Page 36 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

unhappy !' But the recoil of the sixties had pessimistic view of art's possibilities, become unutterably profane. And one would
eventuated in a far glossier misery: a breakdown intimidatingly aloof and inaccessible. From an never confuse the low energy threshold of these
in the notion of artistic unity such that artists ideological point of view, the arch advocates, the Reinhardt paintings with a lack of energy. Their
developed in a mode of progressive and ripest incarnations, of these two stances in the cruciform patterns of dark on dark bleed
accelerated disequilibrium, in the blinding decade of the sixties, are Andy Warhol and the through the sheer force of their denials, always,
spotlight of the media, and under the pressure much older Ad Reinhardt. It is impossible to if at progressively longer intervals, confusing
of always more extreme and specialized conceive the rhetorical polarities, if not the the initial impression of an optical still-point.
demands to make of their work an accessible artistic richness, of the time, without these two What must be said, finally, of both artists, is
trademark of the imagination. radical personalities— who had utterly no use for that they produced an art that thwarted all
The new identity which they undertook to each other. expectations of what art looks like, no less than
evolve could no longer be quite conceived as a Not that their actual work lacks either what it could provide as an artistic experience.
striving towards originality. Instead of the work conviction or quality. It is subsumed by, but Warhol's ostentatious lack of effort blended all
of art as a unique, never-before-or-again- also terribly expressive of, their positions. too well with the puerility of his subjects.
repeated entity, the current idea of art Warhol's career as an artist is studded with Reinhardt's excessive craftsmanship dissolved
established the artistic object as a kind of pawn bursts of inspired craziness. It was he who gave into a puzzling darkening of image and
in a strategy of displacement or reduction. And us the notion of art as a reprise of the assembly variation. But in these ways, nominally so
where once the Freudian view of the ego line, turning out images of products and opposed to each other, they contrived to test
structure, with its component id and super-ego, celebrities, at first identically bright, and then certain limits of public tolerance. Warhol seems
had been the vehicle for speaking of the play of progressively defective in their monotonous, to be admitting that anyone can do it; Reinhardt
a man's artistic resources, now cross-breeding mindless, all-over spread across the canvas, like appears to be pronouncing that no one can see
of information and media were used to so many digits. It was Warhol who convinced us it— 'it' being, of course, in both cases, the
`programme' sensuous data. Like Seurat's that we couldn't have too much of a good thing, pictorial execution. A programmatic nerve,
reaction to the Impressionists, the shift can be that the consumer economy, the star system, the something almost legislated in their make-up,
characterized as one which moves from ad hoc advertising world could not possibly provoke rather than a merely vulnerable courage, led
sensation to technology, from intuition to our moral disfavour, that they were what they them to embrace the most extreme philistine
system. Imagery, format, pattern, all these were, their very degradation sparkling, their clichés about art. And it is true of both of them,
become exchangeable and repeatable, whether colours glamorous. It was Warhol who realized, too, that their work only overturns those
by the supposed method by which machines in and through all the cajoling dross of the clichés, those prejudices, when seen, or thought
operate, or in imitation of the appearance of the media, a buoyancy, and a liberation of the of, in bulk. That is, one is made aware only
artifacts they produce. senses, whose very freedom denied the through a series of art objects, that their
The discords to be witnessed in sixties' art mass-produced origins of their motifs. In the rhetorical attack is tied up precisely with
have to do with the differing definitions of the poker he played with icons of Marilyn, Liz, and repetition, even replication. Both artists expose
impersonal and the machined as a potential of Jackie, all his cards were wild. Who but he a public bind or insensitivity in whatever might
content. On the one hand, the Pop artists could have seen in them, before anyone else, a be called the 'art consciousness' of this country.
became ironic technicians qualifying, garish numbness, a tragic bliss ? And who, If art is really an exalted, imaginative
exploiting, and mocking reproduced better than he, has aestheticized, even construction of the human spirit, how dare
commercial images, thereby seducing and yet sexualized, the grainy newsprint surfaces that Warhol demean it, make it extravagantly
strong-arming the spectator; on the other hand, gave us the bad news of the day ? How can we silly—in endless packages of the same thing ?
abstractionists computed and coded form as a prefer the fuschia cows' heads over the And if art is the domain of sensuous pleasure,
taut set-up of symbolical elements. The look of polychromed electric chairs, the day-glo daisies and human enjoyment, how could Reinhardt
the work in these two tendencies was premised over the aluminum pillows, floating lazily make us work so ridiculously hard to perceive so
upon the most explicit conditions of control. through the air, when all of these things give off little—ad infinitum ?
But the possession and the meaning of control, that same air of terrific innocence, mingled with In Warhol's paradise privacy, free choice,
both these came unhinged from the idea of the the most vivid decadence ? Warhol acquaints us and self-differentiation go down the drain.
merely subjective perception of the artist. That with the fact that newness is tarnished, stasis is When he was asked whether his early
artist represented himself, diffidently or movement, fetishism is health. His art lives only background in commercial art exemplified or
exaltedly, as you will, as a relayer of signals for the moment, but it extends that prepared for his mechanistic aesthetics as a Pop
supplied to him either by detached calculation, moment—almost endlessly, it seems—with a artist, he made the interesting point that in the
or a tripped-out consciousness. The sensibility pixilated fatalism. advertising studio, he was always obliged to
of the sixties was obsessed by the idea of art's And Reinhardt ? The perpetrator of the most `make it right', to conform to some one director's
limits. For the most representative works of the reckless sobriety. To have seen his retrospective idea of an attractive sell, no matter how
period tend either to challenge anew, or uphold at the Jewish Museum in 1966 was to have formularized in itself. Whereas, what he wanted
as of yore, the sense of those limits. witnessed the most single-minded, overbearing as an artist was to make something that
On the face of it, Pop Art, and related spectacle of humility, a self-effacement that conformed to no one's idea of 'rightness',
phenomena such as happenings, seem rather an knew no bounds, and that did not hesitate to observed no individual's option of taste. In an
optimistic development; a playful and positive repeat itself in the conviction that one could interview, he said, 'I think everybody should be
embrace of everything that goes on about them. never have too much of the same minimal thing. a machine. I think everybody should like
They do away with hierarchies, prescriptions, The reiteration of the almost black, almost everybody.' (Q) Is that what Pop art is all
and self-denials; they transmit a message of live lightless, almost blank canvas façade, about ? (A) 'Yes, it's liking things.' (Q) And
and let live, they release us from seriousness, immaculately smooth in texture, and perfectly liking things is like being a machine ? (A) 'Yes,
and certainly extend the forms, the appearances, square in dimension, came to seem a timeless because you do the same thing every time. You
and the identities of art. Classic sixties phenomenon, resistant to all circumstance. And do it over and over again.' (Q) And you approve
abstraction, almost by virtue of the contrast, yet, that 'almost', that 'as if', whispered of that ? (A) 'Yes, because it's all fantasy. It's
insistently compresses its strategies, restricts its throughout his innumerable paintings of the hard to be creative and it's hard not to think
meanings, and wards off the seductions of mixed sixties, hovered valuably between statement and what you do is creative or hard not to be called
media. It therefore seems to purvey a very non-statement. One began to appreciate it as the creative because everybody is always talking
hemmed-in sense of value, a negative and sacred bearer of a content that in Warhol had about that and individuality... I think somebody

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