Page 46 - Studio International - July August 1968

The art of Paul Feeley

A Paul Feeley (7910-1966) Memorial Exhibition was recently held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York.

Gene Baro

There is no simple way to account for the work of Paul Feeley's way to make drawing the dynamic, articulate centre of his art, to
artistic maturity—roughly of the last twelve years of his life. One free it from aesthetic bondage to Cubism. His grasp of the implica-
might speak of a breakthrough in 1953-4, when he began to centre tions of current expressionist practice, and of the standards that
the image and suppress painterly incident. Hindsight tells us that must be applied to it, was quick and sure. Greenberg has recorded
this shift was decisive; technically, and even intellectually, Feeley's that Feeley 'developed a remarkable eye in a remarkably short space
further achievements followed logically from it. The late paintings, of time with regard to the "new stuff". And he never lost that eye or
such as Cheleb (1965) and the untitled six-foot tondo (1965), and the its strictness. According to my lights, he was not once taken in in the
monumental Sculpture Court (1966) are equally in debt to the reasoning sixteen years or so after his "awakening" —not by anything in paint-
that developed from Red blotch (1954) ; but so, too, are the late works ing or sculpture.'1
indebted in feeling to the earlier. The sensibility revealed is personal But understanding and a sufficient critical sense have their limita-
and unmistakable—and older in Feeley's œuvre than 1953-4, if only tions, and for the artist particularly; his work requires emotional
intermittently visible before then. commitment and conviction for authenticity; otherwise it is an
The 'breakthrough', a radical departure in one sense, is self- exercise. For some two years, Feeley struggled to bring his work into
acceptance in another. Around 1954, Feeley began to base his art line with the best expressionist practice and thinking. Drawing was
upon the dictates of his own temperament. The direction he took to be his way in, but here he was frustrated; his drawing had never
owed more to how he felt than to any overt strategy in relation to been gestural; its emotion was not in the vigour or reticence of the
the then-current scene in avant-garde American painting. stroke, but in the adumbration or essentializing of form. This
He had been introduced to this 'new' painting, as typified by the realization, when it came, made the work of his maturity possible.
work of Pollock and de Kooning, in the Spring of 1951. His guides In the meantime, other dissatisfactions with expressionism arose.
had been his former student, the painter Helen Frankenthaler, and The relentless emphasis upon painterly incident, even upon accident;
the critic Clement Greenberg. It would be hard to think of two better, the sheerly pragmatic character of the expressionist painting experi-
an enthusiastic young artist and a sympathetic and knowledgeable ence and its justification upon lofty moral grounds; the exaltation of
commentator. And on the merits of the case, there was little resist- `risk' coupled with a careful editing of the results—these practices and
ance from Feeley. Only a few years earlier, he had returned from a attitudes troubled Feeley. They suggested the war years (out of
wartime tour in the Marines directly to his teaching duties at which, in fact, they came) ; they involved a barely suppressed
Bennington College. The war had caused a break in his artistic agression, an obsession with activity, a taste for heroics, wilfulness,
development; it had unsettled him in ways not yet apparent. His and rampage.
adjustment to civilian life was a form of marking time. There was a This, anyway, is how it began to look to Feeley. And his indebted-
young family to consider; there was little money. A trip to New York ness defined itself. Some years later, he was able to say to Lawrence
was rare, a major event that required careful planning. Feeley Alloway: 'I think Pollock made me go back to school, or maybe
sensed that he was out of touch. make a school for myself. Something like that. And trying to forget
During his war years, Feeley had had no opportunity to paint. He was very difficult for me because I'd been an earnest and conscien-
had taken to drawing, wherever and whenever materials came to tious student. The most important lesson, I think, that I got from
hand. He drew on scraps of paper, on pages of books, even on odd Pollock's work was that willingness to face the worst in oneself, to
pieces of Kleenex. Drawings of his survive made with clorox washes. escape taste, or perhaps more accurately, traditional taste, by a
This activity was artistically of the first importance. Drawing had freshness of experience that made taste by any common definition
been a first love. As a beginning artist, lacking money for materials not the main issue.'2
and professional models, he had drawn his younger brothers as they Feeley went on to describe the negative aspect of his encounter with
lay sleeping. Night after night, he had stayed awake to catch them American-style expressionism: 'I think that what made me revise
in the vulnerable postures of sleep. Then, in the Marines, in the my ways after the influence of Pollock, and a lot of others, was maybe
duress of war and in the boredom of camp life, he came back to the some embarrassment about an expression that eventually became for
emotion and directness of drawing. This means was a disturbing me unbearable. You know, a bit of that heart-on-the-sleeve effect.
alternative to his careful, accomplished, self-conscious painting of the I suppose pushing that Expressionist element, by every device that I
pre-war years, with its Cubist rationale. After his return to Benning- could think of, as far as it would go, led ultimately to complete
ton, drawing elements and qualities became increasingly evident in disgust, just unbearable disgust, and then some uncertainty about
Feeley's painting. The gouaches of 1949-51 are a case in point. But which way to turn.'3
drawing did not then liberate Feeley's imagination; it remained a But temperament had already pointed the direction; it was away
form of notation; it served a system rather than created one. from variability and activity, away from the conception of art as
Feeley's exposure to the 'new' painting seemed to show him the performance. More important is what it was toward—decorum and