusty conventions of art could stand a good shaking. Cubism had investigated a new representation of space, but Haydon did not see modern art seeking a dramatically new approach to time and motion.

" ...the graphic arts have throughout given a rather inadequate and highly formal interpretation of time...a fourth dimension, time expressed in motion, has been neglected. Painting has treated motion in the extreme ideal manner, catching the moving world at an instant as if to substantiate the mathematical concept; seeking the feeling of movement and disregarding the fact."

Haydon sought a creative approach to the elements of time and motion. In doing so, he focused on two points of special interest, and they both had to do with the true effects of vision. One was binocular vision and the other was retinal afterimage. Each grew out of his fascination with discovering the true nature of the physical world. He had delved into the inscrutable world of the new physics, as well as the philosophical discussions that emerged from it, and became convinced that art needed to revise its representation of the world. Interestingly, with all of his studies of new scientific discoveries, the primary antecedent to Haydon's binocular vision painting came from Leonardo da Vinci's notes on the subject and his description of how our eyes use it to obtain stereoscopic depth. Unfortunately, in Haydon's view, "people continue to see the world from the "one-eyed" point of view, neglecting the doubling of images on the retina."

Harold Haydon was clearly an independent thinker. His interests were wide ranging, and he drew from this range of knowledge to create and support his own opinions rather than attach himself to another's. So well founded was his philosophy, that his belief in the binocular vision theory of composition remained consistent throughout his career. In a 1951 letter to Frank Holland, then art critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Haydon describes the potentialities of binocular vision composition in terms that relate even to his earliest work in this method of painting.

Although the use of a perspective space frame is quite conventional, I still think there is a vast new world to be explored that has been seen by comparatively few persons - the world of fully conscious vision with both eyes that contains doubled images for everything in the field of vision except those at the point or plane of focus. Indeed it is this neglected phenomenon that is responsible for our sensations of deep space in vision, as stereoscope and so-called "three-dimensional" photography show. I find the doubled and "seen-through" image most valuable, since in addition to creating depth, it is possible to enlarge greatly the number of objects in a given field of vision. The activity, repetition, and suggestion of movement that results seem most appropriate to our time.

Hockey

The earliest paintings that include the binocular vision form of composition and/or an illustration of retinal afterimage date from 1931. Hockey, (1931, 17 x 21", oil on canvas PA0431) is Haydon's first binocular vision painting. Here his focus is on the ice rink and attention is on the players who, by the way, are also portrayed using the retinal afterimage technique as he tries to convey the game's fast paced action. As his conscious focal point is on the rink, the other spectators within his field of vision are shown in varying degrees of image separation. The woman seated directly in front of him at the game is the closest object in his field of vision and is shown in the most dramatic binocular vision distortion. As he looks past her to the ice rink beyond, it is only where the line of sight of both his eyes intersect that we see a solid image of the back of her head. So, what would conventionally be a picture of an average sized woman's head, is compressed into a thin oval of a head on a pencil-like neck. On either side of her distorted head and pencil neck are the transparent halos of what each eye sees that is out of range of the other. As we look into the picture's depth, the spectators' heads that are closer to Haydon's point of focus, the ice rink, show the least amount of distortion.

The compositional challenge of illustrating binocular vision in a painting like Hockey, brings new life to what would otherwise be an ordinary image. And further, the color choices and compositional patterns used to represent the halos' transparency required keen observation and a good eye for color. But, what is also interesting about Hockey is that Haydon's technical ability in painting to this point had all been self-taught. He had been painting and drawing since childhood and had developed a style of realism that combined tight drawing in some parts of his canvases and looser, more impressionistic colorism in other parts. They were studied, yet still amateurish and contradictory, and it wasn't until the following year, 1932, that Haydon began formal art training at the School of the Art Institute. There, he learned traditional methods to resolve the contradictions of his earlier paintings, but by this time he had already discovered his own means of resolution in the form of the binocular vision technique. He already knew of course of the transparency effects in Cubist, Futurist and Synchromist/Orphist painting, and how they used design and color to represent those effects, but Haydon was not interested in duplicating their efforts or following their paths. Binocular vision was not only Haydon's compositional technique, it was the actual subject of his paintings.

In addition to binocular vision, Haydon briefly explored the concept of retinal afterimage as a means for incorporating "the fact" of motion. Although we see this effect captured in a few of Haydon's canvases, even as late as 1947, it was never as fully pursued as the binocular vision experience. Even so, there are some striking early works that use just the afterimage effect, such as Orpheum, (oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 37 1/2", PA0085) which was painted in 1931, the same year as Hockey. Throughout the history of art, objects and figures in motion have been represented in mid-stride or mid-flight, as if in stasis, giving the suggestion of movement but not incorporating the fact of what is really seen, which is that successive images of an object are implanted on the retina when the object moves across our field of vision. With Orpheum, in an otherwise static environment, we see a figure literally in mid-stride, but with the added detail of blur lines showing what we would actually see due to the retinal afterimage effect.

The Futurists had attempted to depict movement in their canvases using multiple images and "force lines" to convey the power and energy of motion and the dynamism of the contemporary mechanical age. Their efforts were far more grandiose than Haydon's, as they were tied to their social and political manifesto. Haydon's inspiration came from the scientific arena in that he was investigating a true phenomenon of nature and seeing if he could find a way to expand the artist's vocabulary to include this effect. The trouble is that depicting time and motion in paint on canvas is a narrow theme, and due to the limitations of the medium, the results are often not very satisfying. Compositionally it does not become interesting until it is taken to the level of the Futurists' work, and Haydon already knew he did not want to mimic them, even if his rationale was different; he was looking for something of his own. Expressing "the fact" of motion is an intellectually interesting and challenging puzzle, it was just not the best or most successful contribution he could make to painting. He was interested in motion in art, though, and found other ways later in his career to explore it.

Not only was enlarging upon the Futurists' theories not what Haydon intended for himself, it is also possible that his opinion of Futurism was influenced by Willard Huntington Wright's Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning, first published in 1915 and then again in 1930. Wright's book was one of the first, after the 1913 Armory Show, to interpret modern art. Wright's view of Futurism was that it focused on an irrelevant side of painting, and he went so far as to describe it as confusion, chaos and failure. Although today this book is seen for its highly individualized and sometimes incorrect interpretation of modern art, and by Haydon's time there were certainly many books written on modern art, it is interesting that Willard Wright's book was the only one on the subject that Haydon included in the bibliography of his 1932 paper, "An Approach to the Unitary Analysis of Nature," where he first discusses the binocular vision theory for painting. Wright's asserting the importance of art's aesthetic elements over that of subject matter or sentimentalism is what probably appealed most to Haydon. Like Wright, Haydon had been reading the aesthetics of Clive Bell and Roger Fry and was as familiar as Wright was with their formalist writings. While Wright embraced their views as he interpreted modern art for the reader, Haydon was attempting to supersede the formalists' position by acknowledging the preeminence of aesthetic elements and seeking ways to expand them. Also of likely significance, was Wright's explanation of the historical roots that formed the foundation of modern art, showing that modern art was not revolutionary but an evolutionary outgrowth of the 19th century. Called "a feisty, impassioned book in a period of impossibly dull criticism," Wright's appeal may have also stemmed from his insistence on an intellectual foundation to modern art. For example, Wright chided the Cubists for not developing a strong philosophical and scientific basis for their work, saying that they "...only dabbled in mental processes..." and that their explanations came after the art, something Haydon was quick to remedy in his own case.

The influence of Wright on Haydon's work seems to be limited to the fundamentals. There is no indication that Haydon subscribed to Wright's contention that Synchronism was the epitome of modern art. After all Willard Wright was Stanton McDonald Wright's brother and unabashedly promoted his brother's work. And further, Harold's father had taught him and his brothers "to be skeptical of received doctrine, to look behind the obvious for the evidence that supports or refutes it." The elder Haydon was no doubt referring to religious doctrine, but "art doctrine" can be equally formidable.

.:: family life and early education

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