Page 59 - Studio International - November 1972

of the evidence upon which generalizations are painting had perhaps been their real common
based in one context appears capable of language, however different the expressions of
sustaining a contradictory interpretation in each; for the latecomers, the New York School,
another (for instance the material on political the Club, American Art, Art News and all the
`positions' — though it's never easy to make rest were their Community. Communities of
much sense of that). But the overall texture of that sort are most comfortable for those who
the book is sufficiently diverse to allow one to move into them once those who had reasons for
form one's own conclusions a lot of the time. forming them have found reasons to do
One point that came out particularly clearly for something else.
me was the contrast between what was hoped Miss Ashton occasionally appears to wag a
for in the thirties and what was accepted in the finger, but I would have been glad of more real
fifties. In the thirties it was believed that art scepticism and of less evident susceptibility to
could assume a socially relevant function; by the the pronouncements of talented individuals
fifties the dreary existentialist notion that upon broad and complex issues. The tone
individual self-assertion will instantiate some struck is occasionally that of an Insight
general truth or universal ethic was employed to journalist setting the scene for a by-election:
compensate for the artist's sense of difference and of course such accounts are of most
from a world which he had not changed and into interest to the constituents. Not all of those who
which he had inevitably been absorbed. figure in Miss Ashton's narrative are of much
The moment of transition seems to have been interest outside the parish — and New York can
in the later forties. I'm led to wonder whether be as parochial as anywhere else. Without the
the move into non-figuration which took place context of a discussion of the paintings to
at that time in the work of certain artists — sustain them, many of the preoccupations
including Pollock, Rothko and Newman — might seem tedious and many of the interlocutors
have become possible only once the earlier inconsiderable.
hopes for a 'relevant function' had been But there is a wealth of detail there for those
abandoned. We are accustomed now, largely by who want it or need it. No account of a
the obduracy of the formalist (Greenbergian) Zeitgeist can be comprehensive, however well
interpretation of art history, to see the chosen the citations and quotations, but
development into abstraction as an inevitable The Life and Times of the New York School
one; but of course that concept of makes a fair complement to Sandler's all too
`inevitability' itself depends upon an concise study. This is not a light book.
explanation of 'development' in art which is However, when Dore Ashton writes that
methodological rather than historical. `Cage's value as an artist was matched by his
I could wish that Miss Ashton had herself value as a model of individualism', I am
been prepared either to employ more method — prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt
i.e. to allow herself to develop more of a thesis — and assume that she is exercising a sense of
or to accept more of the role of the historian—i.e. humour. q
to deploy her facts in the most economic and CHARLES HARRISON
most accessible form. The book could have been
more readable with less detail, or more
scholarly with less chat. There is a slightly old-
fashioned insistence throughout upon the
embedding of information in belle-lettrist
narrative. And the rigorous abstinence from all
discussion of the technology of painting
(we're given an account of every possible
subject of studio talk except that one) tends to
overbalance the narrative in favour of literary
figures, to whom considerable respect is
accorded : Malraux is a 'great and influential
figure', Gaston Bachelard a figure of
`tremendous stature in European philosophical CONTRIBUTORS TO THE BOOK SUPPLEMENT
circles'; Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Edmund Fr. Cyril Barrett is Senior Lecturer in
Wilson make prominent appearances; and Philosophy at Warwick University . . .
finally Ginsberg exhorting his audience to read Andrew Forge is a painter and art critic of The
Shelley while they plied him with cheap Listener . . . Elizabeth Glazebrook is a
Bourbon, and Dylan Thomas, 'dishevelled, Director of Latimer Press . . . Charles
distraught, full of misgivings and despair'. Harrison is a founder editor of Art-Language
It seems in the end everyone got in on the act. . . . Tim Hilton is a contributing editor of
Newman had written of the thirties, 'The only Studio International . . . Harold Hurrell is a
free voice one heard was one's own'. The founder editor of Art-Language . . . Robert
Abstract Expressionists undoubtedly formed a McNab is doing research into metaphysical
community, though perhaps not a school; in painting . . . Robert Stuart Short is a
195o they worried about the nature of their lecturer at Norwich University . . .
community in a group symposium. But by then Maurice Yaffe is a research psychologist at the
it was nearly over for them; the technology of Institute of Psychiatry, London.

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