Art Criticism - The State University of New York

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Breaking the Picture Plane: Reflections on Painting John Hultberg IN1RODUCTION: TI-lOUGH I SPEAK AND HAVE NOT CLARITY I have written this rather ornate apologia without knowing who my audience is and therefore am uncertain of my tone of voice. It was obviously motivated by a certain bitterness for the neglect from art critics that has come my way recently in my painting career. In the isolated moments when the selfsearch I had undertaken (to find out how much of the blame was mine) was not interrupted by addictively refreshing jeremiads against established critics, dealers, collectors, etc., I came to the conclusion that my work had been weakened by useless detail. This had come into being when I was no longer sure of my once ingenuous impetuosity. I doubt, therefore I embellish; I doubt, therefore I explain. Being isolated from the avant garde climate by my fall from mild success led me into an insight about the rest of the culture. Folk art, usually considered simple in mind and heart, is in reality too rich in timorous complexities to be communicated effectively. Widely used slang fads are usually disfigured by arcane affectations some lost purpose of secrecy. This seems to be a symptom of a loss of self-respect and of ambivalence toward moral values no longer operative in practical zones. . I wondered if I could redeem in myself my unquestioning love of the paint magic by seeking carefully in my depths the sources of the rapturous abandon I admired most in the kind of painting I felt would overwhelm the majority of people who were free of prejudices. This made me want to revitalize a shabby myth of thoughtless nineteenth century romanticism, its politically radical generosity and bravery; and to wonder whether, if illustrated, it would produce a hypnotic surrealism without malice. If there is little documentation here, that is because I have been unable to find any, and least of all in my own work. I thought this folk-ferment would be poiarized out of the inchoate glossalalia of abstract expressionism's atomizations, but that will not happen as long as we are distracted from the central yearning by irrelevant data, expected by historians to change hearts that must be moved first by religion. Perhaps my way is futile, but in my desperation I must have faith that a ritual of words will make my brush less dry. I want art to be more than an ambivalent euphoril>, piercing accidentally the 6 Art Criticism
depressions of our entropy. I want it to change the cosmos that spawns such despair. This is the theme that is expanded and modified in the following passacaglia variations. 1. PAINTINGS THAT "SPEAK IN TONGUES"-ABSlRACT EXPRESSIONlSM'S GLOSSALAUA When the people of the town of Frederickton, New Brunswick were allowed into the New Beaverbrook Museum, prior to the festivities for a 1963 exhibition of international modem art (a solemn affair) they were soon convulsed with laughter, which offended the zealots who had arranged the show. But isn't this exactly the reaction of gaiety that most of the artists represented would have expected? Klee and Miro would have, I am sure, since theirs was a safety-valve art reflecting and mocking the insanity of the world since World War I. Though laughter may also have greeted the products of the represented abstract expressionists, this reaction was not the intention of these artists. Theirs was a vision beyond tragedy or farce, relating to the dispassionate elan vital of nature, not human grotesquerie, ignoring the Zeitgeist. So stunned by the human condition were they that they had no strength to relieve it, wishing only to attempt a portrayal of the undecipherable energy behind all of life. Pain was subdued with paint. It was not usually a violent outpouring. When Sam Francis returned from Paris to New York in 1954 he said that what surprised him about the work of Jackson Pollock was its softness and delicacy. My first confrontation with his painting in 1950 had made me think of thoroughly bombed railroad tracks, but I felt no violence in the remains. At this time Francis told me he wanted his own pictures to be so boring that people would tum away from them and, finding the world even more boring, would return to the painting. Though some of us indulged in sullenness or outrage, I would venture that the dominant mood of this unusually informal school was lyrical, almost tender, a celebration of the seething forces behind manifest nature. Loud colors or bounding forms more often suggest exuberance than anger, an attempt to make the unnatural natural, inevitable, self-evident. "Self-evident" is not a term usually applied to painting, yet how few pictures are able to speak for themselves. In the past, the fables of religion or myth had to be known for complete understanding; now it pays to be a member of a religious cult, usually Eastern. Or, to "read" the work, you must know that the painter is trying to outdistance another artist in daring, complexity or "minimalism." Another block is when the painter is illustrating some family myth or in-joke, orre-confusing lines from Dylan Thomas or Melville's white vol. 17, no. 1 7
Page 1: Volume 17; Number I ART C.RIT1C1SM
Page 4 and 5: Art Department State University of
Page 6 and 7: 4 Art Criticism
Page 10 and 11: whale saga (more recently Hesse or
Page 12 and 13: and many of whom were born in Europ
Page 14 and 15: printed a bullet track fired into a
Page 16 and 17: music that (like the Mona Lisa) has
Page 18 and 19: causing by neglect a bitterness amo
Page 20 and 21: preserved some of the exuberance th
Page 22 and 23: which inspiration was stabilized. 5
Page 24 and 25: pain in the eyes of the cripple giv
Page 26 and 27: Bruckner did in his music) was not
Page 28 and 29: mortify into hard edges and mushy c
Page 30 and 31: with the sleep of reason. In the Am
Page 32 and 33: cent. Its fluidity of happy acciden
Page 34 and 35: And yet I can imagine these atrocit
Page 36 and 37: erature the not very evocative work
Page 38 and 39: maiden" of Marxism (unless things g
Page 40 and 41: ic he realize that artists suddenly
Page 42 and 43: The little nonsense that wise men r
Page 44 and 45: desensitized by the imitated means
Page 46 and 47: symbolism? If the arts only exist t
Page 48 and 49: The Femme Fatale as seen in the wor
Page 50 and 51: Huysmans parallels the life of De R
Page 52 and 53: ask for the unreasonable and receiv
Page 54 and 55: ennui or physical distress leads th
Page 56 and 57: ences cited herein, the femme fatal
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period."2 He traced the tradition b
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suggestion to the artist and the po
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of Moreau's works is vague and myst
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ing her as the femme fatale, or sub
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The subtitle Satanic Decameron evok
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completely mythical. Coupled with a
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Moreau was very much a man of his t
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themes and images are often decaden
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p. 7-8; cited in Pierre Louis Mathi
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Between World War I and World War I
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shown distrust in the new styles. T
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These passages were meant to help g
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man public was voicing disapproval
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y old masters that were more suitab
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Notes 1 Alfred Barr, "Art in the Th
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From Diagnoses to Decadence: A Brie
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ate effort to reproduce fully an im
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patients. Charcot was often to be f
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Breuer attributed the presence of A
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still is traditionally associated w
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is not always recognized as such. H
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generation on which the multitude o
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2 Elaine Showalter, The Female Mala
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36 Freud and Breuer, 37. 37 Su'ch a
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Recasting the Art History Survey: E
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mode of self-consciousness that bes
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student-as-Other "calls" us to teac
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thesis of such descriptions into an
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In this final section of the essay,
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image-world, the picture opens up a
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history must itself be rethought in
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15 Two of the most prominent propon
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power: from the premodern exercise
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~fJed in the Unikd Smtc, .• 9 ~]~
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