Making the Familiar Strange

A useful way of bridging the chasm between representation and abstraction is to use the art Universal  "make the familiar strange". One of the best (and perhaps overused) examples of this is Picasso's Bull Series (1946), and Lichtenstein's send-up done in 1973 (above). An example of the reverse of that process would be the borrowing of elements from science-fiction and letting them inspire the creative process. Either way, it makes the final product less strange and more familiar, and more interesting for generating new ideas, as it resolves misunderstandings of "strange". This has also been used in music since Varese (and perhaps much earlier), who introduced "strange" procedures in music composition.

"Making the familiar strange" will have its own variations in the future, as it is now an established Universal.