Page 20 - Studio International - February 1973

Art of This Century in New York in 1946, awareness of the hopelessness of action in the
Rothko expressed his admiration for the other face of ignorance and chaos). Like Rothko,
man's creation of 'new counterparts to replace Newman seems to have read both Aeschylus
the old mythological hybrids who have lost and Nietzsche, assimilating an educated concept
their pertinence in the intervening centuries'. of tragedy into a consciousness deeply affected
Still's paintings are remarkable in avoiding on by traditions of Jewish mysticism.52 And, in
the one hand any evident association to specific 1945, like Rothko and Gottlieb two years earlier,
contingencies of the material world, and on he explicitly related a general concern for the
the other any underlying structure as witness to embodiment of significant subject matter to a
a rehearsed metaphysic. His stance as a painter specific response to the conditions and
involves an arrogant assertion of the freedom consequences of the war.
. In times of violence, personal
of his vision over the epistemology of the more `.
factitious aspects of the art. 'That pigment on predilections for niceties of colour and form
canvas has a way of initiating conventional seem irrelevant. All primitive expression
reactions for most people needs no reminder. reveals the constant awareness of powerful
Behind these reactions is a body of history forces, the immediate presence of terror and
matured into dogma, authority and tradition. fear, a recognition of the brutality of the natural
The totalitarian hegemony of this tradition I world as well as the eternal insecurities of life.
Clyfford Still despise, its presumptions I reject. Its security is That these feelings are being experienced by
1944-N No z 1944
Oil on canvas, 105 x 92 in. an illusion, banal, and without courage. Its many people throughout the world today is an
Photo: Sandra Still. Coll: The artist substance is but dust and filing cabinets. The unfortunate fact and to us an art that glosses
homage paid to it is a celebration of death. We over or evades these feelings is superficial and
discovered that salvation cannot be bought. all bear the burden of this tradition on our meaningless. That is why we insist on subject
We are now committed to an unqualified act, backs but I cannot hold it a privilege to be a matter, a subject matter that embraces these
not illustrating outworn myths or pallbearer of my spirit in its name.'50 feelings and permits them to be expressed.'
contemporary alibis. One must accept total The appearance of Still's paintings is (Gottlieb53)
responsibility for what he executes. And the consistent with his determination to refuse `. . . The war, as the Surrealists predicted,
measure of his greatness will be in the depth of acquiescence to 'the collectivist rationale of our has robbed us of our hidden terror, as terror can
his insight and his courage in realizing his time', and to escape incorporation into the only exist if the forces of tragedy are unknown.
own vision. Demands for communication are omnivorous 'totalitarian mind'. They remain We now know the terror to expect. Hiroshima
both presumptuous and irrelevant ...'(1952)48. definitely 'outside'. Their dense, opaque, showed it to us. We are no longer then in the
Still's paintings since 1945 have been slabbed surfaces defy our attempts to 'enter' face of a mystery. After all, wasn't it an American
remarkably consistent in basic characteristics : (in the sense that we might imaginatively boy who did it ? The terror has indeed become
asymmetrically placed jagged 'planes' which are conceive of 'entering' the surface of a painting as real as life. What we have now is a tragic
interwoven with 'grounds' in such a way that by Rothko). In a context wholly devoid of rather than a terror situation.' (Newman54)
neither evidently overlies or stands out against pathos, his art reflects a condition of The notion of 'action in chaos' — 'a tragedy of
the other; an all-over scaly paint surface `solitariness', non-associativeness and action in the chaos that is society' (Newman) —
usually applied with a palette knife; an `otherness'. Rothko quoted him to the effect pervades abstract-expressionist ideology.
avoidance of 'organic' or 'lush' colours : no that his paintings were 'of the Earth, the When Newman recommenced painting in
pinks or soft reds, very few greens; a Damned and the Recreated'. 1944 it was, initially, in terms of a spontaneous
predominance of deep earth browns, resonant procedure for the generation of potent images.
maroons, acid yellows, chalky whites, opaque 8 Barnett Newman Barnett Newman
dark blues, and a range of greys and blacks. Like Still, Barnett Newman seems to have felt The Song of Orpheus 1944-45
This is a very markedly non-Mediterranean ill at ease in the forties with the heritage of Mixed media, 19 x 14 in.
chromatic range; the very antithesis of the European art. The possibility of independence Coll: Annalee Newman
cubists' and a long way even from Matisse's ; became real for him at the point when he
closest of anything to certain of Emil Nolde's seems to have sensed that a straight line need
landscapes — and that affinity does nothing not evoke a Euclidean, a 'non-objective' world;
more than suggest a common approach to that an uncompromising division of the
colour in terms of assertive and symbolic surface could in effect serve to embody
rather than descriptive and narrative uncompromisingly 'subjective' themes; that he
potentialities. Newman's and Rothko's use of was not bound, in fact, to choose between
colour, frc m about 1948 onward, could be `abstraction' and a world of subjects.
characterized as essentially non-referential in For five years in the early forties Newman
similar terms and to similar ends. In fact the had abstained from painting. During that time
developing anti-naturalism in the colour of he appears to have attempted — often in
these three painters was a significant means to writing — to understand the broad development
freedom from the kinds and considerations of of art in terms of its subjects and to account for
subject matter instinct and current in European the apparent present sterility of 'content'. He
painting and its traditions.49 This involved a saw the Post-Impressionists, with their
corollary freedom to embody subject matter of a emphasis upon problems of representation, as a
different status in an essentially less `school of still life painters with a Nature Morte
circumstantial context. On the evidence of work critique to all things'.51 He concluded that the
from the mid forties, Still seems unarguably to motive force for the making of art was terror
have been the leader in this. (before the 'unknowable') and that the
Until 1946 Still worked 'out West and alone'. acknowledgment of terror was tragedy (the
In an introduction to Still's one- man show at cognizance of the `unknowable'; the

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