Page 47 - Studio International - July August 1974

ABSTRACT PAINTING

IN CALIFORNIA

Tradition, as any reactionary finds out in his before 1950, lingering two or three low-key extension of a sourdough-hippy
old age, is essential to abstract painting in any thereafter. (Hans Hofmann's brief tenure at pantheist life-style. Although certain of his
given region — first, because the objects of art the University of California, which modified a post-197c, works — the felt-tip and stain
history are still present tense, and they reek prevalent Cézanne-ism and left behind a bark-looking paintings — have overtones of
of their cultural environment, and second, carload of devotees in the early ios, is negligible `field' and appear to deal with issues of edge,
because abstract painting (like any good by comparison). Clyfford Still came down from repetition and a little of the 2D/3D
fine-art) is not only functionless but unglamorous Washington state and taught for four solid years conundrum that fascinates Ron Davis,
(compared to the seductions of video, at the San Francisco Art Institute (then the everybody knows Wiley's concern is with good
performance, and concept officialese). California School of Fine Arts); Rothko was vibes rather than, in the formalist sense,
Tradition, available on the walls, is necessary there two summers and Ad Reinhardt one. with good painting.
to make the whole enterprise seem worthwhile. True, a kind of Abstract Expressionism was A typical (and mythical) student egresses
This doesn't mean that abstract painting can't taught/cultivated and a hundred paint flingers from the San Francisco Art Institute with a
function without it — LA has practically none were unleashed upon the city's wafer-thin hang loose, do-your-own-thing eccentricity,
and its current stratum is richer than the Bay support system, but Still proselytized or from the Davis campus (90 miles east) of the
Area's, which has a modicum — but, without it, painting as an ethical, rather than an aesthetic, University of California with a brand of
inordinately heavy burdens will fall on climate enterprise; he proposed (much like his own spiritualism fed on a bond of charisma
and the mysteriously tough-mindedness of pictures transcend the hundreds of textural/ between students and a heavy faculty of Wiley,
individual artists able to survive in a backwater. chromatic palette-knife marks to become Robert Arneson, figurative painter Wayne
The great hoary debates of modernism have profound, spiritual surfaces/expanses) the Thiebaud and Manuel Neri. During the first
long been resolved (a painting that looks painter rises above his/her wrestling with the couple of years, the attitudinal flavour of
painted with a donkey's tail can be as great as a mechanics of Cubism and lascivious, house- Wileyism obtains : the country, gratuitous
Rembrandt; good abstract paintings can be brushed paint to discover, simply, himself/ enigma and punnery, mock-mock
done with almost anything, physically, and herself. The artist's bogyman is internal, seriousness, artists as good ol'boys; after that
almost nothing, visually, etc.), so the viability of not external. a second phase creeps in, especially in the city:
formalism hinges on secondary issues But maybe a little selling out is necessary to fixing up a studio, getting serious about the
(What's the function of the edge ? Does keep the operation afloat, and perhaps the look of specific work and history as well as a
quantity change the quality of colour ? Can moral interiorization of CSFA 1945-50 put personal beatitude, and reading the New York
paint still be 'on' the surface rather than 'in' it ? some tiny leaks in the hull of San Francisco's magazines. And that's where abstract
Is it all right to have shapes, and how many ?) AE; after Hassel Smith, Richard Diebenkorn's painting lies now, with small doses of New
These depend in turn on a closely packed early work, and Frank Lobdell, formalist Yorkisms in some younger artists who've
urban arena, with one painting answering painting in the Bay Area pooped out. slid into stage two.
another in tens of galleries and at least a Some artists left for New York, others The recent influx of New York style formalist
handful of museums, month after month. reconverted to the figure, and the remaining toughness comes from several directions.
New York — save for the inconvenience of few abstractionists (eg David Simpson, Jake Berthot, a semi-purist painter of
hauling fifteen-foot canvases through streets Sam Tchakalian or Keith Boyle) couldn't do considerable deep-seated, understated
rough even on pushcart peddlers — is perfect; much more than list in the currents of system, lyricism, taught at Berkeley for a few months
thus, no matter what great morphological field and stain. Still's suspicion of the in 1972; Berthot left behind (I know this for
upheavals at the spear-point of the art world, gallery-museum axis, meanwhile, still holds, myself, since I was doing a simultaneous, less
the combination of available heroes incarnate albeit modified. Nearly 25 years after the effective visit) a group of graduate students he'd
and a neurological grapevine quicker than a heyday of CSFA, the moralism still plagues touched with his poetic austerity. Kathan
flyweight's gloves continually produces/ Bay Area art because it translates as a lack of Brown's Crown Point Press brought in New
sustains artists like Robert Ryman, Joan dialectical seriousness; the Bay Area has been York heavies to do etchings (Chuck Close,
Snyder, Robert Mangold, Pat Steir, Brice for two decades anti-commodity and anti- Brice Marden), and even the minimal social
Marden, David Novros, Jake Berthot, Gary precious. Since formalism today is contact was enough to let younger artists know
Stephan, and wave after wave beyond them. synonymous with a kind of preciousness that attitudes other than Bay Area scruffiness
But by any measure, California is no better (adjust the colour, don't scuff the canvas, exist. Daniel Weinberg's gallery has shown the
than ambivalent. (A few unanswerable crate it nice), it can be accused of folksiness. same sort of artist, especially Dorothea
questions occur. One — is/was there a West But times change and the William Wiley/ Rockburne, who, from three thousand miles
Coast sensibility, an école du Pacifique? Two — Bob Hudson teacher types, who were away, is unfortunately admired as much for the
if so, does it have to be stacked up against taught by Lobdell's generation that secular inherent look of seriousness in her work
New York, ie is our only hope doing paintings doings are the death of real art, now caution (the economy of folded paper, serialism,
`as good as . . ? Three — if not, how does a only, 'Yeah, but be careful when you deal sets — as delectable as grids were in the 6os)
West Coast sensibility matter in the history with the guys with suits.' as for its difficult structural quality. Lastly,
of modernism except as a curio ? For now, I can Wiley is the biggest honcho, by force of and maybe overridingly, the Eva Hesse
only set them down.) example and productivity, the most powerful phenomenon (shamelessly played by the
The Bay Area (San Francisco, the east bay and contagious teacher-aesthetic in recent magazines as the most tragic art hero since
metropoli of Oakland and Berkeley, and memory. A prodigy AE painter in his early Pollock) came in on wings of print and
surrounding territory) is more given to 205, Wiley followed his nose for enigma into photographs, then, in the flesh, in the
genealogy and, not surprisingly, has a titles, then funkiness all around, then a kind travelling exhibition at Berkeley's museum.
readily definable, cohesive heritage: the of frontier assemblage playing off the seriousness Like Rockburne's, Hesse's work was probably
abstract expressionist flowering in the five years of painting, and then to a regard for art as a germinal for more prosaic reasons, such as the
35