Page 26 - Studio International - April 1965

serves the evolving consciousness of mankind in the
total effort to establish a human world in the midst of an
indifferent universe.
Let us now contemplate the forces that threaten art's
integrity: the modes of disintegration which I shall re-
view under the categories of incoherence, insensitivity,
brutality and privacy.
The whole of the modern movement is sometimes
accused of incoherence, but such criticism generally
confuses incoherence with a very different quality,
informality. Incoherence is the failure to reach, or a
deliberate disregard of, integrity of form. Incoherence is
chaos.
Informality, by which we generally mean irregularity
of form, is not necessarily chaotic. Nature is full of
organic forms that are superficially irregular. It may be
that every form in nature—and there is no reason why
we should confine our observations to organic forms—
can be explained as the result of an interaction of forces,
electro-magnetic or cosmic, that are measurable or pre-
dictable, but to the human eye, aided or not by the
microscope, many of the structures of matter have an
informal character. Such structures appeal to our
aesthetic sensibility for reasons which we cannot
explain—they fascinate us. Obvious examples are
cumulus clouds in a clear sky; stains on walls; patterns
of lichen on trees; irregular rock formations, especially
those eroded by wind or sea-water. But there are
myriads of such irregular forms in nature and many of
these for some mysterious reason we find fascinating.
The modern artist can create forms that are irregular
in this sense and of similar attractiveness. The move-
ment known as Abstract Expressionism is devoted to
the exploration of this realm of irregular form, and there
is no doubt that the individual artist can endow such
forms with style and vitality. Their deeper significance
is not to be excluded : they may be archetypal forms,
corresponding to some psychic syndrome in the artist's
mind. If that syndrome is personal, it may elicit in the
spectator nothing more than curiosity or sympathy,
which are hardly aesthetic feelings. But if we can
accept Jung's hypothesis of a collective unconscious
such archetypal forms may be of universal significance.
It is difficult to explain the extremes of informality (for
example, some of the paintings of American artists like
scientific scepticism has been able to deprive us of this De Kooning, Sam Francis, Jackson Pollock, Franz
necessary word to indicate powers or processes so far Kline, etc.) on any other supposition. Even if they record
inaccessible to scientific observation. There is always no more than the graph of a gesture, the gesture, in so
in a work of art this intangible, indefinable element to far as it is not aimless and therefore incoherent, is pre-
which it owes its vitality, its magical power to enhance sumably significant: the calligraph records a state of
life, and an artist's possession of this transforming mind.
power is his style. Incoherence is meaningless: it is the disruption of all
All great periods of art are vital in this sense and all significant relationships, and corresponds to the debris
individual works of art in such periods possess style. It is left by an earthquake. There are contemporary artists
only in decadent and academic periods that the vitality who do not hesitate to expose the debris of a mental
of art is sacrificed to rules and formulas ; only in such disturbance that corresponds to an earthquake. Such a
periods that individuality and eccentricity are despised. formal disintegration is usually accompanied by another
The modern movement in art has been an immense threat to art's integrity: lack of style, or insensitivity.
effort that has now lasted for more than a century to Style, as Goethe once observed, belongs to the
restore to art its vital function, to make art once more an deepest foundations of personality. It is a visible
organic mode of perception and communication. record of the encounter that takes place in the psyche
1 Delacroix, Courbet, Constable, Turner, Degas, Cézanne, between spirit and matter, and it tells us to what extent,
Jasper Johns
Large Target Construction 1964 Matisse, Picasso, Gabo, Moore—these are some of the in this arena, spirit has been able to shape matter to meet
Encaustic and collage on canvas
with plastic casts 51 x 44 in. representative artists who gradually redeemed art from its own need for externalisation or expression. As
Private Collection, New York its academic sterility and made it once more an expres- individuals thrown into society we are compelled
2
Andy Warhol sion of man's expanding apprehension of reality. to communicate with one another, not merely for
'Campbell's' 1964 Such is art's integrity: an unrelenting concentration on mutual aid in the struggle for survival, but for self-
Painted wood 10x 19 x 9 1/2 in.
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York formal unity, on stylistic vitality, to the end that art assurance, indeed, for self-awareness. We become
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