Page 21 - Studio International - July August 1974

MODERNIST ART

1960 TO 1970

`Jonathan Edwards held, for example, that the at the same time it would make its possession of essay. Nevertheless, this paper does attempt
things which are objects of seeing are merely this area all the more secure.'2 to define the general direction of the decade's
mental existences in the same way that objects The decade of 1960 to 1970 was one of the concerns with colour in its movement from
in a mirror have no real existence but exist only richest periods in the history of modernist art. an open linear style to a complex linear one.
mentally. Nothing belonging to body, Edwards Its formal inventions and its attention to central It is a period wherein the works of art that were
insisted, exists out of the mind except aspects of the definition of picture-making or made measured up in quality and presence to
"resistance, which is solidity; and the sculpting recalls the profound concentration those of the two earlier 'great decades.'
termination of this resistance with its relations, shown by the first generation of modern painters, American art came of age with the mature
which is figure; and the communication of the the impressionists, between 1865 and 1875, and abstract works of Jackson Pollock. Pollock
resistance from space to space, which is motion." that evidenced by Matisse, Braque and Picasso fused in his paintings, done between 1948 and
And since all of these modes are forms of in the watershed period of 1905-1915. 1951, the major currents of modernism-
resistance, and resistance is nothing but the Impressionism had shown this concentration impressionism, analytical cubism, Mondrian's
exertion of God's power, this resistance cannot first, as Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley had late 193os style, and the surrealists'
exist out of the mind — one more way of proving atomized their painting touch in order to record automatism of Miró and Masson — into a radical
the world to be an ideal one.' the full import of natural colour. Henri Matisse synthesis. Based on the development of a
Alfred Owen Aldridge, 'Jonathan Edwards' had borne down even more strongly (or in a `painterly line' (achieved by pouring paint) and
Modernism, unlike many other terms used to more modernist way) as he took colour from its employment in an all-over structure, he
describe art since 186o, refers to a specific the painterly-pointillist tradition and made it merged painterly currents that had remained
critical approach to the ongoing traditions of function more powerfully, first in a complex isolated heretofore, in pictures of consummate
painting and sculpture over the last century.1 fashion, his fauve works, and then into a more import.4 Of more importance, they moved
Whereas terms such as 'modern art,' 'futuristic', immediate experience in the large, three- painting further into its area of best
and 'avant garde' refer to everything done colour, linear compositions that directly competence, visual abstraction. As Michael
during the century or a specific period, followed. Fried has written :
modernism refers, in general terms, to the While Matisse pushed colour to a greater `In a painting such as Number One there is only
focusing of each of the arts (painting, sculpture, explosiveness and power, Braque and Picasso, a pictorial field so homogeneous, overall and
etc.) on what is specific to that art alone. with overwhelming dedication, pursued the devoid both of recognizable objects and of
Modernism is thus distinct from both logic and inconsistencies of Cezanne's abstract shapes that I want to call it optical,
`catch-all' general definitions and polemically restructuring of impressionism to their deepest to distinguish it from the structured, essentially
inclusive groupings in that it bases its attitudes understandings and conclusions. And, when tactile pictorial field of previous modernist
on the perspective of what has freed the analytical Cubism faced the inevitability of painting from Cubism to de Kooning and even
components of painting and sculpture to exist abstraction, they resisted and moved into Hans Hofmann. Pollock's field is optical because
more fully in the works of art. Thus, in the synthetic Cubism and collage; a redirection of it addresses itself to eyesight alone.' 5
modernist point of view, the rise of abstraction such magnitude that it was only possible, one Ironically, Pollock's style, particular to him
in the last one hundred and ten years is most feels, because of the deep concentration with and yet summing up so many modern
properly viewed as a logical development by which they had attended to pictorial problems. traditions, was self-closing historically and,
painting and by sculpture to narrow in on what Of course, isolating an aspect of art-making with the partial exception of Frankenthaler,
is particular to their own separate definitions. does not lead necessarily to quality: genius, no artist extended directly his techniques or
The historical origins of modernism arose as it always has, does that. But the his complete compositional concerns.
from the changes and crises in religion, examination of what constitutes, irreducibly, a Pollock's use of an all-over, cubist design
politics and philosophy which began in the painting or sculpture — a questioning we here and its balanced area-to-area spotting
nineteenth century and continue today. In call modernist — has been the basis of the best resulted in his suppression of high-keyed
order to achieve its goal of maintaining the of modern art. colour. In the face of this omission, modernist
level of quality found in the art of the old The narrowing-in on varying salient features painting until 1970 was increasingly concerned
masters, only now in modern terms, of artisanal concerns has been the method for with the restoration of colour and its role in
modernist art has required, and continues advancing modernist art's historical definition pictorial structure and effect. During the
to require, radical, self-renewing steps. As of itself. Mondrian best exemplifies this, by period of the 'classic' Pollocks, Newman, Still
Clement Greenberg has written: 1918, in his decision to plot vision itself with and Rothko were moving, on different fronts,
`The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in horizontal and vertical coordinates.3 Yet from to push colour painting (which had remained
the use of the characteristic methods of a this extreme formal restriction (and these are basically dormant after Matisse's and Monet's
discipline to criticize the discipline itself — not the first abstract pictures — in modernist terms) commanding works) into its own. All three
in order to subvert it, but to entrench it Mondrian's art did not lose its human touch depended upon a non-cubist design for their
more firmly in its area of competence. . . . Each or qualities. distribution of colour, a way of avoiding the
art, it turned out, had to effect this In the 196os modernist art is characterized obvious necessity of an equalized emphasis in
demonstration on its own account. What had to by a concentration on the role of colour, like distributed elements. The freedom from
be exhibited and made explicit was that which Matisse and the fauves had done from 1905 to traditional structure, and the intense experience
was unique and irreducible not only in art in 1915. But, unlike Matisse, the decade of the of colour separately achieved by each artist,
general but also in each particular art. Each art 196os benefited from a full century of modernist was to exercise an enormous influence on the
had to determine, through the operations art's tradition, and the artists, thanks to the decade of the 1960s; likewise, these same artists
peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and broader possibilities of abstraction, created continued to develop what they had begun early
exclusive to itself. By doing this, each art would, from a much more varied base. It is a period too in their own works, and thus established in the
to be sure, narrow its area of competence, but rich in ',ubstance to discuss fully in this short twenty-year period new post-Pollock levels of
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