ABSTRACT ART HISTORY Page: 2
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At this point I can imagine some readers asking "What more can abstract art possibly offer us, than this? Here we can enjoy non-representation. and representation at the same time. What is there wrong in superimposing a real landscape on to pure art? The truth is that this offers not less, but more than does abstract art." To this I would reply that Monet's first intention was certainly to paint a landscape, and that in order to dispense with subject and paint nothing but a painting a certain evolution, or call it if you like a slow revolution, had to be gone through. I would add that art is worth exactly as much as the spectator is able to put into it, and that the spectator at the moment is the man of 1955 and not of 1873.
I think the time has come to assert that abstraction in art does not mean being anti-nature. There is too much of nature in us for it to be other than an intrinsic part of our make-up. There would be no point in trying to rid our inner field of experience of all those visions and perceptions that have impressed themselves on our minds since childhood. It is well known, also, that the most profound visual sensations automatically give rise to symbols which are then nourished by the subconscious, and which cannot but exteriorise themselves in art in a fairly obvious way.
Altogether to exclude nature from our thoughts and works would amount to a harsh form of mental repression, resulting in a kind of narrow mental dictatorship. It cannot be denied, however, that since 1912 the most outstanding works and those most calculated to enrich the human mind seem to have been made in the absence of any apparent help from external nature, which incidentally, Cubism tended more and more to reduce to a still-life, a nature-morte.
Further misunderstanding may be avoided by adding that abstract art does not eliminate nature but expresses it in a different way. The Impressionist used to set up his easel in front of his subject, against the background of the external world; but the abstract painter instals himself, so to speak, in the domain of inwardness, in the inner life, or, to put it another way, he opens up this inner life before the canvas with which he then communes in secret. The mind of man is the greatest of unexplored territories, and it is there that the greatest discoveries are to be made. It is a microcosm in which dream and speculation, idealism and love flourish side by side, and it bears the indelible marks of our experience of material nature. Thus it is not surprising if some unexpected reminiscence of nature occurs in the works of an abstract painter. The artist abhors dogmatism of any kind and to ban any particular thing (black is not a colour!) causes more violent reactions in the field of the arts than elsewhere. It is undeniable that after practising abstract art for some years, certain artists finally returned to representational or figurative art, only to produce threadbare commonplaces and forfeit any claim to our interest. The protection of a few critical mandarins and magazines does nothing to soften their fall, but only makes it the more spectacular. This is because in 1955, as in 1912, the hard way, but the way along which discoveries are to be made, still lies in abstraction.
It is a long and complicated task for any young painter to find his own personal voice and keep it intact and natural. It is a painful triumph over the self, and when it is carried out sincerely and profoundly, in depth, it is bound to be an heroic undertaking.
Even from the outside it looks like a wager, a wild undertaking. Everything seems to have been done already: there are now abstract painters all over the world, every possible form has been invented. For a sensitive person, strict, uncompromising abstraction might well look like a kind of hit or miss. All drawing leads to the ideogram. Everything suggests an image to the fertile imagination: a square is a house, a wavy line a river, a circle the moon, a few dots are the starry sky. If you let the pen doodle on a sheet of paper it is not long before it suggests a human or other figure. Join up a few lines at the foot of the page and you have a tree, a plant, a flame or a fan. Whether you accept these suggestions or dismiss them in your search for something more unusual, you are returning to the figurative world and rediscovering the delights of childhood. The greatest of such enchanters is Paul Klee. He covers a sheet all over with horizontal lines, then adds a few vertical strokes and creates a palace, a village, a fairy-like tower. The towers are turned upside-down and Klee only has to write the word 'rain' under his drawing to suggest cloud-castles slowly pouring down on to the earth. A profound humorist, gifted with a light touch, full of poetic surprises and forever flirting with the absurd, Klee has produced few works that do not contain some allusion to external nature.
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