Polygyric Appearances - Robert Lohman, c. 1970

In Polygyric Appearances, Robert Lohman creates a visual world in which figures do not simply stand beside one another; they appear to develop from the same folded structure. The neurological meaning suggested by the title changes how the composition can be understood. Rather than viewing the work only as a gathering of distorted bodies, we can see its looping contours as a metaphor for the convoluted surface of the brain.

The cerebral cortex is defined by its repeated ridges and grooves, structures that allow a large amount of neural tissue to occupy a limited space. Lohman’s composition follows a similar visual logic. Forms are compressed, folded, and nested within one another. The figures occupy the sheet not through traditional perspective, but through a series of interlocking turns.

This does not mean that Lohman was necessarily attempting to illustrate a specific medical condition. There is no anatomical cross-section, clinical detail, or known artist statement establishing that intention. However, the word “polygyric” was already part of neurological vocabulary by 1970, and the resemblance between the title and the work’s folded visual structure is difficult to dismiss as accidental. The strongest interpretation is that Lohman draws upon the physical language of the brain and expands it into a psychological image.

The central figure offers the clearest example. It stands upright, supported by two long black legs that give it a surprisingly stable presence. Above those legs, however, the body becomes increasingly difficult to separate into recognizable parts. Rounded forms gather inside the torso, and several possible faces appear to turn in different directions.

One profile seems to look toward the right, its eye, nose, and mouth reduced to a few curling lines. Another smaller face appears beneath or within it. Additional shapes may be interpreted as folded arms, internal organs, or more bodies waiting to emerge. The figure seems less like one person than a container for several appearances.

The title makes that internal multiplicity especially meaningful. The central body can be seen as a mind whose external form contains several competing images. Thoughts, memories, personalities, and visual impressions gather within the same larger structure. Lohman does not separate them cleanly because consciousness itself rarely separates experience into perfectly isolated categories.

The body’s outline behaves almost like a cerebral fold. It curves outward, narrows, bends back into itself, and then releases another shape. Instead of using contour merely to describe anatomy, Lohman allows line to generate new anatomy. Each turn creates the possibility of another face or body. The two dark legs are therefore important. They anchor a form that might otherwise dissolve completely. They tell us that the central mass is still a figure, even as its identity becomes multiple. This balance between stability and transformation runs throughout the work.

The group at the left is even more deeply folded. Several profiles overlap without clear borders, creating a mass that resembles a continuous field rather than a collection of individuals. At the upper left, a large irregular shape contains two spiral-like forms. These may be eyes, ears, openings, or simply the ends of tightly curled contours. Below that form, another profile emerges from the same boundary. A crescent shape may be a mouth, cheek, or separate face. Still lower, smaller figures appear to curl into one another, their heads and limbs sharing the same outlines.

This visual sharing is one of the work’s most interesting qualities. A single line may function as the edge of one body and the interior fold of another. Lohman creates no clean division between identities. The figures are distinct enough to be noticed but too connected to be fully independent.

That relationship mirrors the structure suggested by the title. The folds of the brain remain part of one organ even as each ridge and groove creates a separate visible form. Likewise, Lohman’s figures appear separate only temporarily. Follow their contours far enough and they reconnect with the larger mass.

Some of the left-hand figures also possess animal-like features. A rounded head may resemble a muzzle, while another shape looks like a curled creature or embryonic body. This movement between human, animal, and abstract form gives the composition an almost evolutionary quality. It is as though the brain is not only producing thoughts, but generating the basic templates through which living forms are recognized.

The viewer becomes involved in that process. We instinctively search for faces because the human mind is highly sensitive to facial patterns. Lohman takes advantage of this tendency. He provides just enough information for recognition in a curve that resembles a nose or a dot that becomes an eye before redirecting the contour into another possibility.

The work is therefore not only about what appears on the paper. It is about what happens inside the viewer’s own mind while close looking. We repeatedly form an image, lose it, and create another. The drawing performs the restless activity of perception.

On the right, a solitary figure stands apart from the denser groups. It is surrounded by a stippled field that follows the edge of the body, giving the impression that it is either emerging from or dissolving into the surrounding atmosphere.

The figure is constructed from several large compartments. Its head and upper torso are loosely connected, while the lower body narrows into dangling or curling forms. These sections resemble lobes or mapped areas more than ordinary anatomy. The body looks assembled from distinct regions that still depend upon one another.

Its separation from the central group creates an important emotional tension. The figure may represent an identity that has detached itself from the larger mental field, or perhaps a thought that has moved far enough away to be recognized on its own. The empty paper between them becomes a kind of neurological or psychological distance too far for synapse.

This open space also prevents the composition from feeling uniformly crowded. It acts like a pause between clusters of activity. The brain does not appear as a single undifferentiated mass; it contains networks, separations, and areas of relative quiet. Lohman’s use of negative space gives the work a similar rhythm.

The dotted passages also contribute to the cerebral reading. They appear behind and around the figures like active fields of sensation. These marks could suggest electrical activity, tissue, particles, or the indistinct matter from which forms emerge. They are not connected into clear objects, but they make the blank paper feel alive.

Crosshatching provides another visual texture. Near the upper portion of the central figure, a dark checked form interrupts the smoother contours. Elsewhere, hatched passages appear along edges and interior folds. These dense areas resemble moments of concentration within the larger network, places where visual or mental activity has accumulated and is a motif that reoccurs in Lohman's work.

The work’s outer border contains this activity within a defined field. It may be read simply as a compositional frame, but it also gives the image the quality of a specimen, diagram, or contained mental space. Everything occurs within this rectangular boundary, as though the viewer is looking into a conceptual section of consciousness.

Despite this possible medical association, the drawing never feels cold or clinical. Lohman’s lines remain playful, imperfect, and deeply handmade. The figures possess humor and personality even when their anatomy is impossible. One seems to lean, another appears to listen, and another withdraws into itself. That humanity is essential as he shows how its physical folds might produce the emotional richness of human appearance. The neurological structure becomes a metaphor for the complexity of personality.

The plural word “Appearances” also deserves attention. Lohman does not title the work after a single figure or condition. He emphasizes the many things that can come into view. An appearance may be a visible body, a temporary impression, an imagined presence, or even something misleading.

Each figure in the drawing is an appearance in this broader sense. It arrives through perception but remains undefined. The forms do not possess one permanent identity because they depend upon the viewer’s attention. Shift the focus, and a different body emerges.

This instability may also reflect how the mind processes memory. Memories are not fixed images stored without change. They are reconstructed, layered with later experiences, and sometimes joined with other people or events. Lohman’s figures resemble such reconstructed memories: familiar enough to feel meaningful, but too folded together to be separated completely.

The date of 1970 gives the work an interesting place within Lohman’s catalog. It predates the more explicitly political anxiety of Surveillance and Watchers, where fragmented bodies respond to observation, secrecy, and institutional control. Here, bodily fragmentation feels less threatening and more exploratory.

The figures are not watching one another with fear. Their eyes are not multiplied into instruments of vigilance, and there are no obvious signals or mechanical devices. Instead, Lohman appears interested in how figures form within thought itself.

This distinction shows the flexibility of his visual language. The same techniques—distorted anatomy, overlapping profiles, interrupted contours, and shifting scale—could communicate very different ideas. In one context, fragmentation becomes paranoia. In Polygyric Appearances, it becomes the structure of consciousness.

Lohman’s background as a sculptor can also be felt in the composition. The figures are built from volumes and interlocking masses rather than simply outlined as flat silhouettes. The central body, in particular, feels as though it could be modeled in clay. Its rounded compartments press into one another like attached sculptural forms.

Yet drawing allows Lohman to achieve something sculpture cannot do as easily: a line can belong to several bodies at once. It can form the outside of one figure, enter another, and then return as a facial feature. That continuity makes the sheet especially suited to the neurological theme. The line behaves almost like a pathway. It carries the eye through a network of forms, connecting distant figures and redirecting recognition. In this way, the act of following the drawing begins to resemble the transmission of information through the brain.

There is also an automatic quality to Lohman’s mark-making. Some figures appear to have been discovered during the movement of the line rather than planned in advance. This gives the composition the feeling of thought occurring in real time. The forms seem to emerge through association. One curve suggests a face, that face creates a shoulder, and the shoulder becomes another body. The process resembles the way the mind moves from one image or memory to the next, often through connections that are difficult to explain logically.

Polygyric Appearances presents the mind as a place where forms continually emerge from other forms. Lohman’s figures behave like cerebral folds: separate but connected, visible yet never completely independent. Their bodies turn inward, divide, and produce new appearances.

The work becomes most powerful when viewed not as a puzzle with one correct solution, but as an image of consciousness itself. Every face leads to another face, every boundary opens into a new form, and every act of recognition reveals how actively the mind creates the world it believes it is merely observing.