The Shape of Content [Paperback ed.] 0674805704, 9780674805705

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THE

sh/\pe: of

COMTENT BV BZN 5HAHN

THE SHAPE OF CONTENT

The

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

1956-1957

O

THE shape:

of

CONTENT BY BfN 5HAHN

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

PRESS

©

Copyn^Ht, .,S7, ^. ^^^

^reMent an,

College Felloes of Uar.ar,

lO

Catalog Card Library of Congress

Number

ISBN

0-674-80565-8 (cloth)

ISBN

0-674-80570-4 (paper)

5T'^

States of America Printed in the United

CONTENTS

Artists in Colleges

The Biography of a

i

Painting

The Shape of Content

On

Nonconformity

Modem

Evaluations

The Education of an

25

^3

73 92 Artist

11

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grateful acknowledgment Insel-Verlag, and

is

The Hogarth

made

to the

W. W.

Norton Company,

Press, Ltd., for permission to reprint the

The Notebooks of Make Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Harvard University for permission to reprint passages from Report of the Committee on the Visual Arts at Harvard University. passage from

Rilke, and to

Acknowledgment is gratefully made also for assistance in reproducing the drawings in The Shape of Content to the following: for the frontispiece, to the owner, William Bomar, Jr., of Fort Worth, Texas, and to Henry B. Caldwell of the Fort Worth Art Center and Richard Underwood of the University of Texas Press for their aid in photographing the original painting; for the drawing on page 3, to the owner. The Downtown Gallery; on pages

7, 27, 29, 33,

and

112, to

originally published in 1954 in

Harper^s Magazine; on pages

The Alphabet

15, 56,

and

64,

by Ben Shahn, to the owner, John McAndrew; on pages of Creation

Pantheon Books, Inc.; on page 20, to 27, 29, and 33, to the owner, Leon M. Despres; on pages 30 and 31, to the Estate of Curt Valentin; on pages 37 and 46, to the owner, The William Hayes Fogg Art Museum; on pages 37 and 86, to The Nation; on pages 41 and 54, to Charm Magazine; on page 42, to the owner, The Downtown Gallery, and to the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.; on page 71, to be published in the 1957 Christmas booklet, Love and Joy, to the Museum of Modern Art; on pages 80 and 81, originally published in 1956 in Thirteen Poems of Wilfred Owen, to The Gehenna Press; on page 116, to Erich Kahler; on page 119, to Columbia Records. The drawings on pages 7, 10, 30-31, 41, 54, 59, 69, 71, 75, 80-81, 86, 90, 94, 100, 104, 112, 116, 119, 124, 127, 129, and 131 are from the artist's collection.

The Shape

of Content

Artists in Colleges have come to Harvard with some very serious doubts

I

whether

am

I

It is

I

ought to be here

a painter;

I

am

my chosen role to

at

all.

not a lecturer about

art

nor a scholar of

view of

art that has

form?

Is

or the theo-

not already been fully expounded?

can he say in words that he could not far more pictorial

art.

paint pictures, not to talk about them.

What can any artist bring to the general knowledge retical

as to

What

skillfully present in

hot the painting rather than the printed page

his

testament? Will he not only expend his energies without in any

way

increasing the general enlightenment?

audience gain from listening to an

And

artist that

it

then,

what can an

could not apprehend

more readily simply by looking at his pictures? Here are a few of the honest questions, and I have them with honest answers. far

tried to

Perhaps the most pertinent of the questions has been

what

I

can accomplish by such

discussions promises to be.

My

a verbal

Odyssey

meet

as to just

as this series

of

personal answer has been that the

need to formulate clearly those things which

I

think

I

think

may

be

of sonic value to me, and that the process will be interesting. But

what about you?

From I

the point of view of both the audience and the university

can only suggest that the venture will probably prove about

as

worthy as the ideas will be good. But there is a further reason for my being particularly interested in being here, and undertaking some such discussions. Within the past few years there has developed an increased interest in art within the universities with the promise— the possibility at least— that they

may come to constitute the new art community. Such a prospect has so much to recommend it, so much in the way of intellectual stimulation for art, in the way of values and perhaps of sympathetic climate, that one hopes it may be realized. At the same time, there is always the possibility that art may be utterly stifled within the university atmosphere, that the creative

impulse

may

be wholly obliterated by the pre-eminence of criticism

and scholarship.

Nor

is

there perfect unanimity

on the part of the

university itself as to whether the presence of artists will be salu-

tary within

its

community, or whether indeed

solid intellectual pursuit

and therefore

a

art itself

is

a

good

proper university study.

Such questions have been the subject of extensive conferring and surveying within the past few years, of changing attitudes on the part of the colleges and of heated disagreement; for the whole

problem of creativity often reaches into basic educational philosophy, and sometimes into university policy I

have

a

number

of observations to

coming alignment. They are based

are not

upon considerable

all

itself.

make on

of

them

familiarity

on

They

are

this possible forth-

optimistic, but they

my

part with the art-

made in the hope that something really fruitful may emerge and that some of the existing misconceptions and maladjustments may be erased. They are made university relationship in process.

particularly in the

young person

who may no

hope that the student

of talent and ability in art

happens to be

a

longer be caught

between two impossible choices; the one whether

to gain a liberal

education at the cost of losing his creative habit, the other to sacrifice his liberal

education in order to gain an adequate training in

art.

/

But have in

us ask wliat possible interest the university as such can

let

art? In

There

the rather

is

augment

art possibly

fiat

fact of

which we

perspective?

its

man; and then

the question of the educated

first

is

think there

what way can

are

all

I

most uncom-

fortably aware, that our average university graduate emerges from

of study as something

his years

woman. He

likely to be

is

than an educated

less

most strikingly wanting

in the

man

or

accom-

plishment of perceptivity, in the noncurricular attributes of sensitiveness

and of consideration toward

those finer arts

all

which

are

generally conceded to have played a great part in the humanizing

of man.

And

our graduate

with regard to painting

Nowhere do tacts

is

not unlikely to display total blindness

itself.

become

his limitations

so conspicuous as in his con-

with Europeans of similar background and education. For the

European, whatever

his

shortcomings in other directions, will be

perfectly conversant with the art and literature of his try as well as with that of others.

know

will

It is

not

at all

own

coun-

improbable that he

considerably more about American art than will the

American himself. Today, in view of our increasing commerce with European countries, this art-blindness of ours tends to become not

just a cultural gap,

but even something of

Francois Mauriac has said of us: "It

is

a diplomatic hazard.

not what separates the

United States from the Soviet Union that should frighten

what they have

in

common

.

.

.

us,

two technocracies

those

but that

think themselves antagonists, are dragging humanity in the same direction of de-humanization

no longer

as

an

end— this

is

.

.

.

man

is

treated as a

means and

the indispensable condition of the

two

cultures that face each other."

Jean-Paul Sartre has

said, "If

France allows

enced by the whole of American culture, tion there will tions

.

.

come here and completely

a living

itself to

and

be influ-

livable situa-

shatter our cultural tradi-

."

In England, V.

S. Pritchett

wrote of

4

us,

"Why

they should not

be originally creative

puzzling.

is

It is

man

organic sense, the convicti o n that into technicians

and cuts them

off

possible that the lack of the is

a

machin e— turns them

from the chaos, the accidents and

intuitions of the creative process?"

do not agree with any one of these opinions, but I believe that they do serve to demonstrate the uneasy view that is taken of us by I

a

few very eminent Europeans. But that uneasy view

is

not confined to European countries.

There have arisen some complaints on the domestic scene also, and some from very unexpected sources. A leading executive, for instance, of

through only

a

one of our really vast industries undertook a circuit

number of American

this in

universities a year or so

view: to persuade the colleges to do

educating their graduates.

He

em^asized; he pointed out

asked that the

that,

li

ago with

a better

job of

beral arts be re-

while technical,

scientific,

and

other specialized training has been very advanced, there has been lacking a quality of imagination, a

human view

asjiecessary to industry and business as I

think that

many

universities

is

of things,

w hich

is

technical training.

today are seeking to counteract

such overemphasis upon technological education and are beginning to re-emphasize liberal education. I

think

I

I

note a great increase, at

least

do, in serious theater, in exhibitions of painting and sculp-

ture, in the loan of art to students, in publications of diverse sorts,

but of a serious nature.

I

think

all this

activity represents an intelli-

gent effort to place the student in a cultured and creative environ-

ment

rather than to inject culture into

him hypodermically,

so to

speak, via the specific, required, and necessarily limited classroom course.

Besides the practical objective of producing a better-educated

graduate, one

who may meet

the

new need

for the international

citizen, the university has other possible objectives in

hand toward It

has

art,

extending

its

these both philosophical and generous.

become obvious

that art itself in

America

is

without what

might be culled

environment. Art and

a natural

within a public climate that

Or

profession.

The

concentrate within small colo-

and self-affirmation.

a sort of self-protection

art colonies are severely limited in the variety of experience

They become almost withdrawal from common society;

and opinion which they can contribute to degree of their

monastic

in the

and thus

their art

and

less

often exist

either indifferent or hostile to their

may

otherwise they

wherein they find

nies

is

artists

less

art.

product becomes increasingly ingrown, tapping

the vital streams of

common

experience, rejecting

more

and more the human imperatives which have propelled and inspired

By

art in past times. studies, it

some of the

bringing art into the circle of humanistic

universities consciously intend to provide for

sympathetic climate, and one in which there will naturally

a

be found sources of stimulation, of

lore,

of intellectual material,

and even of that element of controversy on which

art thrives so

well.

Philosophically,

I

daresay such a policy will be an item in the

general objective of unifying the different branches of study toward

some kind of

a

such diverse

fields as, let

whole

culture.

I

think that

it is

them impressive

highly desirable that

come

us say, physics, or mathematics,

within the purview of the painter, find in

it is

who may

amazingly enough

visual elements or principles.

I

think that

equally desirable that the physicist or mathematician

come

to

accept into his hierarchy of calculable things that nonmeasurable

and extremely random human element which ciate

only with poetry or

that antique

Such,

Perhaps

is

also

versity will

again toward

the university's view and objective in embrac-

ing the arts however cautiously

view must

we may move

asso-

and outmoded ideal— the whole man.

think,

I

art.

we commonly

it

may

proceed. But the

artist's

be considered and the question of whether the uni-

become

his natural habitat,

highly debatable point has

within the university,

as

its

or will spell his doom. This

implications for

all

the creative arts

well as for the artist-teacher, the artist-in-

6

residence,

The

and by

first

that art has

or repudiate

all

means, the artist-student.

observation to be

its it

roots in real

wholly.

It

made

life.

here

is

the rather obvious one

Art may affirm

may mock

its

life-giving soil

as bitterly as did

Goya, be

was Daumier, discover beauty within the sordid and did Toulouse-Lautrec. Art may luxuriate in life positively

partisan, as real as

and affirmatively with Renoir, or Matisse, or Rubens, or Vermeer. It

may

turn to the nebulous horizons of sense-experience with the

Post-Impressionists, the Cubists, the various orders of Abstraction-

7

ist,

but in any case

the stimulus for

That

it is life

exist that f ur nishes

not to say any special branch or section of

is

a

is

chances to

^

art.

ing situation in which an

temper

itself as it

artist finds

proper situation for

Any livto his own

life.

material pertinent

would not have made sense boxing circuit nor for George

art. It

for Paul Klee to have followed the

Bellows to have chased the vague creatures that lurk within

lines

and squares or to have pursued the innuendoes of accidental forms

which yielded found

so

much

such casual aspects of reality

in

cxeate an oeuvre, to build a language of skill

and

While artist, I

am

and com preh ension of

taste I

that

Yet each of these

treasure to Klee. a

form of

him self,

life,

up

will find matter for

independence which

its

potential

imagery almost anywhere,

to favor the blossoming of art.

vitiate the sense of

wit an d

things.

generally mistrustful of contrived situations, that

peculiarly set

means to

a

his peculiar

concede that almost every situation has

someone

artists

is

I

is,

feel that

present to

situations

they

may

some degree

One wonders how the Fauves would have fared without the Bourgeoisie, how Cezanne would have progressed if he had been cordially embraced by the Academy. I am plagued by an exasperating notion: What if Goya, for instance, had been granted in

a

all art.

Guggenheim, and

then, completing that, had stepped into a re-

spectable and cozy teaching job in

New England

college,

Spanish Insurrection?

some small— but advanced! —

and had thus been spared the agonies of the

The

unavoidable conclusion

is

that

we would

never have had "Los Caprichos" or "Los Desastres de

la

The world would

for the tor-

not have been called upon to

mourn

Guerra."

woman of the drawing inscribed "Because She Was a Liberal!" Nor would it have been stirred by Goya's pained cry, "Evtured

The Same!" Neither would it have been shocked by depictions of human bestiality, nor warned— so graphically,

erywhere his cruel

It Is

so unforgettably— that fanaticism

Thus^

is

is

man's most abominable

not unimag inable that art 8

arises

trait.

^

from somethin g

stron ger than stimulation or even in spiration— that

from something but that

life,

always has

it

its

closer to provocation, that

may

may

it

may

substitute

its

its

own

may

take

jfire

not just turn to

be compelled by

at certain times

ingredient of impudence,

authority, so that

it

it

life.

Art almost

flouting of established

authority, and

own

its

enHghtenment.

How many ponderous tracts have been written upon those drips and threads of paint by which the

known!

self

does not

lie

If his peculiar

late

Jackson Pollock made him-

decor has

its

human

dimension, that

within the time-space, the interplanetary meanings so

often ascribed to the work, but rather in the impudence of setting forth such work; the boldness of recognizing the beauty which

does reside in such a surface; the executing of presenting such effects as

whether tion in

as Pollock's

would have produced

the insistence

its

upon

in a completely be-

would have been bom;

the degree of shock and opposi-

which may well have been one of the most stimulating

factors

growth.

So is

it

doubt whether,

art. I

nign atmosphere, such an art

it,

I

only

beheve that

if

altruistic, it

the university's fostering of art

may

other hand, the creative

prove to be arts,

is

only kindly,

also meaningless. If,

on the

the branches of art scholarship, the

various departments of art are to be recognized as an essential part

of education, a part without which the individual will be deemed less

than educated, then

I

suppose that art and the

arts will feel that

degree of independence essential to them; that they will accept their role to create freely— to

fully visionary

comment,

and exploratory

as

as

to outrage, perhaps, to be

their nature.

But the purchase of a comsculpture, the commissioning of a mural— or

Art should be well-subsidized, pleted painting or a

is

it

perhaps the pubUcation of a

yes.

poem

or a novel or the production

of a play— all these forms of recognition are the rewards of mature work. They are not to be confused with the setting up of something not unhke a nursery school in which the

9

artist

may

be

spared any conflict, any need to strive quite intently toward com-

mand

medium and his images; in which he may be spared even the need to make desperate choices among his own values and his wants, the need to reject many seeming benefits or wishes. For it is through such conflicts that his values become sharpened; perhaps at

of his

it is

only through such conflicts that he comes to

know

himself

all.

It is

one)

is

only within the context of reaMife that an forced to

make such

choices.

lO

And

it is

artist

(or any-

only against a back -

ground of hardxeality that _choices count, that they affect a Ufe, and carry with them that degree of beUef and dedication and, I think

can say,

I

know whether

not

versity;

he

spiritual energy, that

it is

a

primary force

in art.

I

do

that degree of intensity can exist within the uni-

one of the problems which an

work

to live there or

is

is

So the answers

artist

must consider

if

there.

to the question— Is

it

possible for an artist to

function fully within the university?— must be

a series of provi-

sional ones.

Ideally, yes, for as an intellectual center, the university

provide background and stimulation to the

him

as

art.

All

an individual; this, if

it

artist; it

can conceivably provide

one accepts the

thesis that art

well as an emotional process, and that

it

new

can

can broaden directions for

an intellectual

is

thus profits

as

by an expanded

range of knowledge and experience. Ideally, yes, for art scholarship itself should provide continuity

and perspective for the

artist,

way complement

every

the creative process

community

for

it

by

the scholarly one.

ought to function well within the uni-

Ideally, yes, the artist

versity

should enrich his imagery, should in

seems desirable that the one-sidedness of

the educational pattern be counteracted, and in this sense art has a

mission to perform as well as an advantage to gain. Yes, too, because

within the university art those

of of

may become

young people who

tomorrow, the

familiar to,

and accepted by,

will probably constitute the taste-makers

leadership,

intellectual

the

future

audience

art.

Thus, ideally promise for

art.

we may

Factually, however, there are circumstances

render the prospects

One

conclude that the university holds great

which

less optimistic.

such circumstance

is

the record

itself

of

artists

lived in residence or taught in the universities over a years. In the report issued in 1956 1

by

the

who

have

number of

Committee on the Visual

Arts

Harvard University we read the following well-considered

at

lines:

In too viavy cases

imfornmately, the artist-teacher gradually

^

develops into something ist.

Too

often the

the teacher

else:

initial basis

uoas formerly an art-

was

of appointment

who would

desire to find an artist

who

with

'^get along''

who

the department acquired a colleague

fallacious. In the

got along well enough but

much

turned out to be neither 7mich of an

artist

Few

are sufficiently

[the report continues]

artists

teaching to

make

a career of

it.

Over

a

nor

long

is

have one friend

who

that

preserving the

atti-

it.

will recount a

few

instances:

West-

has been artist-in-residence at a great

ern university for some years.

him he was

I

dedicated to

the danger

of secondary importance to

In support of this observation, I

still

of a teacher.

is

time.,

the artist will produce less and less art while

tude that his teaching

art historians^

a bright light in

He

is

When

well paid.

American

art,

first

I

knew

one of the good names.

Full of vigor, imagination, and daring— and

good thinking too— he

was then producing one impressive canvas

after another,

was beginning he

is

to be sought after

by

collectors

painting small decorative vignettes,

One cannot must be city in

help but observe that his

good taste— a

polite

which the university

to have absorbed very

little

I

and he

and museums. Today

cannot understand why.

work today

reflects

what

sort of decorator taste— in the small is

situated.

The

university

of this man's influence.

On

itself

seems

the walls of

a sort

number of his large earlier canvases, of indecorous reminder that he was once a brash and bold

young

painter.

his fine studio there

Such

a

change

still

may

of reasons and under fair to attribute

it

all

hang

a

certainly take place in a sorts of circumstances,

to the academic situation

man

and

were

it it

number would be unfor a

not for other

similar instances. I

can

at the

moment

recall three other artists each of I

2

whom

has

formerly been prominent in the gallery world. Each

now

is

versity professor, the head of his department, and each

And

primarily an administrator and teacher.

now

is

in addition to his ad-

and teaching work, he undertakes

ministrative

a uni-

round of

a certain

promotional duties which seem to us on the outside peculiarly unan

fitting for

artist.

Two

of these

from the gallery world, and third— to

With

my

mind

(Actually,

I

have not seen a picture from the

I

a great artist— for several years.

before

My

sistence in remaining a painter.)

prospect of the

ill,

the artist

The

within the university environs. vive as an artist

is

not,

we might

art,

and to the

reach beyond the

The is

first

of them

is

who

becoming

is

artist's

field

is

a familiar figure

question of his ability to sur-

say,

wholly academic. I

have concluded

continuing to produce serious

of

And

art.

dilettantism. Dilettantism, as

even the minimum standards of that Dilettantism in the university

is

tering" courses themselves, but

I

it is

work

perhaps these major blocks

are ill-equipped— and actually

academic routine;

per-

for the whole

we

all

the nonserious dabbling within a presumably serious field

sons

one.

major blocks to the development of a

within the university situation.

may

concern

the basis of fairly extensive observation

that there are about three

mature

real

mis-

within the university, for increasingly, and

artist

whether for good or

On

have disappeared completely

me it is small wonder that I have had whether my own present undertaking is a right am not very deeply concerned about my own

all this

givings as to

men

know,

by

per-

do not even want— to meet

field,

or study, or practice.

best observed in the so-called "smatit is

by no means confined

to such

a fairly pervasive attitude.

understand fully the need to educate broadly.

And

I

under-

stand and applaud that breadth of interest that impels the bright

human being to

dip into or to investigate

Obviously there

is

all

a contradiction here.

13

sorts of divergent fields.

For to have

a

broad ac-

quaintance with

some of

number

of different studies means that at least

these studies cannot be

cessfully in

For

some

a professional level.

but has certainly not done so in the

fields,

whereas in other

fields

regarded seriously, however

whose main

interest

believe that

I

is

it is

field,

of study the department

little

may

itself is

be absorbed by the student

an objective of any one of the major departuniversities to constitute in itself a center

so that individuals and institutions in the practical

world customarily look

work

of

elsewhere.

ments within the greater its

field

governs the whole departmental

in this field, dilettantism

attitude,

for

met on

think that the university has met the contradiction fairly suc-

I

art.

a

most advanced

to the university for the

or opinion obtainable. Ideas and leadership then flow out of

the university and into general currency.

And need

I

cite the leader-

ship of the universities in such fields as that of physics, of

all

the

branches of sociology and psychology, of archaeology and numerous other

fields!

In this connection, the Visual Arts Committee Report com-

ments: All the timidity that artist

now

surrounds the thought of bringing

and studio into the university, on

scholarship, lately surrounded the

artist

and

places.

with other

fields of

same venture with regard

to sci-

found his place within the university, laboratory has become academically respectable, so the

entists. Just as

just as his

a par

the scientist has

studio, given time

[And

and opportunity

the report also says]

Though

,

should find their

research laboratories in

industry and government contribute increasingly to the advance-

ment of fundamental

science, the university

is

still

the primary

source of the most important scientific progress. Students then-even those ticular field itself— may real

meaning.

And

still

who do

derive

the individuals

not expect to follow a par-

some sense of

who

teach and

its

stature

and

its

who work under

the university aegis are actually working in the center of their field

and not on

its

Thus

fringe.

the university

may

be assured of gain-

ing the foremost talent in such studies, while the teacher himself, the physicist-teacher or the sociologist-teacher,

be disillusioned nor bored by the level

Quite the opposite art.

In the

first

is

which

true in the field of

frivolous. (It

at its art is

us say, need not

his profession exists.

art,

that

place the university directorship

look somewhat askance

somewhat

at

let

is

departments and

is,

of creative

quite likely to

its

art courses as

not inconceivable that the great public

blind spot toward art extends even to such high places.)

dent of art in a college

is

becoming involved or too once or twice during

make

stu-

almost required to guard himself against serious about his art.

He

week, but must not and

will dabble a bit literally

can not

of art a field of major interest.

He may

be an art-history student, or an architecture, or an

aesthetics student, in as the

a

The

which

saying goes, "to get

case he will his

hand

do

in."

a little painting "just,"

Or

a student

may

dis-

play a passionate interest in painting; but even in that event he

15

is

-^

required only to play about lightly.

still

long hours or concentration to

produced

is

And

likely to arouse in

ness, particularly if

he

is

work from

is

him something akin

I

cannot

creative work. Is

it

of self-committal?

students— not

work

that

to physical

is

ill-

And and why

is

doing there

his

exist

such mistrust of

to guard the student against an incautious degree

Or

is it

indecision as to whether art

^wholly decorous profession?

between the

thue

is

himself an artist of great capability.

own pictures. understand why there should

not off painting

his

thus the level of the

then he must perforce ask himself what he

he

cannot devote either

work. The artist-teacher

his

not able to require or to expect serious

even from the talented ones.

He

Or

there

is

some

really a

is

conflict in value as

taken place, and that which

art that has already safely

—alarmingly enough— may take place?

Some such

conflict appears within the Visual Arts

[On page

lo,

for instance,

we

read]

Report

The Committee

that the visual arts are an integral part of the humanities

must assume a tion.

[Yet,

role of

on page

Harvard can

prominence

66,

we

believes

and

in the context of higher

find] It

is still

doubtful

if

itself:

as

such

educa-

a student at

find space or time to apply himself seriously to crea-

work in the visual arts. [On page 9, the enlightened comment] at no moment in history since the invention of printing has man^s communication with his fellow man been so largely taken over by tive

visual ?nedia as today. [But,

do not propose

on page

65,

we

read the following]

to inject the art school into the

rather to give the experience of art

its

academic

life,

We but

rightful place in liberal educa-

tion.

I

wonder whether

the university

would

also suggest offering

the experience of calculus, of solid state physics; the experience of

French or German; the experience of economics, of medieval

his-

tory, of Greek. I

was one of those asked

to give an opinion concerning the

16

desirability of the university for the education of an artist.

I

ex-

pressed preference for the university as against the professional art school.

my

But

grounds of

its

recommends

it.

belief that the

rejection of the art school

was

professionalism; indeed that

My

certainly not

is

the one thing that

preference for the university

very content of the

liberal

by and

tent of art, that art will profit

education

is

based upon a

is

a natural con-

greatly needs the content of

liberal education. Further, that the humanities

view have been the companions of

on the

art

and the humanistic

during the great periods of

^ ^

both.

But

if

dilettantism

is

to pervade the

and even the very department

in

which

being the best influence for the young

prove to be the worst, and

may

whole atmosphere of it is

art,

taught, then, far

from

the university

may

artist,

further prove equally unfavorable

to the artist-teacher.

The second major and to the f ear

of creativity

aspects of ing,

artist's

block to the development of a mature art

thriving within the university

The

itsel f.

community

is

the

university stresses rather the critical

knowledge— the surveying,

the categorizing, the analyz-

and the memorizing. The reconversion of such knowledge

into living art, into original

work, seems to have diminished. In

a

few universities— particularly in the East— discouragement of original work has achieved the status of poUcy. I was told by a department head in one university that in that institution the creative arts are

discouraged because

the liberal arts."

I

"it is felt that

may

interfere with

have never been able to understand actually what

he meant, but the result of the policy sult isjhat the student misses the vital

he

they

knows with what he

is

brilliantly clear,

opportunity

to^

and that

integrate

re-

what

th inks— that he fails to f orm the expressive,^r—

the creative habit.

In another university visits to its

,

I

once had occasion to pay

very large ceramics department.

17

I

a

number of

noticed that there was

a great leafing

about

to be decorated, nal. It

seemed

ure there

to

may

among books whenever

a piece of

pottery was

and that not even the shapes of pieces were

origi-

me

pleas-

that the students

were missing whatever

be in the work. In talking to them,

I

made

odd

the

discovery that they did not consider themselves capable of originating a decoration;

me

to

A it

fact

was not the course they were incident indeed, but

trivial

one student explained taking.

a disturbing one.

still

Could

the Greek, the Chinese, the Etruscan, to be able to surmount

and create something of

that

r

very

was not for them. In

be that the students were too impressed by the past of ceramics,

by ^

that that

it

own?

their

It is

not impossible that

within the university the pre-eminence of scholarship

may

itself

become an impassable block to creativity, and may over-impress \and stifle both the artist-teacher and the student.

{

The by

who

only

is

a painter

degree-bearing brethren.

his

MA's,

artist

may

Under

become intimidated charmed light of their

well

the

accumulated honors and designations, the

their PhD's, their

scholars speak of art in terms of class and category, and under head-

which the

ings of

may

artist

may

never have heard. While he himself

have read extensively about art— and

do read while he

a great deal

may

about

have looked

them and absorbed them,

art,

and

his interest has

work would never have occurred its

has

no such

for

remembering

distinction, if

discussion, his

At

And

it.

own

it

The

been

I

a different one;

id ea of classifying

he

such

him the work

from other

art,_that interests him. If the

art,

work

surrounded by abstract and learned

may waver and

feel that

art,

about it-

have dwelt upon

to him, because to

both

of immense value to the creative

depth and subtlety to

artists

does not stand alone, he has no reason

yet,

vision

the same time

a great deal

itself alone. It is its distinction

commonality with other

not

know

think that most

at scores of paintings,

has absorbed visually, not verbally.

isjini^e^jt exists in

I

and

it is

i8

its

reality

art history

artist.

and

grow art

dim.

theory are

All such material lends

definitely stimulating to

most

Only when,

artists.

verbahzing or the teaching process, the

in the

original creative necessity

is

tory tend to suffocate the

artist.

I

have

years,

young

a

was given

obliterated "^oes art theory or art his-

who, through most of

friend

He

to writing poetry.

year in the university.

The

other evening

verse he had been writing, and whether

"Oh,

replied,

poetry.

There

that

are so

you have

many forms

didn't

amount

Perhaps

to

much;

it

Then

I

good

a

He

he explained,

to master

liked to put things

first.

down.

free verse."

my young friend would never under any

have become

it.

before you can write

you have

that

was only

entering his junior

might read some of

know

to

Actually," he said, "I just wrote because It

I

high-school

asked him what sort of

I

stopped writing poetry."

I've

much

"There's so

now

is

his

circumstances

poet. Perhaps he should have had the drive and

which have defeated him— I mywonder whether it was made clear to

persistence to master those forms self

think he should. But

him

that

all

I

poetic forms have derived from practice; that in the

very act of writing poetry he was, however crudely, beginning to create form. is

I

wonder whether

an instrument, not

it

was po inted out

a tyrant; that

but form; and that

it

him

that for

m

whatever measures, rhythms,

rhymes, or groupings of sounds best suited pose could be turned t o

to

form— possibly

just

too mig ht in time take

own expressive purhis own person al form,

his

its

place in the

awesome

hierarchy of poetic devices. Scholarship

is

which

that scholarship

ad absurdum,

And

there

perhaps man's most rewarding occupation, but dries

up

its

own creative sources is

a reductio

a contradiction of itself. is

the loneliness and isolation of the artist

upon

the

many artists have painted alone with great success. But of these we may say that they chose loneliness: loneliness was their theme and their way of painting. college grounds.

Of

course

we know

that

Theirs has been a different loneliness from that of the safely cushioned within the pleasantest and

19

artist

who,

most agreeable environ-

s/u^ ment known

to

man, must

versational table,

out

his tubes

move

off,

at

some point

don

arise

from the good con-

his paint-spattered pants,

and become involved

squeeze

in the nervous, unsure, tense,

and unsatisfactory business of making

a picture

which

will

have

cohesion, impact, maturity, and an unconscionable _lpt_ of sheer

work; which

w

ill,

most u ncomfortably,

20

displ ay

an ind iscreet and

u nveiled feeling about something; and which will then proceed to violate every canon of good art behavior just dehneated by his recent companions.

These

latter

have no need to create something new.

that they discover the old and bring

sciousness in

The

all its

third

it

home

to the

It is

enough

common

con-

radiance.

major block

to the successful functioning of the artist

somewhat romantic misconception as to what sort of man he is. The more venerable academic element, still under the sway of Trilby, looks upon an artist as a mad genius. This group beheves, and I think the public joins it, that an artist has no within the university

idea of

why

a

is

he paints; he simply has

more advanced

collegians, the

New

Among

to.

younger and

the

Criticism has taken over, but

the artist himself fares no better. For according to this very avant-

garde view,

it

makes

little

difference

he himself happens to think;

what an

the viewer

it is

for the meaning of the work, and even he hopelessly were all

it

not for the theorist, or

the clues to art; he I

have one

critical

is

artist paints

who

a cosmic one.

is,

through which ever,

all

critic.

fencing companion

The

artist, as

who

In his hands rest

assures

artist,

a

me

that the

supra-human,

medium Any willing, how-

he describes him,

sorts of ineffable forces flow.

would only destroy

is

a

any intending, would be an the time-space continuum,

which

implication, that art

is

would

the product of willing

and intending must be impure.

As

criticism itself flourishes particularly within the universities,

so does this particular critical

view

find

its

warmest advocates

In several universities, the critical circle has formed small cultural nucleus

which

there.

itself into

a

exerts a powerful influence, one not 2

I

(

n

)

inter- S

render impure the art produced.

And, by

^

the high priest of the art process.

on the part of the

ference,

really accounts

would flounder about

meaning of one order of art— the nonobjective— is that

or what

upon

free of snobbery,

the arts— a Gorgon-like

power

that turns the

creative artist into stone.

This curious academic mutation

Report

ual Arts

tual

.

.

.

that, highly as the university

tends to take a

art, it

of

corroborated within the Vis-

most understanding passage.

anions paradox

It is a

work

in a

is

dim view

of the artist as an intellec-

one encounters the curious view that the

know what

he

doing.

is

It is

inely understand

neither

it,

artist

does not

widely believed and sometimes ex-

however great

plicitly stated that the artist,

esteems the

how

his art,

he produced

it,

nor

does not genuits

place in the

culture and in history.

At

few somewhat crisper lines in this direction from Francis Bacon: "Some there have been," says the philosopher, "who have made a passage for themselves and their

own yet

this

point

by

opinions

all

cannot

I

pulling

resist a

down and

their stir has but little

demolishing former ones; and

advanced the matter, since

their

aim

has been not to extend philosophy and the arts in substance and value, but only to

.

.

.

transfer the

kingdom of opinion

to them-

selves."

Before the sity

artist

environment there will be needed

the quaUties of the

be

can be successfully oriented within the univer-

at ease

man and

a

calmer view toward both

the qualities of the work.

with an opinion that holds him to be

of art— the fellow

who

puts the paint on.

Nor

a

No

artist will

mere handy-man

will

any

artist rest

mad genius— something other than human or less than human or tangential to

well with the notion that he

is

a

more than human. The whole notion of genius n eeds to be reassessed, nee ds perhaps to be deglamorized somewhat. For genius is certainly much more a matter of degree than of kind. T he genius so-called is only human,

either

thatone

who

details a little I insist

discerns the pattern of things within the confusion of

soone r than the a v erage

upon saying

so-called)

is

m an.

likely to

22

Thus

the genius (again,

be impatient with those

who fail to discern common affairs.

individuals

within

If the artist,

such patterns, such larger meanings,

or poet, or musician, or dramatist, or philosopher

seems somewhat unorthodox in cause he

knows— only

It

good

seems to

me

attitudes,

a great deal of

be-

it is

man— that

or-

human good, whether

of

than the average

a little earUer

thodoxy has destroyed charity, or of

manner and

his

sense, or of art.

from

that, far

setting the "genius" apart, the uni-

versity should constitute itself the natural place

young person of such

exceptional talent

suitable to his talent.

Otherwise

we

may

toward which the

turn for an education

announce, in

effect, that the

broadness of view, the intellectual disciplines, the knowledge content

which the university

affords are reserved for the unproductive

man— the uncreative,

the nonbrilliant. Such an assumption

an absurdity, and yet

how

the university

is

often do

I

do not

tentional undervaluing of art, nor is

hear voiced the sentiment that

not for the young person of genius. •^

Withal the foregoing, other fields

I

would be

attribute to the university an in-

do

I

believe that creativeness in

discouraged by intention other than in a few con-

spicuous instances. In the abstract,

I

believe that creative art

nent in the university hierarchy of values.

B ut

teaching

emi-

is

itsel f is

^ '

so

largely a verbal, a classifying, process that the merely intuitive

kinds of knowing, the sensing of things which escape classification,

moods and movements in life and or obliterated by academic routine. They

the self -identification with great art

and

letters

may be

lost

are not to be taught but rather absorbed through a in

it is

actually

just I

such inexact knowing that

beUeve that

it is

toward

this

classifications of the classroom reach, if It is this

—that

is

of

life

intensively developed arts play an easy and familiar part.

which

For

way

is

implicit in the arts.

And

kind of knowing that the

sometimes unsuccessfully.

kind of knowing also— the perceptive and the intuitive^

the very essence of an advanced culture.

The

dactyl and

the spondee, the heroic couplet, the strophe and the antistrophe

23

may be valuable and useful forms to the poet; but the meaning the poem and its intention greatly transcend any such mechanics. hope, in the following discussions, to give you

I

of

its

forms and

tificated

any

artist

view of

art,

meanings, from that particular, isolated, uncer-

promontory which

art, artists, its

its

my

of

occupies. But

I

I

as

an

have thought

and the creative process

prevailing point of view.

changing attitude toward

artist

That

I

it

occupy, which perhaps desirable first to locate

itself vis-a-vis

am

here at

the university and

all is

evidence of the

art within the universities.

24

The Biography of a Painting In 1948, while

York Sun, cryptic

which

I

exhibited a painting to

title,

I

Henry McBride was

"Allegory."

The

which

its

writing for the Nev)

had given the somewhat

I

central image of the painting

had been developing across

mera-like beast,

still

a

was one

span of months— a huge Chi-

head wreathed in flames,

its

body arched

across

the figures of four recumbent children. These latter were dressed in

very commonplace clothes, perhaps not entirely contemporary,

but rather

as I

could draw them and their

details

from

my own

memory. I

had always counted Henry McBride

mirer of

Even

my pictures, about which he

first.

Then

he launched

and angry analysis of the work, attributing to

cal motives, suggesting parallels

and an ad-

had written many kind words.

of this one, he wrote glowingly at

into a strange

as a friend

which

I

it

politi-

some symbolism of Red Moscow, drawing

cannot

recall accurately,

25

but only their tone of

by recommending

violence, completing his essay

Red Dean

the

my work

of

ing as

that

I

first

have read, nor was

did from a critic

it

whom

astonishing piece of analit

the

a

review of

go to make up aware, but origins, I

I

a painting.

wondered

and the

to

which

had long carried

in

was

in

it,

what

sort of things

the immediate sources

what extent

I

was

fully

could trace the deeper

I

my

McBride's review had engendered.

A4r.

mind

that

famous

critical

instead has

grown

to almost tidal proportions

constitutes the Procrustean

\

stretched or shrunk.

(

tive

The work of

element in a

bed into which

credo runs art

may

or

with us nothing from familiarity with

Once a

its

life,

art

all

as follows:

may

credo of Clive

and which

must be

"The

no knowledge of

art,

representa-

we must

its affairs

still

either

not be harmful, but

always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of

become

I

credo which might well have been erased by time, but

/

*

to

conscious motivations.

less

besides the pique

^ which

\

me

caused

it

it

had an additional reason for undertaking such an exploration

Bell's, a

s

Of

as a friend,

"Allegory," to try to assess just

my own enlightenment what really

for

/

this painting,

case,

com-

Perhaps,

last.

had looked upon

I

was one of the most disconcerting. In any undertake

along with

I,

of Canterbury, be deported.

Mr. McBride's review was not the ysis

that

and

it is

bring

ideas,

no

emotions."

proffered as an isolated opinion, that view of art has

very dominant one,

is

taught in the schools, and

now is

la-

boriously explained in the magazines. Thus, in reconsidering the

elements which

I

had in mind both

feel

have formed the painting "Allegory,"

critical views, the

I

have

one which presumes a symbol-

ism beyond or aside from the intention of a painting, and the other, that

which voids the work of

any

intention.

The immediate Chicago

fire in

art of

any meaning, any emotion, or

source of the painting of the red beast was a

which

a colored

Bartlow Martin had written

man had

lost his

four children. John

a concise reportorial

26

account of the

"^*'-^

event— one of those

stories

which, told in

tionalism being present in the writing far greater emotional impact than I

was asked

to

I

a

without any emo-

manages to produce

a

highly colored account.

for the story and, after several

discussions with the writer, felt that feel of the situation to proceed.

itself,

would

make drawings

detail,

I

had gained enough of the

examined

27

a great deal of factual

and then

visual material,

1

discarded

all

of

it.

It

seemed to

me

that

the implications of this event transcended the immediate story;

was

there

from

ings

There was

fire.

Even

disaster invokes.

had

this event,

pursued

about man's dread of

a universality

this

a universality in the pity

And

his suffer-

which such

which had played

racial injustice,

overtones.

its

and

fire,

the relentless poverty

man, and which dominated the story, had

its

a

part in

which had

own

its

kind

of universality. I

now

work For

began to devise symbols of an almost abstract nature, to

Then I rejected that approach too. an idea one may lose the very intimate hu-

in terms of such symbols.

in the abstracting of

manity of

and

it,

things human.

deep and

this

common

tragedy was above

returned then to the small family contacts, to the

I

familiar experiences of

all

of us, to the furniture, the clothes, the

look of ordinary people, and on that level made versality

and for the compassion that

would

rative

Of

all

all

I

my

bid for uni-

hoped and believed the nar-

arouse.

the symbols

which

retained only one in

my

of flames with which

I

I

had begun or sought to develop,

wreath

illustrations— a highly formalized

crowned the

I

plain shape of the house

which

had burned. Sometimes,

if

one

particularly satisfied with a piece of

is

work

which he has completed, he may say to himself, "well done," and go on to something else. Not in this instance, however. I found that I

could not dismiss the event about which

the so-called

"Hickman

half-realized, the

Story." In the

I

first

had made drawings—

were the

place, there

only intimated drawings in a symbolic direction

which were lying around

my studio;

I

would develop some of them

what might come of them. In the second place itself; I had some curious sense of responsibility

a little further to see

there

about

was the it,

pressed

fire

a sort of personal involvement.

my

formulated

sense of the enormity of the it

in

its full

I

still

Hickman

proportions; perhaps

28

had

it

was

not fully ex-

fire; I

that

I

had not felt that

owed something more to the victim himself. One cannot, I think, crowd into drawings a really towering content of feeling. Drawings may be small intimate revelations; they may be witty or biting, they may be fragmentary glimpses of I

great feeling or

awesome

but

situation,

I

feel that the

immense

idea

asks for a full orchestration of color, depth, texture, and form.

The

me a chain of personal fires in my own childhood, one and unforgettable. Of the first, I

narrative of the fire had aroused in

memories. There were two great

only colorful, the other disastrous

29

remember only

that the Httle Russian village in

father lived burned, and

was

I

there.

I

remember

the flames breaking out everywhere, the lines of ets to

other

left its scars

on

a drainpipe

I

saw, dead-white in

fire left its

my by

father's

the excitement,

men

passing buck-

the reflected color. all

my

family, and

hands and face, for he had clambered

my brothers and sisters and me

out

one, burning himself painfully in the process.

Meanwhile our house and parents stricken

all

mark upon me and

and taken each of

of the house one

my

grand-

had escaped from someone's house during the con-

and whose face

The up

my

and from the river which ran through the town, the mad-

woman who fusion,

which

all

beyond

our belongings were consumed, and

their

power

30

to recover.

Among my there

were

a

Hickman

discarded symbols pertaining to the

number

story

of heads and bodies of beasts, besides several

Harpies, Furies, and other symbolic, semi-classic shapes and figures.

Of one

of these, a lion-like head, but

still

not a

lion,

I

made many

drawings, each drawing approaching more nearly some inner figure of primitive terror which to

become most

say,

I

was seeking

to capture.

familiar with this beast-head.

It

I

was beginning

was,

you might

under control.

Of

the other symbols

I

developed into paintings a good me-

human

nagerie of Harpies, of birds with

cipherable beasts

which held

just

all

of

which

enough human

I

heads, of curious and inde-

enjoyed immensely, and each of

association for

31

me

to be great fun,

and held

which

enough

just

(And this group paintings of more or less

also enjoyed.

I

into a series of pleasant, but

some which

I

at last

imbue

able to

of paintings in turn led off classical allusion,

some only

paintings to me, each having, be-

allusion, a great deal of additional motivation.)

its classical

When

touch of elegance

a

"City of Dreadful Night" or

like the

"Homeric Struggle" were major side

add

classical allusion to

it

turned the lion-like beast into a painting,

with everything that

had ever

I

felt

about a

I

felt

fire. I

Hickman story body I placed the

incorporated the highly formalized flames from the as a terrible

wreath about

its

head, and under

its

four child figures which, to me, hold the sense of

all

the helpless

and the innocent.

The image that I sought to somehow doesn't interest me.

create I

was not one of a

wanted

instead to create the

you might

tional tone that surrounds disaster;

disaster; that

call it

emo-

the inner dis-

aster.

In the beast as tures; there

I

worked upon

was something of the

once owned that had devoured

its

it I

recognized a number of crea-

abnormal cat that

stare of an

own

young.

And

then, there

we was

the wolf.

To beasts,

me, the wolf

is

perhaps the most paralyzingly dreadful of

whether symbolic or

out of

my

Russian background?

product of some of sued by wolves

when

my she

my

real. Is

fear

know.

don't

I

mother's colorful

was with

a

some

Is it

merely the

about being pur-

tales

wedding

instinctive strain

party, or again

when

went alone from her village to another one nearby? Does it come from reading Gogol? Whatever its source, my sense of panic she

concerning the wolf

is

real. I

sought to implant,

ognized something of that sense within

my

Then, to go on with the wolf image:

or, better, I rec-

allegorical beast.

I

had always found

concerting the familiar sculpture of Romulus and suckled a

by

the She- Wolf.

symbol that

I

abhorred.

It

had

Now

irritated I

32

found

me

dis-

Remus being

immensely, and was

that,

whether by coin-

cidence or not

was its

I

am

unable to say, the stance of

just that of the great

Roman

imaginary beast

wolf, and that the children under

belly might almost be a realization of

stead of

my

my

vague fears

that, in-

suckHng the children, the wolf would most certainly de-

stroy them. But the children, in their play-clothes of 1908, are not

Roman, nor are they the children of the Hickman fire; they resemble much more closely my own brothers and sisters. Such are a few of the traceable sources of imagery, and of the 7 feeling of a single painting— mine, only because

I

can

know what j

these sources are,

because

least to that point at

I

am

able to follow

which they disappear

them backward

at 7

into the limbo of the

subconscious, or the unconscious, or the instinctive, or the merely biological.

33

'

j

But there are many additional components present within

many

painting,

a

other factors that modify, impel, restrain, and in

unison shape the images which finally emerge.

The

restraining factors alone wield a powerful, albeit only nega-

An artist at work upon a painting must be two people, not one. He must function and act as two people all the time and in several ways. On the one hand, the artist is the imaginer tive, invisible

hand.

and the producer. But he such inexorable standards

even

in his

When

most

iUiberal

a painting

also the critic,

is

about some idea that he

Your

which the

A

has.

upon

"You

it.

The

artist

cheerful

embedded.

is

fire,

formulate

is

fire.

is

You must

An image

enthusiastic

It is

Not

critic,

not essentially

find an image in

of a

fire?

Not

of bright colors and

affair. It is full

not to describe a

is

cannot," says the inner

underdeveloped.

makes everybody happy.

it

about a

is

feeling itself

fire is a

shapes;

idea

liberal

in the visionary stage, the inner

"superimpose upon visual material that which visual.

a critic of

moment.

already begun stamping

critic has

is

have made McBride seem

as to

merely

is

and here

at all!

moving

not your purpose to at all;

tell

what you want

the terror, the heart-shaking fear.

Now,

to

find that

image!"

So the inward

critic has

stopped the painting before

been begun. Then, when the

artist strips his

idea

down

it

has even

to emotional

images alone and begins slowly, falteringly, moving toward some realization, that critic

is

constantly objecting, constantly chiding,

holding the hand back to xmains only that, so that lage, I

it

t he

image alone, so that the painting

does not

two

t hings,

one, th e

and another, the meaning.

have never met

a literary critic of painting

sentiments toward the

artist,

would

painting.

He would regard such

consider

it.

He

split into

re-

But the

critic

an act

within the

who, whatever

his

actually destroy an existing as

vandalism and would never

artist is a ruthless

destroyer.^

continually rejects the contradictory elements within a paint-

34

do not act upon other colors and would thus constitute dead places within his work; he rejects insufficient drawing, the colors that

ing;

he rejects forms and colors incompatible with the intention or

mood as

of the piece; he rejects intention

banal or derivative.

He

itself

often

mightily applauds the good piece of

work; he cheers the successful passage; but then not come up to

mood

and

itself

if

the painting does

he casts aside everything and

his standards

oblit-

erates the whole.

The

j

critic

within the

7 sonal, experienced and exacting.

^

prompted by

artist is

He

highly per-t^

will not tolerate within a paint-

ing any element which strays very far from that

During the early French-influenced I

taste,

part of

taste.

my

artistic career,

painted landscapes in a Post-Impressionist vein, pleasantly peopled

with bathers, or

painted nudes, or studies of

I

had a nice professional look about academic training.

fairly solid

inner critic ironic

first

words

as,

it

rested,

I

The work

think,

on

a

that the

my insides. With such a nice professional look about it," my into ridicule or tear down my work in just

began to play hara-kiri with "It has

to admire

it.

questions, "Is that enough? Is that all?" began to plague

me. Or, "This

may

to realize that

however

however

and

friends.

was during those years

It

ward demon was prone those terms in which I was wont

The

it,

my

original

be

it

my own art?" And then I began professional my work might appear, even

art,

but

might

person which, for good or

is it

be, ill,

it

still

did not contain the central

was myself. The whole stream of

events and of thinking and changing thinking; the childhood influences that

were

rapher with

its

still

my rigorous training as a lithogcraft; my several college years with

strong in me;

emphasis upon

become a biologist; summers at Woods Hole, the probing of the wonders of marine forms; all my views and notions on life and politics, all this material and much more which

the strong intention to

must constitute the substance of whatever person I was, lay outside the scope of my own painting. Yes, it was art that I was producing, 35

7

perfectly competent, hut foreign to me, and the inner critic

up

rising It

against

it.

was thus under the pressure of such inner

began to ask myself what sort of person question the matter of taste

I

both tawdry and

wear the

which

feel, I

I

trivial to I

rejection that

And

and the

even know, that

artistic dress

this first step in rejection

was of a

is

a

presence

have undertaken to speak.

I

The moving toward one's inner self is a long painter. It offers many temporary successes and is

it

did not belong.

within the fire-image painting of which

there

to bring into this

felt— or the inner critic felt— that airs

I first

and what kind

really was,

I

of art could truly coincide with that person.

society to

was

pilgrimage for a

high points, but

always the residuum of incomplete realization which impels

him on toward the more adequate image.

Thus

there began for

me

the long artistic tug of

war between

idea and image.

At

my

first,

first

the danger of such a separation did not appear. For

disquisition in paint

Walker Evans and

was only

semi-serious.

My

friend

up an exhibition in the barn of a Portuguese family on Cape Cod. He would exhibit a series of superb photographs which he had made of the family there; I would exhibit a few water colors, most of them not yet in existence. At just that time I was absorbed in a small book which I had picked up in France, a history of the Dreyfus case. I would do some exposition of the affair in pictures. So I set to work and presented I

had decided to

set

the leading malefactors of the case, the defenders, and of course

Dreyfus himself. Under each portrait

I

lettered in

my

best litho-

graphic script a long or short legend setting forth the role which the original of the portrait had played in the celebrated affair.

What

my eyes.

had been undertaken lightly became very

Within the Dreyfus pictures

expression opening a great deal of

my

I

could see a

significant in

new avenue

of

up before me, a means by which I could unfold most personal thinking and feeUng without loss 36

of simplicity. pictures

hoped

was

I

a great virtue in itself.

a little, that

artistic elite

very directness of statement of these

felt that the

who

And

I

further

such simplicity would prove

had already— even

felt,

and perhaps

irritating to that

end of the twenties-

at the

law of creation. As

begun

to hold forth "disengagement" as the

artists

of a decade or so earlier had delighted to epater

geois, so

found

I

it

pleasant, to

borrow

first

a line

le

bour-

from Leonard Baskin,

to epater F avant-garde.

Having returned only recently from France where the SaccoVanzetti case was a national fever, I now turned to that noted drama for the theme of a new group of paintings, and set about revealing the acts and the persons involved with as rigorous a simplicity as

I

could command.

the simpHcity with

I

was not unmindful of Giotto, and of

which he had been

able to treat of connected

"4Wu>^-5b%^^2.-^'

37

events— each complete

in

itself,

yet

recreating the

all

religious

drama, so living a thing to him.

The First,

my

I

ensuing scries of pictures was highly rewarding to me. felt that

person.

my own work

Then

kindly, but there

was

influx of people

who do

Italian

also

customary

art public receive the

an entirely

new kind

not ordinarily

immigrants and

identified

many

visit

with

which met the

there was the kind of response

pictures; not only did the

and

was now becoming

work

of public, a great

galleries— journalists

other sorts of sympathizers.

And

then there was the book about the case which Benchley sent to

me, inscribed, "to Ben Shahn without

whom

this

crime could never

have been committed." continued to work in terms of pictures which related to a cen-

I

tral

theme, the inner

being somewhat appeased and exercis-

critic

ing only a certain technical stringency.

now tions. I

series of questions

them the

inevitable consequent rejec-

began to question the degree of

my belief in the views which

arose for me, and with I

A new

held. It^became

me

unc omfortably apparent to

that

w hatever one

thinks as well as whatever one paints must be constantly re-

examined, torn apart, in the light of

new

if

that seems to be indicated,

attitudes or

new

and reassembled

discovery. If one has set for

himself the position that his painting shall not misconstrue his personal

mode

of thinking, then he must be rather unusually alert to

what he does think. I was impelled to question the social view of man to which I had adhered for a number of years without actually doubting that it might be either a right view or a natural one to me. Now it dawned upon me that I had always been at war with this idea. Genjust

eralities

and abstractions and

Whether were

in people or in art

interesting.

cause he

is

One

has

a generality,

vital statistics

it

was the

had always bored me.

individual peculiarities that

sympathy with

a hurt person,

but precisely because he

^/individual can imagine, invent, or create.

38

is

not.

The whole

not be-

Only

the

audience of

art

is

an audience of individuals. Each of them comes to the paint-

ing or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends

all classes

and

flouts all predictions. In the

of art he finds his uniqueness affirmed.

work

^^

Yes, one rankles at broad injustices, and one ardently hopes for

and works toward mass improvements; but that whatever mass there

them

is

able to feel

Nor would

may

be

such

a

character of a society

view invahdate

its

is

its

musical treasures,

art. I

a

beUef which

is

molded upon

its

literary

by

had held

its

^reat crea-

and that

epics,

created things— its cathedrals, its

I

have always believe^ that the

largely shaped and unified

works, that a society

agines in terms of

of individuals, and each of

and have hopes and dreams.

about the unifying power of

tive

made up

is

only because

is

its

it

im-

works of

art,

and philosophic works.

One

might-

may be so unified because the highly personal experience is held in common by the many individual members of the pubUc. The great moment at which Oedipus in his remorse tears out his eyes is a private moment— one of deepest inward emotion. And yet that emotion, produced by art, and many other such pri-

say that a pubHc

vate and profound emotions, experiences, and images

bound

to-

gether the Greek people into a great civilization, and bound others all

over the earth to them for

So

I

all

time to come.

had crossed the terrain of the

not return.

At

the same time,

I

"social view,"

feel that all

such

and

I

would

artistic terrain

which one has crossed must to some extent affect or modify his later work. Whatever one has rejected is in itself a tangible shaping force. That

all

such work improves the

discernment of the eye thinking,

is

however much

skill

of the hand or the

only a minor consideration. Even of one's his

views

may

change, one retains a great

only that which seems foreign to him or irrelevant. wholly reject the social view of man and at the same

deal, rejecting

Or, one

may

time cherish

Such

its

underlying sympathies and

a process of acceptance

its

sense of altruism.

and rejection-the

39

artist plus

the

1

inner critic— or in the

you might

just say, the

informed creato r— is present

most fragmentary piece which an

sketch of Picasso's, a drawing by Rouault, or is

not to be dismissed

produces.

artist

A

small

Manet or Modigliani,

neghgible, for any such piece contains in-

as

evitably the long evolutionary process of taste, deftness, and personal view.

It is, if brief, still

dictated

by

the same broad experience

and personal understanding which molds the larger work. I

was not the only

dream, and

who

artist

thirties,

social

art.

abstraction.

but any dream

As during

the thirties art had been

during the forties there took place a mass

ideas^ so

movement toward jected,

had been entranced by the

could no longer reconcile that view with the pri-

vate and inner objectives of

swept by mass

who

at

all.

Not only was

Many

the social

dream

re-

of those names that, during the

had been affixed to paintings of hypothetical tyrannies and

theoretical cures

and swirls of

were now

paint. Part of that

meaningful; part of great part of

affixed to

it

it

cubes and cones and threads

work was— and

is— beautiful and

does indeed constitute private experience.

also represents

A

only the rejection, only the absence

of self-commitment.

The change in art, mine included, was accomplished during World War II. For me, it had begun during the late thirties when I

worked

in the Resettlement Administration.

I

had then crossed

and recrossed many sections of the country, and had come to well so

many

people of

all

know

kinds of belief and temperament, which

they maintained with a transcendent indifference to their lot in

Theories had melted before such experience.

had turned from what sonal realism.

there

I

is

My own painting then

called "social realism" into a sort of per-

found the

was the coal miner,

life.

qualities of

a cellist,

who

people a constant pleasure;

me who

organized a quartet for

—the quartet having three musicians. There was the muralist

war and then of "Uncle Sam Did It All." There

painted the entire end of his barn with scenes of plenty, the

were the

whole painting

five

entitled

Musgrove brothers who played

40

five

harmonicas— the

wonderful names of people, Plato Jordan and Jasper Lancaster, and of towns, Pity Me, and Tail Holt, and Bird-in Hand. There were the poor

who were

times rich in

rich in spirit, and the rich

There was the South and

spirit.

stories of snakes

of

life

some-

story-telling art,

its

human

shell

with hopeless prej-

and ignorance.

Personal realism, personal observation of the

mood

also

and storms and haunted houses, enchanting; and

yet such talent thriving in the same udices, bigotry,

who were

and places;

all

that

is

way

a great pleasure,

of people, the

but

I

felt

some

larger potentiaKty in art.

During the war were suppKed with

I

worked

in the Office of

a constant

War Information. We

stream of material, photographic and

other kinds of documentation of the decimation within ritory.

There were the bombed-out

ter-

secret confidential horrible facts of the cart-

loads of dead; Greece, India, Poland. tures of

enemy

places, so

many 41

There were the blurred of which

I

knew

pic-

well and

cherished.

There were the churches destroyed, the

villages,

the

monasteries— Monte Cassino and Ravenna. At that time

I

painted

only one theme, "Europa," you might

I

painted

Italy as

I

lamented

it,

or feared that

42

it

call

it.

Particularly

might have become.

had been

It

my principle

i

n paintin g, during

all

the changes that

had undertaken, that outer objects or people must be observed /With an acute eye for detail, but that all such observation must be •^

molded from an inner view.

I

such content must be painted in

medium, whether

oil,

had a

felt consistently, also, that

way wholly

any

subject to the kind of

tempera, fresco, or whatever.

now I saw art turning abstract, courting material alone. It seemed to me that such a direction promised only a cul-de-sac for But

the painter.

I

wanted

to avoid that direction, and at the same time

some deeper source of meaning in art, a constant spring that would not run dry with the next change in political I

wanted

to find

weather.

Out

of the battery of acceptances and rejections that mold the!

style of a painter, there rises as a force not only his

own growing^

and changing work, but that of other work, both contemporary/

and

He

past.

those

must observe

which appear

all

these directions and perhaps continue/

to be fruitful, while shunning those

pear to be limited and of short duration. tion

is

Thus

which ap-

a degree of sophistica-

(

^

essential to the painter.

While I felt a growing conviction as to the validity of the inner ^ view, I wanted not to re-tread the ground which had been so ad- ) itiirably illuminated by Surrealism In deed the subconscious, th e^ .

uncons cious

,

the dream-^orld does offer a rich almos t limitless /

pa norama for the explorations of ar t; but in that approach,

we may call it the

psychological approach, one

the rich imagery certain limits and inevitable

\=^The Its

limitation

effort to reveal

intention

which circumscribed the subconscious. For

were increasingly

may

discern

I

think

beyond

pitfalls.

Surrealist art arose

from

in that effort control

and

relinquished. Surrealism and the psy-

chological approach led into that quagmire of the so-called auto-

matic practices of art— the biomorphic, the

fecal, the natal,

and the

other absurdities.

The

subconscious

may

greatly shape one's art; undoubtedly

43

it

I

/

does

making

The very

act of

an intending one; thus to intend and

at the

But the subconscious cannot create

so.

painting

a

is

same time relinquish intention that

is

sel f.

The

one

a hopeless contradiction, albeit

is

failure of all such art, at least in

mo st

in the fact that man's

ng

.

on every hand.

exhibited

But the great

i

art

able self

is

my own

view,

lies

h is consciou s self— his intend-

psychological view can at best, even assuming that

were accurate,

tell

us

what man

is

in spite of himself. It

may

it

per-

haps discover those animal motives which are said to lurk beneath the

human

truism. It

ones.

may

It

may unmask

selfish

purposes lying within

even be able to reveal primitive psychological

al-

states

underneath the claims and achievements of philosophy— the brute beneath the

But the values of man,

intellect.

if

he ha s a ny at a ll,

which he has moved away peak and in his humanity at its

resid e in his in tentions, in the degree to

from the

brute, in his intellect at

its

peak. I

do not conceive

it

to be the role of art to retrogress either into

the pre-natal or into the pre-human state. So while

I

accept the vast

inner landscape that extends off the boundaries of consciousness to

be almost infinitely fruitful of images and symbols,

I

know

that

such images mean one thing to the psychologist and quite another to the artist.

One might is

a

return to Oedipus. For, to the psychologist, Oedipus

symbol of aberration only— a medical symbol. But

Oedipus

is

a

to the artist

symbol of moral anguish, and even more than

that, of

transcendent spiritual power.

Van Gogh; to the psychologist it is the periodic insanity of Van Gogh that is pre-eminent, and the psychologist deduces much from that. But to the artist it is clear that it was thfe^ Or, consider

L great love of things and of people and the incredible suffering of

IVan Gogh \j

I

know

that

made

that there

his art possible

and

his insanity inevitable.

must be an ingredient of complete

any work of art— belief

in

what one

44

is

doingr

I

belief in

do not doubt that

those artists

who work

only for pure form beUeve in form alone

therapy probably believe

art as

doing.

And I am

art.

sure that the artists

who

only manipulate materials

believe firmly in that method. But here again one

by rejection. Such ward or outward.

must be impelled

can contain nothing of experience either

art

midway

only a painted curtain resting

It is

tween the subjective and the

as

Those who look upon their with equal fervor in what they are

the ultimate possible expression in

in-

be-

from the

objective, closing either off

other.

To me

another aspect of the problem of image and

t ance.

lenge

b oth subjective and objective are of paramount imp or^^^

is

not to abolish both from

/^^I

I

topical

M)e

an image of which meaning

had once believed that the

were enough;

The

is

an inalienable ^.

incidental, the individual,

that in such instances of life

and the

of Ufe could

all

implied.

But then

chal-

but rather to unite them into

...

a single impression,

/

art,

idea.

-^^^ILbeingjiYgjcag£_r^

and most

dislike

generalities.

The answer

such material because it is

particular to

it is

none

.

If

that

I

impersonal.

we were

to

we would necessarily the common qualities of

attempt to construct an "average American"

put together an effigy which would have all

Americans, but would have the eccentricities,

46

peculiarities,

and

unique qualities of no American.

like the sociologist's

high-school student, approximate everyone and resemble

statistical

no one. But

would,

It

let

us say that the universal

firms the unique qualities of that private experience

all

which

that unique thing

is

things.

The

which

af-

universal experience

is

illuminates the private and personal

which each of us lives the major part of his life. Thus, in art, the symbol which has vast universality may be some figure drawn from the most remote and inward recesses of consciousness; world

for

in

it is

aware.

I

here that

we

are unique and sovereign and most wholly

think of Masaccio's "Expulsion from the Garden," so in-

tensely personal that

it

leaves

no person untouched.

I

think of a di

Chirico figure, lonely in a lonely street haunted by shadows; loneliness speaks to

all

human

As an experience, neither both come from extreme lim-

lonehness.

painting has anything of the average; its

its

of feeling and both paintings have a great universality.

The

paintings

made toward the "The Red Staircase,"

which

"Liberation" picture,

I

close of the

war— the

"Pacific Landscape,"

"Cherubs and Children," "Itahan Landscape," and quite

a

number

of others did not perhaps depart sharply in style or appearance from

my

earlier

work, but they had become more private and more

ward-looking. cryptic

A

symbolism which

now became

the sense of

I

might once have considered

by which I could formulate emptiness and waste that the war gave me, and the the only means

sense of the littleness of people trying to live

mity of war.

in-

I

think that at that time

with communication

as a

I

on through the enor-

was very

little

concerned

conscious objective. Formulation

itself

problem— to formulate into images, into painted surfaces, feelings, which, if obscure, were at least strongly felt. But in my own view these paintings were successful. I found

was enough of

in

them

a

way

a

^

to go, actually a liberation of sorts for myself

c ame most conscious then that the emotional image sarily of that

is

.

I

be -

not neces -

event in the outside world which prompts our feelin g;

47

.

^|/f hejyijmk^najjii^^

events.

It is

of that

made up of the irinejLv cstiges of man y company of phantoms which we all own and

which have no other sense than the

fear sense, or that of the ludi-

crous, or of the terribly beautiful; images that have the nostalgia of

childhood with possibly none of the facts of our childhood; images

which may be drawn only from the recollection of paint upon surface,

a

and yet that have given one great exaltation— such are the

images to be sensed and formulated.

became increasingly preoccupied with the

I

indeed, with the

was, as stant

I

power of

sense and the look,

newly emerging order of image.

this

It

have indicated, .a-piQduct.ofAc tive intentio ns plus the con-

demands and

rejections of the

certain striving to measure

inward

critic;

my own work

even perhaps of

critically

a

with some

At the same time I read and do read comments work by outer critics, some referring to the work as "So-

basic truth in art.

about cial

my

Realism," some lamenting

be irrelevant to any

art,

its

but most employing certain labels which,

however friendly they may be to the context of a painting. to choose their

degree of content, holding that to

I

in intention, have so Httle relation

believe that

own labels most would

if it

were

left t o art ists

choos e none. For most

have expended a great deal of energy in scrambUng out of

and categories and pigeon-holes, aspiring toward some fect

freedom which unfortunately neither human

artists

classes

state of per-

limitations

nor

the law allows— not to mention the critics. I

I

don't just think,

have

just described

animal which

is

I

is

growing; there

discussed,

that this long historical process

is

which

present within the one painting of the

called "Allegory."

which extends through ing,

know,

There

is

fire

considerable content

one's work, appearing, disappearing, chang-

the shaping

power of

rejection

which

I

have

and the constant activity of revising one's ideas— of think-

ing what one wants to think. All these elements are present to a greater or less degree in the

work

cupied in trying to impress

his personality

of any painter

48

upon

who

is

deeply oc-

inert matter.

But allowing that

all this

procedure and material,

in another sense, only background. It

it is,

taste; it is the stuff

and make-up of the inner

ground stream of

ideas.

But idea

itself

I is

must

now

say

formulative of

critic; it is

must always

the under-

bow

to the

/^

The

needs and dema nds of the material in which it is to be cast painter who stands before an empty canvas must think in terms of .

paint. If he

is

just

beginning in the use of paint, the

way may

be

him because he may not yet have established what a complete rapport with his medium. He does not yet know yet discovered that it can do, and what it cannot do. H e h as not paint has a po wer by itsel f and in it self-o r wher e that power lie s,

extremely

difficult for

For with the practiced painter it is that relationship which counts: his inner imag es are paint images, a^^^£. those of the poet are no doubt metrical word images and those of .A^ or

how

it

relates to him.

the musician tonal images.

which a painter begins to strike figures of color upon a surface he must become acutely sensitive to the feel, At the textures, the light, the relationships which arise before him. one point he will mold the material according to an intention. At

From

the

moment

may

another he

at

whole concept-to

yield intention-perhaps his

emerging forms, to new implications within the painted surface. his mind Idea itself-ideas, many ideas move back and forth across currenis, and dias a constant traffic, dominated perhaps by larger rections,

by what he wants

grows, changes

^

rh^fjpaintin

is

communicative

to think.

as a painting

idea rises to the surface,

grows and develops. So one must

bothj;creatiye affair

Thus

jnd_ responsive

.

b etwe en the painte^and

It is

saV'

an intimat ely fl\

his j)aintmg,_a^o^a-

painter even as versation back and forth, the pai nting telling the

receives

Here

its

it

shape and form.

too, the

inward

critic

is

ever at hand, perpetually advising

it and casting doubt. Here the work is overstated; there else another place, muddiness is threatened; somewhere

connection with the whole; here

it

49

\ /7

is

thin; in

it

has lost

looks like an exercise in paint

alone; there, an area should be preserved; thus the critic, sometimes

staying the hand of the painter, sometimes demanding a fresh ap-

work be abandoned—

proach, sometimes demanding that a whole

and sometimes not succeeding, for the will to override such

be stubborn enough

advice.

have spoken of the tug of war between idea and image which

I

at

good

may

an

earlier time in

my

me

painting had plagued

not reconcile that conflict by simply abandoning artists

but

it

may

had done. Such an approach also

ijj^'tellectual

removes

it

idea

if

were

not. jo

there

is

value

painting of the

indeed simplify painting,

it

man

adult, fully in-

rests

Red

upon the human

idea,

I

as to fires,

I

cannot

have idea

ability to

,

I

is

an idea painting.

hope that

began the painting,

it

is

as I

still

have

only with the sense of a debt to be

paid and with a clamoring of images,

and

1

reason

itself.

Beast, "Allegory,"

primarily an image, a paint image.

with no established

little

generally as a merely behaving

highly emotional painting, and

It is also a

fire itself,

many

emerge from the work.

i)4. indeed upon the stature^of^thejdea

said,

idea, as so

from the arena of challenging,

look upon myself or upon

The

could

and mature practice. F or me, there would be

#fo,T painting ;pecies. If

I

so greatly.

had many

many

of them. But as to the

ideas, a

whole sub-continent

which would be executed to measure, but any one of which might rise to become the dominating force in the painting. So it was with the series of paintings which I made during and after of ideas, none of

the time of the fire animal.

There was the painting "Brothers."

Paint, yes, but also reunion, reconciliation,

end of war, pain of

strong feeling, family, brothers. There was the painting called "City of Dreadful

Night"— a

forest of television aerials— lines in paint-

splashes of light, or heads of ancient

—a somber

demons tangled

in the antennae

building with moldering Greek heads. All of these im-

ages arose out of paint, yes, but they also arose out of the

ominous implications of

Out

television for the

somewhat

mind, for the culture.

o f a chain of connective ideas, responding to paint and color

50

,

rises

the image, the painted idea

.

Thus

the

in a satirical direction.

amusing direction,

m

work may turn

Or sometimes

images are

amplification,

found-image ideas which are capable of great power, can be built up to a high point of expressive

which

at least for

purposes.

an

my

u i two-way communication has alI cannot question that such a with greater inways constituted the painting process, sometimes •

•

or none. Personal style, be it Tintoretto, or of Titian or of that of Michelangelo, or that of peculiar^grsonal rapport which has-^ Giotto, has always been that developed benv een anjrtis^ and^his medium.

sistence of idea, sometimes with

"So ffeel that'painting

is

less,

by no means

a limited

medium, neither

alone, I feel that painting limited to idea alone, nor to paint and all that he is. The images to contain whatever one thinks

may be drawn

out of colored materials

minosity measured by the

artist's

may have

own power

to

is

able

which

depth and lu-

recogmze and

re-

reflect and to develop them. Painting may of an artist, the mnocence of even brilliantly, the very limitations and a John Kane. Pamting can, eye of a Rousseau, of a Bombois, of of scholarship. Paintvarious times, contained the whole

spond to such

it

qualities,

has at

m

ai in a Daumier, the insurgent ing can contain the politician noLajpoken idea.ak.ne,ii Goya, the suppliant in a Masaccio. Itjs intention tha^onns^w^^^^^ nor a legend, nor a simple use or

called

the-^riphy

thiffing and feeling place;

it is

partlj.

^airLtJngjyi^tharjh^.^Qlene^ within an individuaytj^artl)Mi^^ of a

hi^chndho:?^ orlve^l.l»l?ILSijfe?i^^^

mmy

one must see a fev, lines [wrote Rilke] the mimals, one must eel things. One must know mall flo'wthe gesture 'with 'whtch the

For the sake of cities,

men

md

hov, the birds ers

in

open

fly

J

and kno'w

th,nk back to roads morning. One must be able to meetings and to part,ngs v:htch regions, to unexpected

in the

unknovM

51

one had long seen coming;

to days of childhood that are

plained, to parents that one had to hurt

and one did not grasp

so?ne joy

(it

it

to childhood illness that so strangely

found and grave transformations, quiet and to nwrnings by the sea,

when

not yet enough

if

of the screams of

women

a

the

women

in

one must have

open window and the

have memories.

of

the stars— and

One must

this.

have

none of which was like the others, labor, and of light, white, sleeping But one must

sat beside the

fitful noises.

One must

all

all

love,

in childbed, closing again.

side the dying,

else);

to the sea itself, to seas, to nights

one may think

memories of jnany nights of

someone

number of prorooms withdrawn and

began with

of travel that rushed along on high and flew with it is

unex-

they brought one

ivas a joy for

to days in

still

And

also

dead

have been be-

in the

still it is

be able to forget them

room with

not enough to

when

they are

many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have

\^ )

J turned

^

to

blood within

us, to glance, to gesture,

nameless and no

longer to be distinguished from ourselves— not until then can

I

pen that

I

midst and goes forth

in a

New

hap-

word of a verse arises in their from them. [From The Notebooks of Make

most rare hour the

\Laurids Brigge,

it

York,

first

W. W.

52

Norton and

Co., Inc., 1949.]

r

The Shape of Content I

would not ordinarily undertake

a discussion of

form

in art,

nor^

they are inundertake a discussion of content. To me, turning of content into a masegarable. Form is formulation-the

would

I

terial entity,

givmg rendering a content accessible to others,

permanence, willing

it

to the race.

dental meetings of nature.

Form

Form

in art

is

is

as

it

varied as are the acci-

as varied as idea itself.

it is the living picture the visible shape of allman^s growth; his civilization at its most tribe at its most primitive, and of

Tr is

of his

sophisticated state.

Form

is

the

many

faces of tjiejegend-bardic,

architectural; epic, sculptural, musical, pictorial,

ages of religion; is

the very

s hape

it is

it is

the infinite im-

the expression and the remnant of

self.

Fomi

of content .-^-^

form, of three,

expression in ""Think of numbers alone, and their far back into time the for instance. Who knows how triad extends?

Forms

in threes appeared

53

everywhere

idea of the in early art.

^

But then the Trinity arose in Christian theology— the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and was a new form-generating concept. It

became

medium,

desirable to turn the idea of Trinity into every possible

to turn

it

to every use.

The

challenge to formulate

new

expressions of three, to symbolize further the religious idea, actually

became a sort of game. How vast is the iconography of three alone —the triptych, the trefoil window, the three-petaled fleur-de-lis, used everywhere; the triskelion in its hundreds of forms— three angels interwoven, three fish interwoven, three legs interwoven,

three horses interwoven, and the famous trefoil knot with three loops; the divisions of churches into three, of effort to

compose pictures

But the

hymns

into threefold design.

three, the Trinity,

into three; the

Form— content.

was only one small part of the stimu-

form which arose out of the vivid Christian legend: think of the immense and brilliant iconography which remains detailed for us and our delight— the Lion for Mark, the Ox for Luke, the Eagle lus to

Angel for Matthew; Lamb and Serpent and Phoenix and Peacock, each with its special meaning; symbols of keys and daggers and crosses, al l challenging the artists and artisans and archi-

for John, the

tects

and sculptors to new kinds of invention. Sin and Temptation,

Piety,

and

terials

of

a

thousand virtues and vices

art,

all

transmuted into the ma-

into form, remaining for us in mosaics, in frescoes, in

carvings, forming capitols, cupolas, domes, inner walls and outer fa9ades, tombs,

and thrones. Wherever something was made, the

legend turned

into form.

Think

it

also of the ancient epics of

Rome, each with personae,

Wonderful form; wonderful content.

its

its

Greece, Persia, Egypt, and

profusion of image and incident,

hierarchy,

its

complicated

rites,

every such item a point of departure for the

form for the

its

its

dramatis

fierce families—

artist, a

touchstone of

poet, a basis for elaboration, a vessel for personal con-

tent, a subject for craft, for excellence, for style, for idea.

Form—

content.

Form and

content have been forcibly divided by a great deal of

SS

y

prcscnt-day aesthetic opinion, and each,

he reads, goes

its

the consideration of a

of bad

Some

taste.

one

is

to beheve

what

separate way. Content, in this sorry divorce,

seems to be looked upon

vocabulary.

if

as the culprit. It

work

critics

of art;

it is

is

seldom mentioned

in

not in the well-informed

consider any mention of content a display

Some, more innocent and more modern, have been

taught— schooled— to look

at paintings in

such a

way

as to

make

them wholly unaware of content.

more and more exclusively in terms of form. Characteristic comment from the magazines upon one artist's work will read as follows: "The scheme is of predominantly large areas of whites, ochres, umbers and blacks which break off abruptly into moments of rich blues with underlayers of purple." Of another artist, it is written: "White cuttings expand and contract, suspended in inky black scaffoldings which alternate as interstices and positive shapes." Of a third, we read, "There is, first, a preoccupation with space broken into color through prisms and planes. Then the movement alters slightly and shifts toward the large field of space lanced by rectilinear lines that ride off the edge of the canvas—" and so on. Writing about

art

is

From

time to time the critic himself will create a content by de-

work

scribing the

in terms of

some content-reference,

as

when one

of the above uses the term "scaffolding"— seeming to hunger for

some object

that he

may

be able to hang onto.

writer describes a nonobjective

work

as

Or when

another

"an ascetic whirlpool of

blacks and whites, a Spartan melodrama, alleviated only

by piquant

whispers of turquoise, yellow or olive ..."

S uch a nostalgia for content and th e creed as trine. I

it is

set forth

by

m ea ning in art g oes co unter jo

the true sp o kesmen f or the_newjigc-

have already mentioned the credo of that early modern

who

^ S J

demanded that art display "nothing from Hfe, no knowledge of its ^ affairs, no famiharity with its emotions." A contemporary writer, Louis Danz, asks that the artist "deny the very existence of mind." / Ez ra Pound has called art "a fluid moving over and above the minds .

^

of men.

"

An eminent American

critic

speaking recently in

London dwelt

upon "horizontality" and "verticality" as finalities in art. Throwing upon a screen reproductions of one work by Jackson Pollock, and one page from the ancient Irish "Book of Kells," the critic found parallel after parallel between the two works— the two at length

named above, a certain nervousness of line common to the two, the intricately woven surface. Coming at length to the differences between the two works, the critic pointed out that the "Book of Kells" was motivated by strong qualities

faith— by belief that lay outside the illuminated page. But Pollock

had no such outside

faith,

only faith in the material paint. Again,

"Book of Kells" revealed craftsmanship, the craftsmanlike approach, but no such craftsmanship entered into the work of Polthe

lock.

Necessarily the surface effects which can arise out of such art are limited.

One

writer divides such painting into categories ac-

cording to the general surface shapes,

his categories

being

( i )

Pure

Geometric, (2) Architectural and Mechanical Geometric, (3) Nat-

57

uralistic ist

Geometric

(I

wonder what

that means!), (4) Expression-

Geometric, (5) Expressionist Biomorphic, and so on. Among all such trends, there are the differences. There

factor that decides whether a

or whatever

spiral, blurred,

work

it is

shall

in shape.

is

some

be rounded, geometrical,

/^

Those differences are in point of view. Sometimes the point of view is stated by the artist himself; more often, certainly more proHxly, it is stated by the theorist, or aesthetician or critic. I wish to discuss certain of these points of view, and show— if I can— how _a /point of view conditions the paint ates

/^ \

artist cre-

Let us begin with the paint-alone point of view— the conten tion

That any work of

I

is

art

sufficie nt in painting, the attitude that

holds

should be devoid not only of subject, or of

but even of intention

L meaning, ^

which the

.

7tha t material alone **

s urface

itself.

suppose that the most monumental work in

this direction

is

the

by Clyfford Still and exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art a few years ago. The canvas is done in a dull all-over black, and has a single random drip of white coming down to (I would judge) about a foot from the great canvas— occupying a whole wall—done

top of the painting. There paintings of

immense

is

nothing more.

Mark Rothko, sometimes much more

perhaps

though there holds

first

as content-less as is

The work

lock,

done by

Ad

of paint

of these three paint-

anything to be seen currently,

always Malevitch's "White on White," which

alstill

place in the competitive race against content.

Distinguished in appearance from such static described

colorful but also

And there are many painters who work in forms

almost entirely static in their effect. is

there are the

in size; there are the blurred squares of color

Reinhardt.

ers

Then

is

whose

work

as I

have

just

the painting of the late and very noted Jackson Polpictures are, as everyone knows, tangled surfaces of

threaded paint, sometimes splashed paint, sometimes dripped paint.

There

are the legion followers of Pollock

58

among our young

paint-

Frenchman Mathieu; there whose paintings consist of one or two long

ers; there

is

Th ese "ta se A^as( "

/

it is

the

cases looked

S his

own

upon

(

which

agitated strokes.

Then

e mphasized.

is

other cases

as therapeutic; in

becomes

the artist

actor,

The

it is

act

is

in

some

looked upon

sometimes

in a

as

drama of

psyche, sometimes in a vast time-space drama, in which

/case he becomes only the /

artists

painters are of the paint-alone school too, but in their

the act of painting

automatic.

young

are several

medium

held) for great forces and

(it is

movements of which he can have no knowledge, and over which he can have no control. Thus Pollock spoke of "the paroxysm of creation." Mathieu, going further, dressed himself order to make ing to the

his painting,

critic,

in the

"The

most eccentric of costumes

Accord-

Battle of the Bouvines."

he was "dressed in black

he wore a white

silk;

helmet and shoes and greaves and cross-bars. ...

was our good

It

fortune [he says] to witness the most unpredictable of

ballets, a

dance of dedicated ferocity, the grave elaboration of

..." And

rite

later,

"Mathieu regards everything

surd and shows this constantly in ized

by the most sovereign

plete lucidity

domain of the

all

T he yne.

is

character-

He understands with com-

on which he has staked

humanism having been

his

rejected

whole

life,

every

." .

.

differences in such art surfaces are not differences of paint

They

are differences of idea

Indi fferences of objectiv e.

They

are,

,

differences of point o f view.

even in

this

most extreme wing

of non-content painting, sim ply differences of conte nt. I

magic

as totally ab-

behavior which

of dandyisms.

a

the dizzying propositions in the inexhaustible

abstract,

possible type of

his

in

have said that form

is

the shape of content.

We

^/ might

now

turn the statement around and say that form could not possibly gxist

without

a

would be and apparentl y is apart from content Even the

content of some kind.

y^im20ssibk_toj:onceive of form

as

It

.

ectoplasm of Sir Oliver Lodge and the homeliest household ghost

have

a

content of some kind— the soul, the departed

60

spirit. If

the

content of a

much

work

of art

We

content.

is

only the paint

may now

most nonobjective painting shaped by content;

But there

is

it; it

has that

beUeve, that the form of the

I

consists of a given quantity of paint,

content consisting in a point of view, in a

its

and

series of gestures,

say,

so be

itself,

in the accidental qualities of paint.

a great deal of other

content that enters into the

There is, for inwe must note that

turns and twists of abstract-to-nonobjective form.

even

stance, mission,^nd

there has been

social milieu. '^Socially,

no other time

have taken place.

It

cases the very suppositions

ever

new

upon which

from Freud. Further,

by Kandinsky, by

just this art

had to be preceded by Frieud;

be directed toward a public conversant

are derived

when

in history

Klee,

it

wim

may

must necessarily

Freud, and in

conteitTp(5fary art

is

based

for

its

forms, what

have taken, ar e an inheritance from

the earlier group of great imaginers.

All this

more; there

at least the

worthy;

content within content-less

is

a certain sort of proclamation involved,

cial

few, the

Fprmjs treme

announce that

only kind of

it is

man

only anonymous.

this

is

art,

art; that this is

is

even

an impera-

man even—

that counts.

The pubUc

Worth

inheres only in the spe-

itself

itself is

not

vvJ;

initiate.

the visible shape of cont enrThe forms of the most ex-

varieties of the paint-alone aesthetic differ

other art because the content ence,

but there

is

tive, a mission, to

from those of

And if content is the differnew content looks alongside

differs.

we might wonder how

the

the old.

A year or so ago

I

was one of the judges

for the Pennsylvania

Academy annual exhibition. When we, the judges, walked into the immense room where we were finally to decide on prizes, a curious sight met us. The new paintings stood around the wall on the floor before the places where they were to be hung. The old pictures, the Pennsylvania "Treasures," were

still

6i

X

many

had to be preceded by Picasso,

by Miro, by Mondrian,

departures they

it

could

in place

above them.

I

remem-

,

ber experiencing a certain

new

thrill

of pride as

I

noted the contrast.

The

pictures constituted a very river of color around the floor; they

glowed

richly.

constituting

And,

in

comparison, the older paintings, certainly

some of the very

seemed

finest in pre-impressionist art,

almost a gray-to-tan monotone.

I

felt

proud of

my

contemporaries,

and of painting. The forms of the new work stood out bold and clear,

and the colors were

infinite.

Invention and variety competed

and seemed almost to obliterate the work hanging on the felt a little

I

sad that the older artists were so limited in their use of

color and that their Later, as

I

work dimmed

sat at lunch,

Winslow Homer Player."

walls.

I

so alongside the

kept remembering the Eakins— the

paintings, too, but mostly the

What was

it

new.

Eakins— the "Cello

about Eakins that was so compelling? There

was no boldness of design

there. Colors, elegant

and muted, but not

used for design— used actually quite descriptively. Perhaps partly realism, but then realism alone quite often leaves

was

it

me

cold.

There was another kind of content in the Eakins painting; there was a certain intellectual attitude— a complete dedication to comprehending something, someone outside himself. There was an tensity of honesty, a personal simplicity present in the

Odd,

that

by departing

utterly

from

work

in-

itself.

himself, an artist could so re-

veal himself.

What a departure, what a contradiction to the canons of art which we hold so inviolate today! Eakins, full of content, full of story, of perfection of likeness, of naturalness, of observation of

small things— the look of

wood and

cloth and a face— seeking to

reveal character in his painting, loving the incidental beauty of

even more the actual

things, but loving

way

of things— sympathy,

honesty, dedication, visible apprehensible shape.

Almost anyone ply does not

exist.

will tell

But

you

again,

of content: with Eakins, no

or Baziotes, form

is

that, in

we must less

Form— content.

terms of form, Eakins sim-

look upon form

as the

shape

than with de Kooning, or Stamos

the right and only possible shape of a certain

62

content.

Some

meaning and

other kind of form would have conveyed a different

a different attitude.

form— and

a certain kind of

we do

actually

is

to

sit

in

it is

So when we

sit

in

judgment upon

usually called lack of

judgment upon

form— what

kind of con-

a certain

tent. I

have mentioned some of the surface shapes which are char-

acteristic of

contemporary painting, and some of the

classifications

which painting is put, depending upon whether it displays rounded shape, squarish, angular, or some other sort of shape. into

a I

have pointed out that even with the renouncement of content, some content does remain, '''""^

There

art

is little

if

only of verticality and horizontality.

q^

being produced today that does not bear some

when painting was freed which had laid down so many rules

"^ imprint of the great period of the "Isms" /

from

that academic dictatorship

about both form and content. Every branch of the rebellion of the

f

7

Isms had, as

/ the course

we know,

which

it

a

content of ideas, and that content charted

would pursue,

as

y the cube, the cone, and the sphere, conscious, and Dadaism, perversity.

Cubism, for instance, pursued

as

Surrealism pursued the sub-

>

[

\_

Out

of those ideas there emerged a

aesthetic rebirth.

Both the forms and the

ent to some degree in the

work

are familiar with the ideas

purpose, idea

u nited

in. a

heritan ce,

all

provide

of us

who

new

direction and

later,

and

who

sha pe, but

common

all

sometimes seems to have

the me.

abstract in art

levant material

much

in

art in -

common

to reject content, but actually is its

it

with

has not,

point of departure,

itsi

To abs tract is to draw out the essence of a mattei is

to separ ate certain fundamentals

which surrounds them.

63

An

artist

may

from the

/

are yc

the most classic of the contemporary

for in the case of abstraction content

&

have come

and images thus generated. Conten t,

new

w perhaps

whicKnas sought its

ideas are necessarily pres-

^x

pointS'OjF view, k/

cue, and

universe of forms, an

certain modernity, in the sharing of a

V Abstraction

that art

new

ir -

abstract the

form of an object by freeing it from perspective, or by freeing it from details. He may, for instance, interpret Jazz— an idea, a content— by abstracting out of a confusion of figures and essential

instruments just the staccato rhythms and the blare. In Stuart Davis' paintings of jazz, for example, or in Matisse's, blaring sound

becomes blaring

color;

rhythm of timing becomes rhythm of forms.

Content, particularly with Davis,

is

64

not just jazz;

it is

the interpreta-

tion of an age with all

the senses,

its

shocks,

movements

violent

its

neon-Ughted

its

in

glare, its

impacts on

which the eye glimpses

everything and grasps nothing-*^highly intellectual content formulated into a single immediate impression. If

Abstraction

A bstract Exp r essionism,

so-called,

be entitled to expect of

would take almost

expressive, differences

Actually,

I

this

its

as there are

inward, or

artists.

think that the varieties of form in Abstract Expres-

we might

fewer than

sionist art are

view— judging from

between

One might name— that it

the most prevalen t.

is

many outward forms

as

modern modes,

the most classic of the

itself is

expect.

Although the

\v loose one,

and can be expanded to include almost anything,

C~Tisua lly

b e„ap plied to about three or four directions

.to

may indicate upon

that painting

a surface, or

it

may

said, a biologic

it

a

seems

in for m. It

which takes the form of whirls and

swirls

be appUed to painting in squares, or geo-

metric patterns. Sometimes it is

title is

shapes are rounded, having,

its

connection. Sometimes the forms

believe

I

may

have an

The theory underlying Abstract Exprescommon with completely nonobjective views.

angular or spiked look. sionism has points in

P erformanc e —the

is Jikely

act, as agains t a

to be held an essentia]__par^o_f^the art process

controlled objectiv e. But, as to the result,

I

think that this view admits of content— that content being the true impulsive compulsive If art seeks to

ages, if

divorce

revealed in paint.

itself

from meaningful and

holds material alone as

it

material

self,

its

objective, then

ought to have the greatest possible

itself

greatest potentialities for the

I

that vein.

plasticity,

think that the sculpture

has been created with a view to being

more

think that the the

development of shapes and the creat-

ing of relationships. For that reason

deal

I

associative im-

form alone has been

whichi-^ a great

successful and interesting than has been the painting in

The

sculptor sets out with

two

pre-existing advantages:

one, that he must have craftsmanship, and the other, that he in the round.

He

works

does not have to simulate depth nor create

65

illu-

sions of depth because he

works

vokime— in three-dimensional

in

form.

Thus Noguchi, working

in marble,

two and yet

ships in three dimensions rather than plicity

and unity.

He

able to develop relation-

is

retain both sim-

has at his disposal the advantages of light and

space, and the natural translucence and

glow of marble,

all

of which

he exploits and reveals with great elegance.

Henry Moore has brought new

He

is

one of the great contemporary imaginers

new

materials and

who

concepts into sculptural form.

discovers the naturally heroic character of bronze and exploits

wood. Undoubtedly

feelingly the graining and fine surfaces of

most remarkable and idea are

still

been the surrounding of open space and

feat has

such space

his use of

as a sculptural material.

the

in

But beauty and craft

paramount with Moore, and he never

these qualities in the shock of the

Unique

any age

Calder,

is

modern people who

•/time dimension into his

his

obliterates

new.

who

is,

I

think, the only

one of

has actually and physically introduced a

work.

(It

is

sometimes held that the work

of certain of the "paroxysmic" kind of painters represents a sort of

time-space extension, that cal forces;

tion

is

but

I

it

expresses the action of

immense physi-

cannot escape the conviction that such an identifica-

more romantic than

identified with the

real; that it expresses

new, to participate

only a wish to be

in the vitality

and centralness

of a scienc e— of physics— which has so greatly shaped th e sense of our time.) Calder's tify

it

with that which

and for genre,

a

its

modern.

long time. While

its

requires It

no terminology to iden-

reads at once, and for anyone,

shapes and forms are of an abstract

meanings involv e tha t return to nature, to

which seems art or

is

work

to_be an indispensable condition of

movem ent

mood and

in art. Calder,

first

principles,

any great work of

once an engineer himself, but

also

son and grandson of sculptors, undoubtedly brought to engineering

an eye for beauty, a sensitivity to aesthetic meanings which would

wholly escape the usual engineer. Thus,

66

in stress

and balance,

in

sequences of motion, in other basic and natural and probably com-

mon

principles, he

them

to

The

saw tremendous

aesthetic potentialities,

and put

work. result for us

who watch

the continuously interdependent

form balanced daringly and with delicate precision, is to experience the perfect union of nature and art. Here is sculpture that creates endless patterns in space— timemovements, the

Of

rhythms. this,

adding

And

varieties of

course Calder's

its

own

great sense of play enters into

own pecuHar gaiety

all

to the forms.

then there are other interesting and diverse kinds of con-

remember lisof black alone which

contemporary sculpture.

tent that find expression in

tening to a remarkable speech on the qualities

David Smith delivered spontaneously before an ence a few years ago.

It

would be hard

could be said of black— of

we

its qualities,

look

its

variety— unless

all

so feelingly expressed.

at

of

I

aesthetics confer-

much

to believe that so its

personal meanings, of

David Smith's sculpture where

it is

In painting, there are additional kinds of content which help to set the

look and the shape and the colors of the

today. There

is

tional attitude

a certain

moody

work

that

we

poetic content, sometimes an

toward nature— toward the

sea,

see

emo-

strange places, aspects

of the city, even objects which have some odd emotional connection.

Such content

ings

which have only

it

may

is

sometimes expressed formally in abstract painta

vague reminiscence of actual things. Again,

be present in actual scenes or objects strongly overbalanced

by some one

quality, so that only the feeling

is

present, as in

Maclver's painting of Venice— the Venice of lights only.

Or

Loren there

Reuben Tam's seascapes, the moon or the sun in black, or swallowed by the sea. There are many extremely fine painters who work in this vein, and it constitutes to my mind one of the highest and most worthy expressions in the modern idiom. Then there are the avowedly figurative painters whose point of are

departure

is

idea, attitude

toward things and people, content of

67

all

kinds, not excluding story content.

Even among such

painters,

among them, the impress of abstraction and expressionism is strong. The variations in form, in the look of painting, may be greater among the artists of this vaguely defined and scattered group than among artists of some of the other groups, and

include myself

I

simply because they have

most of them work

Not

in

common

little in

images— things,

in objective

any other age but ours would such

—satirist of

aside

from the

fact that

places,

and people.

a painter as

Jack Levine

manners, observer, commentator, craftsman, and, in

with such

sense, traditionalist— be aligned

a

Tamayo— the and men in all

a painter as

designer, the imaginer, originator of strange beasts

What have they in common? That they paint content, figures! Nor would Philip Evergood be placed alongside Kuniyoshi, or Jacob Lawrence or Hyman Bloom, except the possible mutations of red.

that

are "content" painters.

all

Content, in the view of Panofsky,

which

"that

Meaning

iA)ut does not parade." In his book. calls it

is

one work.

this qualified

by one

work

personality,

class, a religious

and condensed into

obvious," says Mr. Panofsky, "that such an in-

It is

volutionary relationship will be obscured in proportion the

two

pressed.

elements, idea or form,

is

as

one of

voluntarily emphasized or sup-

A spinning machine," he says,

m anifestation

s ive

betrays

in the Visual Arts, he

"the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a

persuasion— all

a

"is

per haps the most impr es-

of a functional id ea, a nd an abstract paintings is

probably the most expr essive manifestation of pure form. But b oth

have

a

minim um of content/*

Form

arises in

many

ways.

Form

in nature

emerges from the im-

pact of order upon order, of element upon element, as of the forms

Or form may emerge from

of lightning or of ocean waves.

pact of elements

Form

upon materials,

in living things too

is

as

of wind-carved rocks, and dunes.

the impinging of order

slow evolving of shapes according to function, and

And

other shapes— the ear, the

the im-

upon order— the drift,

hand— what mind could 68

and need.

devise such



shapes!

The

varieties of

veining of leaves, of nerves, of roots; the unimaginable

shape of aquatic things.

Forms of

artifacts

meetings of materials.

grow out

Who

of use, too, and out of the accidental

again could dream of or devise a form

so elegant as that of the chemical retort, except that need and use,

and

glass

and glass-blowing

of houses, the Greek, the

all

met

Roman,

69

to create form?

Or

the forms

the extremely modern, or the

gingerbread house; these the creations out of different materials,

and

and

tools,

and needs— the needs of living and of im-

crafts,

agining.

F orms

from the impact of idea upon material or he impinging of mind upon materia l. They stem out of th e human wish

tp_

in art arise

,

fo rmulate ideas, to re create

ings will not depart fitfully as they

ing and belief a nd attitudes I

do not

at all

them

into entities, so that

me an-

do f rom the mind, so that think-

may end ure

as ac tual things.

^^^

hold that the mere presence of content, ot subject

matter, the intention to say something, will magically guarantee the

emergence of such content into successful form. Not often indeed does the intended bellow of industrial

on the savings bank

a falsetto

lofty angels choir for the

walls!

How

at all!

How

power turn

to

often does the intended

downtown church come

off resembling

somehow a sorority pillow fight! F or form is not just the intention of contentj it^isjthe embodiment of content. Form is based, first, upon a supposition, a theme. Fo rm is, second, a marshaling of ma t erials, the inert matter in which the theme is to be cast. Form is, third, a setting of boundaries, of limits, the

F orm

is,

whole extent of

idea,

but no more^ an outer shape of idea.

next, the relating of inner shapes to the outer limits, the

initial establis hing

of harmonies.

Form

is,

further, the abolishing of

excessive conte nt, of content that falls outside the true limits of the

theme. is

It is the^ abolishing

extra neou s to inner

Form

lished.

is

what ever material order ^fjhap^s now estab-

of excessive materials,

harmony, to the

thus a discipline, an or dering, according^ to the needs

o f conten t. In

its initial

premises, content itself

may

be anything.

It

may

be humble or intimate, perhaps only the contemplation of a pine

bough.

Or it may

In such an

initial

strive

toward the most exalted

theme

touchstone of shape.

lies

Bu t from

the cue, the point of departure, the that

form must be __ ^^

the development of

in idea or emotion.

p oint, from the setting of theme, a penetration of inner relation-

..

^

ships, a c^jisJLant_elimin_ation of

tc nt

an

and of shape. S ometimes,

artist's

whole

effort

if

nonpertinent matter both of cqn-

extreme simpUcity

is

an objective,

must be bent toward the casting

extra matter. Sometimes,

if

the theme

is

exalted,

aside of

tremendous en-

ergy must be poured into the very act of reaching toward, of seeking to

fulfill

the boundaries of that theme

haps the most heroic performance in has even

known— at

least

of the Sistine ceiling

task;

on the part of one

its

set.

this direction that the

man— was

by Michelangelo. Here was

formal plan so vast that

human

which has been

Per-

world

the creation

the setting of a

enactment alone became an almost super-

moreover, there was the establishment of a pitch of

71

which could not be let down or diminished and which was not diminished!

feeling

Co ntent, I have said, t he h uman mind may be It is

m ay

of form; and

it is

have gained the great

in

any place—

Whatever

be anything.

crosses

content for art— in the right hands

fit

we

out of the variety of experience that

rieties

in

.

have derived va-

out of the challenge of great idea that

form— the immense harmonies

fiieaningful related actions of the drama, a wealth of

we

in music, the

form and

style

[and shape in painting and poetry.

Content person

may

be and often

may pronounce

of an idea before

execution that

either

is

trivial.

upon

we may

do not think that any

I

the weight or

execution into a

its

But

note that

work

it

of

was

upon

art. It is

the triviality

only after its/,

fruitful of greatness or*^

variety or interest.

We

have seen so often

thought unworthy for

how

in past instances

art has risen to the

content that was

very heights. Almost

ev ery gr eat a rtist from Cimabue to Picasso has broken

down some

pr e-existing canon of what was proper material for pajnting. Per-

haps

it is

self to his

ness.

B ut

J whi ch into

it.

the fullness of feeling with

theme that I

which the

will determine, finally,

think that

it

its

artist

addresses him-

stature or

is

serious-

can be_said with certainty_that_ the form

does emerge cannot be greater than the content

F or form

its

which^ent

only the manifestation, the sha pe of content.

72

On The

Nonconformity

artist is likely to

be looked upon with some uneasiness by

more conservative members of society. He seems a little unpredictable. Who knows but that he may arrive for dinner in a the

red shirt

.

.

.

appear unexpectedly bearded

.

.

.

offer, freely,

un-

... or even ship off one of his ears to some unrecipient? However glorious the history of art, the history

solicited advice

willing

of artists

is

quite another matter.

And

in

any well-ordered house-

may turn out may be a point

hold the very thought that one of the young artist

can be

a cause for general alarm. It

to be an

of great

Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a good

pride to have a of having

many devoted

art Covers to rout.

A great deal of the uneasiness about artists a great deal of artists

it

also

is

founded upon

a real

is

based upon fiction;

nonconformity which

do follow, and which they sometimes deliberately exaggerate,

but which seems nevertheless to be innate in art^l do not mean to

imply

at all that

artists are

every

artist is a

nonconformists.

I

nonconformist or even that most

daresay that

73

if

we

could

somehow

se-

cure the total record painters, sculptors, in

every

it

would show

enormous majority of

that an

and even etchers have been impeccably correct Unfortunately, however, most of

detail of their behavior.

these artists have been forgotten.

There seems

to have

been nothing

about them, or even about their work actually, that was able to

Who

capture the world's attention or affection.

knows? Perhaps

they were too right, or too correct, but in any case

member them

or

it

hardly re-

they were.

commotion aroused in Paris around 1925 was proposed by officials that one of the pavilions of the

There was

when

know who

we

a great

coming Exposition des Arts Decoratifs be housed

in that space tra-

ditionally reserved for the Salon of the Independents. It

gested that, in view of the

new

enlightenment, there was actually no

further need of an Independents'

show

in Paris.

promptly offered to give twenty-five reasons ents'

show ought

The

was sug-

An indignant critic why the Independ-

to be continued.

twenty-five reasons proved to be twenty-five

names— those

of the winners of the Prix de

Rome

over

Rome being the most

award

that can be extended to talented

artists

by

the French

exalted

Government. But

unknown

as

all

many

years, the Prix de

these names, excepting

off twenty-five other names,

those of

The critic then called artists who had first ex-

hibited with the Independents,

who had

not

that of Rouault,

and

who

were

totally

to art.

won

a Prix de

Rome,

could not by any stretch of the imagination have

won

They were Cezanne, Alonet, Alanet, Degas, Derain, Daumier, Matisse, Utrillo, Picasso, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, such an award.

Braque, Gauguin, Leger, and so on and on.

This incident has great bearing upon the matter of conformity.

For

it

was through the questionable

Prix de

Rome

virtue of conformity that the

winners had prevailed. That

quarrel with art as

it

stood.

The

is

to say, they had

no

accepted concepts of beauty, of

appropriate subject matter, of design, the small conceits of style,

and the whole conventional system of

74

art

and

art teaching

were

perfectly agreeable to them.

out of past

art,

whose standards

By

won

the applicants had also

current standards

fulfilling

were based upon

the approval of officials past art,

and

hardly be expected to have visions of the future. But

th e future that the course of art

o fficials

artists fall

and so

all

who

it is

could

always in

the guesses of th e

were wrong guesses.

What is itself

lies,

drawn

it

about

that causes us

us, the public, all

to require

and then, with consummate

and what it

about conformity

of our neighbors and of our

fickleness, to forget those

into Une and eternally celebrate those

75

is it

who do

not?

who

a

Might not one surmise formity in us

that there

some degree of noncon-

is

perhaps conquered or suppressed

all,

in the interest of

our general well-being, hut able to be touched or rekindled or

by

inspired

bedded I

just the quality of

unorthodoxy which

em-

doubt that good psychological or sociological opinion would

opinion in these

On

the contrary,

dumb by

tradition, struck

I

think that the most advanced

we are by our hemmed in by peer

holds that

fields

conformity. "We seem to be

not allowed that

It is

we may

do not myself

I

care a rap about

may

it

well out of

it.

my

I

And

peer group.

still I

cannot believe in I

of scientific

by

are the organization

I

do not

as for

my

feel that

can even dream of

a

I

Man

feel

don't

I

tradition, brave

am on

the

whole

or Reisman

Man

day when perhaps both

Man in some

wonderful museum

follies.

Nonconformity

is

not only

One need only remark I

to

which was before.

Statistical

be ranged alongside Piltdown

torical

We

aspire to being a sociologist,

be and nostalgic,

(Reis-Man?) and

point that

groups, hedged

committed to correct sociological behavior.

particularly

though

doomed

think for ourselves or be differ-

ent or create something better than that

Since

natures

archetypes; to be other-directed, inner-

directed, outer-directed, over directed.

shall

so deeply

in art?

allow such a view.

man.

is

shall

that

all

a desirable thing,

art

is

it is

a fac tual thing.

based upon nonconformity—

undertake to establish— and that every great

his-

change has been based upon nonconformity, has been bought

either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.

Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Charta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions. All that

But

it

at all in

seems to be

any

field,

les s

obvious

is

pretty obvious.

somehow

that to create anything

and especially anything of outstanding^^worth,

req uires nonconformity, or a

want of

76

satisf action

with things

as

t

hey

Th e

are.

creative perso n— the

nonconformist— may be

found disagreement with the present wish to add

pl y

Let

me

his views, to

way

in pro-'^

may

of things, or he

sim-

render a personal account of matters.

indicate the mildest kind of

nonconformity that

I

can

think of.

A painter, let us say, may be perfectly pleased and satisfied

with art

just as

the abstract. possibilities

in light.

stands.

He may

like the

Within the

abstract

mode, however, he

it

modern and

may

and powers not yet exploited. Perhaps he

He may

feel confident that

lean toward

is

envision

interested

with the enormous freedom of

manipulation afforded by abstract techniques he himself can pro-

He may believe that by relating colors and way— by forcing them perhaps— he can produce

duce something new. forms in a certain

unheard-of luminosities. Even though that he sion,

engaged upon

is

many

of his friends

realize

it.

There he

The point of his nonconformity new vision, of his confidence that

art.

point of Jhis

takes lessons

If there

Such

may

perfectly circumspect in his behavior, and

even with

he will pursue

a ridiculous project,

and he will probably ultimately

is

nothing in the code,

holds that light

nonconformity

a

is is

wrong and

some

some such

official

if

is

his

there

as part

his vi-

man may be

will be just at the it

can be realized. authority

.

no doctrine which artist's

of the art process. But

stricture,

body or

feel

have no quarrel

own is

a

undesirable thing, then the

taken for granted

there happens to exist principle, or

from no one, and

may

some

rule or

tribunal to obstruct his

if

academic

work

or

take issue with his purpose, then nonconformity becomes rebellion, intransigence.

One

thinks of Turner, for this great innovator did manipulate

colors and suppress forms to create light.

sionism

by

academic

so

art.

many

years,

He

anticipated Impres-

and he violated every accepted canon of

Radical though he was. Turner created no outright

work encountered little opposition steam" by Constable and "soapsuds and

explosion, simply because his

beyond being called ''tinted whitewash" by someone else.

77

How

different

was the case with the Impressionists who, with

objectives ahiiost the same as those of Turner,

laws and the outcasts of

art, their

paintings ostracized

edict.

The French Academy, which

terial

power, had been able to

ards. It

set

were made the out-

held

up

official status

by academic and some ma-

a certain absolutism of stand-

had pronounced upon the proper aims and objectives of

painting,

and the creation of pure and unalloyed

among them— particularly

light gained at the

light

^as

not

expense of the en-

trenched method of underpainting in black, a heritage from the

now-sacred Renaissance. The Academy did seek to obstruct and curtail Impressionist est art

nonconformity, 4nd thus produced the great-

upheaval in history.

Nonconformity, even on

any

a vast scale, does not necessarily

sort of violent or total overthrow.

eval art into that of the Renaissance

The

humane and

Ambrogio

from Medi-

transition

was accomplished by the

modest personal ventures of such gentle painters bue, Duccio, and

imply

Lorenzetti, each of

freshly observed images within the

Cima-

as Giotto,

whom

created his

framework of the

Medieval manner.

The

Renaissance was of course a time of extraordinary

latitude, a time tolerant of

commodate

all

artistic

nonconformity, able to expand to ac-

sorts of styles

and viewpoints, to endure the me-

diocre as well as to applaud the great, to be at once religious and

pagan and rigidity of

classic.

The world

mind— perhaps

a period in

has enjoyed

a space of a

few such

respites

few hundred years

from

in Greece,

France from the Enlightenment almost to the present,

Victorian England— but whenever they have occurred a flowering has taken place— in the

and most

arts, in science, in literature,

sig-

nificantly, in life. /

'

Every

successive change in the look of art, that

movement, has been

at issue

with whatever

is,

mode was

every great

the then pre-

vailing one. Protestantism in art seems almost to have preceded

Protestantism in religion.

The

high style of the

Italians,

even though

t

it

model and

constituted the very

German

painters,

appears

still

Dutch and Flemish and

ideal of

somehow

too florid for the lean

and frugal Northern temperament. Holbein, Diirer, Griinewald, and Bosch were earth-oriented and did not or could not aspire such sky-ey matters

as the

wonderful cloud-surrounded Transfig-

which the Italians was conscientiously,

urations and Apotheoses at

Protestant art

itself

to

ented, and in opposition to

it

there

excelled. defiantly,

was created the

earth-oriart of the

Catholic Counter-Reformation with the almost studied return to splendor.

To

Rubens,

greatest artistic spokesman,

its

no excess of

Church and

elaboration, ornamentation, or glorification of

nobility

seemed unacceptable. As such lavishness descended to Rococo, there arose almost as

and Ingres,

if

in revulsion the severe

a fast after

Neo-Classicism of David

too-prolonged feasting.

The Romanticism

may well have been a The Realism of Courbet

of Gericault and Delacroix

recoil

that neo-classic sterility.

took issue with

romantic effulgence; Impressionism and it

were

a fragmentation of Realism,

tial

fact of

The

art

just

the Isms that followed

and then

outright opposition to Realism. Al l of

u pon the history of

all

from

a denial

which

is

and then an

not to elaborat e

movements, but only to point out the essen -

nonconformity^«r occupies a unique position vis-a-vis the society in

artist

which he

lives.

hood, he

is still

social status

However dependent upon

it

he

may

be for

his liveli-

somewhat removed from its immediate struggles for or for economic supremacy. He has no really vested

interest in the status quo.

The only

vested interest— or one might say, professional con-

cern—which he does have ability to observe ity,

to

in the present

way

of things rests in his

them, to assimilate the multifarious details of real-

form some inteUigent opinion about the society or

at least

an

opinion consistent with his temperament.

That being

the case, he must maintain an attitude at once de-

tached and deeply involved. Detached, in that he must view

79

all

things with an outer and abstracting eye. Shapes rest against shapes; colors

augment

Contrasts in

colors,

life

move

and modify and

relate

and mingle mutually.

constantly across the field of vision— tensions

between the grotesque and the

sad,

between the contemptible and

the much-loved; tensions of such special character as to be almost

imperceptible; dramatic, emotional situations within the most banal settings.

and

Onlvthe detached eve

able to perceive these properties

is

^

qualities of thing s.

"Within such contrasts and juxtapositions of what

life is

today, or any day.

or would capture

its

lies

the very essence

Whoever would know

essential character

must maintain such

his

day

a degree

\X

of detachment.

But besides perceiving these

t hings,

them. Therein he differs from the

80

the artist must also feel ''*-Sf,

}f^'. -A..

p"

passionately, collate,

The

artist

may

draw

not use

conclusions, and

lines or colors

feel their rightness.*1i a face

formal passage

fail

to be involved in the pleasures

hem

and the desperations of mankind,

registered. Feeling, being a lways specific

and never generals

l ies

must hav e

its

own

vocabulary^fjthings experi enced and

because of these paral lel habits of detachment and of

nal involvemeni^that^^^ists so often

so often

why

no further authority

whi ch the work o f

It is

nd

is

the very source of feeling up^on

f or in t

ized,

able to

and no other standard of measurement. So, he must never

it

is

is

or a figure or a stretch of grass or a

for

art

remain uninvolved.

or forms unless he

that sense, then there

fails in

still

Lecome

partisans in

its

become

critics

burning causes.

8i

all

emg -

also

they are so likely to be nonconformists in their personal

Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Rembrandt were

felt^^^