Page 17 - Studio International - July August 1974

anyone. All relevant criticism is structural. But Post-Pollock painting in America represents told that art is only emotive in destroying
how do we know (i.e. recognize) the structure of an important period of self-recognition with conventions, and only expressive by
a work of art ? Here our valuing comes in, for regard to these issues : in what I am presuming confounding the inherent impersonality of the
structure does not simply present itself to our to call the 'high' period of modernism in medium. If anything, the opposite is true. In
looking, all matters of value aside. We cannot painting, when abstract art came into its confirming its medium it is emotive. Under
speak of anything in a painting without some maturity, into its full autonomy, in a way never modernism, the medium is noticed, and with it
doubt that others will not see (or will choose previously — or never completely — achieved. its impersonality. T. S. Eliot put it far more
not to see) the precise and particular And lest this sound like one more slogan, I must succinctly. The artist, he said, 'has not a
configuration we claim as structural, and insist that this in itself is no statement of value. "personality" to express, but a particular
therefore of primary importance. This is a real And yet, the creation of a fully autonomous art medium which is only a medium and not a
enough problem — as any who writes about art seems now a prerequisite for the establishment personality'. Literature, of course, reached a
must know to their cost — and is a problem of value. If perpetual crisis has seemed to have theoretical understanding of this point before
because describing is itself a form of valuing. become an obligation for modernist art it is to painting did, in the so-called 'doctrine of
It is our estimation of a work's quality that keep its body alive. (The continual impersonality' which Eliot himself (and T. E.
directs us to the locus of its formal ambitions redefinitions of its constituent norms are like Hulme) derived from Symbolist theory. 'The
and allows us to speak of structure at all. 'The cells renewing themselves.) And though the pure work', Mallarmé insisted. 'requires that
critic's aim', wrote F. R. Leavis in 'The possession of life itself is no mean achievement, the poet vanish from the utterance'. This,
Common Pursuit', 'is, first, to realize as the feelings this living can afford becomes the however, can be taken in different ways. What
sensitively and completely as possible this or ultimate test for modernist art, as it has been for more invisible poet is there than Marcel
that which claims his attention; and a certain all art, of whatever period and whatever its Duchamp, whose 'irony of indifference' in
valuing is implicit in the realizing'. Valuing ambitions. What modernism continually shows, signing an object he neither made nor altered is
emerges in the realizing; and vice-versa. however (though again this is true of all art), is the very apotheosis of impersonality. The
Realizing and valuing come down, in the end, to just how very intimately feeling is tied to art's utterance is not his, it is easily objected. How
one and the same thing. For 'structures' are not construction of its anatomy : how it speaks with can he therefore vanish from it ? But more than
invented for their own sake, but are set up to its whole body, not only through its face; not this is involved. For Duchamp, and for those
achieve value for the art. through a medium, but with one. best called neo-modernists, the demonstration of
Our realization of structure, then, is an In a modernist situation, the artist surrenders modernist principles — the extension and
evaluative realization as well as a historical one, himself to his art. If this has always been so, exaggeration of modernist theory — becomes an
and both, in combination, are dependent upon a modernism only makes it manifest, that it end in itself. For Eliot, as a modernist,
perspective of what tradition comprises. I stress `expresses' its art before its artist, that it `impersonality' was the result of a particular
the traditional once more because I must now acknowledges its medium as its first priority, aesthetic enterprise — namely the acknowledging
turn round and insist that if modernism is and in this acknowledging is expressive. Too of the medium of his art — and was therefore a
dedicated to the preservation of its tradition, it often the word medium is used in a matter of practise; to be explicated by theory, to
is devoted to crisis at the same time. Crisis communications sense, as if it were an agency be sure (and occasionally too strictly), but a
usually implies instability, a turning point or or intervening substance through which some matter of practise nonetheless. Duchamp
break in continuity. Modernism knows no total other things are transmitted — be they assumed it as his persona. And far from
breaks, for its turning points turn back to the informations, feelings, or whatever — as if it separating himself from modernism as he
past even as they challenge the conventions of were something transparent. The biological pretended, his work is in effect a kind of gloss or
the past. It is, however, in some senses all meaning is preferable: the medium as a commentary upon certain modernist
turning point, all instability : the perpetual substance within which something is grown, principles. This, of course, was only possible
instability of an unending self-analysis in which a 'culture'. To look at it in this way is to see after these principles had been sufficiently
each of the modernist arts continually seeks out that it cannot actually transmit feelings. demonstrated — or, better, revealed — in actual
its own identity. This seeking for identity has These can only be grown in the medium or practise. Hence, Duchamp's chief 'attack' on
come to mean a search for autonomy, and this culture itself. They thrive and flourish within modernism — on its grounding in technique —
has brought two important complications. It the medium; outside of it they cannot be said to was only in fact possible when artists had
has made the personality of the artist himself an exist. They are created there. 'I am driven on by become conscious that technique was thus
acutely problematic one within the context of an idea', Matisse once said, 'that I really only inspirational. His immediate target was
the would-be autonomous work. It has also grasp as it grows with the picture'. 'Truth and Analytical Cubism (the style in which he briefly
brought into question — if not into danger — the reality in art begin at the point where an artist worked), which more than any previous style
very existence as well as identity of easel ceases to understand what he is doing and created the climate for such a consciousness.
painting itself. Ever since Impressionism, the capable of doing — yet feels in himself a force In Cubism, technique (though serving
traditional structure of easel painting has been that becomes steadily stronger and more informational ends) was so emphasized in itself —
threatened. Painting was saved by Cubism from concentrated'. This is not entirely to attribute in the exaggerated contrasts of light and dark
this — in some ways its natural — fate, only to to paintings feelings which have to be rising to the surface of the paintings — as to
find itself endangered once more with the satisfied, but to say that feelings can only exist force itself upon our attention in a new way. By
emergence of Pollock's all-over style, which to the satisfaction of the medium which shapes ambition an illusionistic art, the methods of its
made the whole genre of easel painting newly them. Working clarifies feeling; but more than illusionism came to win over illusionism itself.
hazardous. The pattern of risk and reassertal this it actually specifies it, when the medium is Duchamp opposed this fictive 'limiting' of art.
continues. Only by risking not only painting's given its autonomy. He wanted it open, and made it so for himself by
identity but its very existence as well have Under modernism, then, the medium is far subverting or by avoiding technique itself. For
modernists been able to develop it as probably more than simply a mechanical or executive modernism, technique is fundamental not only
the highest of the visual arts. These crises are feature, but it is at once the source of as the source of its inspiration but as the
ones which modernists themselves have sought inspiration of an artist and the locus of his evidence of its humanity: the controlling hand
incessantly to maintain, and it is, I believe, in interpretations of the past. Each work of art, the moral centre of its art. Duchamp's
the intersection and interrelationship of them therefore, becomes not only a present of indifference to technique — his turning to
both that the current situation in painting is creation, but also a present of culture: that `broader' ideas, to things impersonal and
best viewed. `culture' which is the medium. We are still often unsigned — avoided (though pretending to

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