ABSTRACT PAINTING IN FRANCE Page: 2
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Talents of nationalities that are sometimes varied but always Parisian in spirit, and tendencies that are sometimes opposed but never irreducible.Three great currents without very distinct boundaries seem to divide modern painting at the moment:
1. The constructivist tendency (not necessarily geometrical).
2. The expressionist (not necessarily tachist).
3. The semi-abstract (that springs mostly from impressionism).
Within the constructivist tendency one must place among the veterans: Herbin (geometrical), Gorin (the last authentic neoplasticist), and Sonia Delaunay. The team of Robert and Sonia Delaunay provided a unique example of creative osmosis, which has found a natural continuation in the work of Sonia Delaunay. Magnelli, an Italian by birth, whose influence on the younger generation is incontestable; and in his case, as with many youthful artists, the term geometrical means nothing any more. And finally the new generation: Deyrolle -- the one whose work is most full of nuances, whereas Vasarely is the purest, Mortensen highly sensitive, Pillet (no comment), and Dewasne the youngest and the most intransigent technician.
The second tendency has a characteristic note that it is a painter of German origin who heads the list, Hans Hartung (although a naturalized Frenchman). If his reputation in America is surpassed by certain younger artists -- such as Mathieu or Soulage, for example -his work by its fullness and strength dominates the whole group. Lacasse, Ubac and Le Moal, Schneider, of Swiss origin, and Poliakoff who was born in Russia as well as Lanskoy: and finally, both Chapoval and de Stael are both so recently deceased that I cannot omit mention of them also.
Last comes the third tendency: Bissière was long unrecognized by both public and galleries, but his influence has been considerable; Bazaine, Estève, Manessier, Singier, Atlan, Vieira da Sylva . . .
Naturally this list is in no way exhaustive, and there has been no pretense at any complete and final panorama of present-day painting in Paris. My classifications are in all probability inaccurate too, as are all such attempts to classify. Poliakoff, for example, could be put in the first tendency, Estève in the second -- if I were referring to his most recent work; and Lanskoy might go into the third, etc.
Had I added to this list all the names which I have unfortunately overlooked and whose work in the future might embarrass me; and were I to put in the coming generation, which I have voluntarily omitted so as not to spread the classifications too far, but whose names in the future may shine even more brightly, I think I can safely assert that French pictorial development today is as rich and significant as the movements of the past. Less explosive, less 'for sensation', it marks a time not of spectacular discoveries but of research into depth.
I now come back to my original premise -- a rectangle of pure flat color -- if it has been inspired only by the memory of a table -- will lack the specific and pure poetry for which we are searching. This would be equally true of a surface of tormented textures that gives us only the idea of a rock, of underbrush, or of a beach covered with lichens and shells. But it means also that a colored rectangle can very well contain all the painting-poetry we are looking for -- quite as successfully as the tormented shape of an eroded texture.
At present since it has been established that qualitative distinctions can be made, not on the basis of formal appearances, but on the basis of the poetical purity that makes up its context; and now that the ground broken by our predecessors is wide open for us, we must conclude by saying that means of expression seem to be more and more infinite, even if -- as we have to admit -- all contemporary painting proceeds from the first abstract researches. Indeed this unending means of expression draws infinite richness from these possibilities for deepening and lengthening.
The task of the first abstract painters was to prove the existence of abstract painting. Our own task is to prove that abstract painting is neither restricted nor limited, that it is not a mere tendency or school, but an autonomous way of expression, so conscious of its autonomy and of its powers that it can reject all compromise.
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