Page 26 - Studio International - December 1970

and another thing to see what is involved won't settle the issue whether he can bring it distortions are produced both in criticism-so
when we make good the ellipsis. Perhaps the under the concept-any more than, if he can, that, for instance, it is thought good enough to
best way to try to get a view of this is to shift this settles the issue whether it falls under the say of a painting that it insists upon the fact
our standpoint somewhat and to consider the concept, i.e. whether it is a painting. For, as of its surface-and in art itself-so that we are
matter in the perspective of the spectator. A we have noted, an action can be performed confronted by objects which try to acquire
spectator looks at a painting-more specifi- under a certain description and not satisfy value just from this insistence.
cally, a modern painting. He looks at its sur- that description: for the action may miscarry. The confusion may be put briefly by saying
face. And he looks at its surface as the surface However, once the spectator has recognized that in a typical modern work there is an
of a painting. What is involved in his looking that the surface he is looking at is that of a asserted surface, but this does not mean that
at the painting's surface as the surface of the painting, or he is able to look at the thing the assertion of the surface forms part of the
painting ? whose surface it is as a painting, then, for picture's content.
The first point that can be made is this: If a him to look at the surface as the surface of a Perhaps the best way of bringing out this
man looks at a surface as the surface of a painting, he must also have some idea how the consideration ii to show how the theory, as it -
painting, he must also look at that whose surface of a painting should look. And this is stands, can lead to interesting art, whereas the
surface it is as a painting. Just as if a man where the second consideration links itself theory, as misunderstood, is unlikely to lead
looks upon an action as the action of a friend, with the first: for if what I have just been say- to anything but boring art. For the theory, in
he must look upon him whose action it is as a ing is true, then it seems quite incontrovertible asserting that a painting has a surface, draws
friend. (Of course, he might look upon him as that the concept of a painting was never with- the painter's attention to the surface, and en-
a friend solely in virtue of his action, and the out the connotations of physicality. It was courages him to make use of the surface in a
same thing goes in the case of the painting.) always true not just that a painting had, but way or to a degree not contemplated by his
Now, if we don't find this point sizeable, this that it had to have, a surface. For how else predecessors. But if the theory were that the
can be only because of a dangerous attrition, could we have any idea how the surface of a painting should assert that it has a surface,
in our contemporary thinking, of what it is to painting should look-or, to spell out the then not merely would no premium be placed
look at something as a painting-or, more matter, how a surface should look given that on the use of the surface, but the effect of the
generally, as a work of art. The attrition it is the surface of a painting ? theory might well be to work against the use
occurs in two stages: first, from thinking of Of course, in what I have just been saying of the surface. For it might be felt that any
something as a work of art to thinking that it there is no implication that, for instance, such use would only interfere with the clarity
is a work of art; then, from thinking that simply on the basis of the visual description of or the definitiveness of the painting's asser-
something is a work of art to (something like) a surface ('what it looks like'), I could rule tion. The fact of the surface might become
saying to oneself that it is a work of art. And out that thing whose surface it is as a painting. eclipsed, wholly or partially, by the use of the
the consequences of this attrition, or trivializa- It is not in this simplistic way, that we have a surface. And in an artistic situation where the
tion, we can see, for instance, in some of the notion of how the surface of a painting should fact of the surface is the important thing, the
banal pronouncements characteristic of Con- look. If I am to rule out a surface as impermis- use of the surface begins to look dangerous.
ceptual Art.2 It may well be that some version sible for a painting, then I must also know To talk of the use of the surface and to con-
of the theory that to be a work of art is to be what the painter's intention was or what he trast this with the fact of the surface, and to
recognized as such is true. But no version of was trying to achieve. For a painting does identify the former rather than the latter as
the theory could possibly be acceptable- not take on the surface that it has simply the characteristic preoccupation of modern
though paradoxically, it is in some such through being 'a' painting, nor, to put the art, attributes to modern art a complexity of
version that the theory gains acceptance-on matter the other way round, does the painter concern that it cannot renounce. For it is
which recognition is equated with a nod of simply set out to paint some painting or other. only if we assume such a complexity that there
recognition. The surface is as it is because the painter sets is any sense in which we can think of the sur-
The truth is that we acquire and possess a out to paint a specific painting; and our face as used. Used, we must always ask, for
concept of art, again a concept of painting, judgment that what is before us isn't a paint- what? And it must be somewhere within this
and when the spectator looks at a work of art ing because its surface doesn't look as the complexity of concern that the answer lies.
or at a painting, this must mean amongst surface ought to look, must generally be The point, I must emphasize, would not be
other things that he brings it under one of against this background. Though, of course, worth making if it were not for the widespread
these concepts. Now, whether he does so or there may, as an extreme case, be surfaces confusion which equates the autonomy of
not depends on whether he can do so or not, which could not be the surfaces of paintings modern art with its single-mindedness, even
and though his ability depends on a variety of because (we are sure) there could be no its simple-mindedness. To talk of the autonomy
factors, one thing that cannot be effective here intention which would justify a painting hav- of art is to say something about where its
is mere decision. The spectator can say at will ing one of them as its surface. I am inclined to concerns derive from, it is to say nothing about
of something that it is a painting, but what he feel this about the black canvases of Ad their number or their variety. To talk of the
cannot do at will is to say this and mean it. And Reinhardt; assuming these, that is, to belong surface being used, rather than of its existence
this is why it is no nugatory point to insist to art, and not to art-history. being asserted, as a characteristic of modern
that, when the spectator looks at a surface as painting, is not a point to make in the abstract.
the surface of a painting, he must look at that The third consideration that I want to raise The point cannot be grasped without some
whose surface it is as a painting. in connection with the theory of modern art kind of incursion into the substantive issue.
Of course, there are interested spectators or is this: The theory insists upon the physicality What I want to do for the rest of this lecture
curious spectators and there are dull specta- of the work of art-upon, for instance, the is to consider three paintings, and try to make
tors. If the spectator is curious-and there are surface of the painting. And this I have the point in relation to them. It is no accident
good reasons why we should confine our equally put by saying that the theory insists that these paintings are amongst the master-
interest to him-then one influence that will upon the fact that the painting has a surface. pieces of twentieth-century art.
affect whether he does or doesn't, can or can't, But this does not mean that a painting pro- The first painting is La Fenêtre Ouverte painted
bring the object before him under the concept duced in conformity with this theory will itself by Matisse in Tangiers in 1913. Some of the
of painting is his knowledge whether the insist upon the fact that it has a surface. Yet things that I shall say about it will apply to
object itself was produced under that concept. this is sometimes thought to follow both by the other great open-window paintings of
Of course, even if he knows that it was, this critics and by artists; and consequential Matisse, for instance, the sombre La Porte-