Modern Painters. Writers on Artists 0789480352, 2001042264

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1

Miimm

Modern Painters

Writers 0W

Artists

A collection of great writing on art b}

critics,

and

artists from

some of the worlds leading

novelists, poets.

the pages of Modern Painters magazine Foreword byA.S.

B

j_

\ Writers on Artists On Artists

\\ liters

will

of the qualities

and challenge you,

surprise

outrage and enlighten you.

From

precise discussions

work to Bamboyanl writings with an edge, Writers On Artists of a particular

artist's

gathers together a collection of essays that are as diverse as art

Modern

itself.

Painters magazine selected

the thirty-nine articles from

publication.

The

its

and edited

fifteen years of

collection demonstrates that the

possibilities for discussing art are as idiosyncratic

as the writers

and

Nick Hornby

is

artists

themselves. For example,

moved by the

revealing photographs

of Richard Billingham; Bryan Robertson shows his

admiration for Robert Rauschenh^-g; Seamus

Heaney

writes poeticallv

Cooke; and Will S of the work of

.

Damien

tter ,

iting

Hirst.

DK Publishing joins with this

Barrie

matches the audacity

unique presem

.Modern Painters in

artists

century and challenging

new

of the twentieth

talent of the twenty-

its distinctive DK design, Writers On contains approximately 350 full-color reproductions as well as portraits of all the artists first.

With

Artists

and

writers.

Quotations by the

artists

within

the essays provoke deliberation; quotations by

other critics in the side-bars provide opposing points of view. will come away from reading Writers On seeing established artists in a different light

You Artists

and open

to fresh visions

from the daring new talent

of the art world.

'Writers

On Artists is a fantastic,

stimulating, I

can't recall

talent

and

and challenging book. such a convergence of

intellect, controversy,

and

sensibility ever taking place before.

An amazing artistic feast.

Enjoy."

William Boyd "At last

-

- art criticism that is fun What could be nicer?"

to read.

hn Ashbery $40.00 USA •9.95

Canada

Writers ^Artists

Writers ^Artists In association with

Modern Painters

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Writers on p.

artists

/

[essays by] A.S. Byatt... [et

al.].

cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-7894-8035-2 I. Art. Modern-20th Byatt, A.S., 1936-

(alk.

paper)

century.

2. Art,

Modern- 19th

centurv.

I.

.

N6490 .W755 2001 709'.04-dc21

2001042264 Color reproduction by Mollis Morgan, l\ in the United States In R R, Donnellj \ Sons Co. I

Printed and

bound

fin

complete catalog

at

www.dk.com

Contents Foreword byA.S. Byatt 6

Introduction by Karen Wright

7

184 Bridget Riley on Piet Mondrian

Peter Fuller on Sir Sydney Nolan

8

196 Craig Raine on Georges Seurat

David Hockney on Pablo Picasso

16

Richard Wollheim on David Hockney 24

Matthew

Collings on Jeff Koons 40

Howard Jacobson on Andy Warhol 50 Germaine Greer on Paula Rego 62 Peter Jenkins on Larry Rivers

72

Michael Hofmann on Otto Dix 82 Jed Perl on Henri Matisse 94

204 David Bowie on Tracey

Em in

222 Andrew Motion on Duane Hanson

224 Nick Hornby oh Richard Billingham 230 Bryan Robertson on Robert Rauschenberg 244 A.S. Byatt on

Patrick

Heron

252 John Ashbery on Henry Darger

256 Paul Bailey on Constantin Braneusi 262

Siri

Hustvedt on Giorgio Morandi

Duchamp

102

272 Martin Gayford on Jackson Pollock

Jamie McKendrick on Stuart Davis

110

288 Tom Paulin on Chaim Soutine

David Sylvester oh Marcel

Sister

Wendy

Beckett on Salvador Dali

Will Self oh Phillip

Damien

Hirst

1

16

122

Hensher on Cy Twombly 130

Patrick

Heron on Paul Cezanne 138

290 Harland Miller on Jean-Michel Basquiat 296

Bill

Berkson on Willem de Kooning

302 Julian Mitchell on Ed Ruscha

310 Jules

Olitski

on Himself

William Boyd on Howard Hodgkin

148

320 Lance Esplund on Wes Mills

Degas

158

328 Seamus Heaney on Barrie Cooke

Trevor Winkfield on Jasper Johns

166

334 Charles Darwent on Donald Judd

Norbert Lynton on Robert Motherwell

174

340 Ian MacMillan on Harmony Korine

Julian Barnes on Edgar

Index 346

•

Picture Credits 351

•

Acknowledgements 352

Foreword byA.S. Byatt

Writing

about painting

words

of

is

knows

Patrick

Heron

says "the flavour

intensely anti-visual. Strictly speaking, painting cannot be written

is

about. Visual experience

place or person,

As

peculiarly difficult.

that the

words

is

purely visual..."

call

up

as

many

A

good novelist or poet, describing

a

different mental images of that place or

person as there are readers. Yet to write about painting requires unusual rigor and accuracy.

A work

of art

is

singular.

There are many ways of writing badly about painting. Most painters write manifestos or vague

lyrical afflatus.

inaccurate, but overexposed all

"vibrant."

There

is

and

There

irritating

is

words- "tender," "delicate," "intense," "bold," and above

the language of the schools

allegories of writing,

way

in to a

Modern novelists

and make a beeline

Painters puts

good writing

and poets who can

works and

artists in

a remorseless innocent moralism,

on

schools

political,

It

they have

in

isn

t

see,

first.

The

common

-

ol artist

-

a painter thinks

how and why

the virtues of toughness,

a

by painters who can

about his or her work, and by

work of

art is as

it is

and

strikes us

flexibility,

And

delight in impossible accuracy, writerly

putting curiosity before the need to judge and generosity before

all,

little

of jol

and writer

explain

how

see,

the pieces are chosen primarily for the quality of the writing.

smartness or position-1

amount

contributions in this anthology are written by

and describe accurately what they

who can

a text-book

modesty - and above

bearable

as

any included verbal clue, including the signature,

for

and can make non-painters understand

does.

it

"situates"

possible narrative or meaning.

those very rare writers on art as

which

and sexual grounds. Many novelists and poets write badly because they see paintings

social,

write,

producing

an "appreciative" language of threadbare, not

and movements and recently judges them with

as a

badly,

>st

and

m

gallery-gossip

is is

no dated meta-language. Each piece ickney, Riley,

t

though what there

and Heron,

is

amusing, a a revelation,

both

indirectly of the art of the

writer, as well of the artisl

And

the illustratioi

Heron's point. The) luck

at

.ire

,!

"striui.

the patentl) real realities of

an d indispensable. They bear out Patrick any kind... But

th

\R

Jasper Johns by Trevor Winkfield

THERE APPEARS TO BE NEITHER RHYME NOR REASON why good given time. Take Russia in 1915:

art is

who would have suspected

at

any

that in the midst of war,

one of the most conservative and repressive societies then

in

produced

existing, a society

Jasper Johns One

of the most influential

disintegrating from

own

its

lack of imagination, Kasimir Malevich could have

wrenched

of the Abstract Expressionists,

Jasper Johns ultimately rejected 'he

form

himself

to create

images that were simple and

commonplace, while at the same time ironic.

settled

ignored his freezing apartment, his dire poverty his meager food rations, and

free,

down

elements are

Suprematist compositions?

to paint the first

On

the other hand,

when

all

the

nothing seems to happen. Japan, after 1950, blessed with unparalleled

in place

wealth and a curious, acquisitive middle-class lusting after wallcoverings, failed miserably to Born

1930

in

Georgia, he

in Augusta,

left

New

for

any contemporary

initiate

art

of value (to the extent of having to import

it).

power of

All the

York in 1949, but was soon drafted into military service.

Returning

to

Neiv

Victorian England, too, only squeaked forth the Pre-Raphaelites and the Royal Academy.

York,

Jasper Johns,

he established friendships with Rauschenburg, the

choreographer Merce

Cunningham, and

the

in

who

rose to

prominence

1958, has had a career which

A

the Japanese model.

after his first

show

at

Leo

Castelli's in

New York

glance seems a product of the perfected version of

at first

country (the United States)

at

the height of

mercantile and

its

composer John Cage.

military

He

power (1947-65), secure

in its material

achievements, with a small but influential

painted his first flag

picture in 1954,

and extremely knowledgeable

and

intelligentsia, seeks to legitimize its

new

wealth by patronizing

exhibited more of these flags

-

along with paintings of numbers, and letters

targets,

-

at his first

many

"One works without

one-man show. Gallen show.

Tliis Castelli

believe,

marked

the

THINKING

beginning of the Pop Art,

HOW TO WORK.

??

which eventually Johns developed into Minimalism. His reductive images of si mhols and objects

familiar

the

arts.

Of

course,

helps

it

when

there's a

bushel of talent awaiting patronage, a bushel

focus on the painting as an

and of

object in

itself

rather

moreover firmly ensconced

than a representation

longer

of an object.

is).

fabricate

A

its

in a city affordable to artists (as

generation of Abstract Expressionists had finest paintings prior to this

Johns' major exhibitions

include a retrospective

at

Museum in the Museum

which reaped

its full

benefits,

New York

somehow managed

upsurge of patronage, but

and ultimately

its

then was, and alas no

it is

to survive

and

Johns' generation

poisoned chalice. For around the mid-

the Whitney

New

)ork,

Ludwig

in

National d Art Moderne in Paris, the

1960s

a

new bevy of wealthy

opposed

to middle-class art lovers)

muscled

into

the American art world, their eyes formed by film and television rather than the old masters,

llavward (-alien.

London, and the Seibu

Museum

oj Art,

Tokyo.

and

for the

most part unable

easily assimilated

movement,

While one doesn't warn

166

collectors (as

Cologne. Musee

to differentiate

as

good from bad

art.

Bauhaus abstraction had been

For them, Pop Art was an for

an

earlier generation.

to denigrate the simplistic liberating effusions of

Pop,

its

legacy

JASPER |OHNS BY TREVOR WINKFIELD

(and that of of recent

its

successor, Minimalism) forms part and parcel of one of the most paradoxical

American achievements: the ascent of proletarian Pop represented

Stylistically,

a

usurped the old

art

between dealer and another capitalist

now

numskull

in favor of

trudging through the West.

around of huge sums of money which Pop ushered

world and imposed an artist shifted to

industry',

by purely capitalist means.

massive surrender of complexity

homogeneity, signaling that great ennui of the imagination Financially, the reckless throwing

taste

art

in

market mentality where the relationship

one between dealer and

became

collector. Art

just

Trevor Winkfield

with aesthetics more or less thrown out of the window.

A Simultaneously criticism suffered

a

massive

degenerated into bad journalism, or worse, pseudo-esoteric twaddle.

happened,

it

was only

and

loss of nerve, refused to take the lead,

a matter of time before

contemporary

art,

Once

British painter living in

New

York City since the

1960s, Winkfield was horn

this

had

following on from

in Leeds in

He

944.

1

attended the Leeds College

modern

of Art and received his art,

could

rubric

itself

be gobbled up by that strange commercial hybrid "gallery

more bad

art

was churned out - and

sold

- during the 1980s than

art."

at

Under

any time since

the reign of the nineteenth-century salons. Artists by and large were reduced to

purveyors to the trade and any art managing to escape

its

been associated with writers,

and

mere

homogenization tended

to

M.A.

from the Royal College of Art in London. He has long

this

his idiosyncratic

works

of art have appeared on hook covers for the poet

be

John Ashbery.

buried by the dross. Thus, by the early 1990s,

New York,

its

eyeballs exhausted, found itself Winkfield's intensely hued,

in the parlous state in

with nothing

much

which

Paris

had found

of interest to display

the mid-1950s: a plenitude of galleries

itself in

and the glum

realization that

American

collage-lilze paintings are

made up of seemingly odd

art's

personal allusions to events

Golden Age was well and

and

objects, but a persistent

viewer can find narrative

truly a thing of the past.

Through dissolution

in them.

Fragmented images

of people, animals, objects,

all this

and patterns form a kaleidoscope on the canvases,

and venal

and

mayhem, Jasper Johns has

the effect

is

a distinctive

melding oj formalism, surrealism,

and Pop Art.

sailed apparently unscathed, a

bemused

survivor,

Winkfield has won the

perhaps the

Award

explorers gravitating around

the Abstract Expressionist/Pop axis.

Some had

died,

in Art

from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Pollock-

only one, of that gifted slew of

Krasner Award.

He

to live, paint,

and

New York while

continues write in

exhibiting

his paintings in the

still

and

in

US

England.

others took early mental retirement, content to

^^^B

^£^-V>—.

A* .jdir-!'

endlessly recycle their early

formulas (which were formidable - nobody can dismiss the sheer visceral

impact of early Warhol and

Target with Plaster Casts, i

Lichtenstein).

Those

still

alive

95 5, encaustic and

51x44

more

or less spent their later

cull

canvas with objects,

in/130 x 112

Private collection.

cm

New

York.

16:

WRin

Ri

ON

ARl'IM

s

careers wasting their oxygen. Johns alone has cleaved to his self-imposed role of research painter,

one of that endangered band whose password might be Kant's

where

am," and whose

work

is

I

first

requisite

be perpetually dissatisfied by the direction their

to

is

no longer know

"I

taking at any given time.

This discontent

is

one reason why so many American

have dedicated a

artists

special niche to Johns in their pantheons. He's remained, despite his

on

a quintessential artists' artist,

a

commercial success,

par with Marsden

Hartley and Willem de Kooning, admired at the same

time as they are plundered by

He

tastes.

is,

one of the

in fact,

influential of

American

contrast, has

had

little

least imitated

artists (Pollock's

despite

back

work - the

all that's

solitary's

in the

- the

being painted. Only first

show

— which

a

aspect

brings us

in

and numerals —

of defiant solitude as

Few saw them

when

while they were

they emerged as a group in

1958 did they enter public discourse,

and then with alarming right painter at the right

emerged

like). It's this

flags, targets,

same mood

Malevich's white fields.

Johns'

beyond

Malevich.

Johns' early work

were hatched

work, by

dedication to research

going on around him

full circle to

but most

to offer later generations

concept of what "greatness'' can look of Johns'

widely divergent

artists of

in the 1980s,

rapidity.

Johns was obviously the

time (unlike

who were

all

those

who

the wrong painters at

the right time). This ready acceptance was due in no

small measure to Johns' ability to render the

achievements of Abstract Expressionism comprehensible De\ice Circle. 1962,

oil

on canvas,

to

an audience more amenable to figuration. This coming together of figurative subject

40 % 30 in/102 x 76 cm. Ilie

Baltimore

Museum

of Art:

matter with an abstract handling of paint marked a historic breakthrough, and

still

seems

Purchased with funds provided by

Hie Dexter M. Fern Jr. Trustee Corporation Fund and by Edith Fern Hooper BMA 1976.1

one of Johns' most memorable reforms. Forty years

later,

these early

emblems have only increased

their

magnetic

luster.

.

One can flat,

easily reconstitute their original appeal, a paradoxical

banal imagery (whose iconic starkness bespeaks America) married to a sensuous,

idiosyncratic handling of

one

union of opposites. Their

as a terrific

pigment -

accomplishment

a

for a

melding of public and private faces -

young

painter.

The works

giddy arrogance of early Seurat and Picasso,

when

and would change the way people looked

the world.

Shorn

ol their

weeping

veils of

at

still

vibrate with

those painters

knew

all

strikes

the

they too could

encaustic droplets, the flags and targets might be cast

JASPER JOHNS BY TREVOR WINKFIELD

as forerunners of Warhol's masterpieces for

morons of the following decade. But retaining the veils signaled Johns' rejection of reductive

modernism, which the dead-end of

in turn

allowed him to bypass

Pop and continue along

visionary road he's spent the rest of his traversing, albeit with

many

a feint

that

life

and stumble.

This repudiation of his early success - a

triumph based on monolithic imagery confining autobiographical intrusions to the action of the

- erupted

painter's wrist

Circle

in

1959 with Device

and Out the Window.

In these paintings,

the confines of the canvas for once restrictive.

The

seem

too

patient, contemplative brush-

away

strokes are ushered

to

make room

for

vociferous pattering wind-bursts looking to

The

over onto the wall.

paintings stop being

monologues and become conversations, Johns had taken

spill

Duehamp's

to heart

though

as

insight that

it's

Target.

the viewers, replete with personal

J

958,

oil

and

collage on

canvas, 36 x 36 in/92 x 92 cm.

histories

and

their

own

interpretative skills,

who complete

the painting. Johns' target surfaces

Collection of the

artist;

on loan

to

the National Gallery of Art.

had looked

as

though they were guarding the images beneath, not only clamping them down

but trying to hide them -

From the

early

subsumed violence

Washington,

personified.

1960s the images bubble

to the surface,

break

free,

and

start

parading Three

around, beckoning the viewer to follow. three of Johns' paintings for the

he saw the second show

in

It's little

Museum

of

wonder

Modern

secular altarpieces he'd lionized, he found tableaux (trash cans) into

which everything had been tumbled.

Many

these later paintings, executed at a time

Johns was claiming exposure of

my

"I

feelings,"

spoons, cups, brooms

They're

still

don't

-

a

that Alfred Barr,

Art from the

first

who'd purchased

show, blanched

when

want

have

of

when

my work

to

be an

literal intrusions:

Flags,

J

958,

encaustic on canvas,

n \\

a

4b in/78 x 116 cm.

hitney

New

1960. In place of the

which had the quality of bins

DC.

Museum

of American Art,

York.

•***•••*

**•*••••*•

**********'

itit 4 7 •* ********) ****••** xx ^+ ******** ^^ w * ** •*•***** i

jcit

*

**********

whole pantry of images.

bedecked with

petrified wax, evoking

troops of nerves circulating beneath, as though the paintings' real lives, as ever, took place out of sight.

Here Johns

(a

ravenous reader of poetry,

whose work contains numerous references

to

169

WR1 fERS ON ARTISTS

Right 4>

iShi

\

1977 color

S.iv.irin

Jicct

lithograph,

Published

14

1

\

89cm.

sheet

Limited Art

i niversal

b\

us.

Opposite page, top: Periscope (Hart

I rane),

48

m

1963,

oil

on canvas,

170 x 122 cm.

Collection of the the National

artist:

Museum

courtes

of American

Smithsonian Institution.

Art.

Washington,

DC.

Opposite page, bottom: Voice 2 (detail).

1971,

oil

and

collage on

canvas, three panels, each

72

\

SO in 183 x 127 cm.

Kunstmuseum,

Basel.

"Jasper

Johns

usually locates

the beginning of his

career as an

artist in the years

1953 and 1954,

WHEN HIS

HE

WAS

IN

EARLY TWENTIES,

AND WHEN, HE HAD DECIDED TO

^6^

STOP 'BECOMING' AN poets such as Frank O'Hara, Hart Crane, Ted Berrigan, and Tennyson) consciously or

ARTIST 'BE

AND

ONE."'

— Nan Rosenthal

unconsciously succumbed to that well-worn but not the thing

itself

but the effect which

surrogate self-portraits, as soldiers,

it

still

potent Mallarmean notion of painting

produces. Seen in this

some have hinted? Are

Johns

Has Johns'

own

life

work been

the targets

the body parts, corpses, skulls, sleeping

wooden beams, and bloodied bandages evidence

of our time?

light, are

of the strangest religious painter

a struggle to erect a crucifixion

without painting one?

intentions have remained skilfully shrouded in ambiguity. In the interviews

and remarkable sketchbook notes, we're supplied with

elliptical clues rather

than the hard

JASPER JOHNS BY TREVOR WINKFIELD

facts that lazy-bones crave. There's

Johns,

no simple

He

always overlaid with "Either/Or."

it's

don't put any value

"Yes''

the

Museum

Modern

of

on

limits

His mercifully reticent biography offers few clues as in the

to Jasper

himself asserts:

on a kind of thinking that puts

approach the work. At one point

"No"

or

things."

how

to

"1

to

chronology running through

Art catalog (one of those unnecessary rib-

crushers so beloved of contemporary curators) the compilers are so

stumped

for interesting tidbits they're

as the entry for

October

reduced

to

such small potatoes

1983:

7,

Front Stony Point, Johns writes to Castleman denying rumors he

he has broken his cleaned

leg.

He

adds that the monotypes are being

how

Goldston, and that he will soon decide on

b) Bill

to

tear these prints' margins.

One

can,

I

suppose, dismiss these non-events. But reading between

their lines

we can

been

on the canvas, not

lived

detect that the important part of Johns in the

life

has

world outside - which gives his

inert slabs of encaustic a terrible poignancy.

A

problem which such a devotion creates

and loneliness many for

hours

at a time,

artists

day

in

main reason so many abandon the

decade

out,

boredom

the sheer

when confined

experience

and day

is

to their studios

after decade.

It's

the

task, or start talking to themselves.

THINK A PAINTING SHOULD CONTAIN MORE "I

EXPERIENCE THAN SIMPLY INTENDED STATEMENT. 55

Johns, about the time his paintings stopped being monologues and

became conversations (1960), with

studio fever mounting, adopted

the clever strategem of taking up a team activity in the form of

printmaking.

The

revivifying

impact apart - maneuvring raw

lithographic ink jolted his paint into chromatic overdrive

-

it

led,

by

the end of the decade, to an increased flattening of the paint surface.

With

his passionless

"Screen Pieces" of 1967—8 one suspects he

no longer meant what he painted. As their Pieces" were

more about

print than paint.

become

a

flatness than

By the time he came

moody topographer

titles

suggest, the "Screen

hidden depths, more about to paint

Decoy

of atmosphere, but

in

1971 he'd

little else.

171

WRI

I

1

RS

ON

\RTISTS

It's

what

clear he'd simultaneously run out of ideas of

and how

to paint

to paint.

three interchangeable panels of Voice 2 (1968—71) illustrate the color crisis he

the

same

time.

experiencing

at

has

rudimentary grasp of

it's

at best a

often been said

It's

color.

true he rarely puts us in a lather with he's always

we

beg

I

— Johns has

to differ. He's a

cunning arrays of

used color so

leave Matisse,

it

tacitly

wonderful

tints the

—

agreed

The

was

While

colorist.

way Matisse

does,

When

doesn't overpower his ideas.

on the other hand, often we're

he

that

left

with a

stunning crimson glow, and an empty head. Voice 2 does, however, betray Johns' lack of self-confidence in his innate

was

color sense to an alarming degree. Originally, each panel

painted primary red, yellow, and blue (remnants of these colors

mementi mori along the edges of the Canvases).

act as

-

primal state

ensemble was felt

still

compelled

to tone

monochromatic gray very

much

a

1970 - the whole

visible in slides taken in

a prismatic riot. Alas,

shadow

it

down by

overlays; so

of

its

Johns

In this

lost his

nerve and

reverting to his usual

what we perceive now

former

self, still a

is

masterpiece,

not ruined but muted.

At

this

each decade Green Target, 1955, encaustic on newspaper and cloth over canvas,

and saw

60 x 60 in/152 x 152 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York

second,

Richard

ability to capitalize

S. Zeisler

Fund.

stars

a car

in his career),

coming towards him. Covered

at the turn of

Johns was driving on Long Island

in cross-hatchings

and glimpsed only

for a

fortuitous dazzle supplied subject matter sufficient for a decade's mining. This

its

and

impasse (impasses occur regularly

on apparently

trivial

occurrences (witness his dream of painting the

stripes, or the casual suggestion

by a friend that he paint

a pet)

marks him not

Not

only as a willing sponge but draws attention also to his relative lack of imagination. that there's anything

And

wrong with

besides, painters by

and

musicians and poets, they of finding

and refining

The range shufflings

a

that

- many

large aren't the

come

most imaginative

few subjects, and Johns

slots into this

may be narrow

and myriad interpretations. Just

enough, take on the gravity of planets

creators;

as

but

all

that

we can

get (Voice 2's buried

archaeological evidence) paint's ability to depict to the

is

made

a bird's-eye

spectrum being

explicit in the

and disguise

at

the

it's

to

a matter

of things perfectly.

runs deep, sparking endless

Cezanne's apples, contemplated long

in their orbits, so

one which becomes

it

scheme

Johns can transform a green view of the roof of a tower,

multiple floors receding into the wall behind. This awareness that what not

compared

on the imaginative totem. Mainly

pretty low

of his subject matter

target into a whirlpool,

find Picasso too overpoweringly protean.

same

this concept's

we

its

are seeing

is

most tangible

works from 1980 onward. Thanks

to

time, previously secret layers are hauled

surface yet retain their unfathomable ambiguities. Autobiographical elements such

JASPER JOHNS BY TREVOR WINKFIELD

as the floor plan of his grandfather's

house are earpeted by ladders, bod} shadows,

segments of sidereal spaee. stick men, and Picassoid eyeballs. finally

declaring his

to

life

he an open book

...

if

only

we can

It's

find

Laboring under the label Greatest Living American Painter

as

though Johns

him on the

(a

is

shelf.

burden which should

be returned to the Guinness Book of Records) cannot have been easy

for Johns.

He must

"In part it connects with duchamp's idea that an artist has

only a few ideas and he's probably right. One's range is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion." often have

felt

he'd been transformed into one of his alleged self-portraits, a target.

Certainly he's received a

Great Painting.

isolationist

who

more than

Much

his fair share of brickbats

better to think of

him

as a

when

Remarkable

has never stopped painting his best work.

he's failed to deliver

Painter, a

maverick

Map, 1961, oil on canvas, 78 x 123 in/198 x 315 cm. Museum of Modern Art ,

New

Yrk_

173

S WR1

I

1

ON

R.S

AR.

Robert Motherwell by Norbert Lynton

"Every' -picture

one paints involves not painting

others.

"

Robert Motherwell to Frank O'Hara,

1965.

Robert Motherwell Motherwell, horn in

Washington State

in

SHOWING A MAJOR MOTHERWELL EXHIBITION IN SPAIN MAKES GOOD SENSE.

19 IS,

Ashton curated

for the

it

Tapies Foundation

in

Dore

Barcelona and there, carefully,

credited with introducing

is

sparsely hung,

the term "Abstract

He

studied painting briefly

at the California

School of

Fine Arts in Sati Francisco, received his

BA from

Stanford University, and studied art histon at

Columbia

whose atrium allows gallery supported

it

air

and space and

light,

coming down from

on unusually slender, modern, cast-iron columns.

few Tapies up there, and go up

to see

new

a

One

ceiling above a

could glimpse a

them. Motherwell was never a "matter painter"

building images out of heavy, dense materials

- he

when

usually works thinly, even

paint

University.

Meyer Schapiro to become a painter.

Motherwell

is

considered

the leading exponent of

Abstract Expressionis)}i in the US. Extremely prolific,

he worlied primarih in the

medium

of collage. In 1944 he was invited to exhibit at the

looked both strong and enticing, especially in the main gallery

he was encouraged

Tliere, b)

it

US.

to the

Expressionism"

Guggenheim

"Art of

Fhis Century" exhibition in

Sew York - a moment

seminal

"Regardless of the medium, whether it is in Eliot or Picasso or a TV THIRTY-SECOND ADVERTISEMENT, I THINK COLLAGE IS THE TWENTIETH CENTURY' GREATEST CREATIVE INNOVATION."

in his career.

Employing a range of methods including drip-

Motherwell abandoned gestural

and-spatter,

expressionism in the late

goes over paint - but there powerfully,

is

a real kinship

between the two

Both use blacks

artists.

and ochers and white, and sometimes inscribe ancient signs

call abstract.

Both have a

vivid sense of scale. For Tapies, very

much

in

compositions

alive, to

we

welcome

'60s in favor of "Color Field"

painting using pure color

Motherwell,

who

died in 1991, to his Foundation

is

a fine act of collegiate

homage. From

devoid of emotion.

March Motherwell exhibited paintings

and

prints

extensively throughout the

US and

abroad. His

can be found qj

Modem irt

the

at the

Art in

work

Museum

New

the exhibition will be in the Reina Sofia

Museum

in

Madrid,

in beautiful

more impersonal

room there and

Many

spaces.

The dozen

the result

or so paintings that

were omitted

in

Barcelona

but

will find

must be an even more persuasive show.

of Motherwell's best paintings refer to Spain.

We

tend to think more of his

links with France, his

deep and somehow essential regard

for

French Symbolist poetry and

of Fine Arts in

Boston, and mam other museums. He died in 1991.

literary theory as well as

Journals

174

May

York,

Institute of Chicago,

Museum

to

his

in Paris,

French painting.

He

wrote his

art history thesis

on Delacroix's

Grenoble, and Oxford. From 1944 on he edited that famous series of

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

source books, "The

He

Documents

Modem Art,"

of

wrote several introductions for

it,

inevitably looking

because

was not about

it

modern

principles of

to

art,

who

are good with words. Marcel

Surrealism appeared in the series too, a surprising choice

yet altogether right

and timely

for the light

most important book

Historically the

art.

French material.

of exactly the sensitive, slightly chancy, entirely

stimulating sort one hopes to get from spirited artists

Raymond's From Baudelaire

first to

throws on the

it

in the series

is

the

exceptionally large one dealing not with resonances and silences but with "anti-art," as

was called

when

1950s: Tlie Dadaist Painters and Poets, published in 1951

in the

the

it

Dada

NORBERT LYNTON The

movement had could

all

but disappeared from modern

perhaps

art history,

to leave

what we

Modernist "pro-art" unchallenged.

call

NORBERT LYNTON

BY

and writer

art historian

was born

in

educated

in

1927 and

Loudon

Birkbeck College and

The

exhibition's multilingual catalog includes an important essay

by Professor Ashton

Courtauld

Institute.

at

at the

He

has

taught at several colleges and

who knew Motherwell School, and to

many

over

many

New York

years, witnessed his activity as part of the

universities, including

the most multicultured of American critics. She writes about his attachments

is

things, stressing his enduring regard for Spain.

He

heard Andre Malraux speak on

School of Art, and the University of Sussex, where

he

War

the Civil

in

was beginning

San Francisco

in

to paint seriously, in

and married a Mexican

love with

1937.

He

actress,

is

soon discovered Spanish poetry. Just when he

some months

1941, he spent

met various

sorts

in

Mexico, where he

now

Professor Emeritus

of the Histon of Art.

fell in

and degrees of Spanishness but

Leeds

College of Art, Chelsea

During the 1960s, Lynton was the London correspondent for Art

also

had contact with Spanish refugees from Fascism. Young Motherwell, of

partly Scottish

International,

1965

stock and born in Aberdeen, Washington (his father was Robert Burns Motherwell

II),

a

to

for London's

critic

The Guardian.

From 1970

student of philosophy,

and from

1970, the art

to

1975, he

worked for the Arts Council

psychology, and art history

-

of Great Britain as the Director of Exhibitions.

unavoidably international subjects

York in

- had

1

940

settled in

to

history further

^^^^

ML New

art

jugMWj

under Meyer

'

York.

L

^fl

in

and near

:

j

)

i^^

'

9 Il^JI

He

is

on

the editorial board of

Modern

jgJWB

He now

lives

Painters.

and

writes in

Brighton, England.

v

V n

New

Yale Dictionary of

Erika Langmuir. "

f

to the Surrealists sheltering

from the war

recently co-authored

Art and Artists with

painting part-

time and Schapiro introduced

him

has written widely on art

of the twentieth century,

The

pursue

He was

He

and

T Schapiro.

m.

V

'1

Ji

Motherwell said he spoke

pidgin French with them; they

1 found him young and eager, responsive and helpful.

It

iHH

was

*

^ jjL

ftST* 1

'

l

\Mlx-

JH flttf

Jw

**» the un-French Surrealist Matta,

J

from Chile

officially

but from '

just about

who

told

everywhere

in effect,

him about automatism

and drew him down

to

Mexico

W V

IB

11 H

Personnage

(Self-Portrait), 1943,

collage of Japanese

and Western oil, and ink

Papers with Gouache,

on paperboanl, 41 x 26 in! 104 x 65 cm.

A W'

Guggenheim Collection, Venice Solomon II Guggeheim Inundation,

New

York

.

175

WRITERS ON

\R1 ISTS

in

1941, to black, reds, and ocher in sunshine

and popular celebrations of death. The unsettled and resettled him.

York with the Picture with

first

He

visit

returned to

New

item in the exhibition, Spanish

Window, and began painting

Spanish Prison (1941-44;

iMOMA, New York).

Dore Ashton touches only Motherwell's isolation

Little

among

lightly

on

the leading

Abstract Expressionists, even once he was exhibiting mature of them.

She

work and was paraded

refers to

as

one

Harold Rosenberg's words

about "eoonskins" and "redcoats, identifying the

new

painters of

New York with and the

those un-

uniformed

guerillas

practicing

European maneuvers, with the square-

traditionalists,

bashing English soldiers, useless

That was

She

also

a useful

in the wilds.

and entertaining image then.

mentions Philip Rahv's distinction with

American

literature

the family of

between palefaces,

Henry James and

of Eliot,

and

descended from Emerson and

redskins,

Whitman.

How

did Motherwell, aware of

these tropes, see himself? Spanish Picture with Window,

1941

.

oil

Beginning

in

1960, David Sylvester's interviews with the major

New York painters

were

on canvas,

42 x 34 in/107 x 86 cm.

Modem Art Museum hort Wortli. Texas.

broadcast by the Third Programme, including one with Motherwell. Sylvester titled

of

"Painting as Self-Discovery," aptly

enough according

American painting and Motherwell's particular wanted

to publish the text,

also stopped speaking of

Motherwell wanted

to the general

interest in it

image of the new

automatism

etc.

retitled, to "Painting as

automatism preferring the

it

When

Metro

Experience."

"free association" to refer to the

He

way

of

drawing on his unconscious. At the risk of oversimplifying the situation, alone among the heroes of Abstract Expressionism, Motherwell stood for peripatetic, experience-gathering activity, in

the studio

and outside

it.

Motherwell's colleagues, Rothko, Pollock,

Gottlieb, de Kooning, Guston, etc. accepted the role of pioneers. Pollock's

Kooning's paintings fitted the coonskin/redskin image. Rothko's, not,

the

though they adopted, and

unknown and

could do so more

They were

176

risking

all

brilliantly

Still

Still's,

Still,

and de

and Gottlieb's did

amplified, the associated cliche about venturing into

while focusing their work on one kind of image. That Rothko

than

Still

while Gottlieb

became boring

is

another matter.

serious, thinking, learned painters, ambitious for art as well as for themselves.

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

Motherwell associated with them

1948

in

Artists."

the running; he certainly organized the lectures, by John after

it

de Kooning, and Gottlieb, and

for the

WPA,

suspect Motherwell did most

Cage and

ol

others, that people

to twelve years

at university a university

younger than Rothko,

art was an aesthetic, ethical,

and

and Guston were merely two or three years older than

society. Pollock

Motherwell but painting professionally from the mid- 1930s. Motherwell was better

a

"For Motherwell,

student while they worked

developing a new awareness of each other and wondering about the place of

modern

high art in

1

closed in 1949.

Motherwell was youngest of the group - eleven Still,

NORBERT LYNTON

forming and running the short-lived but

in

famous school they entitled "The Subjects of the

remembered long

BY

ultimately

spiritual force."

off,

— Stephen

Aldiss

true that every artist HAS HIS OWN RELIGION.

It

is

V)

and perhaps too eager all,

to join in

producing new journals and be a spokesman

not out of playboyish self-regard but out of missionary zeal.

reluctant

America was

to see

any virtue

and young Motherwell volunteered

him

do

it.

I

art.

A

lot

them

have forgotten

of basic teaching

how

was needed,

suspect the others used him while not taking

entirely seriously. It

—

to

new

in the

We

for

would have been wholly against

even, or especially, highbrow ones.

fully related to life as lived.

some

his nature

Not

and desire

to set close limits for his

"self-discovery" but "experience": he

work

wanted an

Motherwell worked out many of these ideas and developed

of the imagery for the Spanish Elegy series in Possibilities (1947-8), one of the

art

The

Guillotine, 1966. oil

acrylic

on canvas,

66 a 50 in/168 x 127 cm.

sequence of avant-garde journals he helped Baudelaire

to

Surrealism in which Marcel

Raymond speaks seem echoed

edit.

in

of experience in terms that

Motherwell's

art:

Experience becomes a sense of certainty that penetrates one's

being and state

stirs

one

lilze

whole

a rei'elatiou

—

a

of euphoria that seems to give the

world to

man and

he possesses'

persuades him that

it."

For this to happen,

Ravmond goes

on, one has to

accept the free play of received sensations and "not to place

them

in a logical

framework." John

Dewey, developing William James's thoughts on pragmatism, in 1934 published Art as Experience.

Its title

alone must have stirred

Ashton

also quotes a passage in

From

Israel

Museum,

Jerusalem.

and

WRITERS ON ARTISTS

young Motherwell,

as

Ashton implies; perhaps

also

Dewey's notorious statement, "the true

that

which works."

Our

habit of identifying

"Elegy" series

— images

themselves readily counter to the

way with

career.

man

him with the

do imprint

our memories — runs

himself and to his inclusive

Masterful though

art.

was neither

in

that

his goal

it is,

the series

nor the culmination of his

There are other

series, quite as

is

series: the

"Open"

dramatic on occasion but

involving another kind of exploration; the series of "Je t'aime" paintings, explosions of lyricism Elegy to the Spanish Republic

that stand

up well

to those epic statements;

more than one

series of collages,

many

of

No. 172 (With Blood), 1989-90,

them

Acrylic on canvas,

displaying his attachment to scraps of France (Gauloises packets, envelopes from the

84 x 120 in/213 x 305 cm.

Nouvell Revue Francaise, printed and written words

Denver Art Museum, Denver.

maison/nuit

la rue,"

on

a collage

and

in

French such

a large painting, references to

as

Eluards "Jour

la

Mallarme, and so on);

paintings incorporating figures in varying degrees of directness; the "Iberia" series of primarily black paintings; discrete series of calligraphic paintings on paper and of images

drawn

Iberia No. 17. 1958, oil

on paperboard, 11 x 14

in

I

27 x 35 cm. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

178

in

response to favorite pieces of writing

brilliantly

represented here by ten pages

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

A

BY

NORBERT LYNTON

La Pintura No.

12,

1971-74,

and charcoal on canvas, 108 x 120 in/274 x 305 cm.

acrylic

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,

New

from

his

Dedalus Sketchbooks of 1982;

a large range of print series, usually

between major painting campaigns and including

1968-72

in

response to Raffael Alberti's poems

A

a fine suite of etchings

done

York State.

in spurts

done during

La Pintura. The Spanish poet, who had

thought of being a painter, wrote delicately but also with hypnotic rhythmical insistence

about paintings, about colors, especially black, in ways that Motherwell found confirming

on

a

good day and This

one to

is

list

a stimulus to action

when

were

his spirits

low.

could go on and probably should. Trying to see Motherwell's work whole,

overcome by

its

be indulged. "Here

variety over a is

ground bass of challenges yet

to

God's plenty," as Dryden said of Chaucer. In a

freedom of search and expression was associated with one path per looked open, directionless even, to a

fault.

patented brand-images, Gottlieb,

trapped by his

own

best work.

Rothko kept

seemed

the lesser Abstract Expressionists (as they to repeat

be met, preferences

Still,

to

his earlier

me

artist

work

then, and

New York where

still

he must have

secret.

of

and the color had artist

kept grave

do) were content

COMPANY."

we know,

—Mar)' Ann Caws

Kline, particularly Pollock,

The 1959 Tate show made

Some

"For years the

felt

Francis and Guston look as

though they had settled on their brand-images, but they soon moved on. The horrified response to Guston's radical redirection of his work the dismay that had greeted de Kooning's

"Woman"

in

1970 was an amplified version of

series in 1953.

Both were sinning

179

WRI

I

I

Rs

ON ART IMS

"my way" convention.

against the

constancy

seemed

in

the

relevant, in Monet's Waterlilies

essential

it

to the

collages adhere to

new world

was Cubism

European ways,

No

that

had

to

his large

and the

Cubism; others

They

paper a

collage fragment on painting

hoard,

not.

If his

Both

sorts

Nachtmnsik and the

are his Eine kleine

one complains of Mozart's range, we don't associate authenticity

Someone should study

Figure in Black (Girl With

are rooted in Matisse.

quasi-monochrome paintings do

epic.

the rise of this obsession, that every

the

be overcome.

music with one tune or one form. And the Motherwells are not

Stripes), 194~, oil with

Cubism was

of expansive, neither centered nor episodic, painting.

are intensely personal, the lyrical

Jupiter Symphony.

on what

again, by focussing only

contracted and hardened.

art

of Motherwell's paintings acknowledge

belong

it

and Kandinsky's apocalyptic "abstracts" of

European

to

European modernism, and

Some

had on hand prominent examples of such

work of Mondrian, and then found

1913-14. American references

Many

New York

in

"Masterpieces."

all

work by

major

a

"masterpiece" (forget the true meaning of the word). In this exhibition one

breathless by the most august paintings, including the "Elegy" and the

has to be

artist

knocked

is

"Open"

series,

and

24 x 19 in/61 x 48 cm. National

Museum

of

American

Art,

some

of the almost entirely black paintings referring to Spain (including a

intimate one,

tiny,

Smithsonian Institution. Washington,

DC.

a

superb

little

N^MHfe.

thing a

more self-important

w«^

^w^^ ^^H^

might well have been embarrassed

artist

There are also Ten Years

Aft er

-

Ama —

Threatening Presence (1976)

reaching well beyond the

They

more

involve

such as The Voyage:

large singletons,

(i96i) chi

color

'

Crede

(

1

962) and

real adventures,

artist's

—

by).

there

range is

at that time.

always more

color in a Motherwell than reproductions allow one

- and they show him

to see

what we begin

furthest from territory.

He

at his

called

some

of

most aggressive,

to think his particular

them monsters.

Between the two extremes come radiant interventions, neither lyrical nor epic, but

responses,

and

would seem,

in that sense

Italy

(

it

more out-turned. Summertime

)

is

such

a one.

making us imagine

in

The

title

overburdens

it,

a specific source. Also, there

not one ocher but variations on ocher, and with

them come glimpses

The most Hollow

Men

have seen

Now

ISO

and a moment,

No. 7 (In Golden Ocher)

1961

is

to a sight

it

it

of red.

surprising painting

(From

was

T.S. Eliot) (1983).

reproduced, but

it

his I

The

know

I

hadn't registered.

haunts me. Motherwell had always included

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

references to figures in his armory, with Picasso and Klee (Girl with Stripes) (1947)

is

in

mind. His Figure

in

BY

NORBERT LYNTON

Black

indicated by black

bands that may have come from Klee's

late

work; his

Doonvax with Figure (1953) makes me think of Las Meninas

as

mediated by Picasso. But Orange Figure

with Interior (1953) suggests other stimuli. figure, a

truncated torso reduced to midritt.

abdomen and

thighs,

is

unmistakably female and

painted with lust as well as awe. date point to de Kooning's in

Here the

Her

"Woman"

and

fleshiness

series, first

seen

1953. She pre-echoes a hea\y pink figure on a

much

larger scale

and

Feminine

(1988—9), her form defined and divided

II

a

larger canvas in

The

by black lines which summarize the body almost

beyond recognition yet catch are left uncertain exactly

its

what

is

sexual appeal.

presented,

shoulders and arms, or legs and groin, or both, and hints of breasts.

The

We

interior

some

of

brusquely

Doorway with

Figure, 1951,

casein on tan wrapping paper

mounted on masonite, 48 x 40 in/122 x 75 cm.

Denver Art Museum, Colorado.

Orange Figure with /953,

oil

Interior,

on canvas,

\ 24 in/5 I x 61 cm. Modern \n Museum of port

20

Worth. Texas.

181

\\

Rl 11 RS

ON

ARI ISTS

I

N

\V

The Hollow Men (From Eliot),

J

T.S.

supplied

in

the 1953 painting, perhaps derived from Matisse,

is

here replaced by an

983, acrylic, charcoal and

pencil on canvas,

entirely

Motherwell expansive firmament of blacks and off-whites.

88 x 176 in/224 x 447 cm. Private Collection.

With The Hollow? Men {From

T.S.Eliot)

we

are in another world.

As

often, the title

surfaced as the image developed. Motherwell kept poetry and other books in the studio, to read between bouts of painting.

He

painted with reading in his head where others work

"One of the most striking of abstract art's appearances is her nakedness, an art stripped bare." accompanied by music. He always valued American-English Stevens; Eliot perhaps

became more important

painting, in alluding to Eliot's

82

to

him

1925 poem, refers also

poetry, especially Eliot

as the years passed.

and

But of course the

to the situation Eliot addresses: this

is

;

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

a political painting

homage

more than an

to a piece of writing,

though

it

"men" occupy much of

this painting,

The

as both.

nearly fifteen feet across, yet are

its

"More than

almost

swiftly,

any other artist

dismissively outlined in thick charcoal

and brushed ocher the

in cursorily

left, in

since vasari,

with diluted

There are denser areas on

acrylic.

black and red, and there

band of yellow

at the

is

a

continuing under is

think, Robert

Motherwell situate the art

rest,

including the thin black overpainting at lets

I

undertook to

bottom. These

underline the slightness of the

the top which

movement

This repressed red

participated

part of the message, the context in

which these wobbly

the scene. In front of the painting

main response was hate-filled lines

to

and

in

the larger

dominate

figures

in

WHICH HE

us glimpse the red it.

NORBERT LYNTON

act of

perhaps we should sec

weakest element,

BY

structures of

my

them, to those

history.

a

he played

triple role,

their conjunctions.

as thinker, as Weightless, gutless, the "men" hang in the nightmare space of the painting.

maker and as

It

intermediary, in the is

now

that

I

can name the

memory

transformation of they stirred: they are Motherwell's perhaps unconscious answer, by very different means, to

Duchamp's Nine Malic Molds

in TJie

Large Glass.

elaborately crafted painting confront the

Eliot's early

modernism that

poems and Duchamp's

same world.

The Royal Academy's panoptic American show

of 1993, "devised from a

European

standpoint," excluded Motherwell even while emphasizing the quarter-century from

Abstract Expressionism to Conceptual Art as defining the US's "essential contribution to the art of

our

time.''

To

rhetoric of leaving

identify' that

home seems

contribution with what can in itself

now seem and

took place in new York in the 1940s AND '50s. n

—Arthur Danto

adolescent

immature. The exhibition found room,

in

some

instances a lot of room, for Haring, Holzer, Peter Kelley, Koons, Sherman, and others, clever professionals working their chosen seams without finding to

use no harsher word,

artists as

in the

company

Johns, Ellsworth Kelley,

much

in

them and looking

slight,

of the best Abstract Expressionist painters and such

Nauman, and Twombly The

only excuse for excluding

Motherwell would have been that three or four canvasses could not have done justice this

profound as well as mobile

artist.

which seems odd, almost obscene,

I

to

suspect his European connection kept him out -

in this little

would-be great world of ours.

IS-!

W'KI

1

ERS

ON

ARTISTS

Mondrian

Piet

by Bridget Riley

AN

artist's early

interests,

artist

Born

in the

S

Mondrian took an

Netherlands in

interest in art.

early

To please his

earned a degree in

family, he

of

is

which

inevitably

made up of a mixture

are compatible

of tendencies

and some of which

and

are in conflict.

As the

picks his way, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry

MONDRIAN

PlET ~J

some

work

emerge. His failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging on£ thing he confirms

something

even

else,

if

at the

time he does not

sense, although

Mondrian may sometimes

development

of use

fail,

know what

something else

that

is.

In that

he never makes mistakes, everything

in his

education, but after beginning a career as a teacher, he soon left

His first exhibited worlis were

-

and contributes

There are two conflicting

pursue painting.

in the

is

to that

development.

the profession to

Dutch

still lifes

in

nature.

colors with intention

He

to light.

- "temperament"

as

an

artist's

in the

own

sense given to the word by

particular

and ineradicable

traditional style

landscapes and

subdued

Baudelaire and Cezanne

temperament,

traits in his

to then exhibited

with the Postimpressionists

m Amsterdam's

One

a feeling for

is

rhythm, which quickens

to the pulse of life

be connected with his positive sense of the new; and the other

balance, which

is

at

is

and seems somehow and

a love of order

the root of his search for unity and fullness. Both these

traits

can also

1907

Quadrennial Exhibition. afterward producing "TJie

Red

Cloud," a rapidh slwtched

drawing dense with

color.

Mohdrian moved to Pans 1912, where he was

in

"Art is not made for anybody and at the same time, for everybody.

is, }?

influenced In the earl)

Cubism

of Picasso

and

Braque. Mondrian

experimented with

approach

to

his

have an obverse

side: the lively quality

may

lead to an extreme

dynamism and

own

Cubism. Along

fragmentation, while the insistence on order can sometimes turn into a bland and almost

with three other painters, he

founded the art movement and journal. De Stijl. The movement strove lor purit) and rejected external subject matter:

it

restricted pictorial

language

to the straight line

and

and color to the three primaries and to the noncolors white, gray, and black. Mondrian called the

schematic statement. These two temperamental qualities ebb and flow throughout the various preoccupations

styles of his

development — now one

in

ascendancy and then

the other, until they slowly find a resolution in the late abstract works.

The

early landscapes painted in

Holland are predominantly tonal

in treatment

and

right angle,

style

have

a low-key,

Mondrian

in

lived for

London

and buildings reflected

in

water produce

self-

field of vision

up

York,

two years

to

where he develop his

Neoplasticism

Evening

light is

frequently chosen and there

is

a

marked

interest in visual

phenomena

1938,

before settling in

continued

his

character. Trees

contained symmetrical images which cut the recession short and pull the close.

Neu

moody

"Neoplasticism."

Leaving Paris

in

and

bordering on the apparitional.

The

tree in

Evening on the Gein with Isolated Tree (1908),

from calling on natural similitude, looms over the dark shape of the reflection like

some ominous

sign;

and

in Trees

river

on the Gein: Moonrise (1908) the

style until

death in 1944.

bank and

are treated as a spectral frieze spread flat against the light of the

moon.

far

its

five trees

PI

This up closeness

is

carried further in a choice of subjects in

Domburg (The Red "Indeed view is

it

realist painter," says

normal perspective and therefore cannot see

in

BY BRIDGET RILEY

In his Trialogue

(1910—12)

about the The Mill

at

Mill) (1910):

find this windmill very beautiful, particularly

I

MONDRIAN

which the sense of an

unencompassable presence and an overpowering scale dominate. Mondrian, under the guise of the "abstract

ET

it

or

now

draw

that

it

we

are too close to

normally From here,

it

very difficult merely to reproduce what one sees."

The

final painting

Bridget Riley

conveys the sensation of something grand towering up above the One

spectator's viewpoint.

of the few British artists

have

to

won

award

The

recurrent subject of

the Premio

at the Venice

Biennale, Riley, a pioneer

Op Art,

of

sea and dunes pro\ides a

enjoys an

international reputation.

theme of

vast,

London

was horn

lack of

College of Art and the Royal

in

and educated

openness.

The

differentiation in gives a singular

Her first was

prominence

horizon line and

reverberations.

By stacking

in

solo exhibition

London

color, creating the x'isual

equivalent of energy. Works

from the

and differences, Mondrian

early '60s feature

small triangles, ovals,

and curved, creates a fluctuating,

verticle,

black and white. In the late '60s,

very early on

colors,

she began working in

adding rich coloration

to the

black and white.

have been a

special attraction to trees

Riley's recent

and

work includes

an installation of a to the pictorial

problem of

how

sky,

and

its

offices at

Canary Wharf in London.

Her work foliage or

large-

scale sculpture comissioned

by Citibank for

branches,

and

horizontal lines, painted in

inpalpable envelope of space.

to

1962,

best-known paintings

Riley's

and

seems

in

which she began

capture the intensity of light

divisions of different weights

there

Goldsmiths

at

to exhibit widely.

its

and interlocking horizontal

From

1931

in

College of Art in London.

such motifs

after

to the

She

uncentered

blossom interact

in

and

and interpenetrate. Being

has been exhibited

Europe. Japan, Australia, recently in

at the

New York

Dia Center.

essentially a subject that Riley currently lives

cannot be treated

and works

in

London,

Cornwall, and France. "realistically,'

the tree offers a

marvelous pretext for the fabrication of a rhythmic structure of shallow recessions

and advances that have

nothing to do with the void and solid of the original motif. The potential of to

be

fully realized in

little

or

this subject

was The

Mondrian's Cubist work.

But before that Mondrian discovered

color. It first

Mill at

Domburg (The Red

Mill), 1910. oil

entered his world through van

Gogh

59x34

on canvas,

in/150 x 86 cm.

Gemeenteniuseum,

and Divisionism. Both the vibrancv of autonomous brushwork and the abstract intensity of

Collection,

Slijper

The Hague.

,85

wRi rERS ON ar:

color contrast for

must have appealed

to his feeling

rhythm and dynamism. In Evening; Red

Tree (1908) the sensation of evening light has

shed

moody

its

aura,

and Mondrian

crackles the painting into

life

fairly

with equivalents

of red and blue and short energetic

brushmarks. From there

it is

to the liberating of color

from any descriptive

only a small shift

or representational function. This Fauvist

approach can be seen

same

year.

The

Mill in Sunlight of the

in

dazzling heat and light of a

midsummer day

is

recast in stabbing strokes

and blotches of red and yellow shot through with pale blue and

violet.

But Mondrian's development

one of

a

not simply

young painter finding out what

a

and how from

is

to paint

it.

to paint

Like van Gogh, he comes

Dutch background deeply involved with

religious matters,

and

fulfillment as an artist

in a similar

way

his

inseparably connected

is

with transforming these roots. The parallel striking

because

basis as alien

it

shows

that even a cultural

and unsympathetic

to artistic

aspiration as fervent Protestantism

necessarily an obstacle.

whether an

artist is

predicament to

is

It is

is

not

a question of

strong enough to turn this

to advantage.

Van Gogh was

able

transform his religious zeal and empathy with

the people working in the coal mines into

preaching sun. in

a virtual gospel of the

Whereas Mondrian, who

theosophy and

all

power of the

initially

engaged

sorts of attempts to

reconcile philosophical speculation with Christianity,

had

to discover in the basic

properties of painting the

him

that allowed

to fulfill his spiritual quest.

The

crucial painting in this context

Evolution (1910-11).

186

means

It is

is

something of an

PIET

embarrassment

to

many people who

claim that Mondrian

is

love

Mondrian

and not

a symbolist

serves as the basic reference point. In fact

really it

as an abstract purist;

an abstract

artist at all, this

expressive works such as the Eternal Feminine and the artist

would ever dare

risk

for those

something

New

like this;

Olympia. it

to

BY BRIDGET RILEY

who

painting

deserves neither of these responses.

unique and revealing failure on an imaginative scale only comparable

well-behaved

and

MONDRIAN

It is

a

Cezanne's early

No

fashionable or

takes an unselfconscious

and

Above: Evolution, 1910-1

uncompromising imagination

to

go to such awkward lengths. Over and above

pictorial shortcomings, the failure of the to

make

a universal statement about

life

work

-

is

objective. In Evolution

a task of

dimension

its

obvious

Mondrian attempts

traditionally only

accomplished through the agency of Biblical subjects and Antique mythology. The fact

whole sphere of representation was no longer available had been an essential main-

spring in the formation of for

Modern

art in the

nineteenth century. Mondrian had to discover

himself that literary symbolism and personal invention could not

make up

for this loss.

70 x 34 in/178 x 85 cm, 72 x 34 inl183x88 cm. Gemeentemuseum, Slijper Collection, The Hague. Left:

creation of a

common

social language

does not

lie

within the scope of an individual

The Red

oil

on canvas,

28

a

Tree,

1908 -10,

40 iu/70 x 99 cm.

Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Bottom 1908,

The

on

center panel

Top that this

1, oil

canvas, triptych: side panels

Left: Mill in Sunlight,

oil

on canvas,

17 x 14 in/44

\

14 cm.

Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

and the lack of such a basis has It

to

be accepted by Modern Painting.

would have been almost impossible

for a

young

artist to deal

with this gigantic-

IS"

Will

I

1

ON

RS

AKII

n 1

S

problem on

own, particularly when

his

was completed, Mondrian pioneers, the

"A MONDRIAN IS

WITHOUT

TOLERANCE.

NO

ELEMENT CAN

BE

CHANGED,

as

left for Paris

Modern movement had

living in a provincial context.

Soon

after Evolution

where, through the daring and brilliance of

already begun to

make

its

response to this

its

crisis.

Just

van Gogh had found liberation in the Divisionist approach to color that nineteenth-

century Paris offered him, so Mondrian, following a similar pattern of emancipation, found a

key to spatial organization through Cubism

contemporary

critics

in

twentieth-century Paris. However, as some

observed, his interpretation of

Cubism was

His work was recognized for being "extremely original

mark

the

MOVED, ADDED,

that

it

bore

if

temperamental distinction, while

Cubist "laws of volume" (Andre Salmon) - that

OR SUBTRACTED paintings

— drew

in

is

much

clearly very

his

own.

conception" (Leo Faust) and for his

to say the

complete indifference

to the

remarkable flatness of his

the criticism of other reviewers.

WITHOUT In Paris

REFORMING THE in

WHOLE."

Mondrian worked

first

from the

latticelike

drawings of trees done previously

Holland and then from small, diagrammatic notes he made of the planes of interior walls

exposed

in the

demolition of large houses near his studio. These walls bore the remnants of

— Tom Lubbock

"Intellect confuses intuition.

55

the wallpaper and paint that had once decorated rooms on each floor and presented patches of color placed haphazardly visual field,

subdued

colored grays, or

colors: the

muted shades

Cubist paintings that were

his

abstract

the

way

new in

a flat surface.

and provided Mondrian with a

articulate planes of lightly

on

to

Both motifs were treated close up,

classic

the

which he could

loose, informal grid within

warm-cold binaries of

filling

Cubism,

his

own

of red, yellow, and blue. Ultimately the two aspects of

prove most important to the development of his later

work were the dynamic relationships of these areas within the picture plane and role assigned to the spectator in assessing these relationships.

which we "read" the paintings

is

That

to say, the

is

a constituent part of their formation.

Within a few years Mondrian had absorbed influences from three seminal movements of

Modern

sort

art

- Divisionism, Fauvism, and Cubism. The impact was

out this experience he needed time and reduced exposure to the Parisian

returned to Holland for the

unable to return

summer

to Paris until

of 1914,

1919 when

it

and when the War broke out

was

over.

to find his

between the human

own

and the "moody" quality of emotion with

Emotion expresses

is

more outward than

mood and

the

the most basic color.

188

had taken place

footing with greater certainty. In 1915 he

spirit in its role as a

like. Spirit

in

art

expressive

spirit. Spirit

He

August was

made

in his

work,

a distinction

builder within the realities of an artistic its

scene.

This enforced break enabled him to

take stock, to reflect on the various phases and changes that

and gradually

To

clearly very strong.

dependence on external

medium

reality.

constructs, composes; emotion

constructs most purely, with the simplest line and

PIET

In Holland

Mondrian

at first

continued with the facade motifs, now based on the church

Domburg, but the dunes and the sea soon exerted strolling

a

walk beside the ocean,

sketchbook out of

his

reality

and came a

This gradual

shift

late in the evening,

pocket and

he worked over that suggestive

from

We

little

made

at

have a friend's account of

under

a radiant, stain

sky he took a

a scribbled drawing of a starry night. For days

scribble. Every day

he took a tiny step further away

tiny step nearer to the spiritual evocation of

from an emotional response

beautiful series of preparatory drawings leading

up

it."

(Autumn 1914)

to a spiritual realization

to Pier

gave

and Ocean (1915).

rise to

the

In the final

painting an immensity of sensation opens up; one feels oneself surrounded by the sparkling stillness

take

on

BY BRIDGET RILEY

with Mondrian on the beach:

"On tinv

their pull.

MONDRIAN

and the rhvthmic movement of some boundless continuum. Here Mondrian's a

lines

wider range of functions, they act as breaks, points, and accents. At one stage

the development of Pier and

Ocean Mondrian thought of adding

color,

Pier and Ocean. 1914, charcoal and white watercolor

on buff paper,

35x44 in

but in the end he

Museum

in/88. x 111

cm

Modern \ri, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. New York. qj

189

WRITERS ON

\R1 ISTS

decided against

However,

it.

in the very next

A

painting, Composition 16, he did precisely that.

pervasive gray with red, yellow, and blue patches

sometimes adjusted crosses,

sometimes

light,

— support and and

darker, but always

contradict the beats,

intervals of the lines.

Slowly the work loosens

what Mondrian and begins

-

to

its

moorings

refers to as a "given in

make

its

in

Nature"

way autonomously. Color

planes are simply arranged on a white ground, gray lines are added to provide a context for the spatial

movement

of these planes without

The

destroying the dynamism. regular grids

introduction of

was strongly objected

such as van Doesburg

for

to

by friends

being repetitious and

denying composition; but Mondrian defended

them on

the grounds that he reworks the regular

division considerably,

and

in the

case of the

"Checkerboard" paintings he maintained that

he achieved contrast through the weight and disposition of his color planes. However, he also

had reservations about

his direction, as

he

later

admitted, for being too "vague": "The verticals and horizontals cancelled each other; the result

confused; the structure was

During Composition with Trees oil

II,

1912,

wrote and published The

Neu

j

lost."

Holland Mondrian

this period in

Plastic in Painting (1917) in

was

which he

sets forth his criteria.

on canvas,

39x26

in/98 x 65 cm.

Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

Part speculative thinking, part soliloquy

much

to

and part

reverie, this

confuse as to enlighten his followers. However, although

complete framework with

Mondrian uses

all its

offer important clues in themselves.

comprehensive

On in

it

as

does not provide a

reference points in place, the expression and definitions

One

gets nearer to the nature of his

endeavor by starting from these basic terms than by trying find a

book has done almost

to grasp

an overall system or

theory.

his return to Paris in

June 1919 the effects of

this reflective

and withdrawn period

Holland soon became apparent. Of Composition A; Composition with Black, Red, Gray,

Yellow,

made quest.

and Blue (1920), on which he worked a painting that pleases

Although,

in

me more

than

for the best part of a year,

all

my

previous work...

the light of his classic period in the '20s this

It

he

said: "I

have

now

has been a long

work can be seen

as

190

—

.j

P1ET

transitional,

The

it is

more revealing

man) ways than those

in

MONDRIAN

BY BRIDGET RILEY

highly accomplished paintings.

peculiar flatness of his pictorial space that had already been observed in his Cubist

work

is

now developed and

some advance, some recede; and up the same

taking

The

clarified.

this

spatial position

is

color planes take up different positions in space

not a simple matter of a particular hue always

wherever present.

It is

a

question of context. Take the

three yellows, for example: the yellow in the top right corner

is

on

a different

plane from the

yellow in the center, and both of these are again on different planes from the yellow

lower

right.

Although one customarily thinks of yellow as a

have varying visual weights - that than the central yellow, which lower

right.

up

take

is

to say, the

in turn

block

light color,

in

the

these three yellows

appears slightly heavier

in the top right

weighs visually more than the yellow rectangle

therefore, do

These three yellows,

-

in the

two principal things simultaneously: they

and

different spatial planes

thev exert pressure through their different weights.

The same

and the

to the reds, the blues,

blacks,

and of course

to the grays

and whites (although there perhaps

applies

less easy to see).

it is

This

brings about a field of forces in

which the various weights and planes are building up dynamic relationships

and tensions.

Such dynamism could

easily

lead to a sort of visual anarchy. But

Mondrian practices

a

form of

ordering that he later referred to as "the equivalence of the dissimilar."

The

disparate visual qualities

each as

in itself

completely

or

"real,

he would say "determinate -

are balanced in

such a way that

they both build a whole and yet retain their individuality.

"I

have just got that large work

right,"

he writes to van Doesburg

Composition A: Composition with Black, Red, Gray, Yellow, and

about Composition

A

"I

made

that blue square

on the

right

and changed

that yellow

one on

Blue, 1920,

oil

on canvas,

36 x 36 in/92 x 92 cm.

the

left to

seen

it

white;

like this."

I

painted over the

And

gray,

the black, and the white;

as the final result shows,

an "equilibriated relationship"

is

I

wish you could have

he altered the painting again. In

achieved which,

in his

this

way

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna,

Rome

words, "most purely expresses the

universal, the harmony, the unity that are proper to the spirit."

So anxious was he

to

191

WR]

I

1

RS

ON

ARTISTS

preserve the individual characteristics within this unity that he worried for quite a while

about the intensity of the large red in the lower sure that

it

ought

to

be so

totally

Eventually he decided to leave

Gradually

it

becomes

it

homogeneous.

left

of the painting:

In theory

it

"I

am

not absolutely

should be, but

in practice...?"

alone.

clear that this abstract

way

of ordering forms the content of

Mondrian's work. His paintings are not symbolic or transcendental, but perceptually accessible and plastic in the sense that he builds up a structure of relationships that

places us, as spectators, in an analogous

We

"equilibrium."

are invited to participate

in a visual interplay

forces,

between weights,

and tensions held together by

balance that

is

a

neither symmetrical nor

systematic. In a remarkable essay of 1923,

"No Axiom but

the Plastic Principle."

Mondrian describes

this

balancing

between the individual elements and dynamic unity

as the plastic principle

purpose of his

art in a

"everything the

is

relativity,

seen

period

'relatively'

their

and

when .

.

.

Moreover

the mutability, of things

creates in us a desire for the absolute, the

immutable." Far from resolving conflict by offering a

new

this

"absolute," he

turns the in-built contradiction into a

dynamic relationship that becomes something of an absolute

which has

to

in itself

and

be re-discovered and

re-

established: in each particular instance; that Composition with Red, Blue,

is

to say: painting

by painting.

Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray (1921) shows with what awesomely

Black, Yellow, and Gray. 1921, oil

on canvas,

simple means Mondrian can achieve his objective. There

is

no

explicit center to the

16 x 14 in/40 x 35 cm.

Gemeenemuseum, Hie Hague

painting,

and yet the peripheral events do not

drift apart.

With

their differing

characteristics they form a correlation of forces that hold the square in tension, being

both open and defined

at the

same

time.

As the body of Mondrian's mature work grew throughout the 1920s principle gave rise to a

tremendous richness and

variety.

this plastic

Quite apart from changes

in the

proportion of the rectangular canvases and the dramatic shift in orientation of the lozenge paintings,

Mondrian pursues, alongside these changes,

a

number

of themes in the almost

P1ET

serial

manner he had sometimes employed

tensions that can hold an

Tablou

I;

empty center

in

the past.

He may

MONDRIAN

BY BRIDGET RILEY

explore the weights and

as in the painting just described; or the reverse, as in

Composition with Red, Black, Blue, and Yellow (1921), where the linear divisions

and the

cut across the central area the color weights

visual forces are turned inside out, as

and planes, being well within the

pictorial field,

it

were. As a result

provoke relationships that

concentrate or diffuse attention. Other areas of investigation include an even greater reduction of his already simplified means, such as the black bands of varying width with just

white planes of varying

proportion; or compositions

with only one or two color planes

occupying the spatial

compartments provided by the linear divisions.

For a long time this period

was regarded

as the zenith of

Mondrian's achievement.

monumental

Certainly the stability

and grandeur

one side of

reflects

temperament.

his

However, the other, the feeling for rhythm, assert itself

and

lively

was soon

to

to increase

dramatically the dynamic element in his first

work. In 1932 he

made

his

"double line" paintings,

among them Composition

with

The

Yellow and Double Line.

rapid

repetition of the horizontal line

adds a new and different quality of plane, a kind of outlined band, to the relationships in the painting

- and one

Composition with Red, Black,

so

Blue, and Yellow, 1921,

subversive that

Composition interval

C

it

puts the stability and coherence of the painting at

But when, as

in

oil

on canvas,

41 x 39 in/103 x 100 cm.

(No.

Ill;

Composition with Red,

between the two

lines,

and the plane thus created friction of the

risk.

"double line"

sits

is

Yellow,

and Blue 1935), he widens the

the ambiguous duality of this

more

there to

pictorial field in half

and

is

in

relationship

easily with others in the painting. stay, as

Mondrian

is

is

reduced

However, the

obviously fascinated by

rhythmic potential and repetitive insistence. In the following

Composition C; Composition

new

year,

Gemeenemuseum, The Hague

its

1936, he painted

Blue and Yellow. There a centralized black vertical cuts the

repeated to the

left to

form a "double

line,"

while a pair of

193

\\

Rl

n

R.S

ON

AR1 ISTS

horizontal "double lines" (with

wider but equal

slightly

intervals)

crosses these verticals, setting up virtual flashing points at the

intersections. But

now Mondrian

tackles directly those aspects of repetition that perhaps

most problematic

seemed

to him: the

accumulated intensity of the overall

dynamism which

threatens to diminish the "particular" at the "universal."

expense of the

By adding

a large

yellow plane and a small blue

one he introduces

a strong

asymmetrical bias that checks the evenness of the rhythm. In

he

left

1937 - the year before

France for England and

New York —

he made

Composition of Lines and Color, III

(Composition with blue), a

most beautiful painting Composirion with Blue, oil

J

937,

reconciles the increasing role he

was giving

to

rhythm with

a

new sense

that

of scale and

on canvas,

32 x 30 in/80 x 77 cm. Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

tectonic strength. Generated by various black verticals

and

movement

their intervals, the

"The colored planes, as much by position and dimension as by the greater value given to color, plastically express only relationships and not forms." sweeps across the painting and

is

counter-movement of horizontal the painting.

up

194

As

brought

to a

complex rhythmic close on the

intervals modifies

deep blue rectangle

it

A

subtle

and harmonizes the drive and tempo of

a finishing stroke an implied diagonal

for attention by the

right.

descending from the top

carries, the only color

left is

pulled

plane in the painting.

PIET

During the

last

few years of

explorations which

governed his work

his

life,

spent

in

more and more amounted in the '20s. In his writings

New

York,

Mondrian

in

BY BRIDGET RILEY

carried on with his

to a reversal of the priorities that

and

MONDRIAN

had

conversation he insisted repeatedly on

"dynamic rhythm" and "creative destruction" by which he meant the transformation of the actual elements

- the

basic colors and lines

expressive dynamism. His

seems

to

sum up

last

his entire

-

completed painting, Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942-43),

endeavor

in

one amazing statement. Earlier tendencies such

those revealed in Pier and Ocean, the "Lozenge," and the "Checkerboard" paintings are integrated with interests striving for It

"The strongest

into the "purely plastic" agents of an

which previously seemed

to contradict

and exclude them. The

constancy and immutability coexists with the love of rhythm and movement.

can be taken as a proof of Mondrian's rigorous and somewhat antiquated

impression as

how

may

be, they shine

among

frail

and modest

their physical

the best work of this century with a unique vitality and

straight he

how

effort to

appearance

of

was as an artist, once he'd found his path, and

achieve the "equilibrium of the universal and the particular" that his paintings have not

been rendered obsolete by history However

is

he made

straightness

and which is

seem rich endless,

mvsterious timelessness.

a hard thing

to achieve."

—Matthew Collings

>

I Broadway Boogie-Woogie, 1942 \3, oil on canvas, 50 x 50 in/127 x 127 cm.

—

Museum

of Modern Art,

New York.

195

WRI ERS ON ARTISTS I

Georges Seurat by Craig Raine

METERS BY THREE METERS, BATHERS AT ASNIERES FILLS ONE WALL -

TWO

difficult, ironic

della

Georges Seurat Born into a well -off Parisian

was

family in 1859, Seurat

enough

masterpiece.

Francesca fresco, as do

to hint at higher things;

quasi-meditative

— and then

it

its

Still,

hazy colors recall the faded pigments of a Piero vivid yet flat figures.

The scene

gestures towards the contemplative,

insists

it

Its

a silent,

is

monumental

it is

composed and

on what Matthew Arnold called the object

as in itself

able to pursue an artistic

career free of material worry.

it

really

Bathers at Asnieres

is.

is

the suburban scene in a trance of torpor.

figures are not

Its

After stitching at the Ecole des

Beaux-Arts, he spent his

naked but nearer

spiritually

a banal vacancy. Seurat evokes the idea of epiphany, a

entire, brief life in Paris,

summers painting

except for

on the Normandy

transfiguration of the ordinary, then settles for a mildly hedonistic vapidity.

He was

too

coast.

intelligent a painter to exaggerate or sentimentalize his subject matter. Rejecting the formlessness of

Impressionism, Seurat

combined certain elements of the movement with the structure of Classicism.

modern

life,

but one

who

He was

a painter of

ignored Baudelaire's stipulation to heroize the stove-pipe hat and

the pipe-clayed spats. Seurat's preferred note was tougher, ugly, accurate, secular, ironic.

He

In Fellini's film

La Strada (1954), the Clown

is

killed

by Zampano,

when

the Strong-

became the leader of the Neo-

man meets

Impressionist group that

his teasing rival

by chance on

a

deserted road.

The Clown,

in mufti,

is

repairing

included Pissarro, Signac,

a flat

Gauguin, and ToidouseLautrec. first

Upon

Baignade, Asnieres, in the

the

Paris Salon of 1883, the jury's

all)

it

a

few blows

in a ragged, realistic fight.

The Clown

caused him

to

he

Clown lies

looks at his wrist

down and

dies.

and complains

That watch.

that the

Strongman has broken

men

dies

separate,

his watch,

then

Bizarre, less symbolic than comically incongruous, a

himself with the young

who

independent painters

later

formed the Societe des Artistes Independents. During the next two years, he laboriously,

Island of

which

from color.

The Grande

pedestrian interpolation at the

Modernism

moment

of pathos,

it is

refuses to edit in the interests of afflatus.

also a perfect

The process begins with

Jatte,

his painting,

was displayed

uncompromising

practitioner.

When Emma

infinite fine points o\ I

Flaubert,

the

emerge

solid masses

example of modernism.

its first

almost fanatically, painted

A Sunday Afternoon on in

The two men exchange

only because he bangs his head against the metal corner of his car: the two

Une

major painting,

rejection of

tire.

entering his

when

it

Bovary's

arsenic poisoning enters

its

at the

Independents show

in

1886,

final

phase, her daughter

brought the attention of

Berthe

critics to Seurat.

\\

hen he died

vety

young

at

is

brought

to the

bedroom. The burning

the age oj thirty-one, Seurat left

onU seven major

paintings.

candles remind the of

Bathers at Asnieres, 1884,

oil

canvas, 79 x

100 cm.

/

18 in 201

x

National Gallery, London

196

on

New Year's

woken

early,

little girl

Day, of being

of

gifts.

Her

eyes cast about, looking for

GEORGES SEURAT

BY CRAIG RAINE

Craig Raine Raine was born

in

England

1944 and educated

in

Oxford.

He became

Quarto

in

at

editor of

1979 and was

poetn editor 1981

at

to

the

Faber from

1991.

His worfis include the poetry

The Onion,

collections

Memory, and Rich; libretto for

her stocking, cubist with presents, depending from the mantelpiece. Her innocent, infantile

Electrification of the Soviet; a verse

egotism takes Pathos

place with the other infantile egotisms gathered around the deathbed.

its

stayed, impurities are unflinchingly reported, the grotesque

is

is

given

A

drama 1953:

Version of Racine's

Andromaque; and

due.

its

a

an opera The

a

Haydn

collection of essays,

A

and the Valve Trumpet.

Ironies are treasured.

Martian Sends a Postcard

Home, perhaps Raine's bestknown collection of poetn. is

say they see poetry in my PAINTINGS; I SEE ONLY SCIENCE.

"Some

written from the perspective

>5

of an alien, describing the

Philip Larkin thought that photography epitomized this tendency to

and inconvenient: "But

o,

photography! as no

art

is, /

established

him

as the

founder of a group dubbed "Tlie Martian School of

embrace the awkward

poets.

and disappointing! that

Faithful

of Earthlings. This

lives

work

"

The

title

poem

is

described as "ingenious,"

records

Dull days as

/

dull,

and

Like washing lines, and Halls-Distemper boards..."

argument

that, to the

is

/And

hold-it smiles as frauds,

And

will

will not

not censor blemishes

inviting "a certain element

/

of self-congratulation in the

My

censor blemishes.

reader

heartbreaking beauty of the preparatory drawings, Seurat, in the

Raine currently teaches

and

of the drawings

is

cognate with photography, though

from

far

photography's vaunted accuracy of finish. In a dozen or so early drawings Seurat's technique

describe

it.

mature

rapidly.

When

it

Using the texture of the paper

crayon develops

its

image as

if

arrives

unravels them."

English literature at Oxford,

finished picture, brought blemishes. Deliberately.

The magic

who

it is

we can

incomparable. Let

me

is

the editor for the

literary

magazine Arete.

see

try to

as a central part of the process, Seurat's conte

the paper were light-sensitive.

photographic detail enlarged to a grainy shimmer.

More than

The

results look like a

Top

usually the process of

Left:

Seated Nude Boy: Study

for Batliers atAsnieres.

drawing seems

to

be preserved

in the finished drawing.

And

the process

is

13 x 10 in/32

brass-rubbing: textures

worn

it is

sculptural in

summon up

patina,

still

its

emphasis on shape, on outline rather than

the surface of polished granite

presening

—

line.

And

its

its

precious

883

—h

x 25 cm.

National Gallery of Scotland,

Edinburgh.

not a high, machined polish, but a Top

irregularities.

1

conte crayon on paper,

also akin to

Right: Detail from Batlters at

Asnieres, 1883-4.

19;

\\ Rl

fERS

ON

\RTISTS

chalk drawing of Seurat by his art-school contemporary Ernest-Joseph Laurent

A good shows

already a

by contrast,

us,

how

little

moved beyond convention, where what

species of spiritualism.

by the

store Seurat set

The woman

is

distinguishing feature a downcast eyelid of the paper, yet utterly authoritative

is

captured

-

and

which

a detail

precise.

what

seem

draw on the paper. This sense of finding images

a record of discovery. Seurat finds

MICHALLET watermark

out vertically in the top

left

aura, as

indistinct,

is

That eye

is

the

is

Reading has

though drawing were

there in outline, granite, granular, her one

drawing to

Woman

line. Seurat's

is

almost an accident

there within the paper.

is

is

The

reading, not resting.

He

doesn't

reinforced by the presence of

in several drawings. In the portrait of

Aman-Jean

it is

picked

of the drawing.

Portrait of Aman-Jean. J883,

Not

conte crayon on paper,

25 x

J

9

tn/62x48cm.

Metropolitan

New

York.

Museum

of Art,

all

the early drawings are uniformly successful. Locomotive, for example, tries to

make conte crayon work

like charcoal.

The enlargement

effect

in

is

abeyance and

in spite of

the conveniently obnubilated subject, the texture

curiously perfunctory and the

is

smoke

stylized

Walking

a particular failure. In

in a Field,

problem of

Seurat addresses the

total texture

ground, foreground.

He

- background, middlefavors overlaid wispy

which can stand

lines, a little like fiberglass,

for

cracked earth, scrubby vegetation,

brambles, texture

-

Two Men

non-representational way. As

in a

because

it fails,

so clearly a device

it is

but without the

clever, relatively versatile,

conjured out of the

inevitability of the granites

paper by his conte crayon.

These granites are particularly

at

once monumental,

where the human

figure

is

in

question, and capable of the subtlest inflections

manages

-

as

when,

to specify a

for instance, Seurat

heavy

the cloak of The Nanny.

twill material for

As

a technique,

perfect for textures, and eventually

marginalized other interesting

experiments —

like the

Gris-like rendition of

it is

it

stylistic

penciled ur-Cubist,

Woman

Seated on a

Bench, or the worn dry-point quality of the charcoal sketch, The Seamstress: the Wall.

These explorations

A

Painting on

are broken off in

GEORGES SEURAT

BY CRAIG RAINE

favor of the sculpted

conte crayon, where the

image seems

to

seep out

of the paper like the

legendary veronica.

The technique has its

limitations.

make

for

It

some

can

difficulty

with a thing as intricate as the ear.

Aman-Jean's

portrait has

wonderful

back

spikes of hair in his

crown and a linen cravat

whose white weave

is

almost palpable - and yet his earlobe

the size of a

is

small mastoid. Seurat has given his fellow-artist a thick ear. Apart from that, it is

a

whose

marvelous drawing, effect

is

at first

The Bridge

academic - though a glance

at Seurat's early

charcoal study, Standing

Man, Hands

1

886—7,

oil

at

Courbevoie,

on canvas,

18 x 22 in/46 x 56 cm.

Outstretched, merely emphasizes the extraordinary distance

work (with stain)

its

and the

graphic, ragged prepuce

and

its

cock and

essentially suggestive later piece.

granular and shimmers in a

a

way

The

between the

balls the

Portrait

earlier,

meticulous

London.

dark shade of furniture

ofAman-Jean

that anticipates Seurat's pointillism

is

deliciously

— though

pointillism

is,

"Whereas others

the art of HOLLOWING A SURFACE Painting

Courtauld Institute Galleries,

is

painted cohesive

??

fragments of a

complex society, of course, a theory of color.

Here the dots

are created by the surface of the paper.

They

are

Seurat painted brought out rather than brought there by the crayon. Later the dots are put there by the point of the brush: Seurat's Bridge at Courbevoie

is

fully-fledged pointillism,

Bathers at Asnieres has a single pocket of touches to the hat of Echo. Pointillism, for laborious application, can create a

permanent spontaneity of

society fragmented

whereas

into disparate all its

effect because, as viewer,

you

are as aware of the representation as of the scene represented. In Bridge at Courbevoie,

smoke emerges from is

a

background chimney

like a gyre of

so minutely speckled, you half feel that the marks

midges. In

may just

fact,

individuals."

—

Ricluird

Thomson

the whole picture

take off like a host of insects.

199

WRITERS ON AR1

ISTS

The nine drawings

for Bathers at Asnieres are a miracle of obvious,

unsurpassed, immediate beauty, classical and perfect. They are unforgettable and flawless. In particular, there

is

a previously

unknown

drawing, Study for "Bathers at Asnieres," which materialized (the mot juste for Seurat's technique) recently.

understanding of Seurat's the

final

grand

The drawing oil,

though

same argument from Seated Nude Boy which

is

it is

is

crucial for a proper

possible to

deduce

part of the holdings

"Originality depends only on the character of the

drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist." of the National Gallery of Scotland. idealized heads. Very

little

else

One

can begin

thinks of Michelangelo's to

compare with

Seurat's frank

pursuit of balance and beauty, poise and perfection. .In the drawings,

both figures are naked, more boyish, The Echo: Study Asnieres, 1883 paper, 12

—

f,

conte crayon on

effect, idealized.

The

genitalia of the standing

x 9 in/31 x 24 cm.

Yale University Art Caller),

New

slighter,

vulnerable

- and

edited for

for Bathers at

Haven.

his tilted, boyishly sturdy waist

scalloped. Adolescence

more

fragile

- curved

boy are

invisible. Instead, the

emphasis

is

on

and one prominent buttock, muscular and pleasingly

on the cusp of manhood. The seated nude, on the other hand,

is

shoulders, narrow neck, a long slim thigh. Knee, calf, and complicated

Detail from Bathers at .Asnieres, 1

883-4.

hands have been until

silently

you look

censored to keep the simplicity and balance. Not that you notice

at

the final

One argument

oil.

suggests that Seurat effects an elision of this classicism with

the realities of contemporary Asnieres. is

I

think this idea

is

wrong.

What

takes place

not an accommodation, but rather a repudiation of the idea of classical

-

perfection

in favor of the task of painting

figure

is

deliberately

lip

The knee

calf, a

down

into an

have gone. In their place

In the final picture, both

is

difference.

and systematically deprived of beauty —

coarsened, the nose enlarged, the upper turns

life.

The swimming costumes make an enormous

these figures are clothed.

The seated

modern

amputated

a pair of cotton

an ungainly

flap.

The hands

his profile

reappear.

stump. Beauty, texture, intricacy

swimming trunks and

a hairstyle like a

ginger wig. Echo's buttocks are out of sight underwater and clad in a costume too.

The

figure

decisions

from Ovid has been metamorphosed into an ordinary urchin. These

show exemplary

To forgo obvious thai poetry

200

artistic

courage.

beauty, irresistible beauty,

should be a criticism of

life.

is

never easy. Matthew Arnold wrote

Oscar Wilde misinterpreted

this to

mean

GEORGES SEURAT

that art

was

a series of cosmetic

meant by

really

"criticism,"

improvements on

whether of an artwork or

object under scrutiny, but describe

stand with Arnold, even flatter reality. Seurat's

if

life

it

accurately

-

as

in the interests of beauty.

life,

it

was

really

that

this involves uglinesses of every kind.

conte crayon confers a

twilit

What Arnold

should not remake the

it

The

is.

BY CRAIG RAINE

greatest artists take their

It isn't

the business of art to

charisma on Hats, Shoes and

Undergarments, not to mention a pair of elasticated boots. But he could also see these items as

in fact reality,

they really were

-

Bathers at Asnieres,

banal, ob\ious, devoid of poetry, but

the truth of their ordinary ugliness. In the final

oil,

redeemed by

their irrefutable

the boots have their loops restored

and they move, with that one touch, from the abstract world of shape

canvas, "9 a

1

J

884,

oil

on

18 in/201 x 300 cm.

National Gallery, Lo)idon.

into the welter of

seams, stitching, shoe-horns, polish, and welts.

When

Claudio Abbado had been with the Berlin Philharmonic

screened a documentarv point, "It

in

which the conductor rehearsed

he interrupted her playing to

should be an ugly sound,

great art

is

There are

tell

a

young

for a year, the

BBC

\iolinist protegee.

At one

her she was making a particular passage too beautiful.

he adxised. Seurat's great picture

not necessarily synonymous with beauty. There other, less ob\ious satisfactions.

is

is

love

a similar discovery

and there

is

-

that

sex.

Think how powerful the idea of obscenity

is.

201

WRI fERS ON

\Ki

Bathers at Asnieres offers of

immense formal

them orchestrated by the

satisfactions,

who

figure of Echo,

are echoes of other things.

example, mimic the

Those loops on the

flick of red hair at the

a self-

is

many

conscious synecdoche in a picture where so

all

things

boots, for

base of their

owner's neck. His half-visible straw boater parallels the

submerged

a

figure with his

back

to us.

Then

there

is

the

Originality depends

only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist." reclining, bowler-hatted figure in the foreground, little

spaniel mirrors

its

master: both are looking over their

shoulders and presenting a profile. picks up on

its

picture's

The

dog's long tail

trousers.

also the lynch-pin of

which runs

triangle of sail

sail to

is

The

two compositional templates.

a triangle

the right.

brown

master's long

This figure

on the

whose

one of the

He

(echoically) from the left to

is

the apex of

background

the other triangle of

sail to

left-hand side of the triangle runs from the

the bowler-hatted figure, through a series of

echoing intermediate figures - a stretched-out figure pink

shirt,

in a

then two figures both with raised knees, then

the stretched figure of the bowler-hatted dog-owner.

The

right-hand side of the triangle runs from the bowler-hat to the right-hand triangular Top: Young

Woman

Powdering

Herself. 1888-9, oil

Above: The Posers (small version), 887,

oil

is

turned, and the wherry with

its

on the bank,

two passengers. The

river itself

forms a further, overlapping triangle, whose apex

is

the bottom right-hand

Institute Galleries.

University of London.

7

whose back

via the bather

on canvas,

Yl x 32 in/95 x 79 cm.

Courtauld

the submerged figure

sail,

corner of the painting.

which

is

a

The base

of both triangles

is

the background bridge of Clichy,

shared horizontal. These two triangles echo each other as they overlap

like

on canvas,

16 x 19 in/19 x 48 cm.

old-fashioned W, which was

a

double

V.

Berggruen Collection.

In addition there

202

is

a

second compositional shape which counters the picture's

an

— GEORGES SEURAT

tendency

to

tilt

The

to the right.

The

us back into the picture.

too.

the

in

sandy shape

as well as in the

From Echo the eye moves

to the figure

man

'

i

\

t

i

*

t.

1

i

bowler

is

is

make

a flattened ellipse.

the "wig," and back to Echo.

in

Study for The Posers, /S87-7888,

the

The man

imm^

on canvas, 6

in

the

\ 9 in

oi/

24 cm, Musce

6 a

d'Orscn. Paris.

^^^^^—^—a^—^—

to Seurat

H|

composition.

to the s

attitude lies in

''"•/a

Vw*"*^^tr»»l

Pil

1

B*»C 'UL

clearly intended to invoke

3^r

.

1^^ ~**^rf J-' JJ^**

(equally clearly) exist also in relation to

f. "\iw^

2t-

La Grande Jatte, which apparently forms whole wall

in this painting.

Jatte looks, in fact, like a

^^^^-«

A ^B*

%

j.

'^^^8

m 4

Br

B iw^^^Sfa

La Grande

window —

'

l -'^j'W.

^^L*

*

^Er*

a .

w indow — through which we

picture

J

of his

the Tliree Graces, but the models

a

figures

Small Version. Here the

Posers:

models are

,

^^

The

— an

The rim

We

internalized, formal.

and central

The key The

the ellipse, like a ring of Saturn.

a further, echoic, mini-ellipse.

Echo, then, silent

it

bent elbows bring

with his back to us. to the figure

.

template and partly an echo of entire ellipse in himself.

in

is

his

the elongated green (of rushes- of grass-) in the

if LU fn inis

w~\\ LU upitu i

skiff, in

hands and

raised

of the riverbank.

straw hat with raised knees, to the r»Air or knf ic t~\ t)'t \\ dow ler-ndL IS pdILl\

Echo has

controlling shape here

see this shape in the wherry, river,

figure of

BY CRAIG RAINE

1

'

^B^KT

'

.'

can see the fully-clothed, parasol-

\

"

\

:,-

> .

i

H

'

i^B * ^

,

£j?

«

bearing Parisian public. Alongside there •4

are these

nude women who

Sp^

£ B^i£ oJl

are

183

k