Page 26 - Studio International - September 1969

Notes on European past with whom he built his own personal mimetic and not non-objective. I had begun to
scale of values take on a strangely intense vitality work on a method of construction in painting
(for collector and artist alike). I wouldn't like to which I was carrying into another dimension.
Biederman draw any conclusions from this, but one fact is Nature which had been the outside world seen
clear: Biederman had a good nose for what was before one's eyes was changing and becoming
`new' in art. Although now it seems he often used related to constructing method. Biederman was
Europeanism as a tool with which to beat America concerned with process—of reasoning, of work and
over the head, it nonetheless turned out to be an of development. I did not agree with his assertion
Now that Biederman is having his first showing in effective one. that the relief was the next natural step from paint-
London, those artists in England who knew about It's probably difficult for students today to imagine ing. I saw my own method as natural to me. But
his work and ideas a good many years ago can re- how little information was readily available as little the disagreement sharpened my interest in his
assess what they think of him in the light of what as ten years ago about most of the 'avant-gardists' writings and gave more purpose to my own efforts.
has happened both in his development and in of our recent past; that it was by luck, effort and Others will write a more critical evaluation of
theirs. contacts that key figures and their activities were Biederman. I can only speak of my own reactions.
Since this is a retrospective exhibition the physical unearthed. Artists were considered successful if One feels that for him nature is still Cezanne's
changes over a long period must be self-evident. they were thought to have discovered uncharted `spectacle that the Pater Omnipotens Aeterne
What will be less clear is how his thoughts and paths to self-expression; the unspoken recipe offer- Deus spreads before our eyes' and his 'structural
theory about visual art have effected it. From what ed in the art schools was that few were chosen for process' is Leonardesque and Renaissance. If then
he has written in recent years the way he valued this mystic role and that in preparation, apart he says that he is in the line of succession after
and interpreted artists considered to be key figures from some technical dexterity, all that could be Courbet, Monet, Cezanne he would seem to have
in his scheme of things has radically changed. done came from an earnest and unsupported intro- some right to say so. I have seen only two original
These were the artists he saw as the international spection. works of his. I look forward to seeing more and all
pioneers, those who took art out of the salon values It was into just such a climate, the one I lived in as together. □
of the last century into the dynamics of abstract a student, that quite by chance, Biederman's ideas KENNETH MARTIN
form and an altogether different intellectual cli- came. Here was someone who offered a dogmatic
mate. Anyone looking through his book Art as the answer which he supported with force and argu- It is difficult today, when every innuendo in a
Evolution of Visual Knowledge will see the work of the ment; even more important, he managed to express work is taken up and exploited for its effect, to
Cubists, Russian Constructivists, de Stijl and Mon- in his general sweep of ideas how it was that the remember the climate of post-war years when
drian taking a major place in his map of recent work of individual artists might be related one to notable exhibitions of modern art were taking place
events. another. Although it was difficult, he showed how in London and the thoughts and writings of artists
Since that book all these people have fallen from these ideas had often been verbalised or clarified and were being published, principally by Wittenborn,
grace; what he managed to show us as a world pic- how this could provide a basis vital to the under- Schultz. The two books by Charles Biederman Art
ture of the dialogue of art, as it stretched back into standing of any subject. It gave a critical frame- as the Evolution of Visual Knowledge and Letters on the
the past and was taken up again with such breath- work from which to make individual judgements, New Art were important because they were con-
taking vigour in our own time, has shrunk into even though one's first thought might be to criticise cerned with what one was doing at that time. That
something very different. This expansive apprecia- the framework itself. It was something that could be Biederman was his own publisher is comment
tion he showed for the complex of individual and used as a tool in front of the chaotic, unfiltered and enough and one's respect for such an achievement
group effects was particularly surprising when his incomplete information that constituted our situa- has never diminished. His later publication The
own temperament seemed to lead him to a rather tion then. For this reason, the consummation of his New Cézanne (1958), a passionate tribute to that
restrictive and dogmatic outlook. Although it was thought, one that seemed to involve an intuitive artist, should not be overlooked.
his former position that held my interest, I realise feeling for the structure of nature, was for me much The first book, published in 1948 but not seen by
that in abandoning it he is following a more natural less relevant. What I wanted to know more about me until 1952, was impressive in its rich layout, its
internal logic, a temperamental need. But how can was the question he seemed to raise: Why was it wealth of illustrations and, above all, in its
one fail to be disappointed at the loss? To see how that those artists whose work I admired had thought scholarly footnotes and bibliography. Beyond all
this international outlook has shrunk into the out what they were doing to an extent unheard these it had an immediacy of viewpoint and a
impassioned defence of a small band of Frenchmen, of within the English traditions still current? It was thesis with which one was in agreement; the
Cezanne, Monet, Courbet, Poussin . . . To try true that these artists were concerned with the insistence on art as process and on the importance
and go back and start again from these artists physical product and they realised it had to be of a process in making art; the exposition of the
seems to me an impossibly idealistic position. handled with practical know-how, but it was decline of painting and sculpture as separate
It is true I felt instinctive affinities for the rigorous treated as a means of communication, not as a cult entities. In the second book, smaller and more
forms Biederman so urgently demanded; the par- object. intimate, published in 1951 and which I read in
ing down of expression to a number of simple basic GILLIAN WISE 1954, Biederman gave an account of his 'structural
units; the acceptance of limitation—the argument process', which seemed to be bound up with
being that only by understanding our tools at a In late 1951 or early 1952 I first read Charles abstraction from nature. Being already involved
simple but fundamental level could work of com- Biederman's Art as the Evolution of Visual Know- in a working process allied to building rather than
plexity and power be controlled. Maybe in other ledge. It is a large, beautifully presented book abstracting, I found this to be a stumbling block
subjects this kind of remark is naively obvious, but published by himself. From naturalism I had to further understanding. Here, I think, lies the
outside Bauhaus ideas (which in any case were become an abstract painter and further had just difference between European and English type
more concerned with applied work), proposal like begun to make kinetic constructions. The enthusi- construction with its kinetic and environmental
this in art, coming as it did simultaneously with the astic climate of activity and discussion among developments, and transatlantic Structurism,
cultural stranglehold of Abstract Expressionism, friends was enlivened and given more forceful which is committed to the relief as the only, pure
was like a breath of air in a stifling desert atmo- direction by the books which were being published path of development. The overwhelming quality
sphere. after the war and which were being circulated which one perceived in Biederman was his
Many styles have passed under the bridge since the among us. Museum of Modern Art and Witten- passionate detachment and his maintenance of a
late 50s and early 60s, but it is interesting to notice born publications, the writings of Vantongerloo world view. At that time one was surrounded by
how many of the ignored 'pathfinders' in Bieder- and Max Bill are examples. It takes a world-view Romanticism, English provincialism, Paris School
man's scheme of art have attained ever-rising inter- of art history which it proceeds to canalize in a abstract art and the first waves of Tachism and
national market prices in the last few years. The radical and didactic manner. It develops an idea, Action Painting. Without some detachment one
bits of string, wood and cardboard of the Russian an attitude, of a rapport between art and nature could not have survived. And the position has not
Constructivists will soon rival those of Picasso, who through this perspective of history, through changed, only some of the names.
unknowingly acted as an important catalyst for analyses of Cezanne, the Cubists, Mondrian (who My own debt to Biederman is a personal one,
them. The often almost invisible fragments that spoke of 'detachment from the oppression of although I have never met him. He wrote to me
came from the hands of Vantongerloo, earning nature'—AEVK p. 449) and the Constructivists. in 1955 after the distribution in America of Nine
only the faintest praise a few years back, are now we point out that the Inventive direction offers Abstract Artists. This was encouragement at a time
avidly sought. Mondrian and de Stijl are already the artist the variety and complexity of nature when I needed it. I did not see a work by him until
unassailable. So, paradoxically, Biederman's evalu- itself!'—p. 548. All that Biederman wrote was 1962 at the exhibition 'Experiment in Constructie'
ation, which he himself now largely rejects, is extraordinarily apt for the time. I had worked at the Stedelijk, when I saw several hanging
becoming a general reality. Abstract Expressionism direct from nature and now I was concerned with together. They were complete demonstrations of
which he so obsessionally attacked is gently dying the problem that it was necessary for abstract art his ideas. □
on its feet, while the ghostly figures from the to be objective in its own way, to be both non- MARY MARTIN