Page 12 - Studio International - February 1971

`A smart set of A year ago I had a dream. The world was themselves, are increasingly transient. In an
relationship with things, as well as the things
infiltrated by dangerous and alien forces which
concepts' gained control over everything. Our oppressors age dedicated to change for its own sake, it is
offered each person a choice: either we could quite possible that what we need most in art is
Suzi. Gablik follow the route they proposed, where the exactly the opposite of what we are getting: a
dangers and obstructions were carefully counter-insistence on psychological stability
delineated beforehand, or we could proceed and on the preservation of certain continuities.
`A smart set of concepts may be a most efficient along an alternative route about which nothing
instrument of corruption.' (Iris Murdoch) The forced pace and the pressure toward
was known. But one of the two paths would continual innovation which our present situation
prove fatal, and there was no way of telling requires of artists may prove extremely
which it was. Those unfortunate or foolish damaging.
enough to choose it would never be seen or It is certainly true, as Bacon points out, that
heard from again. Afterwards, I associated the young artists have completely lost faith in the
anxiety expressed by the dream with the way possibilities of oil paint. They now enter a field
that certain situations are defined for the artist of operations in which the issues may have been
today, particularly with the way in which the so misdefined as to make it impossible to paint
stakes are continually being raised in relation to within it, even if they want to. At the moment
his choices. A year has passed since that dream. we are offered so many paradoxical instructions
The radical shift in the network of ideas through as to what to experience, and as to how we have
which art deals with the world has caused the to experience it, that it is difficult not to
issue to present itself with an unprecedented invalidate one's own experience if it does not
vividness. There are those who now say that conform to that which receives cultural
painting as we know it is about to disappear. sanction and status. It is very difficult to
The power of the word is such that perhaps I am determine with any accuracy, therefore, whether
not alone in my persecutory dreams. It would we are confronted with a real historical
appear that, as a painter, one is confronted with necessity (i.e. that painting as an aesthetic
a deadly choice. When it is said that painting is strategy has played itself out) or whether
finished, that it is an enterprise without a future certain contradictory demands and pressures
since it no longer corresponds to the actual have placed the artist in an excruciating
meaning of existence, either those who say this double-bind which makes it psychologically
are right, or they are wrong. It is no longer a impossible to paint. But all this leads us still
matter of new styles or movements, or of further. As R. D. Laing has pointed out,
figuration or abstraction which is at stake, but of psychiatry is concerned with politics, with who
whether painting as an activity will survive at makes the law, who defines the situation and
all. Certainly the rapidly changing attitudes of what the situation is. I should like to examine
society, and the new conceptions of nature what is happening in art in the light of these
which have evolved from the discoveries of questions.
science and modern physics, require a dramatic Art and critical theory have become so
re-adaptation in the arts. We are caught in a thoroughly intertwined that it is now all but
bedevilled situation: our whole cultural impossible to fix the lines of influence between
tradition has been conditioned to values of them or to define the boundaries of their
permanence, whereas the present conditions of involvements in terms of causes, effects,
life demand an acceptance of transience and purposes and needs. All this suggests a new sort
continual change. Moreover, the currents of of interaction and a new sort of complex—one
change have accelerated so sharply (as Donald which must be dealt with as a configuration,
Schon, the author of this year's Reith lectures, both by participants and by outsiders. As in
has pointed out) that the result is a permanent science, fact and theory are not categorically
crisis of all our institutions, which are being inseparable. A new theory is never just a simple
threatened by the end of the 'stable state'. The addition to what is already known; it indicates a
flight from permanence and from material change in the rules. Its assimilation requires the
objects that we are experiencing in art reflects a reconstruction of prior theory and the
tendency which is central to our times and is re-evaluation of prior fact, which always implies
found throughout society. The artist, it would a qualitative transformation and a new and more
seem, must accommodate himself to these rigid definition of the field. Essentially this
conditions. But what happens when the social describes the way in which both art and science
conditions for making art force him into a quest proceed by paradigmatic rule extension.' In
for solutions which are antithetical, not only art, however, a peculiarly symbiotic relationship
to his temperament and sensibility, but to his has evolved between the artist and those who
basic commitment ? At least two painters of interpret or explain his work. It might be
totally different persuasion, Francis Bacon and described as a Mœbius strip—a one-sided
Kenneth Noland, have confided to me their surface of which the outer surface is continuous
personal feeling that the potential of painting with the inner surface, so that there is no way
has barely even been opened up. Where does of differentiating between inside and outside.
the truth lie ? I think it is essential to ask at this This symbiosis has produced a very problematic
point if painting is really over, or if we are merely dominance-dependency relationship, of which
being instructed that it is over. We are moving in it may not be inappropriate to ask, who is
the direction of a society in which man's really bossing whom ? Theorizing about art
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