The notion of "going under", the abandonment
of metaphysics as proposed by
Nietzsche and developed by Heidegger is a valuable tool in understanding
much of the art in the so called "post modern era."
The "modern" that is
currently being deconstructed by much of the intellectual community
is
defined by the search for overarching concepts, principles and
mathematical
formula that ground our scientific culture and in turn the shape
of our
lived experience. There is nothing that is not calibrated, analyzed
,
quantified in the social and physical world we live in and more
and more the
world we live in is not surrounded by natural forces and presences
but the
man made. The methodology of science was embraced by the founders
of modern
art and dominated much of the 20thc from Mondrian to Reinhardt
, the color
field painters and most recently Kelley and his mentor Leon Polk
Smith.
There was always something of the religious ascetic or its metamorphosis
into the rigorous practitioner of the scientific method in the
modern
painter. At Yale you could see it in the legacy of Albers as
embodied by Al
Held. He was intolerant of emotions, or the enthusiastic response
to one's
environment, and believed absolutely in the power of the abstract
over any
other kind of visual language. Hidden beneath this guise of objectivity
was
a will to control and dominate, to squeeze anything referential
out of the
work except the self referential. Contemporary thinkers have
seen a parallel
between this scientific approach to painting and the politics
of
totalitarian regimes that dominated Europe and Asia up until
recently. The
goal of of Stalin, Hitler and Mao was nothing short of the complete
mobilization of the masses in the name of technological progress.
And the
transformation of the citizenry body and soul into parts that
could be
mobilized into an efficient whole. The flat surface the "lego"
nature of so
much modern work seemed to me as a grad student at Yale to be
a paradigm for
the total transformation of contemporary culture into a well
oiled
mechancial whole. I remember seeing the mies van der rohe slabs
in NYC and
thinking they looked like main frame computers and the inhabitants
reduced
to particles of data.
Recently, I have begun to decipher another way
of looking at abstraction. It
all fell into place for me and my work during the installation
of the
"Severed Ear" a little more than a year ago when artist
curator Addison
Parks placed Richard Tuttle's "sculpture/drawing" on
the floor against the
wall as prescribed by the artist, just next to Bill Jensen's
painting of a
floating in a yellow mist preceded by Leon Polk Smith's abstraction.The
plywood piece of Tuttle's was inscribed with a square drawn short
of
closure.It had a throwaway quality with the square drawn in a
shaky hand on
what appeared to be the remnant of a crate; but the existential
purity of
the mark took abstraction back to the level of the self, the
maker away
from any higher realm. This was not a pristine Sol Lewit, or
Donald Judd or
a mark that immediately becomes part of a larger structure, but
an event, an
ordering event that took place in time and now finds itself leaning
nonchalantly against the wall, not far from the pure blue triangle
of Leon
Polk Smith.It seemed to me the first step in the "going
under" "of the high
language of abstraction. But where was it going. The answer lay
in the rest
of the show. Abstraction was becoming a language. It shared with
abstraction
the love of simple shapes and colors but the forms were being
used in
combinations that were creating moods and feelings akin to poetry.
Anxiety
fear trepidation, pain. The whole catastrophe. It were as though
Abstraction
was coming off its high horse into the world, "the foul
rag and bone shop of
the heart. Joan Snyder 's orbs were moons as well as spheres
and resonate on
a psychic level and Bill Jensens triangle lay hidden beneath
a crepuscular
mist, a fluid that keeps the purity of the geometric at bay.
So instead of
the dichotomy I couldn1t escape in school, especially after reading
Wollinger's "Abstraction and Empathy", it seemed to
me now that abstraction
would evolve into a langugae the same way our abstract letters
make up
words, phrases and meanings. In the context of this show my own
abstraction
found a home with its play with candy colors and references to
dress
patterns, a refusal to be pure and just abstract. Color as contingent
on
memory and context.
Now I find myself in "Picture Perfect"
curated by Charles Giuliano
surrounded by artists who are closer to the modernist in style
and method.I
think the title of the show points to a self- referentiality
in the artist's
use of form and technique. There is nothing out of place, nothing
without a
purpose to the demands of the paintings making. In particular
Bill
Thompson's monochromatic paintings try to exist nowhere but in
the present.
They are part of this world but on their own terms. The poem
of one word. Is
it a refusal of sorts to participate with others , maybe the
armor plate
of an ego that wont let go. All of this I find interesting in
terms of
attitudes toward the self. Marioni from what I heard from some
Massart
students who heard him speak sees his paintings as being emblematic
of a
pure pristine self beyond relativity or contingencies. But the
high gloss
work in Thompson ends up reflecting the world around and not
just what is in
front of it but with its undulating surfaces it picks up the
whole gallery
environment. Is this a statement about the impossibility of purity
an
admission of defeat, or did the work get beyond the intentions
of the artist
and contradict him itself? Then again, the paint is automobile
enamel.
Maybe this is the big step out of pure painting .Did post-modern
irony sneak
in here? However, Moore's clean and pristine works bring us into
a sort of
steady state, a world that has a minimalist hum to it, possibly
the
recitation of a mantra. Grids tend to be self- referential.And
like someone
talking to themselves , the outside world is closed out.
But it makes sense that I am in this show as well.
This pulling back from
the world and the search for inner coherence is not with out
its role in
art. Maybe that is the discipline of art. But the notion of self
in it is
transcendent and prior to the fall of man.
The context is everything. From the funky to the
pure. The struggle for
inner coherence. seemed to be what my world is about in this
show whereas it
about the appetitive and desire for things of this world in the"severed
ear".
In rereading the above it should be noted that
this notion of "going under"
as applied to "the severed ear" implies that this letting
go of the pure in
art is new but a look at art in the 70's and 80's show at the
Whitney makes
it clear that several decades were spent giving the finger to
the
minimalists. The show is everything minimalism tried to avoid:
its embrace
of the ugly, the perverse, just raw energy and sexuality, no
craft and
sometimes just plain exuberance. However, I am talking about
my History as
it unfolds here in Boston with what happens to come my way.
