Page 42 - Studio International - May 1970

Alexander

Liberman: the

art of amplitude

Gene Baro

Eve Version 1, May 31 1968
Painted steel
2
Version 2, September 7 1968
3
Version 5, September 1968
4
Version 7a, September 7 1968
5
Version 9a, October 12/13 1968
6
Version 10, September 6 1969
7
Version 14a October 25 1969
Alexander Liberman is one of a number of The artist is seen to be a man first; his art is 1932.) He had familiarized himself with the
important New York artists whose attitudes a part of his human dimension— not the other work of the dominant School of Paris and
and work are uninvolved with the dogmas of way round. In short, the recent cults of the with other contemporary European art out-
American formalist criticism. Russian by artist as single-minded specialist, philosopher- side of the Parisian ambience. His work of
birth, English and French by education, priest, and cultural superman are rejected by this period was merely formative, an explora-
Liberman moved to the United States in 1941. Liberman in favour of a more traditional, tion of possibilities. It was the upheaval of the
He was the embodiment of that European humanistic view. His artist is both conceptual- Second World War and his translation into
culture that transcends nationalism. His izer and craftsman, theorist and practitioner, the New York environment that focused him.
sensibilities were attuned to the hospitable a man widely involved in the world, an acti- In the 1930s, School of Paris art was well past
artistic milieu of Paris, where foreigners in vist in search of human meanings and, of its revolutionary phase. Much of the painting
numbers, as well as Frenchmen, were invent- course, a man susceptible to art. of those days was concerned with the elabora-
ing the art of the twentieth century. No doubt, there is an element of self-justifi- tion of established modes. Decay was implicit
No commentator can give a more cogent view cation in this attitude. Liberman is a man-of- in these operations. Inevitably, skill of execu-
of Liberman's broad sympathies than he did the-world who operates successfully in several tion—already of considerable potency in the
himself in 'The Artist in his Studio' (1960), spheres (most men would feel satisfied to value structure governing European art—
for which he provided both text and photo- achieve what he has in any one). As artist, he came to seem more important than inventive-
graphs. This remarkable book explores the takes in a spectrum : he is draughtsman, print- ness.
complex feelings that underlie artistic creation maker, sculptor, and painter. At all events, he In New York a decade later, an opposite ten-
and reveals the spiritual source of art in per- is no puritan. He can pick up his brush and dency prevailed. Determined to shake off the
sonality. All of the artists dealt with were put it down. He hasn't the need to deny his deadening hand of Paris (and of Paris at its
native French or French by adoption; they multiple gifts in order to concentrate upon best), American artists were making, in prac-
represented as many viewpoints as they were one of them. I suspect he would think it pomp- tice as well as theory, the propositions loosely
individuals, but they shared a commitment to ous to sublimate a talent or surpress an in- associated later with Abstract Expressionism.
a kind of energy, to the idea of art as an on- terest in the expectation of producing great This involved the assertion that the artist's
going process, a manifestation of the whole- art. His 'traditional' view allows for the radical activity was the true subject matter of art. So
ness of life. ingredient of freedom, however. The critical to speak, it freed the painter from traditional
Liberman, too, has this notion of art as ampli- position that keeps the shoemaker at his last technique—or rather from the need for its
tude. For him, it is an activity that helps to is not for him any more than it was for the systematic employment. Anything went, as
explain or that gives meaning to the chaos of young American artists who left the studios to long as the integrity of the two-dimensional
existence. Essentially, it is an attempt at make the Happenings and the Earthworks surface was closely maintained. For other
communication, an act of love made in and that helped to ventilate the 1960s. artists, painting suggested moral imperatives;
for the eye. In this conception, art addresses Liberman himself made a major contribution paint pursued the experience of sublimity.
itself to what is basic and timeless in ex- at the beginning of the decade. He had, of Paris and New York provided Liberman not
perience, even as it responds to the impera- course, been painting for some time—since the so much with alternatives as with the means
tives of the moment. For Liberman, art's 1930s. (Between 1929 and 1931, he studied to refine his responses. In a sense, he moved
significance is this on-goingness; its strength is painting with André Lhote. He made further away from both camps. Sympathetic to the
in the convention itself rather than in the studies, in architecture, with Auguste Perret idea of artist as craftsman, he began to con-
masterwork. at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts between 1930 and ceive of painting as potentially impersonal in