Page 53 - Studio International - October 1970

An essay `Truth and reality in art begin at the point ing as an equivalence through motif for
where the artist ceases to understand what he experience of the object world, and his un-
on painting is doing and capable of doing—yet feels in willingness to abandon the motif, increasingly
himself a force that becomes steadily stronger
gains in persuasiveness, and one treats with
and more concentrated' — Matisse. more than respect his late remark, 'It is
always when I am in direct accord with my
Alan Gouk The revolution inherent in the rejection of the sensations of nature that I feel I have the right
volumetric by the best painters of the past to depart from them, the better to render what
fifty years, was as well prepared as any in the I feel....'
history of aesthetic ideas. The dissolution of The path of ambitious painting since Matisse
volumetric form by colour in Impressionism, has been the path of motif-free abstraction,
the undermining of form by drawing in Ensor, with its challenges and hazards. In an in-
the fragmentation of volumetric space in spired subversion of the status of painting,
Cubism, and the primacy of flat optical colour made possible by the irrational ferment initi-
in Matisse's most daring phases, all suggest the ated by Surrealism, Pollock was able to
force of an unstemmable necessity of expres- transmute the formal elements of painting to
sion which can define much of the aesthetic create a wholly abstract art, the syntax of
character of the art of this century. But as with whose space and imagery aims at a fluidity
all such revolutions, a legacy of consequent and ambivalence which calls in question the
problems has been bequeathed to artists work- distinction between physical and mental
ing now, the solution to which will not come events. It is important to stress that this was
simply in awareness of them. done by a concentrated re-assessment of the
It is a particular paradox that many of these formal elements of painting as deliberate and
problems are in fact the result of the continual intense as Van Gogh's, who in writing the
tendency for volumetric space to re-instate following, intimated the direction that ad-
itself in all but the most aridly schematic and vanced abstraction was to take in its assiduous
reductive pursuits. It is this struggle to subdue unwillingness to take for granted the funda-
volume, while continuing to aim for a com- mentals of form and expression: 'What is
plexly related art which gives painting when drawing? How does one do it? It's the action
it succeeds now its unique intellectual and for forcing one's way through an invisible
emotional tension. iron wall which seems to be located some-
All the elements of painting expression, given where between what one feels and what one
free rein, gravitate towards the suggestion of can do. How does one get through this wall,
[AN EARLIER VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE FORMED
volume. Line defines volume, overlaps to for it is useless to hit it hard; it has to be
THE INTRODUCTION TO THE ARTS COUNCIL'S
describe it, or fattens into shape, which undermined and penetrated with a file,
TOURING EXHIBITION, 'NINE PAINTERS', FIRST
implies it. Colour is always coloured line or slowly and with patience.'
SHOWN AT THE HAYWARD GALLERY IN MAY.]
coloured shape, shape with edge. The problem of abstraction in painting is
The great colourists of the past constructed firstly a problem of drawing, and drawing is a
their paintings on a tonal architectonic extend- function of edge. For Pollock, drawing meant
ing to the extremities of value contrast. The the definition of an open, volume-free 'psychic'
impulsiveness which they were able to generate space through the attenuation of line. One of
in the orchestration of hues, and which seems the most important distinctions which can be
an essential attribute of the inspired colourist, made about modern painting is between the
was the result of prior mastery of problems of essentially 'graphic' drawing of Picasso, which
value dispersal and clustering round con- bends, distorts, and at times parodies prior
trasted tonal dominants. This is true even of conventions of representation, and what
the close-valued paintings of Monet's high Pollock learned from him and others, enabling
Impressionism. The milked-down close-valued him to pursue drawing process to a stage
adjustment of hues quickly becomes a point- where the necessities of expression forge an
less academic exercise when not animated by authentically original drawing style integral
some pursuit extending the artist's imagina- to the total formal conception of painting
tion beyond the system; it was Monet's realist space. Picasso came closest to achieving this
pre-occupations which served this function for in his analytical-cubist drawings, collages and
him, and made a special case of that aspect of relief constructions, while in paintings of the
his work as a colourist. same period tending to fall back on a tech-
The point here is that any degree of spon- nique of drawing by modulation and adjust-
taneity in the handling of colour leads to a ment deriving from Cezanne.
confrontation with value contrasts, and value In the absence of line as line, drawing is a
contrast is again inseparable from the sug- function of the placement and of the edge of
gestion of shape and volume. Whichever way coloured shape; or when coloured areas meet,
the painter turns in his efforts to enliven his drawing is a function of their meeting. The
art, he is faced with a conflict of ends and chief onus on recent painting has involved the
means. In seeking a free abstraction, he is release of colour from the confines of drawn
continually fettered with reference to substan- shape, allowing colour to breathe and spread
tial realities by the natural momentum of the spatially, not by ignoring drawing, but by
medium. In face of this problem, the logic of giving particular attention to its effect on
Matisse's identification of the status of paint- colour. Two distinct devices have evolved in