Page 38 - Studio-International-January-1974

the outward 'form' of their realization. romance, a 'voluptuous dream that idolized by rational enquiry. Newman, however, by
Newman, however, as I have already stated, was plastic beauty' for its own sake. The result was alternatively showing that it is only in direct
not prepared to accept the validity of this claim that `Man's natural desire in his art to express relation to metaphysical 'ideas 'that aesthetic
for art as a purely aesthetic expression of his relation to the absolute became identified and experience can function to reveal `meaning'
feeling. Alternatively, by approaching its confused with the absolutisms of perfect (that is, as an intellectual art first), was driving
aesthetic content as the means instead of the creations — with the fetish of quality . . .'1 8. at an interdependence far less arbitrary.

end of art, the choice of subject matter had to But while the plastic artists of Greece failed Newman's summary description of the
be justified in relation to other disciplines. to produce significant art, Newman considered problem of subject matter in modern art, once
In Newman's remarkable essay 'The First their writers to have succeeded. He suggested placed within his thesis as a whole, is far more
Man was an Artist',14 he accused the science of that without 'plastic forms to fall in love involved than at first appears. He emphasized
palaeontology of making a ritual confusion with' they had to 'grapple with subject matter'. the modernity of Impressionism as the first
between method and enquiry in determining With the result that their concern with the tragic movement to radically revise the relation of
man's ancestry. He argued that in using the in their own society led to a new definition artists to tradition. 'It was not until
`tool of logic' to descriptively explain the 'what' of man's fate, a statement concerning the chaos Impressionism that a group of artists set
of physical phenomena (the unknown) there is a of individual action that applies equally to themselves a communal task — the exploration
proper coincidence between method and modern society. of a technical problem together. With them
enquiry But the fact that scientific method is Newman says nothing about Renaissance art, talent became axiomatic'.20 Newman
a priori free from any subject of enquiry has led suggests that it was this action that finally
to the confusion that it can be utilized to repudiated the defunct acceptance of fine art as
discover 'any truth'. To use science to discover a social institution (or conventional language)
man's ancestry is simply to substitute a useless within which the artist made no more than a
`who' for the significant 'what' of man. For as personal contribution. Instead it presumably
Newman emphasized, the significant 'what' of came to be regarded as a 'discipline' that was
man is his helplessness before the inner void; to creatively evolve through the critical or
his self-awareness of his existence; his spiritual radical stance taken by artists. But Newman was
cognizance of experience. This realm of also opposed to the modernism of his time that
knowledge, Newman held, can only be evinced tended to critically isolate art as an existent
through man's aesthetic consciousness. The phenomenon. In its extreme form an approach
mistake was to imagine that these acts of self- that generated the aspiration towards a pure or
awareness could be discovered or proved absolute mode of expression through the
through scientific method — whereas reification of its intrinsic means and values. To
they are fashioned by man. From this Newman Newman, the validity of such an experience in
also argued that an aesthetic affective cognizance fine art (as already described) was in itself open
of experience (e.g. the tragic sense) precedes to question. By positing significance with the role
social action. (The totemic act of wonder before of the artist as much as the condition of art he
the tiger ancestor came before the act of was to contest this one-sided deterministic
murder.) If palaeontology could use this approach that placed social influence on the
postulate to discover what original man was (his outside. (In particular the resultant critical
metaphysical insight), we could then discover attempt to justify the values of art through
what today's man is not.15 In making this historical analysis.)21 Newman, however, was
distinction between the unknown (the physical not to refute the 'aesthetic' or 'formal' advance
world) and the unknowable (man's self- of art together with its idealism — an attitude
consciousness), Newman was in one sense that has repeatedly pronounced the death of
merely restating the philosophical problem of Raphael Madonna and child enthroned with Saints art in the name of every cause or discipline
the limits of factual knowledge. But he was also Catherine, Cecilia, Paul and the infant John the Baptist but art itself. For art to assert its competence
doing far more than this : he was proposing a Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York as well as its value, he alternatively proposed
distinction, however problematic, between the a dialectic in which the artist was to focus
Method of Art and the Method of Science in but extends this criticism to the failure of continuously on a synchronous relation between
relation to metaphysical understanding: what European art as a whole to achieve the 'sublime' the formal advance of art and its aesthetic
alone can be logically approached, and what `through its blind desire to exist inside the purpose (its relation to relevant subject matter).
might be poetically (affectively) revealed.' 6 reality of sensation. (The objective world, In this sense then, the most truly modern
In applying the conception that the highest whether distorted or pure.)'19 In Renaissance artists would be those who recognized the
function of art is to reveal metaphysical truth, art the primary relation between aesthetic formal predicaments as well as the most
Newman saw classical art from the Greeks content and subject matter may be described as significant possibilities in the art of their time.
onwards as a progressive betrayal of this an effort to establish an 'ideal' correspondence Newman described the initial part of the
purpose." 7 As he saw it, the Greeks began with between emotional conduct and event, or feeling modern movement in painting as primarily a
the Romantic will to create an art that carried and occasion. By incorporating metaphysical `critical' concern with the technical and formal
a 'symbolic' significance equal to the Egyptians belief into this context, through the mediate use nature of its media. The impressionists,
(i.e. their attempt to comprehend death). But of iconography, exalted feelings were similarly influenced by scientific theories of light and the
their pride in their own civilization led instead expressed that referred to or even illuminated structure of the spectrum, applied these to a
to the creation of gods who represented the this knowledge. But because these ideas are critique of the use of pigment. Following from
material forces of their society (i.e. the fact that presented in the indirect form of 'concrete this concern, Post-Impressionism was located
a man could kill or be killed). This events' their relation to a sublime content is as a sceptical concern with the experience of
representation of the material or concrete led consequently disjunct. The feelings that are line and shape in relation to colour, and later
inevitably to a preoccupation with 'sensation'. expressed may be criticized as being only a Cubism, influenced by Cezanne, as a concern
Instead of their art attempting to penetrate the rhetorical display of individual emotion, or it-- with the experience of mass through a critique
`abstract meaning' of life, it became more of a may even be argued that they can be undermined of pictorial space. (The details of this