Remarkably, several decades
later, Barnett Newman (1905-1970, an American immigrant of Jewish-Polish
decent) used the same basic colours as Mondriaan (and Kandinsky and Rochenko
did before Mondriaan) to make a
series of Very Large Works composed of adjacent monochrome geometric planes;
with the series Who is afraid of Red,
Yellow and Blue being one of the most famous. Barnett, like, Malevich
sought an art of the sublime. He wrote: “I hope that my painting has the impact
of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his
separateness, of his individuality.”
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Photo 10. Barnett Newman. Who is Afraid of
Red, Yellow and Blue.
One of a series of four large canvasses made during
1966-1970 |
Geometrical formal units were also later used
by Ad Reinhardt (working in squares of black and near black).
There are other strains (“styles”) of abstract expressionist
art, less rigid than the formalism in the Malevich vein and less amorphous as
abstract expressionism in its extreme variants. Of these the work of the
American Franz Kline and the originally Latvian Rothko needs to be mentioned.
Both artists tried, in a sense, to restore or simulate the “sign-function” of
their art by creating intriguing, evocative forms and surfaces.
 |
Photo 11. Franz Kline. Untitled. 1955,
painting.
|
Kline (1910-1962) painted mostly in black on
white, creating forms that are reminiscent of Japanese characters, Zen style if
you like, or, as in the above reproduction, forms suggestive of real life
scenes. In this painting you can “read” a human figure with arms stretched out
forward. Rothko’s paintings by their variegated surfaces seek to rouse the
interest of the viewer by perceptual means (for example see photo 5). Again,
and unlike the singularity of Malevich’s Black
Square, meanings are read into it differently by different folks; or even
differently by the same viewer at different times or occasions. So perhaps the
merit of art such as Rothko’s simply is that of “intriguing form,” leaving it
to the viewer’s mind to expand “intriguing form” to “meaningful form” in a
personal interpretation; or perhaps, simply to take the sensory sensation in “as
if music.”
Today, more than five decades after the
publication by Jacobson, there has been extensive exposure to the abstract art
he refers to; and the responses (bewilderment &c.) as they existed at the
time when these nonrepresentational works were first put on show in leading
galleries have ceased to exist. These works, and in particular those of the
leaders and pioneers of these styles, in time did not only assume significance
in an art historical sense but also acquired certain sorts of meaning; they are
now, at least for those exposed to them not lost in a void but included in
memory and have become irreversibly an element of the modern art discourse.
One manner, and perhaps the only one, by means
of which these apparently “meaningless” art works may acquire sense in the
viewer’s mind, is by seeing them as part of a series; as a member of what in semiotics
is call a syntagm. In phonic language a syntagm is an orderly sequence, e.g.,
as in the meaningful elements that constitute a sentence. In visual
communication the significant elements of a “visual statement” (e.g., a
painting) have a spatial rather than a time-sequential relation; but if you
present art works in a slide show you create a sequence of events in time, each
painting having a provisional sign function. It’s worth a try and easy to do.
Google Rothko up – he himself had noted the importance of seeing his work not
in isolation but as a series. Within a few minutes you start to grasp some of
his manner of working: you become aware of his style, the similarity or redundancy in his abstract oeuvre, its
patterning: the beginning of some sort of understanding. It may not do much for
you in terms of arriving at the pictorial semantics or meaning as Rothko intended but you get at least
a glimpse of the underlying sense of his work. Same for Pollock. His work at
first glance and in isolation seems to be dominated by random blots and drops
and splashes of paint. Seeing a number of these in sequence makes you realize
that the apparently random application of paint actually is guided, usually by
a skeleton like frame in white line or other colour; rendering perhaps some
credence to Pollock saying that “his paintings are a statement.”
Statements, in order to be intelligible, must
be properly structured in the medium of their construction and the statement
must be about something. And that is of course the tricky part: What IS Pollock
trying to say? Or is he just trying to invoke sensation and emotion, perhaps of
the sublime kind (as in Kandinsky, Malevich, or Barnett), or of deep human
emotions as in Rothko?
You may ask whether an informed art audience
today equipped with art historical hindsight succeeds in making sense out of
abstract art as individual art works (other than as momento mori of art
movements far removed from the present avant
garde). Today these monumental abstract works are a testimony of one of the
extreme possibilities in art: that of an image-presence without any reference
to objects in our external material reality; except to themselves as a
class of objects. As stated above, the producers of these works assigned
“meaning” to them in particular as embodiment of emotional sensation; however
these remained personal experiences rather than common responses.
The abstract arts, in its formalistic (Malevich,
Mondriaan, Newman, Reinhardt), organic (Rothko, Kline) and expressionistic
variants (Kandinsky, Pollock, Kline, Rothko, De Kooning, Cobra Group) have
continued to exist long after they were presented at the time as the frontier
of artistic innovation. Notably post WW II abstract expressionism appealed to
many painters often a generation following the pioneers, not only in the
Western art world but all over the globe. Many of these followers simply were
epigones, imitators attempting to ride on the success of the innovative
masters, others strived for their own variety or style with integrity. You may
ask how come an art style that received so little public appreciation continued
to exist long after its innovative impact had died out and was taken over by
other, equally fashionable trends or movements.
The answer I believe is twofold. First, Western
modern art as of the beginning of the previous century puts a premium on
innovation and originality – of any kind. Originality at times seems to be an
objective by itself. That accounts for the importance given art historically to
the pioneers/genuine innovators in the wider Western art world. It also
accounts for the senseless extravaganza that turned post WO II art into
controversy and disrepute. Kandinsky, prophetically, wrote over 100 years ago
(1977: 8):
In the search for method the artist
still goes further. Art becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to
artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work. For since the artist in such times [i.e.
materialistic, lacking spirituality] has
no need to say much, but only to be
notorious for some small originality and consequently [is] lauded by a small
group of patrons and connoisseurs (which incidentally is also a very profitable
business for him), there arise a crowd of gifted and skillful painters, so easy
does the conquest of art appear. In each artistic circle are thousands of such
artists, of whom the majority seek only for some new technical manner, and who
produce millions of works of art without enthusiasm, with cold hearts and souls
asleep.
No need to say that “this wild hunt for
notoriety,” as Kandinsky calls it, continues today and demonstrates an amazing
lack of direction by artists and art institutions alike.
Second, the importance of original art has
taken on a specific form by the economics of (modern) art. The work of the few
artists that made it to the limelight of the art scene and whose work has been
accepted and promoted by its major actors and institutions, the prestigious galleries,
museums, writers, critics, have for decades become collector’s items of great
value – we are talking about tens of millions of dollars for a single
painting. The producers of these paintings have become legendary figures and
their works, now enshrined in a mythology invented by gallery owners, curators
and art writers, have become an investment and a substantial one at that. Indeed these paintings can be compared to company shares whose value is determined by the stock exchange. It is
of great importance to those owning these works – private collectors,
galleries, large companies and art museums - that the monetary value of the art
they acquired is guaranteed and the merit of these works is not disputed.
* * *
Concluding Remarks
1. Several abstract artists emphasize the
importance abstract art may have as self-exploration or discovery for the
artist. Sure, naturally the creation of each work of art involves exploration
be it into one’s self or in any case in the limitless world of the imagination.
It is, however, presumptuous to assume that what is important for the artist (as
personal sensation, as experience, as psycho-therapy, as psychological trip) is
equally important to the viewer or the society at large and it simply is wrong
to assume that a viewer even when part of the same art world shall have
experiences in viewing similar to those of the creating artist.
2. All abstract artists insist on the primacy
of emotion and feeling in the experience in making their art. And these feeling
and emotions are the essence of their art. In the absence of “objective
representation or association” the origin of these emotions and feeling are
embedded in the very art work itself. When abstract art came into being,
roughly during 1910-15, this was innovative indeed; an original contribution by
the pioneering artists to the
development of art – and, again according to Kandinsky, that is the lasting
element of “the inner need” that should drive the true artist. Today, having
gone through this phase, the limitations of abstract art stand out more clearly
and these limitations are immanent in its very non-representativeness – or,
more precisely, its lack of figurative association (“mnestic appeal"). Today we
simply look at abstract art as one of the many modalities in which art can be
made; but I think few would hold on to its privileged “pure” position as
envisaged by Malevich and Kandinsky. The freedom the artist has gained is one
of choice, from hyper-realism, narrative, conceptual to abstract or any other manner
of art he or she might think of. More important than style is that art is
genuine, driven by the “inner need” of the artist honestly striving to make
imagery that makes sense not only to the artist but to the viewers as well.
3. The
introduction of abstract art indeed liberated the visual arts from its bond of
representing something outside or beyond itself; it opened up the road to pure pictorial
freedom – at a price. Art, as an autonomous domain of human activity, an
activity defining its functionality first and foremost in and by itself, almost
inevitably is for the happy, or perhaps not so happy, few; for an in-crowd but
no longer for the larger population. This in itself is nothing new, innovative
art generally is appreciated at first by an informed élite after which it
either dies out or broader circulated. What is new I think are the extravagant
happenings and presentations in galleries and museums “in the name of art” when
these events have no artistic merit and more aptly are labeled “the hunt for
notoriety,” Yves Klein’s female blues falling in the category, and the same
applied for a lot of pseudo abstract or conceptual art.
4. There is, in art writing, a confusing usage
of the terms/concept form and content; mostly expressed as form versus content. In this usage “form” is
that what we see and is objectified in the art work, “content” is that what the
art work is about. Form, so to speak, equals perception and content equals
ideas, meaning and “subject matter.” The question is whether this dichotomy
holds in art – as it does in language (language)
where form is the signifier and content or meaning the signified part of the linguistic
sign; the two components being inextricably combined into one. (Visual art in
this sense, is more like speech: the
way words are spoken adds another
layer of meaning concurrent with its verbal semantics). I don't want to go
into an obscure discussion of what “content” might mean when it comes to art but I
do want to say that in art “form” (meaning the manner in which an image is
formed, be that image purely abstract, imaginary, symbolic of a concept or
associated to material objects or scenes) always by itself constitutes an
aspect of content, a component of meaning. That is what is meant by the
autonomy of image formation. It is the internal visual logic that provides an
element of sense to abstract art – even if other associative mechanisms that render
meaning to art appear to be absent, subdued, ambiguous or dormant.
5. The idea that the artist provides a blue
print of what the viewer is to feel/experience/interpret as meaning is
abandoned, or at least is put between brackets, and is replaced by conceiving the art work open minded as a mental
space in which the signifying (of whatever kind) is done by the viewer. The
principle of “intuitive aesthetic recreation,” as Panofsky calls it (1983
: 38), can be left to the art
historian whose job it is to understand the art work as the artist intended and
to reconstruct how it was perceived at the time in the art world where it was
made and presented.
6. All
art in order to be appropriately experienced must turn on in the viewer what I
call the artistic mind set. The term is broader as related concepts like “the aesthetic attitude” or the intuitive aesthetic reconstruction of Panofsky
mentioned above. This is a specific mind set, different from ordinary pragmatic
application of our mental and motor faculties; in many ways this kind of mental
activity is similar to sitting down on top of a hill to take in with an open
mind the sight of the land around it. The artistic mind set in art hinges on
the visual experience, most directly visual perception itself, which by
association or reflection may engage/trigger off/turn on intellectual,
emotional, sensory or memory activity in the viewer; all of this in a highly
complex and intricate manner; partly conscious partially along sub-conscious
associative pathways of the human mind. A condition, for this to happen, is
that the right button is switched on. Such switching on is facilitated by
presenting the art work in a suitable environment (as an art exhibition), by
the obvious presentation of the art work as art (as by framing it), or by
information presented before or during the viewing session. But more
fundamentally: what the viewer sees must appeal, intrigue, or entice him or
her. A major concern of the artist is to “turn on the viewer” and as described
above, the major abstract artists attempted the same. The development of the artistic mind set, including a sense of the
aesthetic, in my understanding, is the universal mission and functionality of
art.
7. All art worthy of its name, be it a simple
sketch or a large elaborate composition, embodies a concept – or a combination
of concepts. These concepts are manifested in formal aspects as perceived or
perceptible: that is the arrangement of visual elements. These concepts can be
of many different kinds – be it the “realistically representation” of a
material object or event; a free rendering of such event or object to create a
specific mood or feeling; the recombination of naturalistic form in fantastic,
imaginary realities; giving form to feeling and emotion without associative
clues to “objective reality;” by isolating, selecting and combining actual
objects and presenting them as an artistic composition; by symbolizing certain
forms to stand for specific emotions, concepts or states; by focusing of the perceptual
intricacies of the work of art as a subject by itself; or by stressing
underlying messages conveyed to the viewer; by the demonstration of exceptional
technique – and so on.
8. Kandinsky rightly says that what I call here
conceptualisation in art is informed by the personality of the artist, the
environment (time/place) where he/she works and by the general development of
the arts – what today we call the artistic discourse. In Kandinsky all three
elements are an aspect of the inner need that drives the true artist; of these
three he attributed most importance to the third: the original, genuine and
therefore lasting contribution by an artist to the art of the world of which he/she
is part.
9. Combining conceptualization in art and ways
to do so (items 8 & 9 above) constitutes The Artistic Space – a virtual reality that constitutes one of the
essential domains of human life, a domain that combines in it visual creation,
perception and presentation with and about feeling, emotionality and symbolization; and
in doing so presents us with one of the instruments to make sense about our
world and ourselves. This visual domain, being non-verbal, compliments that
other great domain of our mental and practical life that is dominated by
language; the space of science, philosophy, thought and practices inextricably tied
up with verbal communication
10. The last line of the Conclusion in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1977:
57) reads: “We have before us the age of conscious creation, and this new
spirit in painting is going hand in hand with the spirit of thought towards an
epoch of great spiritual leaders.” I’m not so sure we have had many of these
great spiritual leaders in art since Kandinsky wrote this over one hundred years ago.
It appears that the notion of artists being spiritual leaders had little appeal
to the great artists of the 20th century – though Kandinsky himself
no doubt was one. His understanding of art as “conscious creation,” especially of
the complex art he called a composition, surely was not heeded by many artist
working in the abstract and expressionist abstract manner – many of them
thought conscious contemplation and reflection to interfere with the
spontaneity of “expression” they were after. Action painters, including
Jackson Pollock, had to design their concept “on-the-go,” so to speak, before
the paint dried up. Much of this work suffers from conceptual poverty,
including work that derived its initial merit from its fresh looks. Now many of
such looks are not so fresh anymore, the work has aged, what was a bright white
once now is a pale yellow, and often such material decay has been accelerated
by a total abuse or ignorance of art materials. There is an eternal truth that
says that the good artist must also be an artisan in his craft – without skill
there is no art (Gregory Bateson, (1973:117).
Note
References
Bateson,
Gregory. Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art. In: Steps to an Ecology of Mind. 1973.
Granada Publishing Ltd, Paladin book.
Jakobson, Roman.
1964. On Visual and Auditory Signs. In: Semiotica 11, p. 216-220.
Kandinsky, Wassily.
1977 (reprint of 1914 English original). Concerning
the Spiritual in Art. New York, Dover Publications Inc.
Panowsky, Erwin. 1983. Meaning in the Visual Arts. Peregrine book.
Stratton, Richard. Preface to the Dover
Edition. In: Concerning the Spiritual in Art. 1977. New York Dover Publication.
I have consulted the Wikipedia entries on Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko,
Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Piet Mondriaan, Willem de Kooning, Kazimir Malevich,
Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Kline. The Museum of Modern Art at New York (MOMA) published
on YouTube video’s demonstrating the painting techniques of most abstract
painters mentioned in this text. Google images provided the material for all the
visual illustrations – if you want to see more just do the regular searching
and you’ll be presented an entire library of abstract imagery.
