Page 29 - Studio International - March 1965

The Ossorio Collection

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war years young painters, perhaps prompted by Manet's skeins of poured paint that unfold across the surface
dictum, 'A painting is first of all a material surface of Lavender Mist could, conceivably, continue indefi­
covered with pigment', and certainly inspired by the nitely: only the limits of wall and ceiling arrest them.
example of Kandinsky, challenged the fundamental It is a graceful painting and a lyrical one, but beneath
conventions of painting-conventions sacred since the grace and lyricism is the tautness of spring steel.
the Renaissance. The illusion of deep space, however While Lavender Mist invites the eye to follow its
skilfully managed, is still an illusion basically false to trajectories, the monumental gray Clyfford Still forbids
the nature of painting. As a convention it is expendable. it. In this painting literal space becomes first a reality
Picasso had suggested and Kandinsky proved that and then an illusion; a reality because one's vision
fidelity to surface was not only possible, but extra­ encounters a wall, the textures of which define the
ordinarily effective in the making of pictures. Add to this limits to which one may penetrate; an illusion because
the possibility of a new convention: that a painting may one is then aware that, imaginatively at least, the two­
continue illusionistically, not into the third dimension dimensional possibilities are unlimited. No artist
but as a strictly two-dimensional object. Thus was America has produced so clearly defines the aims of his
born a fresh and radical new concept of easel painting. art and no artist has remained so impregnably true to
Pollock, I am convinced, was not the originator of this them. Still is unquestionably one of the titans of our
concept; Clyfford Still, working in the west, un­ age and the great Ossorio Still is among his major
doubtedly predated him as perhaps did others. But so works.
controversial were Pollock's means (the popular press Still, despite his immense range, has been resolute
dubbed him 'Jack the Dripper') that he became some­ in his aesthetic. Pollock, more restless, challenged in
thing of a rallying point for the new American art. The paint those ideas of which he was a pioneer. The power-
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