Page 43 - Studio International - December 1967

Left Ultimate Painting 1960-66
Oil on canvas, 59 x 59 in.
Abstract painting 1960, oil on canvas, 59¾ x 59¾ in.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York

panels—religion and art panels—and of course I've gotten were sinful or had some power. I would agree with that
a lot of the religious thing; I've been called a Protestant, except that I would ban images because they're real and
puritan, Byzantinist, a mandarin, a godless mystic, a they don't have any power.
black monk, a Zen-Buddhist, an iconoclast, an Ahab. At
any rate I suppose there's a reason for making a religious The Tate introduction (to the catalogue of the Gulben-
analogy. Maybe that's the best analogy today. Anyway, kian Foundation exhibition) raised the question of a
there's a long tradition of negative theology in which the climate favourable to art today, the question of who is
essence of religion, and in my case the essence of art, is inside and outside and the question of heroes and out-
protected or the attempt is made to protect it from being casts. I guess I've been outside and I've been an outcast,
pinned down or vulgarized or exploited. I think, for ex- or at least not a howling success. 'When the revolution
ample, of the iconoclast sticking to Christian controversy, became an institution', when avant garde became official
in the eighth or ninth century; I think of the iconoclast art, I guess they put down the date 1950 for it. Actually I
controversy which wanted to ban images because they didn't become official—I suppose that means the Museum