Page 24 - Studio International - April 1970

Nor did the art-historical style that dis- the 'hard' style of the 60s is that it did this revolution. Only the journalism about it takes
placed it come into view nearly so suddenly from the first. This fact says nothing neces- it to mean that—takes it to mean a break with
as the events of the spring of 1962 made it sarily compromising about the best 'hard- the past, a new start, and all that. The avant
appear. The 'hard' style of the 60s had style' art. That best is equal to the best of garde's principal reason for being is, on the
already emerged with Ellsworth Kelly's first Abstract Expressionism. But the fact itself contrary, to maintain continuity: continuity
New York show in 1955, and with the would show that something really new, in of standards of quality—the standards, if you
renascence of geometricizing abstract art in scheme, has happened in the new art of the 60s. please, of the Old Masters. These can be
Paris in the mid-50s as we see it in Vasarely. This schematically new thing is what, I feel, maintained only through constant innovation,
Thus there was an overlapping in time. There accounts for the greater nervousness of art which is how the Old Masters had achieved
was an overlapping or transition in terms of opinion that marks the 60s. One knows what standards to begin with. Until the middle of
style too: the passage from the 'painterly' to is 'in' at any given moment, but one is un- the last century innovation in Western art had
the 'linear' can be witnessed in the painting easy about what is 'out'. It was not that way not had to be startling or upsetting; since then,
of Barnett Newman, for example, and in the in the 50s. The heroes of painting and sculp- for reasons too complex to go into here, it has
sculpture of David Smith, and in an artist ture in that period profiled themselves against had to be that. And now in the 60s it is as
like Rauschenberg (to name only Americans). a background of followers fairly early on, and though everybody had finally—finally—caught
That the scene of art, as distinct from the for the most part they remained—and have on not only to the necessity of innovation, but
course of art, has known abrupt changes and remained—heroes. There was less question also to the necessity—or seeming necessity—of
reversals lately should not mislead us as to then than now of competing tendencies or advertising innovation by making it startling
what has actually happened in art itself. (It positions within the common style. Just who and spectacular.
is again ironical that the overlapping, the and what will remain from the 60s, just which Today everybody innovates. Deliberately,
very gradualness involved in recent stylistic of the competing sub-styles will prove out as of methodically. And the innovations are deli-
change, made for the impression of confusion, lasting value— this remains far more un- berately and methodically made startling.
at least in the first years of the 60s, as much certain. Or at least it does for most critics, Only it now turns out not to be true that all
as anything else did.) museum people, collectors, art-buffs, and startling art is necessarily innovative or new
What at first did surprise me in the new art of artists themselves—for most, I say, if not art. This is what the 60s have finally revealed,
the 60s was that its basic homogeneity of exactly for all. This uncertainty may help and this revelation may indeed be the newest
style could embrace such a great hetero- explain why critics have lately begun to pay thing about the bulk of what passes for new
geneity of quality, that such bad art could so much more attention to one another than art in the 60s. It has become apparent that
go hand in hand with such good art. It took they used to, and why even artists pay them art can have a startling impact without really
me quite a while to remember that I had more attention. being or saying anything startling-or new.
already been surprised by that same thing in Another cause of the new uncertainty may be The character itself of being startling,
the 50s. Then I had forgotten that, because the fact that avant-garde opinion has since spectacular, or upsetting has become con-
of the subsequent collapse of Abstract Ex- the mid-50s lost a compass bearing that had ventionalized, part of safe good taste. A
pressionism, which seemed to me to separate served it reliably in the past. There used to be corollary of this is the realization that the
the good from the bad in the art of the 50s self-evidently academic art, the art of the aspects under which almost all artistic
pretty correctly. All the same, some of my salons and the Royal Academy, against which innovation has made itself recognized these
surprise at the great unevenness in quality of to take position. Everything directed against past hundred years have changed, almost
new art in the 60s remained, and remains. or away from academic art was in the right radically. What is authentically and impor-
Something new is there that was not there in direction; that was once a minimal certainty. tantly new in the art of the 60s comes in
Abstract Expressionism when it first emerged. The academy was still enough there in Paris softly as it were, surreptitiously—in the guises,
All art styles deteriorate and, in doing so, in the 20s, and perhaps even in the 30s, to seemingly, of the old, and the unattuned eye
become usable for hollow and meretricious assure avant-garde art of its own identity is taken aback as it isn't by art that appears
effects. But no style in the past seems to have (André Lhote would still attack a salon in the guises of the self-evidently new. No
become usable for such effects while it was exhibition now and then during those years). artistic rocketry, no blank-looking box, no
still an up-and-coming one. That is, as best But since the war, and especially since the 50s, art that excavates, litters, jumps, or excretes
as I can remember. Not the sorriest pasticheur confessedly academic art has fallen out of has actually startled unwary taste in these
or bandwagon jumper of Impressionism, sight. Today the only conspicuous fine art— latter years as have some works of art that can
Fauvism, or Cubism in their first years of the exceptions, however numerous, are be safely described as easel-paintings and
leadership fell below a certain level of artistic irrelevant—is avant-garde or what looks like some other works that define themselves as
probity. The vigour and the difficulty of the or refers to avant-garde art. The avant garde sculpture and nothing else.
style at the time simply would not let them. is left alone with itself, and in full possession Art in any medium, boiled down to what it
Maybe I don't know enough of what happened of the 'scene'. does in the experiencing of it, creates itself
in those days. I will allow for that and still This hardly means that the kind of impulse through relations, proportions. The quality
maintain my point. The new 'hard' style of and ambition that once went into avowedly of art depends on inspired, felt relations or
the 60s established itself by producing academic art has now become extinct. Far proportions as on nothing else. There is no
original and vigorous art. This is the way new from it. That kind of impulse and that kind getting around this. A simple, unadorned box
styles have generally established themselves. of ambition now find their way into avant- can succeed as art by virtue of these things;
But what was new, in scheme, about the way garde, or rather nominally avant-garde, art. and when it fails as art it is not because it is
that the 60s style arrived was that it did so All the sloganizing and programming of merely a plain box, but because its propor-
carrying not only genuinely fresh air but also advanced art in the 60s, and the very pro- tions, or even its size, are uninspired, unfelt.
art that pretended to be fresh, and was able to liferation of it, are as though designed to con- The same applies to works in any other form
pretend to be that, as in times past only a ceal this. In effect, the avant garde is being of 'novelty' art: kinetic, atmospheric, light,
style in decline would have permitted. infiltrated by the enemy, and has begun to environmental, 'earth', 'funky', etc., etc. No
Abstract Expressionism started out with both deny itself. Where everything is advanced amount of phenomenal, describable newness
good and bad, but not until the early 1950s nothing is; when everybody is a revolutionary avails when the internal relations of the work
did it lend itself, as a style, to specious as the revolution is over. have not been felt, inspired, discovered. The
distinct from failed art. The novel feature of Not that the avant garde ever really meant superior work of art, whether it dances,