Page 16 - Studio International - September 1967

themselves indifferent to whether they hung
COMMENT a lawyer. It no longer needed defending on on to it; having won a market, have not
higher grounds.
Now, this acceptance by society of the tried to supply what was in demand.
avant garde artist has had a worrying effect Rauschenberg, for example, after winning
upon some people, especially middlebrow the Venice Biennale painting prize in 1964,
journalists mindful of the consciences of was placed, being prolific, to make a
others. They claim that an avant-gardist fortune, regardless of what he turned out—
ought to be an outsider, that if he's not he's collectors buy names, not quality. In the
either corrupted or in danger of corruption. event he produced hardly anything for the
And of course it's true that some artists next two years: he remains the artist who
have started well, have become successful, once tossed a number of his paintings into
have gone downhill artistically (some while the river (with nobody looking). Larry
remaining successful, others not). It's Poons, when I called on him a few months
generally assumed that the success brought ago, was completing a large painting which
David Sylvester about the decline: post hoc ergo propter hoc. was the best thing of his I'd seen. It was
But it may be that some talents which clear that he had mastered the problems he
flower early would be quick to die irre- had been working on over the last few years,
spective of whether they got early recogni- and was nicely placed to enjoy repeating
I asked Frank Stella whether he saw his tion or not. It may be that the artist who, this success for a while (there's a waiting-list
work as having the sort of metaphysical, having found a formula, cashes in on it by for his work). His ideas were otherwise. He
transcendental content which all his pre- repetition and never develops, had nothing said this was the last painting he was going
cursors—Mondrian, Malevich, Newman— more than that formula to offer in any case. to do with small units and showed me an
attributed to their work. Not unexpectedly, The artist who does develop rather than experimental canvas he was working on
he answered that this had never been an waste time and energy cashing in is to be with elongated units. Obviously it was going
issue for him, that his own sole concern admired, not for his moral rectitude, but to take him time to get anywhere with
was with the 'visual presence' of the for having enough talent to be interested these. He wasn't prepared to waste any of
painting. He added that he thought this in developing it. that time producing things for the market.
applied to all of his own generation, and The Abstract Expressionists generally were I am saying all this, not because I want to
offered an explanation. The earlier non- slow to develop, slower still to win fame. pat these artists on the back for their
figurative painters had worked in a defensive Rothko, for example, perhaps the greatest integrity, but in answer to the familiar
situation, in which their work was not American artist of this century, was into argument that acceptance undermines the
publicly accepted. The claim that it had a his forties before his talent matured, into avant garde. The avant garde is traditionally
metaphysical content might have been a his fifties before it was widely acclaimed. the enemy of the bourgeoisie. Many of its
justification, a token of serious intention. The younger generations, in contrast, creations in its palmy days were made
The present generation had no such include several artists—Johns, Stella, Poons— expressly to épater le bourgeois. What, then,
problem: society was now prepared to who were doing important work while still becomes of the avant garde, goes the argu-
admit that non-figurative art was art. The in their twenties and were already being ment, when the bourgeoisie falls over itself
abstract artist was no longer a social out- acclaimed for it. And it's a striking fact that to buy the latest far-out thing? Can the
cast; painting abstract pictures was now an the best of the younger Americans who avant garde afford to become respectable ?
accepted profession, like being a doctor or have won acceptance have shown But there's no evidence that it has become

Contributors to this issue

Jasia Reichardt, assistant director of the Institute of John Latham has works in many public and private Harry Thubron, teacher and artist, is head of the
Contemporary Arts, Edward Lucie-Smith, poet and collections in England and America. He is among the painting school of Leicester College of Art.
critic and Dore Ashton, American writer and critic artists included in 'The 1960s' at the Museum of
are regular contributors to Studio International. Modern Art, New York, and will be represented in Troels Andersen is editor of Billedkunst, the Danish
the ROSC exhibition in Dublin this autumn. magazine. He studied art history and Russian lang-
David Sylvester is Visiting Lecturer in Fine Arts at uage and literature at the universities of Copenhagen,
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania this autumn and Elma Askham, the painter, was formerly head of the Moscow and Leningrad in 1960-66. He is preparing an
winter. He has recently been appointed a Trustee of painting department at Lancaster College of Art. She English edition of Malevich's essays on art, due to be
the Tate Gallery. has also taught at the University of Illinois. published this year.