“The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art” - Timothy R. Quigley

Modern Art: Basic Assumptions, Definitions, and QualificationsEmergence of New Criteria and Proliferation of StylesThe change in art dethroned not only representation as a necessary requirementbut also a particular standard of decorum or restraint in expression which hadexcluded certain domains and intensities of feeling. The notion of the humanity ofart was immensely widened. Many kinds of drawing, painting, sculpture andarchitecture, formerly ignored or judged inartistic, were seen as existing on thesame plane of human creativeness and expression as “civilized” Western art. Thatwould not have happened, I believe, without the revolution in modern painting.The idea of art was shifted, therefore, from the aspect of imagery to itsexpressive, constructive, inventive aspect. That does not mean, as somesuppose, that the old art was inferior or incomplete, that it had been constrained bythe requirements of representation, but rather that a new liberty had beenintroduced which had, as one of its consequences, a greater range in theappreciation and experience of forms. [Schapiro, 3]William Baziotes, The Flesh Eaters, 1952Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928-2011). Mountains and Sea, 1952Tuesday, February 7, 2012