Art Criticism - The State University of New York
Art Criticism - The State University of New York Art Criticism - The State University of New York
music that (like the Mona Lisa) has lost any thrust and heat it once had. But the dedicated artist who wants to be like the universally respected spiritual helper of yesteryear must leap over the avant garde esthete's snobbish antithesis of abstraction to the Hegelian synthesis of strong em0tion, using folk elements as compost for communication. One could compare the international style in architecture and in constructivist painting to the musical kit that was sent out from Germany to colonize America in the Eighteenth Century, a Haydnesque basic language that could be easily adapted to the wilderness. Hasn't Abstract Expressionism become even more of such a lingua franca, more flexible and personality-sustaining than Mondrian's and Corbusier's dogma? American music languished in the Nineteenth Century because'of the repla
whose main purpose seems to be to exclude their unpopular schoolmates, they were hard on the arriviste, enthusiastic curiosity here outweighed by length of tenure. Since there were no longer any august judges to appeal top the commune gave all a courage that led paradoxically to timid conservatism. This is the tough-mindedness that P. Pavia spoke for when he said in "It Is" that it was inexcusable for anyone in New York at that time not to know what was going on, revealing the exasperation of the seasoned intellectual pessimist at the wide-eyed parvenu. But there were imaginary as well as real turds in this new garden, and avoiding them led to a cautiousy mumbling, noncommittal stance instead of the initial intention of stretching arms and taking new deep breaths. Here were second-wave pilgrims to whom the new faith did not come so easily, who had to earn back a lost ingenuousness painfully, working gingerly and without much panache with the muddy colors from the slough of despond, not having earned the bright colors of the founding fathers' emblems of vindication. The day will come, believed Duchamp, when we will no longer say "hete comme un peintre." But aside from the birdlike gaiety ofthe neo-dadaists, aren't painters usually a stolid, inarticulate lot? Many have the squat short endomorphic muscularity of Picasso, his phlegmatic peasant wit. And, in their awkward muteness, they usually can say "my kingdom is not of this world." Yet H. Hoffman did not have to tell us (as he did) that our creativity made us as important as anyone else; we had the war's overturning of defunct materialist values as a weapon for our new enfranchisement as official dreamers. One shouldn't look for the correct time in a clock store. We see experts scrutinizing with microscopes paintings it took the artist ten minutes to finish with a wall brush. Or they puzzle over the suicides of certain Slavic painters which probably occurred impulsi'vely (providing philosophical ramifications that will, no doubt encourage their devotees). They are pondering a movement that was only vital before it had any large influence. Vlaminck and Derain painted better as Fauves than as independents, and for the Abstract Expressionists this kind of symbiosis was also nourishing, the group acting as superego against excesses that might cause it to lose own respect. But unsettling insights caused some to drift away, many to oblivion in provincial art worlds where "one man alone just ain't no Goddamn, good." As a person attempting to live alone in the woods will write accounts of his escape from corruption to fortify himself, members of this group would join hands with each other by means of magazines, exhibits, distanced not only by heartbreaking U.S.A. miles but by an urgent wish to go against the grain of the "groups'" growing threat to the fulfillment of their own insistent personnae. Contrary to legend, in only a few cases do the prices of dead artists' w~rk rise. It no longer pays for an artist to die. The public that neglects its great artists, trusting that posterity will vindicate them, is guilty in its materialism of vol. 17, no. 1 15
- 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 12 and 13: and many of whom were born in Europ
- Page 14 and 15: printed a bullet track fired into a
- 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
music that (like the Mona Lisa) has lost any thrust and heat it once had. But the<br />
dedicated artist who wants to be like the universally respected spiritual helper<br />
<strong>of</strong> yesteryear must leap over the avant garde esthete's snobbish antithesis <strong>of</strong><br />
abstraction to the Hegelian synthesis <strong>of</strong> strong em0tion, using folk elements<br />
as compost for communication.<br />
One could compare the international style in architecture and in<br />
constructivist painting to the musical kit that was sent out from Germany to<br />
colonize America in the Eighteenth Century, a Haydnesque basic language<br />
that could be easily adapted to the wilderness. Hasn't Abstract Expressionism<br />
become even more <strong>of</strong> such a lingua franca, more flexible and personality-sustaining<br />
than Mondrian's and Corbusier's dogma? American music languished<br />
in the Nineteenth Century because'<strong>of</strong> the repla
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