Page 30 - Studio International - July August 1974

MORRIS LOUIS AND THE

RE-STRUCTURED PICTURE

Artistic inspiration usually comes in consistent character; it seems to be slowly or the structuring of painting, to a system of
company with innovation. The association is substituting conception — an 'idea' of excluding or including components of form and
constant in the last 500 years of western fundamental structure — for skill or craft. material rather than things to be depicted or
painting, although the character of More and more, as art moves on, we look to the not depicted. When painting as the depiction
innovation — what it affects — is always changing. artist as the source, rather than the vehicle, of of real things in an illusion of deep space
In retrospect, innovation seems inevitably inspiration, just as social thought, from disappeared, the usefulness, or better, the
obliged at any particular time to take a primitive animism to mediaeval theology to the `usability', of the illusion disappeared. What
particular form, to change picture-making enlightenment to Freud, presses the vital was in the painting came up flat against the
in a way that is consistent with its own time, point of life into the living, internalizing surface. This flatness resists the integration of
as if there is only one type of innovation which responsibility, or recognizing its real place, the parts painted on it because anything painted
will 'catch' at the highest levels of art-making. bit by bit. The artist is no longer asked to do on the surface automatically blocks the mere
Inspiration is a useful word, but it is well within a given framework but to invent 2-dimensional openness it contains, and works
somewhere along the edge of what can be said the framework itself, to provide not only the against the relating of the painted parts.
and what cannot be said about art, as is the muscle but the skeleton. This is the shape of art Nothing was 'lost' here; painting quality comes
word quality. Inspiration is 'in' the artist just in our time, and it seems inescapable. not from the accumulation of useful devices but
as quality is 'in' the painting. An inspired Once the problems of modelling, perspective from what an artist does with what he's got. But
artist paints pictures of surpassing quality, and and illusion in depth had been worked out since Cubism the first problem of the
thereby is inspired. And so it goes. Though painting gained a foundation which lasted for ambitious painter is a problem realist painting
there is little doubt these things are of great hundreds of years. The first problem of had solved.
human importance, they are available only picture-making — creating a believably So far, in this century, most of the solutions
through experience. Their use as words will be integrated set of variations on a flat surface — have been found in Cubism. Early Cubism got
literally trivial if not backed by experience and was automatically solved by the realistic rid of hue variation, strongly centralized the
taste. depiction of recognizable things in an subject, or what remained of it, and rendered
But innovation can be pointed out and illusion of open space. That illusion gave the picture into parts of very similar size and
described. At its best, it is the path left by painting a very strong, box-like structure. The appearance, trued and faired to the edges.
inspiration. Unlike quality, it is not one-sided; old masters took the fullest advantage of this Later it brought colour back, in the service of
it is not always good for art, because it can system; indeed, it was the only system. Its space, and connected its parts in shallow space
proceed by deliberation rather than by only inherent defect, if it can be called a defect, in an over-and-under way, like a pile of awry
feeling. We have ample evidence of this today. was that the character of the basic materials of papers seen from above. One way or the other,
The recognition that good art is accompanied painting — paint and the flat surface —. were the cubist vocabulary answered most of the
by innovation is widespread enough, and has hidden behind depiction, and therefore, in questions, by reduction of hue or piece
sunk in enough, so that it is thought, always in themselves, relatively inexpressive. This made variation, by surface uniformity, by
desperation, that innovation alone — plotted, no difference to genius, which flourished then geometricizing, by balancing, by lining up with
planned and contrived — will force quality up as now. No art uses all its resources at once. the edge. Plenty could happen on top of all this,
on art. Of course it doesn't work. Inspiration But perhaps it was inevitable that the natural and Cubism has been the backbone of a lot of
sweeps all before it. It is 'getting it all materials of painting would come into their own. great art. But no completely new method of
together,' as the current saying goes. The impressionists started it when they pictorial integration came up in the cubist
Innovation is only a part of the grand began to look hard at nature. There they saw mainstream (cubist collage could have done it,
combination. The artist, faced with the great art not the careful modelling, shading and but Picasso did not take it far enough). The
of the past, must ask himself not how he can do continuousness of the academics but pieces reason for this is as much psychological as
the same, not how he can do something and patches of light and shade, and these aesthetic. Cubism, though a modernist style and
different, but how he can do as well, how he can pieces and patches of nature became pieces and the first abstract style, actually evolved with a
repeat the process by which that art was made. patches on their canvases. Though ever so very single-minded conservative intent: to save
Real creation always forces change as it carefully tied to nature, painting, in their traditional composing from the 'threat' of
digests and integrates materials, and one of the hands, began to become abstract, because the dissolution and dispersal implicit in
materials is the art of the past, particularly the quality of their paintings could be seen to come Impressionism, a threat that was realized in the
recent past. A great work of art is not merely a from material parts in explicit relationship, late paintings of Monet and is coming up in
thing, it is the record of what the artist has quality which was internal rather than advanced painting today. Cezanne and the
done. Part of the measure will be the reflective, rising from the painting, and hence cubists sought to impose traditional order on
evolution he has forced on the art of his time, from the artist, rather than from fidelity to an painting, an order Impressionism was moving
an evolution that sticks and endures, and external reality or ideal. The post-impressionists away from. Apparently abstraction was not too
serves itself up to the art of the future. carried it further; parts were deliberately made high a price to pay. Cubism altered the face of
In this way quality in art is not duplicated distinct, and the subject rigid and remote, less spatial painting, but it 'saved' it, and for forty
but maintained. The evolution of art styles real, forms to hang painting on. Through or fifty years stood behind most ambitous
which is art history cannot be seen as progressive. Cezanne, through the Fauves to Cubism, the painting.
There is no allover peak and decline, as there use of the 'parts' of painting went clearly away Jackson Pollock was a cubist, but he wanted to
may have been in serious music. Quality in from depiction into direct internal paint pictures much larger than the style had
western painting has been kept up for a long relationship, and the first job of inspiration in been able to support. Cubism never favoured
time, but there is no distinct 'more' or 'better', painting became the fundamental large size, as Guernica so sadly testifies, because
though cycles can be seen and traced. But the organization of the picture. it is so difficult to relate cubist parts across a
evolution of innovation seems to have a The cubists were the first to commit painting, large surface, to make the whole 'hang

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