Page 23 - Studio International - April 1970

avant-garde art conformed in the 50s: the medium within a given cultural orbit. This is and unexpected unities of style may become
fluid design or layout, the 'soft' drawing, the also, usually, the time during which it apparent—in fact, they already are apparent,
irregular and indistinct shapes or areas, the attracts those younger artists who are most but this is not the place to touch on them, des-
uneven textures, the turbid colour. It is as highly and seriously ambitious. With this pite all they would do to strengthen my
though avant-garde art in the 60s set itself definition as measure, it is possible to see as argument here.) But, for all the exceptions
at every point in opposition to the common many as five, and maybe more, distinctly that can rightly be taken to my chronological
stylistic denominators of Abstract Expression- different styles or movements succeeding one schema and what it implies, I do think that
ism, art informel, tachisme. And just as these another in French painting of the nineteenth there is enough unquestionable evidence to
common denominators pointed to what was century. support my point, which is that art-historical
one and the same period style in the latter First there was David's and Ingres's Classicism. styles in painting (if not in sculpture) have
40s and the 50s, so the common denomina- Then from about 1820 into the mid-1830s, tended since the beginning of the nineteenth
tors of new art in the 60s point to a single, all- Romanticism. Then Corot's naturalism; and century (if not before) to hold their positions of
enveloping period style. And in both cases the then Courbet's kind. In the early 1860s leadership for on an average of between ten
period style is reflected in sculpture as well as Manet's flat and rapid version of naturalism and fifteen years.
in pictorial art. led the way, to be followed within less than The case of Abstract Expressionism does more
That avant-garde art in the latter 40s and in ten years by Impressionism. Impressionism than bear out this average; it exceeds it, and
the 50s was one, not many, in terms of style held on as the leading manner until the early would go to show that art actually moved and
is now pretty generally recognized. Lacking 1880s, where the Neo-Impressionism of changed more slowly over the last thirty years
the perspective of time, we find it harder to Seurat and then the Post-Impressionism of than in the hundred years previous. Abstract
identify a similar stylistic unity in the art of Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh became Expressionism in New York, along with
this decade. It is there all the same. All the the most advanced styles. Things get a little tachisme and art informel in Paris, emerged in
varied and ingenious excitements and 'experi- mixed up during the last twenty years of the the early 40s and by the early 50s was
ments' of the last years, large and small, century, though it may be only in seeming. At dominating avant-garde painting and sculp-
significant and trivial, flow within the banks any rate Bonnard and Vuillard in their early, ture to a greater extent even than Cubism had
of one, just one period style. Homogeneity Nabi phase appear during the 1890s, and in the 20s. (You weren't 'with it' at all in
emerges from what seemed an excess of Fauvism enters the competition by at least those days unless you lathered your paint or
heterogeneity. Phenomenal, descriptive, art- 1903. As it looks, painting moved faster bet- roughed your surfaces; and in the 50s being
historical— as well as qualitative—order super- ween the mid-1880s and 1910 or so than at `with it' began to matter ever so much more.)
venes where to the foreshortening eye all any other time within the scope of this hasty Well, Abstract Expressionism collapsed very
seemed the antithesis of order. survey. Cubism took the lead away from suddenly back in the spring of 1962, in Paris
If this gives pause, the pause should be taken Fauvism within hardly a half a dozen years of as well as New York. It is true that it had
advantage of to examine more closely another the latter's emergence. Only then did painting begun to lose its vitality well before that, but
popular idea about art in this time : namely, slow down again to what had been its normal nevertheless it continued to dominate the
that it moves faster than ever before. The art- rate of change between 1800 and the 1880s. avant-garde scene, and by the time of its
historical style of this period that I have so For Cubism stayed on top until the mid- final retreat from that scene it had led art for
sketchily described—a style that has main- 1920s. After that came Surrealism (I say close to twenty years. The collapse of Abstract
tained, and maintains, its identity under a Surrealism for lack of a better term: Sur- Expressionism was as sudden as it was because
multitude of fashions, vogues, waves, fads, realism's identity as a style still remains it was long overdue, but even had its collapse
manias— has been with us now for nearly a undetermined; and some of the best new come five or six years earlier (which is when
decade and seems to promise to stay with us a painting and sculpture of the latter 20s and it should have come) the span of time over
while longer. Would this show that art is the 30s had nothing to do with it). And by which Abstract Expressionism held its leader-
moving and changing with unprecedented the early 1940s Abstract Expressionism and ship would still have been over the average
speed? How long did art-historical styles its cognates, tachisme and art informel, were on for art styles or movements within the last
usually last in the past—even the more recent the scene. century and a half.
past? Admittedly, this historical rundown simpli- Ironically enough, the seemingly sudden
In the present context I would say that the fies far too much. Art never proceeds that death of Abstract Expressionism in 1962 is
duration of an art-historical style ought to be neatly. Nor is the rundown itself that accurate another of the things that have contributed
considered the length of time during which even within the limits set it. (What I see as to the notion that art styles turn over much
it is a leading and dominating style, the time hurried stylistic change between the 1880s faster, and more abruptly, now than they
during which it is the vessel of the largest part and 1910 may turn out under longer scrutiny used to. The fact is that the demise of Abstract
of the important art being produced in a given to be less hurried than it now looks. Larger Expressionism was an unusually lingering one.

and technology of the new intermedia communications RENE DENIZOT is a young French philosopher Acknowledgements For their help in the production
network, with an introduction by R. Buckminster of this issue we would like to thank the following;
Fuller. PAUL WALDO SCHWARTZ has written art criticism for Mr Sidney Geist and Messrs Grossman, publishers of
the New York Times, Studio International, etc. New York, for their assistance in obtaining photographs
MICHEL CLAURA is a lawyer and art critic. He has of works by Brancusi; The Solomon R. Guggenheim
organized a major exhibition of projects and documents, DORE ASHTON, the American art critic, is a regular con- Museum, New York, for assistance in obtaining photo-
in association with Seth Siegelaub. tributor to Studio International. graphs; The Weiner Library, London, for permission to
photograph documents in their possession; Michael
FRANK WHITFORD teaches at the Slade School and at Cullen of the Mikro Gallery, Berlin for the loan of
Portsmouth College of Art. positives.
ROY ASCOTT has published theoretical writings in both Corrections In the On Exhibition section of the March
art and science journals and is a member of the Cold- issue we regret that the work Op her Scherp van het Staal on
stream Committee. He teaches at the Slade School and page 122 was reproduced in reverse, that the work
at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. A Section of a Coniferous Tree's Bark on page 121 by John
Holmes was incorrectly attributed to Audrey Davies,
ANNE SEYMOUR is working on a book on Bernard Cohen and that the work Garden on page 121 was reproduced
for Penguin Books. sideways.