Notes on Schapiro, "The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art"

epresentation, but rather that a new liberty had been introduced which had, as oneof its consequences, a greater range in the appreciation and experience of forms. 1The emphasis on freedom and faith in the "self-sufficiency of forms and colors" took holdand shaped the most inventive and forward-looking work throughout the 1940s and '50s.It also challenged and critiqued established understandings of art and its expressivepotential.Abstraction implies...a criticism of the accepted contents of the precedingrepresentations as ideal values or life interests. This does not mean that painters, ingiving up landscape, no longer enjoy nature; but they do not believe, as did thepoets, the philosophers and painters of the nineteenth century, that nature can serveas a model of harmony for man, nor do they feel that the experience of nature’smoods is an exalting value on which to found an adequate philosophy of life. Newproblems, situations and experiences of greater import have emerged: the challengeof social conflict and development, the exploration of the self, the discovery of itshidden motivations and processes, the advance of human creativeness in scienceand technology.All these factors should he taken into account in judging the significance of thechange in painting and sculpture. It was not a simple studio experiment or anintellectual play with ideas and with paint; it was related to a broader and deeperreaction to basic elements of common experience and the concept of humanity, as itdeveloped under new conditions.Schapiro defends individualism and the handmade quality of painting against thehomogenization one finds in mass-produced objects and the numbing effects of workthat flows not from one's intrinsic needs and interests, but is imposed by the desires andinterests of others.This art is deeply rooted, I believe, in the self and its relation to the surroundingworld. And the pathos of the reduction or fragility of the self within a culture thatbecomes increasingly organized through industry, economy and the state intensifiesthe desire of the artist to create forms that will manifest his liberty in this striking way—a liberty that, in the best works, is associated with a sentiment of harmony, andthe opposite stability, and even impersonality through the power of painting touniversalize itself in the perfection of its form and to reach out into common life. Itbecomes then a possession of everyone and is related to everyday experience.Notice the way Schapiro appeals to a populist value in avant-garde art—it reaches "outinto common life", he claims, and belongs to everyone. This is a utopian moment inSchapiro's essay, but one that reaches for an ideal and attempts to go beyond whatoffends so many as blatant elitism in Clement Greenberg's writings. Greenberg, in thatsense, is not at all utopian, but often seems to assume an unbridgeable gap betweenthose fortunate enough to have been educated in art and those whose circumstances inlife make it impossible. So it appears their assumptions may diverge on this issue.Schapiro goes on to argue that avant-garde art is radically distinct from mass mediasince its emphasis is not on communicating ideas but rather on expressive form andcontemplation.The artist does not wish to create a work in which he transmits an already preparedand complete message to a relatively indifferent and impersonal receiver. The painteraims rather at such a quality of the whole that, unless you achieve the proper set ofmind and feeling towards it, you will not experience anything of it at all.1 All quotes are taken from Meyer Schapiro, “The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art”, Art News(Summer 1957), emphases added.2