Art Criticism - The State University of New York

More documents

Recommendations

Info

and many of whom were born in Europe) but this was a surrealism that did not use unsettling perspective and provided a shock more genial than cauterizing. A resolutely non-human, disdainful high comedy of inexorable Turneresque nature was slated to replace the world-weary, all too human nihilism of the art-mockers. These "mad-vets" were not craftsmen in clean denims, for they wanted to get away from the image of the artist as a person who takes infinite pains. Their one important pain was a sense of having to make up for lost time and they trained themselves fast, teaching each other more than they learned from their unbaptized instructors on the GI Bill. Proudly tattered beer drinkers with half-revealed war sagas, few became total alcoholics or were incurably sexually lonely. Few were known to record in writing their barroom ideas and were politely silent if one among them embarrassed the others by publishing words. Their ambitious preoccupation was too subtle, too big for descriptions. Here was painting (often boring or chaotic) which came from the noble Whitmanesque largesse that fed the young writers like 1. Kerouac, flawed with a windy, rough-hf'.wn American gaucherie, but being often above vengeance and subtle deceits. This time of postwar grace, of loafing and inviting one's soul, was inchoate in the sense of rising out of, not sinking into chaos. As it defined and preened itself it lost members who never had thought of it as a real school, but even to them it remained a moral presence. Politically, most of this group was Leftist, but friends from the Right were agreed with in tileir denunciations of decadence, cleverness, facility. Perhaps there was a bit of stoic masochism in their vow to complete a painting in one standing (hard to prove and not a new idea since it goes back to Whistler and the Impressionists). In their lunging paint slings, would they have admitted that dance was necessary to their complete involvement in this almost exorcizing ritual of physicality? Not to the extent that some Europeans would later film themselves in the act of painting. And the sloppiness and dripping or impastoing to a new depth I'm sure was seen as an unselfconsciously rapt byproduct of excitement, like the "dirty" instrumental timbre of the cherished old jazz music, liquor-fueled, that had not yet been ousted by the new coolness of marijuana's progressive jazz and "pop" art. There was little self parody. One artist, after squeezing out a tube of paint onto a painting, left the empty tube embedded in the paint; but, like the tube caps that appear in Pollock's work, this could be smiled at as the result of carelessness or preoccupation. When the canvas was sclerotic they might have rationalized "Sacre du Printemps." Could one make a comparison between these random dislocations and shatterings and "speaking in tongues", the religious glossal alia that, since before St. Paul's time, has been useful in freeing a worshipping mind for prayer? On this non-objective level, to introduce recognizable sounds (as in "Finnegan's Wake") would be as dissonant as bringing recognizable forms into these paintings. For the kind of rich, sub- 10 Art Criticism
conscious poetry below or above gibberish, one would have to utilize (in painting) a new type of surrealism that could illustrate dreams as well as adapt to deep space the unconscious vocabulary without the commonly-shared classical referents that the non-objectivists demanded. Paintings like these are not problems to be solved, but rather answers without questions. If questions arose, it must mean that the painting did not seem natural to us, was over-embellished because of indecision. The strengths in the best work recalled the flung spume ofW. Homer, the gilt-edged clouds of Ryder, the Turner sunsets never beheld on land or sea. What was sought was always the quality of inevitability that finds correspondence in the unconscious laws of vision of everyone who saw the painting. Not just the record of a frenzied dance, but an object of contemplation one can return to without tiring; a thing for museums, as Cezanne had wished for his work. Rothko'sexultation that painters were at last able to stretch their anns and breathe again and C. Still's admonition to keep one's work in the closet and show it only to initiates lest they be defiled by impure eyes-these statements show an intention not to be classed with any decadent group of popular proselytizing surrealists, as well as an unworldliness that supports H. Crehan's calling Still a Manichaeist. If one believes that the devil completely rules the world and that escape to paradise comes only with death, one cannot be called an existentialist, vowing to stoically improve things on Earth. Believing in essentiality, a transcendentally perfect existence elsewhere, the engages find glimpses of this perfection in mathematics, scientific laws. But in this new work there were no perfect circles or straight lines, only the tattered fragments from a heavenly battlefield. Bertrand Russell's positivistic finitude, his belief that all things in the universe could be numbered and that the list had an end, could never apply to these jagged-edged fonns of multiplicity's nightmare. Also here was a hint of unused demonic privilege. C. Greenberg claimed that not superego but only fear of punishment kept 1. Dubuffet from murder. Now we see intellectuals debasing this revered heresy in their dandyish sanctification of the criminal (apropos Sade and J. Genet) which is a misunderstanding of the Manichaeistic privilege, in Sartre and N. Mailer notably. These canvases were placards saying "Repent, the world is at an end!" One cannot be slightly apocalyptic, choosing from the damned everyman some to be excepted from punishment. Instead of feeding on the supposed European traditions of vengeance, these men and women in deciding to be fearless in paint were on the gauche Whitman trail to being both loving and loved in their generous ignoring of particular grievances, since only what is feared is hated. 2. SURREALISM: THE RlCHPERSON'S FOLK MAGIC? It was a surrealist, Dali, not an angry abstract ,:!xpressionist, who vol. 17, no. 1 11
Page 1: Volume 17; Number I ART C.RIT1C1SM
Page 4 and 5: Art Department State University of
Page 6 and 7: 4 Art Criticism
Page 8 and 9: Breaking the Picture Plane: Reflect
Page 10 and 11: whale saga (more recently Hesse or
Page 14 and 15: printed a bullet track fired into a
Page 16 and 17: music that (like the Mona Lisa) has
Page 18 and 19: causing by neglect a bitterness amo
Page 20 and 21: preserved some of the exuberance th
Page 22 and 23: which inspiration was stabilized. 5
Page 24 and 25: pain in the eyes of the cripple giv
Page 26 and 27: Bruckner did in his music) was not
Page 28 and 29: mortify into hard edges and mushy c
Page 30 and 31: with the sleep of reason. In the Am
Page 32 and 33: cent. Its fluidity of happy acciden
Page 34 and 35: And yet I can imagine these atrocit
Page 36 and 37: erature the not very evocative work
Page 38 and 39: maiden" of Marxism (unless things g
Page 40 and 41: ic he realize that artists suddenly
Page 42 and 43: The little nonsense that wise men r
Page 44 and 45: desensitized by the imitated means
Page 46 and 47: symbolism? If the arts only exist t
Page 48 and 49: The Femme Fatale as seen in the wor
Page 50 and 51: Huysmans parallels the life of De R
Page 52 and 53: ask for the unreasonable and receiv
Page 54 and 55: ennui or physical distress leads th
Page 56 and 57: ences cited herein, the femme fatal
Page 58 and 59: period."2 He traced the tradition b
Page 60 and 61: suggestion to the artist and the po
Page 62 and 63:
of Moreau's works is vague and myst
Page 64 and 65:
ing her as the femme fatale, or sub
Page 66 and 67:
The subtitle Satanic Decameron evok
Page 68 and 69:
completely mythical. Coupled with a
Page 70 and 71:
Moreau was very much a man of his t
Page 72 and 73:
themes and images are often decaden
Page 74 and 75:
p. 7-8; cited in Pierre Louis Mathi
Page 76 and 77:
Between World War I and World War I
Page 78 and 79:
shown distrust in the new styles. T
Page 80 and 81:
These passages were meant to help g
Page 82 and 83:
man public was voicing disapproval
Page 84 and 85:
y old masters that were more suitab
Page 86 and 87:
Notes 1 Alfred Barr, "Art in the Th
Page 88 and 89:
From Diagnoses to Decadence: A Brie
Page 90 and 91:
ate effort to reproduce fully an im
Page 92 and 93:
patients. Charcot was often to be f
Page 94 and 95:
Breuer attributed the presence of A
Page 96 and 97:
still is traditionally associated w
Page 98 and 99:
is not always recognized as such. H
Page 100 and 101:
generation on which the multitude o
Page 102 and 103:
2 Elaine Showalter, The Female Mala
Page 104 and 105:
36 Freud and Breuer, 37. 37 Su'ch a
Page 106 and 107:
Recasting the Art History Survey: E
Page 108 and 109:
mode of self-consciousness that bes
Page 110 and 111:
student-as-Other "calls" us to teac
Page 112 and 113:
thesis of such descriptions into an
Page 114 and 115:
In this final section of the essay,
Page 116 and 117:
image-world, the picture opens up a
Page 118 and 119:
history must itself be rethought in
Page 120 and 121:
15 Two of the most prominent propon
Page 122 and 123:
power: from the premodern exercise
Page 124:
~fJed in the Unikd Smtc, .• 9 ~]~
show all

Art Criticism - The State University of New York

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?