Page 37 - Studio-International-January-1974

matter of creation is chaos', i.e. that the these objects, then, was the expression of an
aesthetic content of art is defined through the attitude, i.e. the state of awe felt before the
necessary order it brings to a specific realm terror of the 'unknowable', that served to
(or cause) of emotional chaos. To the sceptic `reveal' or drive insight towards a 'symbolic'
this all too general and self-evident postulate conception of these forces.
might be queried as being no more valid than From this ontology Newman was to redefine
any other transcendent proposition for the accepted relation between the formal means
interpreting the content of art. But Newman's of art and its content. He criticized the general
approach should be seen as a particular response assumption that 'distortion' in primitive art
to the crisis of meaning within art at the time; was the product of geometric abstraction from
that is in relation to specific intentions, and in realistic form. This would mean that its content
this sense it proved perspicacious. For as was either the formal ordering of known visual
Newman's criticism made evident, the facts (i.e. the heiratic emphasis of physical
modernist concern purely with the features), or an expressive arrangement of
`appreciation' of art as an intrinsic aesthetic visual elements (shape, line, colour etc.). These
experience was an abnegation of this issue. By types of procedure Newman suggested belonged
applying this postulate as a general truth to art to the 'decorative 'side of primitive cultures. 9
(as will be seen) it became possible for Newman Alternatively, he interpreted the 'imagery' and
to both 'extrapolate' the content of art and to the 'plastic form' of their art as a symbolic
evaluate its meaning in relation to its underlying, language for the direct presentation of
metaphysical concepts. 'To primitive man a
shape was a living thing, a vehicle for an
abstract thought complex, a carrier of the
awesome feelings he felt before the
unknowable '.10 To clarify this description of
the aesthetic of the 'ritual art' of their culture,
then, form might now be thought of as a
language for presenting metaphysical concepts,
or as being synonymous with 'subject matter',
while its content might be thought of as an
expression of the feeling that necessarily
accompanies the cognition of the presented
subject matter." As Newman stated this
relation, 'the basis of an aesthetic act is the pure
idea, but the pure idea is of necessity an
aesthetic act. Here then is the epistemological
paradox that is the artists problem'.12
Newman's claims for art were admirably
realized in his paintings. But its implications
might first be clarified if compared with those of
nineteenth-century Romanticism; in many ways
the suigeneris of modernist aesthetic thought, if
not strictly speaking coincident with its
intentions. As Baudelaire first made explicit,
in this view art's spiritual nature was to be
Georges Braque Oval Still Life (Le Violon) 1914 realized through the formal expression of Man's
Museum of Modern Art, New York passions as something 'idealistic' and 'aesthetic'.
(Properly speaking Romanticism is neither in
the subjects an artist chooses nor in the exact
even implied, subject matter. copying of the truth, but in the way he feels.)13
If Newman's approach to meaning in art was In life it manifested itself through the pursuit of
directed by an interest in mysticism, it was his various forms of exalted pleasure for their own
`interpretation' of primitive art that proved sake; through man's melancholy, and the self-
most fruitful in elucidating an 'aesthetic'. imposed discipline of the dandy. While in art
As he saw it, the creative impulse in primitive these inherent passions disclosed themselves in
man originated in a 'conscious state of terror' an absolute sense by the feelings invoked in the
before the threat of mysterious forces. It was artist through a 'symbolic' object. As ecstatic
this 'tragic sense' that drove him to the making flowerings of the spirit these feelings represent
of art; 'as a ritualistic will towards metaphysical so to speak ultimate truths : they lead to an
understanding.' 8 In order to accommodate the expression of the spirit that involves its own
invisible forces of nature (African art) or insight and transcendence. Tragedy in this
between man and man (Pre-Columbian art) he context is the failure of man to achieve the
`fashioned' effigies that presented concepts of a priori ideals of feeling and conduct as
these forces through their identity with his dictated by his imagination (his dreams). In
own psyche. (A tiger, for example, became a the sense that these manifestations are held to
Dogon ancestor figure, Tellum style,
goddess of murder, a symbol of unabated be of the essence of man's spirit, their modernity
with patina of sacrificial blood and millet. h. 26 1/2 in.
ferocity and strength.) The aesthetic content of is considered a condition of 'taste' together with
Collection Lester Wunderman
27