Page 20 - Studio International - January 1973

195o Rothko was aged 47, de Kooning and `revolution of consciousness' — a notion very
Still 46, Newman 45, Pollock only 38.) I offer easily related to a sense of involvement in
this concentration upon the late forties, conditions of social/political/cultural
somewhat tentatively, as further justification oppression and of hopes for change.
for the scant attention paid to Robert Robert Motherwell, at least, saw his own work
Motherwell, whose series of Elegies to the in terms of 'a dialectic between the conscious
Spanish Republic were developed into large (straight lines, designed shapes, weighted
scale during the early fifties from small works colours, abstract language) and the unconscious
of 1948 and '49, and of Franz Kline, whose (soft lines, obscured shapes, automatism)
first large-scale black-and-white paintings resolved into a synthesis which differs as a whole
(Cardinal, Wotan, Chief, etc.) date from 195o. from either'.8 Motherwell's assertions often
I feel more confident in the omission of Ad have an elegance untypical of the Abstract
Reinhardt. For all the quality of his earlier Expressionists, but the implicit suggestion here
work, his superb black paintings distinguish that formal and spontaneous procedures are
him as a painter of the sixties. not necessarily irreconcilable holds good for
Space has not allowed any extended the Abstract Expressionists as a whole.
consideration of 'origins' or background'.? Artists have often tended to confuse their
critics by sustaining interests which are
2 Cubism . . . apparently ideologically incompatible. The
The major developments of twentieth-century artist has perhaps tended to work on a 'deeper'
European art, certainly in the eyes of the level where involvement in the technology of
Americans, were Cubism and Surrealism. In painting provides him with an idiom which the
conventional critical attitudes — largely critic cannot 'translate'.
dominated by the formalist tendency which Between the 'extreme' concepts of Cubism
runs through Fry and Bell to Clement and Surrealism there were important points at
Greenberg — these developments have been which various potential sources of influence in
seen as antithetical if not mutually exclusive. the works of individual admired painters
Clyfford Still Cubism and its derivatives have been seen as became compatible as instances of a general
Self-Portrait, 1945 essentially 'visual', and concerned with `deep' problem or possibility. Certain works, of
x 42 in. San Francisco Museum of Art
`picture space' — the relations which obtain a period well represented in American
between the real world of three dimensions collections between the wars, by Picasso, for
their relationships to previous art, without at the and the essentially illusory, two-dimensional example The Studio 1927-8, Museum of
same time denying the possibility of insight into world of the canvas (the 'proper' concern of Modern Art, New York), Miró (Dutch
the painters' more general and 'metaphysical' painting). Surrealism has been seen by its Interior 11928, MOMA), Léger (La Ville 1919,
notions of the significance of their actions and antagonists as an art movement vitiated by Philadelphia Museum; formerly Gallatin
their assertions. One needs also to maintain literariness and theatricality (i.e. as essentially Collection, New York), Matisse (Bathers by the
some truth to a world which allowed the non- or anti-`visual'), and by its protagonists as River 1916-7, Art Institute of Chicago;
coexistence, and at certain levels the a means to the liberation of the spirit and to the formerly Valentine Gallery, New York) and,
compatibility, of very different characters
and characteristics : both Newman and de
Kooning; both 'abstract' painting and figure
painting; both deep seriousness and high
vulgarity; both the deadpan and the sublime.
In an essay like this it is necessary to be
selective and to find some basis from which to
operate the selection. My approach to the
subject is therefore predicated upon the
conviction that the quality and originality of
the art of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning,
Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman and Mark
Rothko establishes their precedence above that
of other artists now customarily included in
group surveys : William Baziotes, Bradley
Walker Tomlin, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert
Motherwell, Richard Pousette Dart, Franz
Kline and Philip Guston.5 I hope the text which
follows will serve as some justification of that
conviction. I have considered Arshile Gorky
and Hans Hofmann as significant figures
involved in but not central to the notion of
`First Generation' American painting.
I have also predicted my interpretation of
Abstract Expressionism as a historical
phenomenon upon the particular intensity of
the art of the later forties, when each of the
five artists I have singled out established
distinct, individual and 'mature' styles.6 (In Robert Motherwell, Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive, 1943. 28 x 351 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York
I0