Page 25 - Studio International - November 1972

so that they conform to a specific attitude or intended framework through which the facts of what it does in the experiencing of it, creates
emotional state of mind, and that the experience have been re-presented, (or more itself through relations, proportions. The
objects presented are the intended abstractly as an object that is in itself a quality of art depends on inspired felt relations
product of that state of mind. In turn, when the projection of felt-consciousness) then to begin or proportions as on nothing else. There is no
properties of an individual object are felt as an with it will be seen that the nature of the formal getting around this. A simple unadorned box
intuitive whole through the form of its presence concerns of these movements are entirely can succeed as art by virtue of these things, and
it will invoke a particular state of mind. different from those asserted by 'modernist when it fails as art it is not because it is a plain
Finally, Judd's objects may be considered as criticism'. box, but because its proportions or even its size
universal in that they are what all objects Now consider impressionist painting; are uninspired, unfelt.'13
would ideally become if experienced as that accepting the risk that it hopelessly over- This view is too simple and partly accounts
specific state of mind. simplifies to deal with the 'tendencies' of for the designation of Modernist Art by its
So far, I have attempted to describe the form movements. Approached in the manner antagonists as merely 'decorative'. As recent
of the experience of Judd's art, to show how the suggested above, our cognition of how it has modernist criticism has also indicated, it was
(affective) meaning of his art might be arrived at. ordered physical phenomena through the only when Abstract Expressionism had managed
It should be added, however, that since the form framework of painting would then broadly to overthrow the traditional 'figurative' space of
of the experience is integral with the involve: its use of commonplace subject matter european art, and redefine it completely as a
presentation of its content (a complex of (the focus on material qualities); its use of projection of 'psychic' or 'subjective space',14
percepts), the cognizance of its meaning will painterly means (the optical description of that it succeeded in producing significant art.
depend on being directly acquainted with the appearance); its use of spontaneity (the This achievement was due as much as anything
perceptual experience his objects provide. (It is to the whole complex change that took place
unlikely that through the 'form' of the in the conception of scale in painting, ie the
apperceived experience alone any specific drawing of the spectator into the space of a
attitude or emotion could be identified.)8 painting; the establishment of a physical,
perceptual identity between the spectator as
the subject of a painting and its internal
2
Having located the kind of experience Judd's elements; the creation of a different kind of
art provides, if it is now moved to a more general illusion, so that the space of the painting
frame, one in which his objects are thought of as seemed to exist somewhere between
an analogue for a 'type of felt consciousness', the spectator and itself,15 etc. The
then in traditional terms the 'internal' issues crucial difference this made to abstract
involved would shift to that of asserting its expressionist painting may be seen by
`significance' as an art experience. In its complete comparing the experience provided by the
reorientation of our experience of art, Judd's art subjective diagrams of Mondrian trapped in a
raises the question: How as an experience can it traditional 'figurative space' and the evocative
be (directly) evaluated as art ? experience provided by the painting of, say,
Modernist doctrine holds that artistic Newman or Rothko. While this aspect of
(emotional) order depends on criteria of quality Abstract Expressionism can be subsumed under
(as rational order depends on principles of the modernist notion of 'rightness of form' it
truth), and that the only means for determining would also be true to say that this framework
quality is through the faculty of taste. This tends to obscure, rather than reveal, the
doctrine also sets limits to the concerns of art. significance of this development : as externalizing
To quote Greenberg, 'Things that purport to be a whole new dimension of emotional experience.
art, do not exist, do not function as art until What is placed in question, then, is the
they are experienced through taste. Until then conjunction that has been established by
they exist only as empirical phenomena, as Claude Monet modernist criticism between criteria of taste
aesthetically arbitrary objects of art.' 9 But what La Cathédrale de Rouen 1894 and value (quality) in art, and its extension to
Jeu de Paume, Paris
this amounts to, since taste can only refer to tenets of style, form, even originality as the
objects that directly evoke a felt response, is elevation of the sketch to high art); its use of sine qua non of art experience.16 If this criteria
that, strictly speaking, only certain objects of serial order (the syndrome of a painting a day) is identified with art solely as 'expressive' then
expression can fall within the domain of art. etc.,10 taken not simply as the formal means for it can hardly be questioned. But alternatively, if
Consistent with these limits, modernist providing an expressive experience, but what Judd's art has made explicit, if an
criticism has presented the recent history of art, regarded instead as the necessary components `intuitive' form of art is taken into account,
primarily through Impressionism and Cubism, of a 'felt state of mind', intuited as a self- then it would now be both relevant and
as successive stages in the refining of its objects supporting world view.11 It is also in this sense appropriate to accord value to the kind of 'felt
as more abstract, and therefore more direct, that these paintings may be said to stand consciousness' that is disclosed by an 'artwork'.
means of expression. Similarly, it has also somewhere between ourselves and the world Having made this distinction however, the
interpreted changes in the 'appearance' of art in beyond — which is how they were painted. question that still remains is, how within this
terms of the narrow formalist conception of If by contrast this approach is now applied context of art is 'value' to be asserted. To
style, as changes in the perceptual 'modes' that to Abstract Expressionism it would at first begin with, it may now be claimed
characterize types of expression (ie tactile seem to bear no relevance. Having discarded that art in this form is 'didactic', the first
versus optical space). figurative subject matter, Fine Art, to all question that raises is, what 'form' of felt
But if, by comparison, the 'formal nature' of intents and purposes, had become no consciousness is being revealed. And, from
this context of art is now considered through more than the auspicious relating of the this vantage point, the 'value' of a work of art
what has been made explicit by the analysis of `abstract' elements of its media through our would become pre-eminent by comparing one
Judd's art; if an object of art, instead of being `felt responses'. 'The neo-plastic artist tries to `kind' of felt consciousness to another;
thought of as a 'physical means' for ordering our think of his painting as an abstract experience of which is probably what Judd meant when he
felt responses to sense objects, is thought of as an relations.'12 'Art in any media boiled down to stated that a 'work (of art) needs only to be
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