Page 17 - Studio International - September 1965

Editorial

Are the days of abstract art numbered? Sir John must have been apparent to any one of discriminating
Rothenstein. a former Director of the Tate Gallery who intelligence, namely, that the good is good in any
therefore speaks with a wealth of experience behind context and that figurative art is bad usually because
him. has publicly declared himself as believing that of its dissipation of pictorial motives across a canvas
this is so. for two reasons: one. that human beings that tries to be too many things to too many people
demanded that art should make some communication at once. whereas abstract art is generally a concentra­
about themselves and the human condition generally; tion of means upon one wave length. as it were. and
and two, that abstract art appeared to rest on the flimsy if it fails upon this selection it fails on all counts.
philosophical assumption that there was some true The 'flimsy· philosophical assumption to which
reality behind appearance which only the artist could Rothenstein refers is no less than the truth. The
portray. 'reality' behind 'appearance· is something that only the
There are. however. more than two reasons for artist can reveal; he does not 'portray' it. Turner did not
believing that Sir John is wrong and the first of them is portray nature in his scenes of clouds and seas. so much
paradoxically enough the same reason that he cites so as identify its essence in the form of paint and colour;
confidently, namely, human nature. Not, it must be by his very abstraction of nature he set the course of
said. the human nature of the patron. the museum many modern artists in whom it is easy to spot parallels
trustee, the collector. whom it is assumed the eminent from Kandinsky to Jackson Pollock. neither of whom
speaker was considering. For this nebulous person. it is safe to say would have been offended by the com­
this largely non-existent being, exerts only a passive parison. The idea that all art begins from a drawing of
influence on the art of our time in the sense that no a given scene is so outdated that even the landscapists
really outstanding artist in the world is listening to his of the bigger artists' societies would seem to be losing
wishes. his ideas. his expressed taste. Artists are the their confidence in it.
deciding factor in art. now and always; if art changes Probably the greatest figurative painter in the world
it is because artists change. None who was of any today is Francis Bacon and it is a fact that his great
account ever delivered a good painting or a sculpture popularity with young painters everywhere is not
as a result of a specification given him by a patron because of his basic figurative qualities but because he
except in the sense of a general theme in an area to uses paint in a fashion that is fully personal and
be covered by paint or in an architectural setting to be expressive. But Bacon is inimitable as van Gogh is
filled by a sculpture. inimitable. as Munch was inimitable. These artists
And the signs of the times as they can be read. though painted as they did not because they believed the
Sir John might differ, are that artists far from becoming human race was demanding that they should reflect its
bored with abstract art are developing into channels fascination with itself but because they had to tell
that leave conventional materials and formats far themselves what they saw and felt about life through
behind. Kinetics is a field of activity that in the past few the medium of paint. Art is a soliloquy. the spectator is
years has gained enormous ground; one gallery in an eavesdropper-and his fascination is fortuitous.
London alone is almost exclusively devoted to it. Far from the days of abstract art being numbered,
Optical art with derivations from patterns that owe it is just possible that abstract art is beginning to break
more than a little to the designs of Art Nouveau is not through the resistance it has endured for roughly fifty
a spent force; having had its popularity in London and years. Abstract expressionism with its excesses has
New York. it has yet to gain support in Paris and Milan passed its peak in the U.S.A. and the newer abstractions
where it inevitably will. Pop art is not really a mature of artists such as Frank Stella. Ellsworthy Kelly and
flowering that can be hailed as a return to realism. others are not assuming to find a reality behind
In Sir John Rothenstein's speech to the audience of appearance but to create reality itself with a new
an English-Speaking Union course at Oxford. he appearance. What the artist today is creating above all
maintained that human beings were too fascinated by is not a representation of appearance but something
themselves. their lives and the world to be indefinitely with an appearance that is of itself. of paint. of canvas.
satisfied by an art that could not make any precise and as such assuming an identity that is not allusive.
communication about these enthralling subjects. But If history teaches us anything it is to try to avoid the
confusion could here arise from the acceptance of art succession of events that have created history; for
as a static vehicle of expression. It is a commonplace human history in general is the remembrance book of
that the most modern art of all is in the cinema and for misfortune. Artists today, replete with art history, see
the human beings who require the satisfaction that staleness in expired mannerisms-this explains today's
Sir John Rothenstein describes a visit to a cinema could 'personalisms· that the artist himself will change for
provide it. But the existence of the cinema has by itself himself tomorrow and thus achieve rebirth by suicide.
removed from the orbit of the artist a sphere he is no And abstract art would seem to be the only way of
longer interested to operate in. creative hara-kari. Any artist. however. who can find
If the arts of painting and sculpture were to be entering a new way of presenting reality without abstraction
a phase of disenchantment with abstraction. the signs and without dullness will be welcome-and to many
would have been present long since in some quantity. people. ■
The fact that there is a lessening of quality in abstract
art should not be held to imply that inversely it must
mean a strengthening in the figurative side. For certain
people abstract art has never been of much account
and for them. if their standards are high, neither has
been much modern figurative art. In this year's Royal
Academy Summer Exhibition. a large abstract painting
Studio International
Volume CLXX No. 869 by Sandra Blow hung in Gallery Ill, traditionally the
September, 1965 most important. Its presence asserted the truth which
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