Page 18 - Studio International - July August 1974

resolve) the dilemma, already apparent in that it was resolved in terms of abstraction. By feelings is so important, and why his insistence
Cubism, of whether the medium of an art is highlighting the problems of representation, upon their importance is so utterly crucial to
primarily 'form' or is 'content' as well. Cubism hid those of personality, or did so until modernism's achievement of identity, is
Removing emphasis from the created (or its structures collapsed in the thirties, when because with Matisse (as with no other early
creative) aspect of art, he treated it simply as a they became passive receptacles for obtrusively modernist) the pre-modernist dilemma of how
specialized and refined instance of the use of personalized incident. Only then were specific can the work of art possess the outside world is
language to express the generalized myths and personalized elements seen to be working replaced by the uniquely modernist one: how
themes of society. In consequence, the object against painting's potential for achieving a total can an artist's feelings themselves be possessed
had to be open beyond itself: open to contain abstractness. This was the issue with which in the making of art. Or, better, Matisse
these myths and themes; all contained in the Pollock was faced within the context of a late clarified the fact that these two problems are
guise of all content. Cubism had exacerbated cubist style, and which Louis took up around one and the same. And Matisse was unique
the already existing problem of 'form' versus the time of Pollock's death. Outside of Cubism, among the early modernists in resolving them
`content' by widening the gulf between reality however, Matisse had already faced this same both. 'I am unable to distinguish between the
and its representation, between what is issue within the context of a representational feeling I have for life and my way of expressing
signified and what signifies. The methods of its art. In a penetrating section of Michael it', he wrote. But by his very example, he
representation, in the gradual achievement of Fried's book on Louis, he brings these three showed that there was under modernism some
their autonomy, no longer let 'content' and artists together. It deserves quoting at length: kind of potentially injurious divide between
significance be seen to be the same. Indeed, the . it would be wrong to think that an account what held personal meaning and what was
actual struggle between reality and its of Louis' art that sought to discover its aesthetic, between what belonged to the artist
representation - as the subject of Cubism - was meaning for Louis must necessarily be and what to art.
if anything the real source of its value. Neither psychological in character; or, for that matter, If, before modernism, artists sought to ally
the signified itself nor the signifier, but an to think that a psychological account of his art the 'literalness and specificity' of the outside
awareness that the world is not so simply must concern certain classes of relationships world to the closed impersonal nature of art,
available as Duchamp assumed. This sense of and feelings (eg, those associated with his under modernism, the literalness and specificity
the loss of reality, which Cubism expresses "private" life) rather than others (eg, those of the artist's feelings become problematic in
rather than overcomes, and which Duchamp connected with painting itself). It is as though the same way. Whereas artists have always
closed his eyes to, is at once the fundamental all of Louis' life was equally private - and, by sought to express the 'artificiality' of their work,
burden and challenge for modernism. After the same token, equally accessible to painting. and have done so through what Leo Steinberg
Cubism, and after Duchamp, 'modernism' and . . . And in general there is no evidence in calls 'internal safeguards' which hold reality at
`avant-garde' cannot be thought of as Louis' work of any conflict, indeed of any felt bay, what is special about the modernist
synonymous terms. Modernism is a grappling distinction, between the demands of life and situation is this : the safeguarding of art itself is
with the problem of an autonomous art and the those of art. This is perhaps the most important its prime concern. The safeguarding of art means
sense of alienation it provides. Increasingly, the difference between Louis and Pollock, whose the self-containment of art, the establishment of
avant-garde is no more than a product of this development seems to have involved a its fictive autotelic whole, an abstract and
alienation. continual struggle between the literalness and therefore silent whole, whose subjects -
As Cubism developed, painting expressed its specificity of urgent personal feeling and the whatever their urgency - do not address the
alienation from the very subjects to which it was impersonal, and in that sense abstract, demands viewer direct but, created in a particular
committed, from the very reality it sought to of painting itself. It was above all the depth and medium, lie there in wait for his inspection.
render. Painting, however, has never been ferocity of this struggle that, in his work of the With the exception of Matisse's work, however,
coexistent with the outside world, even though years 1947-5o, drove Pollock to dissolve or what I am describing was largely unpainted
it is only with modernism that this fact has been revoke traditional drawing and thereby to divest until the recent past, and largely due to the
consciously acknowledged. What has emerged himself of probably the most rudimentary, influence of Cubism. It was certainly only with
in modernism, however, is more than this : not direct means of specifying feeling that he had. Louis that this was achieved in totally abstract
only art's estrangement from the outside world . . . Whereas Louis' very imagination strikes one terms. All earlier 'abstract' painting offers, in
but also its potential estrangement from the as radically abstract in a way that not just one way or another, something other than its
artist's personality itself; now that the identity Pollock's but that of any modernist painter visible surfaces, separately carrying the spectator
of the medium is given its due priority. This is before Louis, except perhaps Matisse, does not'. outside its orbit. With Louis, however,
one important way in which modernism Matisse's imagination, as Lawrence Gowing everything was given over to purely aesthetic
separates itself from the Romanticism which has pointed out, was nurtured on 'a systematic ends.
preceded it: in refusing to see painting as and deliberate self-engrossment'. 'Only his art To some, this might appear to be a criticism
something instrumentalist in effect, as and himself were entirely real to him . . . The of the art - for example, of its lack of 'humanity'
something spoken through. This is not new to virtue of the procedure was regarded as self- or of 'expression'. In the end, however, overtly
modernism. In fact, the concept of inspiration evident. What could art rely on more surely than expressive art now seems somehow intrusive in
traditionally implied an alienation from one's on art ? What could form a more proper study its very surfeit of outward emotion, and in this
own personality, and possession by external than oneself ?' sense seems more a reaction to the problem of
forces. Modernism returns to an acceptance of a It is misleading to think of this as simply personality than a facing up to its implications -
version of external possession - except of course self-expression. Matisse talked frequently of or, as Stanley Cavell puts it (in talking of
what was once called the muse is now more expression - but it is not that his 'expression' is expressionism in 'The World Viewed'), 'a
prosaically known as the medium. now the subject of the work. If it were this, it representation of our response to this new fact of
Because of the public stance of Cubism, its would be an irrelevant achievement insofar as condition - our terror of ourselves in
exteriorizing basis, personality as such was kept art is concerned, for are the feelings and isolation - rather than . . . a representation of
from being an open issue. It was only with the expressions of artists in themselves the world from within the condition of
surrealist versions of a cubist style that it came intrinsically more appropriate than those of isolation itself.'
into the forefront, and only in Pollock's attempt other subjects ? This would be merely to replace This leads me to want to speak of post-
to make an abstract art out of this combination one kind of subject for another (and one kind of Pollock painting as possessing an essentially
that it became clear just what this problem was servitude for another). Why Matisse's self- lyric sensibility. The lyric, we remember, is the
. . . and only with Louis's building on Pollock conscious acknowledgement of his possession of utterance that is overheard. Recent modernist
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