Page 50 - Studio International - July August 1974

STYLE, TORONTO,

AND YOUNGER ART

The best thing about painting in North America `the will to the plane, which orders the picture in Yet the three pictures most memorable to my
right now is the sense of its refinement. Like no strata parallel to the picture plane.'2 And an viewing of Bush's recent, markedly superior,
other art, except perhaps recent music, the affinity does appear to exist between the exhibitions would seem to contradict what I
sheer finesse of seventies painting invigorates assertion of the plane and composing in the have just said. Gray Bar and Temple from the
sensibility. I suppose the distance in time from planar style. Wölfflin saw this as among the Emmerich, New York show and Yellow Blue
the arrival during the sixties of much of today's definitive features of the kind of art he called White Red from a group exhibition at the
major art accounts for the keener, perhaps more `Classic' (to emphasize how the terms applies Mirvish Gallery in Toronto, all tend to align
generally conscious, enjoyment taken in ahistorically, to any period). drawing with the rectangle and in so doing
expertise. That the paint is rolled, stained, or When you look at abstract painting in the become much more forcefully planar and
squeegeed goes less noticed today than the planar style this affinity is clearly there. decoratively coherent than the more irregular
precision of touch involved. It's as though Composing a picture with the plane shapes of even a year before. And the pictures
painting had been determined in unison and immediately in mind reveals an intrinsic are better for it. Linear drawing, now enlarged,
beforehand to increase the range of the decorative unity, at times an emblematic gains a new impact by bringing the planes of the
conventions the sixties so rapidly introduced. In quality, partly because abstract painting's picture space closely together and the shallowly
turn, criticism seems to mean most when it shallow space lends itself by nature to this kind recessive space in the rest of the picture makes
articulates the finer degrees of goodness at of picture. Yet as a mode of the planar style, you more keenly aware of how carefully the
stake, when it leans toward connoisseurship. abstract art goes one better. It turns the surface colour and texture of the ground has been
And there also seems to be a relaxation of pace of paint itself into a parallel subject possessed of proportioned to the usually vivid, sharply
in the sense that criticism is able to emphasize its own interest, the kind Pollock's allover contrasting shapes. By placing these shapes at
today what is characteristic within painting pictures have. the edges or corners of a picture Bush allows the
because change has become easier to deal with What painterliness in the seventies reveals is mottled ground to spread out and away from
as its nature has become better understood.' that painting in the planar style can successfully them thereby asymmetrically balancing out the
Needless to say, none of this has made North receive a painterly treatment. Hence, when no picture surface. Though this happens in Temple,
America significantly less dull a place to live, a alternatives appear to such painting, Olitski's one of his great paintings, reading as an upward
fact which gives a certain weight to the fairly typically, then style blocks itself on two fronts. motion, it is a masterpiece of a more self-
common assumption that we might very well As Kenworth Moffett wrote in his catalogue to contained kind. Gray Bar on the other hand or
see a comparatively barren period of art history the Olitski exhibition last year, 'he is like a Yellow Blue White Red (as atypical as it is in
in the near future. For younger painting these block, the influence that has to be gone through other respects) dramatically demonstrate how
attitudes and this assumption would seem to or overcome if any fundamental innovation or Bush handles this kind of compositional device
read as something like a crisis of direction. At breakthrough is to be achieved." Though this in his finest pictures.
least, the obviousness of good art and the urge contradicts Mr Moffett's thesis, you could add Now, on the evidence of such pictures, that
to be new, place the younger painter in North that the extent to which Olitski defines a get better it would seem the more frankly
America in a peculiarly difficult position at the painterly planar style his art appears connected planar their drawing becomes, how can one
moment. Can there even be a clear sense of with a turning phase, probably a closing one, speak of Bush as opposed to the kind of planar
direction or task in this situation ? within modernist painting. style I mentioned before ? I think you can,
Toronto may be the wrong place to ask this That is why I think painterliness is so because as I see it, Bush is not essentially
question because its ambience remains necessary to pictures in the seventies. Recession, interested in using the edge of the rectangle to
provincial and the provincialism just impedes imbalance, multiplicity - its hallmarks, all act as organize a depicted shape, or at least, it is not
ambitious younger art. Yet Toronto's removal alternatives to what has come to be regarded as enough to say just that. In essence, the shapes
makes the problem explicit for that very reason. the inviolable expansiveness of the picture plane. that inhabit his art align themselves more to the
There is simply less to obscure the problems If Olitski's style represents an impasse for vertical-horizontal axes of sculpture. For him,
involved. But more to the point is the quality of younger art it is partly because he so the shape of the rectangle reinforces and echoes
younger painting you find in Toronto, the best successfully realizes a planar style within its the essentially sculptural orientation of the
of which is commensurate with the best younger opposite mode. The obvious alternatives to drawing, which in itself is not sculptural in the
painting anywhere in North America. And in planarity appear closed off and you look more sense of describing volumes. Though often
this sense Toronto representatively illustrates closely than before at painterly vision in which transparent and non-geometric it functions
the problems of younger art in general; a they stay open in another way, at Bush for more like the drawing of high Cubism or more
problem that seems to involve more than just instance. pertinently, late Matisse, where the rectangle
the present scarcity of talent in evidence. I cannot help but think that a process re-organizes an abstracted, naturally-qua-
something like this accounts for the sculpturally grounded idea in pictorial terms.
I popularization of Bush's art in the seventies. Hence, the necessity of precise placement and
All good painting pays a consistently varied Unclearness, asymmetry, and multiplicity are balance of the colour quantity.
attention to asserting the picture plane. But a all essential features of his vision, which could The beautiful brown and soft grey harmonies
distinction exists between this and composing be why his art in particular seems to have so of cubist painting abstract the colour of their
in the planar style. Though Wölffiin's much stylistic interest right now. Within it, a subject matter as radically as they abstract
distinction between linear and painterly art gets relationship obtains that puts compositional almost every other feature. And with Bush as
used fairly commonly to describe abstract lay-out at the service of drawing and as a result- well the compositional openness and the use of
painting, the shallow space of abstract art makes drawing preserves a broader range of effects. It the painting tools push the picture past
it harder to keep in mind his other equally is not confined to the edge, and thus shows what associations with nature, yet this is not true of
useful polarities of style, of which plane and drawing can still do in apparent independence of the colour. In my experience, pictures that
recession is one. He refers to the planar style as the planar style. frankly associate themselves with the colours of
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