Page 27 - Studio International - November 1972

events.'25 This statement quoted from a recent 'Clement Greenberg, in his essay 'Modernist fix them on the canvas with precision, is an extremely
Painting', published in the New Art. A critical delicate operation . . . . Painting of this kind
lecture by A. J. Ayer, in context, suggests a
anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock, Dutton, necessitates the pursuit of what are in effect
possible extension of the 'sense datum' theory. 1968, has used the term Modernism to refer to the ABSTRACTIONS. It is necessary to be able to
However, if it is recognized that the kind of whole of the self-critical attitude initiated into disengage the fugative motive from the unchanging
representation of physical objects suggested Western culture by Kant. But it has currently groundwork and to do it with rapidity, for the
become more useful, almost a convention, to apply different effects to be seized overlap one another,
here also closely corresponds to that of the the term in Fine Art to the specific enterprise both and if the eye does not arrest them as they pass, they
cubist painters, then would it not have been defined and primarily upheld by him. flow into one another'. Theodore Duret on Monet.
more to the point to ask how this 'mode of "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in Requoted from Rococo to Cubism in Art and
choice of subjects, nor in exact truth, but in
Literature, Wylie Sypher. Random House, 196o.
perception' relates to the concerns of painting ? A MODE OF FEELING . . . . To say the word See also note 2.
It is precisely this open-ended 'use' of 'concepts' Romanticism is to say modern art — that is, "Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks in criticism
that linguistic philosophers regard as a disease intimacy, spirituality, colour, aspiration towards here is to descriptively consider the components of a
work of art without usurping its unity.
the infinite, expressed by every means available to
within logical discourse, and have made every the art'. — Baudelaire. Requoted from Rococo to "Piet Mondrian. 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art.'
effort to eradicate. Cubism in Art and Literature, Wylie Sypher. "Clement Greenberg. See note 8.
Within the realm of abstraction it may be Random House, 196o. 14`I paint very large pictures. I realize that
'Obviously this is a reductio ad absurdum of what has historically the function of painting large pictures is
possible for art to claim a valid function by always been an underlying concern of art. But it is painting something very very grandiose and
structuring our perceptions or cognitions true to say that it is only with Abstract Expressionism pompous. The reason I paint them, however — I
— the ideal of an abstract (non-figurative) means of think it applies to other painters I know — is
through one or other 'formal' system.26 But if art
expression consistent with the form of painting and precisely because I want to be very intimate and
is to be defined by the kind of perception or sculpture — that for the first time it has become the human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself
cognition that it presents then this role in itself explicit method of art. outside your experience, to look upon an experience
'From Don Judd's essay 'Specific Objects', Arts as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass.
becomes open to question. If it is possible to
Yearbook No. 8, 1965. However you paint the large picture, you are in it. It
generalize at all, art may be said to have defined 'See Michael Fried's essay 'Art and Objecthood', isn't something you command'. Mark Rothko. From
itself as an endeavour that presents or reveals Artforum, Summer 1967. `Interiors', May, 1951, republished in Readings in
'It might be added that the use of language here is American Art Since 1900, edited by Barbara Rose.
specific states of 'emotion' or felt consciousness.
not to be taken as definitive but as mediatory — as Praeger, New York, 1968.
And extended formally, by externalizing inner making aware. "Very little seems to have been done in a comparative
states that can be experienced as synonymous 'From the Don Judd Catalogue, Whitechapel Art form to clarify the different uses of scale, and kinds
Gallery, September-November 1970, (`Selected of space, presented by these artists, except for
with the objects it presents, that is, to actualize,
writings by Don Judd: Perspecta II', 1967). E. G. Goossen's essay 'The Big Canvas', published
not to re-present levels of consciousness 'The content of Judd's art is well presented in his in New Art, A critical anthology, edited by
relevant to art. In this sense form resolves itself own writings and interviews: see in particular Gregory Battcock, Dutton, 1968.
as being allied to content, and it is also in this Donald Judd's essay 'Specific Objects', Arts "I have no wish in making this analysis — inadequate
as it may well be — to be identified with the kind of
Yearbook No. 8, 1965, and an interview with Don
sense that abstraction in art is quite unlike the Judd by John Coplans, Artforum, June 1971. objectionable, and mostly trite, forms of derision of
forms of 'abstraction' that belong to the See also 'Questions to Stella and Judd, an modernist criticism so current within the context
of 'Conceptual Art'.
sciences or philosophy; it relates to an interview by Bruce Glazen', edited by Lucy Lippard, "See 'Complaints part I', Don Judd, Studio
Art News, September 1966, also published in
experience that can probably only be shown. As Minimal Art, A critical anthology, edited by International April 1969.
Susan Sontag has suggested, 'the function of Gregory Battcock, Dutton, 1968. 18 `My thinking is always related to a very abstract
'From Clement Greenberg's lecture 'Avant-Garde context which I feel in my time has become the
criticism (here) should be to show how it is, Attitudes; New art in the sixties', published in postulate for a sense of the meaning of the word art'.
what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than Studio International, April 197o. Joseph Kosuth. See Charles Harrison's essay, 'A
show what it means.'27 q 10`To seize, in passing, the variations in aspect which very abstract context', Studio International,
the same scene assumes at different moments, and to November 1970.
"See Joseph Kosuth's essay 'Art After Philosophy',
Joseph Kosuth The Seventh Investigation (A.A.I.A.I.) Proposition i Part B. Chinatown, New York City, Studio International October, 1969.
Leo Castelli Gallery "From a statement by Joseph Kosuth. Information
catalogue, The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Summer, 1970.
"From A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic,
Victor Gollanz Ltd. 1964, p. 44.
"More interesting perhaps is Kosuth's style of
presentation, and the issue of attention and
consciousness in art, but this belongs to another
context than this essay and if anything only
contradicts Kosuth's argument.
"From Morton Feldman's essay 'After Modernism',
Art in America, November-December 1971.
"From Charles Harrison's essay 'A very abstract
Context'. See note 18.
"op cit.
"It is unfortunate that most art in this form has been
shrouded in mystery, whereas the 'epistemological'
or 'ontological' ideas involved are usually easy to
interpret. And as Greenberg has pointed out the
imaginative 'difficulties' set up don't make for
significance (Avant-garde Attitudes', see note 8).
Stockhausen's Momenta is an obvious example.
Accepting the authority of its 'epistemic' structure
(apart from originality), there is however an evident
disjunction between its meaning and the musical
experience it provides — accepting the use of sound
here as a dramatic form of 'referencing'. What is
being presented, in other words, is a form of
programme music with a vengeance. The question
then is why listen to a representation of an idea that
is not particularly (or weakly) elucidated by the
experience of listening. (By comparison it is
doubtful whether the same charge can be directed
against the music of, say, Steve Reich or Morton
Feldman.)
"From Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation and
other essays, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1967.
175