Page 52 - Studio International - October 1969

Academy and the ICA shows can be usefully matter, is to relinquish as no longer in its own for the future of painting than does the small-
related. interest some of the most hallowed procedures ness of its present audience and this is the
The unbroken line traceable from the forma- and salient values of the modern tradition; to question of the processes of innovation that can
list tradition has secured some of the most turn its back on the revolutions, subversions, take place within a basically conservative
fruitful discoveries of Modern Art, including questions, progress and platitudes of this mode. If painting is not dead then it may
non-figurative painting, so it is not difficult to tradition while continuing to accept the con- become complacent, fossilised and superan-
see the attraction that extending this line fines of authenticity demarcated by the earlier nuated. If it is to avoid stagnation then it must
further beyond Reinhardt's statement had for formalist painters. continue to change, but the changes which
the art makers in the early sixties. But to con- The split between the discipline of painting occur cannot be conducted with the same
tinue the line beyond Reinhardt's position and 'Modern Art', though it did not take place iconoclastic verve as previously and the dialec-
meant to go beyond painting and the rejection as a single decisive event, does form an impor- tic involved will be milder, more constructive
of the equivocal quality in painting conferred tant landmark and reference point in the art than the present in Modern Art. The changes
on the formal elements of the art work literal- of this century. It has been the point at which will not amount to progress in the modernist
ness and objecthood. The path through pain- painting gradually switched from headlong sense. The history style formed by post-
ting to object has been the one taken by Judd, linearity to a cyclical track winding amongst Modern painting will be similar to that opera-
LeWitt and Robert Morris as the source, its own authentic issues. Painting has survived ting in pre-Modern art where ideas of
though not the goal, of their reductive the split but it has its problems. Chief of these supersession and obsolescence have little or no
aesthetic and from the static object with fixed is its audience. When it had its radical glamour, importance, so obviously a certain amount of
height and width relationships, itself the resi- painting could always count on the patronage adjustment of expectations must take place
due of rejection, rigidity too was eliminated of the avant garde which supported it through when confronting the new new. There is
and the determination of formal relationships its fight with the academies, the salons, the evidence of this type of change even within the
became prey to the vicissitudes of chance and insistors on realism, the objectors to women painting of the last few years. The strict eye-
the caprices of gravity. with two mouths, the objectors to paintings appeal of Stella, and later Noland's closed
The cause of radicalism has been well served with one colour. The literary English avant geometry is giving way to a revived interest in
by the continuance of rejective procedures and garde especially has turned its interest to a tactility and the material qualities of paint
the avant garde has had its work cut out acting gamut of activities in the visual arts and else- and colour.
as an envoy first for the monastic formalism of where and is apathetic towards painting's new The future of painting is fairly secure so long
the object-makers and then for the esoteric conservatism. The new audience has not yet as it can continue to attract both makers and
floppiness of the antiformalists. fully formed. But, though it is small in number patrons. The rumours of its demise are put
However with Reinhardt's historical niche and consists largely of the painters themselves, about by critics from within the modern
occupied, painters face a crisis. They cannot there is every sign that the new audience has a tradition and such judgements have no validity
eliminate the equivocal factor in their medium wider range of attitudes, is less conformist and when applied to an activity which has prized
and follow the object-makers into actuality, less homogeneous than the avant garde. The itself loose from this tradition. Painting is alive
for obvious reasons, nor does the indefinite new painting can be enjoyed, if not fully and well as, I hope, the Royal Academy
reiteration of Reinhardt's reductive ultima- appreciated, by those unwilling to accept the exhibition demonstrated and its obsequies
tum seem to offer a very bright prospect. social implications of subversive art and there have been prematurely written by those unable
Painting has reached the point where its only is reason to suppose that as painting continues to escape from the teleological perspective of
alternative to being engulfed by the advancing so the audience will become more numerous Modern Art.
tide of radicalism, apart from returning to the and more knowledgeable.
weak representation of controversial subject The other problem has deeper implications DAVID SWEET