Page 25 - Studio International - February 1973

Barnett Newman, Cathedra 1951. Oil and magna, 96 x 213 in. Coll: Annalee Newman

11 Conclusion they were concerned to embody their terms of a recapitulation of and development of
Early twentieth-century abstraction — that of apprehensions and their affirmations. Even in conditions implicit in 1911-12 Cubism (pace
Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian — had been Europe we may come to view the progenitors of Greenberg), I would suggest that the Abstract
sustained by idealism and by a belief in a our abstract art as primitives of a kind, men Expressionists were concerned, among other
`coming era of great spirituality'75. The years whose consciousness of the world was things, with the need to trace Cubism back
between the wars, alike in Europe and America, screened as a child's is, who were thus down through its extensions to the point at
brought disillusion to many, put paid to many privileged to embody the aspirations of a which art ceased to be able to call upon a world
dreams for the future prospects of 'art' and of dematerialized world, an unsophisticated of whole objects, i.e. back beyond the
`culture' and, in Europe at least, saw the rise of awareness. obfuscating idealism of Malevich, Mondrian and
idealism of quite another kind. Or was it so In 1948, Barnett Newman expressed a Kandinsky.
different ? At least one of the Abstract more evolved view of the problem of The European abstract artists somehow
Expressionists made an explicit association representativeness in non-figurative art: 'The managed to derive, from their inability to make
between one kind of idealism and the other. In a question that now arises is how, if we are living sense of man's changed and fraught
symposium of 1951, under the title 'What in a time without a legend or mythos that can be relationship to the material world, an
Abstract Art means to Me', de Kooning called sublime, if we refuse to admit any optimistic belief in a future which would be
described an art of 'spiritual harmony' in terms exaltation in pure relations, if we refuse to live characterized by the `spirituality'of all
which suggested that he saw its protagonists as in the abstract, how can we be creating a relationships. The Abstract Expressionist,
in process of flight from painful realities of life : sublime art ?'77 In so far as it is appropriate confronting a more developed condition of the
`Their own sentiment of form instead was one of to see aspects of Abstract Expressionism in same alienation of man from the world he had
comfort. The beauty of comfort. The great previously painted, saw nothing to which he felt
curve of a bridge was beautiful because people a relationship he could embody, nothing he
could go across the river in comfort. To could affirm, with the confidence with which he
compose in curves like that, and angles, and could affirm his own existence and his own
make works of art with them could only make mortality.
people happy, they maintained, for the only `The argument that science is really abstract,
association was one of comfort. That millions and that painting could be like music and, for
of people have died in war since then, because of this reason, that you cannot paint a man leaning
that idea of comfort, is something else:78 against a lamp-post, is utterly ridiculous. That
It is hard for us, even now, to see European space of science — the space of the physicists — I
abstract art in the disenchanted light by which am truly bored with by now. Their lenses are
some American artists viewed it (and still do). so thick that seen through them, the space gets
After all, many of our highest and dearest more and more melancholy. All that it contains
cultural and spiritual aspirations are invested in is billions and billions of hunks of matter, hot or
European notions of the meaningfulness of cold, floating around in darkness according to a
abstract art. But to the American artists, great design of aimlessness. The stars I think
concerned in the early forties, as the Europeans about, if I could fly, I could reach in a few
were not, with major problems of major art, old-fashioned days. But physicists' stars I use
Suprematism, Neo-Plasticism, Concrete Art, as buttons, buttoning up curtains of emptiness.
Absolute Art, Purism, etc., etc., if they did not If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself
actually accord with Totalitarianism, certainly and wonder where my fingers are — that is all
Mark Rothko, Number 22 1950
did not answer to the circumstances in which Oil on canvas, 117 1/2 x 106 3/4 in. MOMA, New York the space I need as a painter.'78 q
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