Page 40 - Studio International - September 1969

can be no doubt that in this respect he antici- Visual Knowledge', for Biederman the tradi- first manifestations of the Action Painters,
pated Vasarely by a number of years. In 1937 tional 'relation of art to reality rested mainly Biederman's book underlines the dynamism
he had already realized that the traditional on the act of vision'. The 'new vision' to of the American contribution by concentrat-
notion of 'original' art works would be super- which his work has been directed is still a ing on the opposite pole of the modern
seded, and in 1948 he put forward, in Art as matter of perceiving 'color in a new, revo- creative process.'
the Evolution of Visual Knowledge, the view that lutionary way' and recognizing 'a complexity For Pasmore, therefore, Biederman repre-
art could be mass-produced, rather than in nature's colour and structure which has sents not simply an alternative tradition to
merely 'reproduced', giving 'originals' in all not been known before'. that of the Action Painters and their succes-
cases. Just as Vasarely has entrusted the It would therefore be justifiable to regard sors, but the alternative tradition, which
preparation of his works to a team of techni- Biederman's relief constructions as being embodies the aspect of modern creativity
cians over the past few years, so Biederman directly in the lineage of Post-Renaissance most remote from Pollock and his successors.
uses the technical facilities of local Research painting. They are, as he himself puts it, 'an This judgment acquires greater weight if we
Laboratories for the fabrication of his reliefs, outgrowth not of sculpture but of painting' bear in mind that there are close chronological
which are thus in principle repeatable. In despite the fact that they make use of three- parallels between the two traditions. Bieder-
1938 and 1950 he made two originals of dimensional projections. In effect these pro- man made his personal rejection of Paris and
particular works, but the project of making jecting planes are stripped of all tactile the Parisian art world just two years before
further examples has never been economically quality: one could say that they are as Harold Rosenberg wrote his article proclaim-
viable. cunningly adapted to the creation of pictorial ing the 'Fall of Paris'. And Jackson Pollock's
These similarities between the doctrines of space as the linear schemata of a traditional most memorable period began in 1949, the
Vasarely and Biederman, which also involve perspective effect. Thus they concentrate our year in which Biederman completed his first
the notion that the work of art has no sacred response upon sheer visual reaction to the mature works in the 'constructionist' idiom.
apartness, but can be used in architectural exclusion of the other senses. A McLuhanesque Biederman himself is acutely conscious of the
and environmental schemes, are based on one flourish could no doubt be made to draw the overall parallel, and has drawn attention to it
central principle which both subscribe to. connection between Biederman's linear view in his recent essay, 'Art in Crisis' :
This is the notion that their respective achieve- of artistic development, his commitment to we have here two contrary confrontations
ments are of public rather than individual the power of the printed word, his advocacy of the crisis of art. One was formed by
significance. Biederman writes: 'I am not at of mass production for art works and his Americans in a culturally isolated city of
all interested in achieving an art unique to me, concentration upon the sense of vision. America, joined by European artists and
an art that is my private creation'; the My comparison with Vasarely has brought writers forced into exile. My view was formed
passage could be paralleled by several from out the similarities and dissimilarities of these after leaving this country and experiencing
the writings of Vasarely. In part this feature artists within the Modernist tradition as a isolation in the European environment, an
establishes their kinship with the pioneers of whole. But it has not touched upon Bieder- experience essential to the view that resulted.
the Modern Movement, who were equally man's position as an American artist, in rela- Each position deeply contradicts the other, for
committed to declaring the bases of art, tion to the development of American post-war which reason both are worth serious con-
rather than expressing their personal point of painting. A cursory judgment might place sideration.'
view. But it is an attitude which goes beyond him among the precursors of 'Post-painterly It is surely impossible to withhold from
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and abstraction' : as early as 1949, a journalist Biederman the 'serious consideration' which
could in fact be seen as characteristically from Minneapolis proclaimed with evident he requests, if only because he provides so
Classicist in its concern for tradition. 'My astonishment 'This Artist Paints with a Spray firm a counterpoise to the weight of the
interest lies principally,' writes Biederman, 'in Gun'. Yet this would obscure the fundamental modern American tradition. Franz Kline
how what I do relates to what is far more point of Biederman's artistic evolution—his once wrote that half the world wanted to be
important... namely, the main direction of rejection of both painting and sculpture in like Thoreau's Walden, while the other half,
those creative forces that have formed the favour of the relief construction. Biederman including himself, preferred the environment
evolution of man's realization of art ... ' himself has commented succinctly on the of the city. Biederman belongs to Thoreau's
In pointing out these similarities in form course of recent American painting: 'Having group, and this is rare enough for an Ameri-
between the two doctrines, I am not implying rejected the view that painting had reached can artist of today. Yet perhaps even this
any kinship between the works of these two the end of its usefulness, American painters dedication to nature should be seen in wider
artists. In effect the common stance conceals have pushed useless painting to its end.' terms, as a willingness to adapt the syntax of
attitudes to the direction of contemporary Biederman therefore represents a direction the visual artist to some kind of external order
plastic expression which are quite diametri- which is precisely opposite to the Post- or system. Frank Stella has spoken con-
cally opposed, as the difference of opinion over Modernism of Clement Greenberg and vincingly of the contemporary American
the position of Mondrian would lead one to Michael Fried. Where these critics and the painter's desire to exclude all such external
expect. I can think of no more suggestive artists associated with them have taken as their reference, whether natural or metaphysical,
way of explaining this fundamental opposition absolute the medium of painting, and reduced from his purely syntactical exploration. But
than by using McLuhan's two opposed cate- the painting to those properties which it holds he has admitted the possibility that the next
gories of the 'visual' and the 'audio-tactile'. in common with no other art, Biederman has generation may redress the balance.
Vasarely's principle of 'instability' of form taken as his absolute the notion of 'spatial- One can only conclude that Biederman's ulti-
can be equated with McLuhan's notion of the colour-structure' and revised the traditional mate significance is unclear, and will perhaps
`mosaic approach', where the formal elements divisions of media in order to accommodate remain unclear throughout the foreseeable
are not held in a stable balance but provoke a this notion. future. Yet this much can be admitted: when
high degree of 'sensory interplay' : the effect The opposition which is so obvious in this an artist whose work shows such sustained
of his 'oeuvres cinétiques' could therefore case can perhaps be related to a broader invention and whose position is defined with
plausibly be regarded as audio-tactile rather division within the framework of American such rigour and consistency appears peri-
than strictly visual. For Biederman, on the art. Victor Pasmore made this judgment pheral, it may be that our own stance is
other hand, the emphasis is overwhelmingly on Art as the Evolution of Visual Knowledge in askew. Through what is not merely an
visual. As Leif Sjoberg has pointed out in his Form 3: optical illusion, he can be made to seem
article on 'Biederman and the Evolution of `Published in America at the same time as the central. q