Page 27 - Studio International - December 1970

fenétre of 1914 or the painting entitled La which is rather what treating what is depicted extended but non-spatial elements.
Fenêtre, alternatively Le Rideau Jaune, of 1915. through the frame of the window as mere The third painting that I want to consider is
In the painting before us we discern, amongst ground implies. A view is—of course in a one of Rothko's canvases from the Four
other things, Matisse's recurrent concern with rather special, one might say in a rather pro- Seasons series, now hanging in the Tate; to my
the nature of the ground. Now, if we consider fessional sense—an object. And now we have a mind, one of the sublimest creations of our
what is not so much the earliest painting we secondary use that Matisse makes of the time. In comparison with Louis, even with
have, though it is often called that, as the surface. For, by emphasizing the surface Matisse, Rothko's use of the surface is highly
precursor of painting—I refer to the cave art where it coincides with the ground, he en- complex. And I shall only give one hint of
of the Early Stone Age—there is no ground, courages this way of looking at or considering how we might think of this. The greatness of
there is simply the image.3 With the intro- the view. The physicality of the surface sug- Rothko's painting lies ultimately, I am quite
duction of the ground, the problem arises, gests, though in a non-representational way, sure, in its expressive quality, and if we
How are we to conceive of the ground in a the physicality of the view. Of course, wanted to characterize this quality—it would
way that does not simply equate it with the Matisse isn't a clumsy painter, and he avoids be a crude characterization—we would talk,
gap between the figures or the absence of that use of the surface which would make it I am sure, of a form of suffering and of
depiction ? In the history of European painting look as though the open window were filled sorrow, and somehow barely or fragilely con-
we can see various answers to this question. with a solid object. It is made clear, at one tained. We would talk perhaps of some senti-
One answer is to equate the ground with the and the same time, that the view isn't an ment akin to that expressed in Shakespeare's
background or, if this term is taken broadly object, but that it is as though it were. The Tempest—I don't mean, expressed in any one
enough, the 'landscape', and then for the The second painting I want to consider is one character, but in the play itself. However, the
painter to organize the detail that this equa- of Morris Louis's late canvases. Louis's work immediacy of Rothko's canvas derives from
tion is likely to impose upon him in a hier- at this stage was largely dominated by one the way in which this expressive quality is
archical fashion, detail subsumed within preoccupation—apart, that is, from his interest provided with a formal counterpart; and that
detail, in a Chinese box-like fashion. This in the physical look of the picture or how the lies in the uncertainty that the painting is
answer we can see as given in some of the surface looks. And this preoccupation can be calculated to produce, whether we are to see
finest achievements of European art—for described from two different points of view. the painting as containing an image within it
instance, in such different kind of work as From one point of view, it is a concern with or whether we are to see the painting as itself
that of van Eyck or Poussin. Another answer colour: from another point of view it is a an image. Whether we are to see it as contain-
is to regard the ground as providing, still concern with patches—where patches are con- ing a ring of flame or shadow—I owe this
through representation, not so much content trasted both with volumes, which are three- description of the fugitive image to the bril-
additional to the central figures, but a space dimensional, and with shapes, which, though liant description of the Four Seasons paintings
in which the central figures are framed. Now, two-dimensional, are seen as suspended in, by Michel Butor in his essay `Rothko: The
for a variety of reasons, neither of these two or visibly inhabit, three-dimensional space. Mosques of New York'5—or whether we are to
classic answers is open to Matisse. For Louis, in other words, wanted to introduce look upon it as somewhat the equivalent of a
Matisse—and here he exhibits two of the main colour into the content of his paintings, but stained-glass window.°
thrusts of twentieth-century art—dispenses to as great a degree as is humanly possible—or, Now, it is to bring about this uncertainty, as
both with the notion of detail in the tradi- better, visibly possible— he wanted considera- well as to preserve it from, or to prevent it
tional sense and also with the commitment tion of the spatial relations between the from degenerating into a mere oscillation of
to a unitary and ordered spatial framework. coloured elements, or the bearers of colour, to perception, which could, if I am right, be
And so the question returns, How is the recede. Now, I do not think that it is quite highly inimical to Rothko's expressive pur-
ground to be conceived of— except in purely correct to say—as Michael Fried does in his pose, that he uses the surface as he does. For
negative terms, i.e. as vacancy? How—which otherwise perceptive account of these paint- the use of the surface, or the way it manifests
is an extension of this question—is the frontier ings4—that Louis's patches are non-repre- itself to us, simultaneously suggests forms
of the ground, or the line which encloses it, sentational: that is to say, I do not think that within the painting and imposes a unity
not to seem quite arbitrary? And it is at this Louis wants us to see 'exclusively' stained parts across the painting. It suggests light falling
point, to find an answer to this question, that of the canvas. He seeks a form of representa- upon objects and light shining through a
Matisse resorts to the surface. It is here that tion where the representation of space or of translucent plane. Wherever a definitive
he uses the surface. For what he does is to anything spatial is at a minimum. And to reading begins to form itself, the assertion of
associate the ground so closely with the surface achieve this effect, he uses the canvas in such surface calls it in doubt.
—by which I mean that he charges the surface a way that while we look centrally at one of It is only now, when we have taken note of
in such a way that it barely involves a shift of the patches we see it representationally. But other or more working aspects of the theory
attention for us to move from seeing a certain as our eyes move towards the edge of the of modern art as I have suggested it, that it
expanse as ground to seeing it as surface—that patch, the representational element dimini- seems to me appropriate to observe an aspect
we fully accept the size of the surface as shes, and we become dominantly, then that might have seemed to some worthy of
determining the extent of the ground. The exclusively, aware of the canvas. In other earlier attention: I mean the way it is likely
ground ends, and it seems natural that it words, representation gets negated at the to give rise to objects that manifest the only
should, where the surface ends. To under- very point where questions of spatiality—how kind of beauty we find acceptable today. q
stand Matisse's use of the surface, we might does this patch stand to the next?—would
say that through it he reconciles us to the begin to arise. The overall effect is that, in 1 See Stanley Cavell Must We Mean What We Say? (New
York 1969) pp 220-1.
ground without our hankering after any of the looking at Louis's patches, we seem aware of 2 E.g. Studio International, Vol. 180, No. 924 ( July-August
classic ways of treating the ground that them as though they were embedded in, or 1970) passim.
Matisse has foresworn. pressed down upon, the surface—an effect, 3 On this, see Meyer Schapiro, 'On Some Problems in
There is perhaps another line of thought in La which, incidentally, we find, in a highly the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in
Image-Signs', Semiotica, Vol. I, No. 3,1969, pp 223-42.
Fenétre Ouverte which is worth pursuing. What figurative context, in some of Goya's can- 4 Michael Fried, Three American Painters (Boston, 1965),
we see through the open window is a view. vases. The surface, then, is used to control or
pp 19-20.
Now, at any rate for a painter there is, per- to limit the operation of representation, so 5 Michel Butor, Inventory (London 1970).
haps, a certain absurdity in thinking of a view that colour can be encountered in what we 6 I have benefited greatly from conversations with Peter
as a view on to—well, as a view on to nothing, might call a 'pure' mode : as predicated of Larisey, S. J., on this point.