Page 27 - Studio International - February 1974

THE SHAPE OF COLOUR

The following is the text of the 5th Power Lecture, reproductions — our era tends also to reverse (in own validation and justification in those over-
given at the Power Institute of Fine Arts, America, at least) the roles of painting and explanatory rationales in which New York
University of Sydney, on 22 June 1973, and criticism, of painter and critic. Art criticism critics excel. In New York certainly, criticism
subsequently at Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, used to be an interpretative activity; it was a comes before painting.
Adelaide, Perth. verbal commentary which took place after the All of which, you may now be feeling,
event; it was essentially retrospective by nature effectively demolishes any excuses I might have
The fact that painting comes before criticism is and it commented on a non-verbal visual given myself for ever opening my mouth again.
a fact of which many are today increasingly activity — an activity which had already taken I'm horribly aware that the risk I take in saying
unaware. No one can doubt that the present place. By contrast, painting used to be the anything at all about painting is that the
time is the age of the dominance of 'the media'. result of an essentially non-verbal consciousness verbalized perception concerning this or that
Television, films, glossy reproductions can or perception which was simply not susceptible visual fact will henceforth superimpose itself
circle the globe in a trice — arriving on the other of verbal communication. All this is changed. upon the original sensation — which was of
side of the world months and even years before With the ascendancy of the reproduction has course visual. For this reason I would never
those cumbersome objects, the painted canvases come also the ascendancy of the verbal write a word about my present activity as a
on their stretchers, can catch up with the commentary — so that we only see what we read painter. To talk about how one is painting at the
distorted image of themselves which 'the media' that we are seeing, and not what our eyes would, moment would be fatally to disrupt what one is
have distributed in advance. Yet there remains a by their own unaided intuitive visual in the middle of doing. On the other hand, it
world of difference between the direct explorations of visual reality, present to us if would be false to pretend to be dumb : we've
experience, with your own two eyes, of the uninterfered with by art-critical verbal diktats. seen enough of the cult of inarticulateness
physical surface of the painted canvas in your Yet a system of verbalized conceptual art among artists. I've therefore always stressed
presence and that superficial knowledge of the criticism now everywhere threatens the that the statements I've made about my work
same picture which 'the media' has already autonomy of our purely visual experience. have been unavoidably retrospective. One can
projected at you. This overwhelming Increasingly we see what we read, we paint what only be verbally analytical at a remove in time :
preponderance of the reproduction over the we're told that we see : increasingly the act of one can discuss what one did five or fifteen years
original is very far from being that unmixed painting is becoming subservient to the ago because the passage of time has given it an
blessing which art popularizers have assumed. verbalized conceptual rules which critics imagine objectivity, and one can focus on it. I said
In fact, it is the direct cause of two situations of they have themselves derived in the first place verbally analytical : and perhaps you're already
near disaster in present-day painting : because from the realm of the purely visual. When thinking I'm bringing the words 'verbal' and
filmed or printed versions of a painting Roger Fry, fifty years ago in England, in `verbally' rather excessively or indiscriminately
outnumber that physical rectangle of the defence of the visual values of painting, into this argument ? But I'm exceedingly
original canvas by a million to one, we tend to declared war on 'the literary', he was concerned anxious, right here at the start, to disentangle
equate the broadest and haziest outlines of a to oppose interest in the subject-matter of all thinking which finds its articulation in words
pictorial image with the painting itself, figurative painting, and to proclaim that, no from that other kind of thinking which finds its
confusing what is only a skeletal or matter what the subject of such paintings might articulation through the endless organization
diagrammatic summing-up, or break-down, of a be, the only valid content of any visual work of and reorganization of elements which
painting with the painting on the canvas. art was the quality and nature of the abstract have their sole existence in the realm of
Secondly, because our experience of pictorial components of which it was in fact made up. the visual, the seen. For instance, verbal
images is in this way so drastically restricted to That 'All Art is Abstract' was indeed the title of thinking naturally equates the very idea
the enormously simplified images of paintings- some debates I undertook for the Arts Council of analysis with a process which results in the
in-reproduction we tend only to see, and over twenty years ago. The enormous irony of stringing together of words. It does not occur to
therefore only to discuss or look for, these the present situation is that the totally dead and the verbally conscious, perhaps, that if I say I
oversimplified formal schemes which are all academic nature of so much international am 'analysing a painting' I do not necessarily
that the photograph or film of a painting nonfigurative painting now owes most of its mean that I am going to speak or write about
managed to present. Confronted at last by the support to this selfsame literary or verbal mode that painting. For the painter, analysis of
literally unanalysable formal richness of the of consciousness — but this time the verbalizing painting takes place in silence, no words being
original canvas, we insist on reading back into it takes as its subject-matter the abstract uttered; the analytical process goes on behind
only those wildly oversimplified values which components of painting themselves. And this his eyes as they scan and cross over, and recross
were all that a camera could extract from that time, too, there are unprecedented again and again, the purely visual phenomena
infinitely subtle expanse of pigment. Still two organizational pressures interfering with that that that painting is presenting to the retinas of
further misfortunes arise. Whole schools of intuitive freedom of the eye which is the his eyes. Yet the fact remains that I can, if I try
painting now exist in which, although they do painter's birthright and his raison d'étre. In any very hard, interrupt this silent activity of looking
not know it, the painter paints his paintings with exact sense, we should always remember that — which is the mode of consciousness most
certain desired reproductions as the end in view. good painting is simply beyond analysis: or natural to me, most effortless for me — I can
In other words, the reproductions are nowadays rather, that the truth of any visual analysis of rudely shatter it by the mere switch-over to
often actually less boring than the original painting expressed in words, is always words and speech; the mere fact of 'putting
canvases. Finally, perhaps the most destructive fragmentary; and is always in any case something into words', as we say, itself brings to an end
spin-off from this entire situation is this : not perceived after the event. Yet — again in that purely visual reverie or meditation.
content, in effect, with reversing the status and America — we have become aware of a state of Every time I have interrupted the equally
the roles of the original and the reproduction — affairs in which criticism directs painting; in silent activity of pushing and pulling the
the painting of the canvas becoming merely the which the would-be creative activity, namely substance of colour across the surface of a
first stage in the achievement of one million painting, appears always to seek in advance its canvas by uttering an indication in words of
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