Page 20 - Studio International - January 1966

American abstract expressionism and hard edge:

some comparisons by Matthew Baigell

A number of critics have commented on the differences with a content and meaning, regardless of the shapes
and similarities between American Abstract Expression- and colours on its surface.
ism and the current hard edge modes of Pop, Op and For the styles that characterised American art of the
Concrete Expressionism or the New Abstraction. The 1950's and now describe the 1960's, Statements are
distinguishing features on the one hand, as well as especially helpful, particularly for the painting that
the extensions and transformations on the other, have needs no explanation compositionally but does so
been well chronicled by Dore Ashton, Michael Fried with regard to meaning. To be sure, many of the
and Irving Sandler among others. Indeed, we now have statements recorded below are well known, but they
a literature in-embryo not unlike that dealing with the take on added nuances and strength, their differences
relations and reactions of Mannerism to the High or similarities are heightened, when closely juxtaposed.
Renaissance. In this article I use these sayings to point out some of
The paintings, of course, tell the story, but since most the differences between the two generations of post-
of the modern ones are non-figurative it becomes war American art.
important to note carefully the attitudes the artist brings In their protracted voyage to the centre of their beings,
to the blank canvas as well as his thoughts concerning Abstract Expressionists responded to a variety of needs
the process of making a painting. These are revealed, and pressures. With their youth spent in a Depression
Robert Motherwell
Elegy to the Spanish Republic quite readily, in statements by artists, and they invariably and their young manhood scarred by World War II,
XXXIV 1953-54
80 x 100 in. form the most reliable guide available to the observer. they no longer found tenable the straitjackets of
Albright-Knox Art Gallery With the information about the artist's intention which American-scene painting, traditional realism or
Buffalo, New York
Gift of Seymour H. Knox they provide we are better able to invest a painting decorative Cubism. With technology rendering the