Page 36 - Studio-International-January-1974

NEWMAN AND THE mainly to its expressive content: 'as the
ordering of the artists felt responses to sense-
objects'. In relation to this content the
ISSUE OF SUBJECT traditional role of subject matter (as in genre
painting) was seen as indirectly 'locating' the
type of feeling or sentiment expressed. As
MATTER identity; either as a symbolic motif for pictorial modernist painting turned in on itself and
critically redefined its pictorial or abstract
comment, or as a subject that directed means, so on one level it also transferred this
ROELOF LOUW expression. The status of the object in other function to the physical form or processes of
words had once more become preeminent; its its media. Instead of the expressive content of
Newman's contribution to the formal or very choice as subject matter now asserted itself painting being identified through its association
abstract means of painting has cut across fine as meaningful.2 with external reality, it was now identified, as
art for the past two decades. But far more Defined as a style, Synthetic Cubism now it were, in direct relation to a painting as a
important and more problematic is his incorporated the possibility of returning to the physical object in itself. Newman however
conception of art's metaphysical' purpose (its full expression of the epic or lyrical sentiments (like some of his contemporaries) was not
formal means in relation to subject matter). modernist painting had discarded. But the prepared to accept this strictly formalist
Because of its anagogical background, the attempt to revive the expression of the grand approach to art, one that seemed to leave the
`interpretation' of his painting, its meaning, has public sentiments that relate to the subjects of meaning of its content implied or in doubt.
mostly been approached through associated war, religion, social ideals etc, turned out to be Nor did he accept its later justification by
myth or sentiment. In Newman's writings, unsuccessful, even misguided, in spite of the
however, he not only defined the explicit efforts of Picasso, Rouault, even Leger. It
nature of his art, but also undertook to is not within the scope of this essay to
critically relate it to western aesthetic thought. analyse the reasons for this failure, but by
Although his writings are at times comparison with other media, e.g. films
unsystematic and abstruse, he was (Eisenstein), theatre (Brecht), its content
nevertheless careful to avoid the kind of looked naive and unconvincing, even
`mystification' that has come to surround the forced within the Zeitgeist of painting; it
meaning of his work. This essay then is an seemed unsuited to the task3. While the
appreciation; an effort to get closer to both his alternative effort at lyrical (existential)
`conception of art' and the meaning of his statement, using surrealist techniques of
paintings. association, became literary in form and tended
to conflict with, even dissipate, the formal
During the thirties Cubism, as the central advance of cubist painting.
style in fine art, must have seemed to offer It is against this breakdown between the
everything to the ambitious artist. Acclaimed formal advance of the abstract means of
as a totally new vision of the world, it had painting and its relation to subject matter that
redefined the 'perceptual form' of painting, Newman's contribution to aesthetic thought
while through the mechanics of shape it had might best be seen. For during the late thirties
both liberated expression and evolved an and early forties in New York, a period of
associative language for making complex profound questioning in fine art, it was Newman
`symbolic' statements. The need for an inclusive who most clearly articulated this conflict. As he
style comparable to that of 'classical' art seemed wrote in 1944 : 'The modern artist has fought to
to have been fulfilled. But for all this potential escape its shackles, and it is this struggle
richness, once Cubism became dissociated from against subject matter that is the essence of the
its strictly representational purpose it began to contribution the modern artist has made to Georges Braque Guitar 1913-14,39 1/4 x 25 1/2 in.
flounder seriously. world thought.'4 Newman had, so to speak, Museum of Modern Art, New York
In its analytic phase, the appearance of the defined the predicament in painting at the time
object in actual (three-dimensional) space, was as the very need to reconsider the WHAT of
directly translated, piece for piece, into a painting; its formal content in relation to a modernist criticism purely on the grounds of
conception of pictorial space. These realm of concern — an appropriate albeit presenting an intrinsic aesthetic experience in
discrete modes of perception were initially profound subject matter. It was also within the relation to the formal means of art. (`Art is a
connected by the overlay of the represented conventions established by modernist art, in matter strictly of experience, not of principles,
object on to an image of its 'natural' appearance. particular Cubism, and to some extent the and what counts first and last in art is quality:
Within this context, the status of the indirect influence of Surrealism, that Newman all other things are secondary'. Greenberg.)
object, as no more than a convenient subject was to direct his formal thought. For as art redefined its abstract means so
for plastic analysis, remained neutral. But Newman's insistence on the relevance of Newman felt the need for art to similarly
as the arrangement of the unit parts subject matter might at first seem to be an reconsider its aesthetic purpose.
of the represented object became more anachronism in a period where fine art was Newman's thought was apparently
coincident with the flat surface of pictorial moving towards the isolation of its 'content', influenced by an early interest in mystical
space and more independent as visual (tactile) and the rejection of external subject matter. writings and in particular the Myth of Genesis ;7
facts, this connection was severed. With the As de Kooning put it, 'that abstract and in one sense an explanation of the origips of
result that the natural appearance of the object indefinable sensation, the aesthetic part, that creative consciousness as the necessity to bring
was only alluded to and it became, so to speak, brought the subject into existence as something `divine' order to the disparate 'psychic' forces in
more of a 'fiction' within a 'fiction'. With this you ought not to have'5. But this emphasis on life. From this standpoint Newman approached
shift in perceptual modality, attention was the abstract content of painting, as it prepared the issue of meaning in art through the
alternatively drawn towards its subjective to outrule external subject matter, referred transcendant proposition 'that the subject
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