Page 10 - Studio International - October1973

how much more so must it be on the movements
Oriental art and [The extract below is taken from Michael in contemporary art of which not only the
Sullivan's 'The Meeting of Eastern and
twentieth- Western Art' to be published b9-Thames and methods but the very philosophical basis often
Hudson on 8 October, at £5.50.] seem to be thoroughly Oriental.
Between 1909 and 1920 there was launched
century painting upon the European public a barrage of
in the West manifestoes aimed at the destruction of
traditional Western beliefs about the nature and
purposes of art. The attack came from many
Michael Sullivan
directions, chiefly from Munich. The keynote
was struck by Kandinsky in 1909 with his
famous dictum, 'Alles ist erlaubt' (`Everything
is permitted'). All forms of imitation, declared
So striking seems the accord, in aims and the Futurist Manifesto of the following year,
methods, between Oriental painting and should be held in contempt. What should
certain key movements in modern art that it is inspire the artist, Kandinsky maintained, was
natural to assume that these revolutionary not representation of the visible, but 'the inner
Western developments have been to some spiritual side of nature'. In Paris, Matisse was
extent at least inspired by Far Eastern art and insisting that there is an 'inherent truth' which
thought. The parallels between the free must be disengaged from the outward
existentialist gestures of Pollock, Kline or appearance of the object to be represented:
Soulages on the one hand, and Zen ink painting `Exactitude n'est pas la vérité'.
on the other, seem too close to be due to mere What is this truth ? It is not the form, though
chance. After all, it might be argued, if Far it is expressed through the form. 'The absolute
Eastern influence had been decisive upon the is not to be sought in the form', wrote
Henri Michaux impressionists in the limited area of the Kandinsky. 'The form is always bound in time,
Painting 196o-67
Chinese Ink solution of purely visual and formal problems, it is relative since it is nothing more than the

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