ART AND
OBJECTHOOD
Essays and Reviews
MICHAEL FRIED
The University of Chicago Press
.:c:J; Chicago and London
�
MICHAEL FRIED is the Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities at thejohns :Hopkins
University.
Cover photograph: Michael Fried in Anthony Caro's studio, Triangle Art Workshop, Pine
Plains, New York,july 1986.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© tgg8 by Michael Fried
All rights reserved. Published 1998
Printed in the United States of America
o6 o504030201 oo gg g8 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: o-226�26318-5 (cloth)
ISBN: o-226-26319-3 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fried, Michael.
Art and objecthood : essays and reviews I Michael Fried.
p. em.
Mainly reprints of the art criticism written by the author between
1961 and 1977·
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-226-26318-5 (cloth : alk. paper).-ISBN o-226-26319-3
(pbk. ' alk. papec)
1. Art, Modern-2oth century. 2. Art. I. Title.
N64go.F727 1998
709'.04.-dc21
@The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirement.<:> of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39·48-1992.
To Anna
He could not persuade himself that, if he wrote
round about his subject with facility or treated it
from any standpoint of impression, good would
come of it. On the other hand he was persuaded
that no-one served the generation into which he
had been born so well as he who offered it, whether
in his art or in his life, the gift of certitude.
-JamesJoyce, Stephen Hero
Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Preface andAcknowledgments XV
An Introduction to MyArtCriticism 1
PART ONE: 1966-77
Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular
Polygons (1966) 77
Morris Louis (1966-67) 1oo
Jules Olitski (1966-67) 132
Art and Objecthood (1967) 148
New Work byAnthonyCaro (1967) 173
Ronald Davis: Surface and Illusion (1967) 176
Two Sculptures byAnthonyCaro (1968) 180
Recent Work by Kenneth Noland (1969) 185
Caro'sAbstractness (1970) 189
Problems of Polychromy: New Sculptures by
Michael Bolus (1971) 193
Larry Poons's New Paintings (1972) 197
AnthonyCaro's Table Sculptures,
1966-77 (1977) 202
ix
x I CoNTENTS
PART TWO: 1965
Three AmericanPainters: Kenneth Noland,
Jules Olitski,Frank Stella (1965) 213
PART THREE: 1962-64
Anthony Caro (1963) 269
Frank Stella (1963) 277
New York Letter: Oldenbnrg,Chamberlain
(October 25,1962) 279
New York Letter: Louis,Chamberlain and
Stella,Indiana (November 25,1962) 281
New York Letter: Warhol (December 25,1962) 287
New York Letter: Johns (February 25,1963) 289
New York Letter: Hofmann (April 25,1963) 294
New York Letter: Noland,Thiebaud
(May 25,1963) 297
New York Letter: Hofmann,Davis
(December 5,1963) 304
New York Letter: Kelly,Poons
(December-January 1963-64) 308
New York Letter: Judd (February 15,1964) 312
New York Letter: De Kooning Drawings
(April 25,1964) 314
New York Letter: Olitski,Jenkins,Thiebaud,
Twombly (May 1964) 316
New York Letter: Brach,Chamberlain,Irwin
(Summer 1964) 324
Writings by Michael Fried,1959-77,Exclusive
ofPoetry 327
Index of Names in "An Introduction to My Art
Criticism" 331
Illustrations
FRONTISPIECE
Frank Stella, Portrait ofMichaelFried Standing on His
HeadFarabove Cayuga's Waters, I959
BLACK-AND-WHITE FIGURES I-3 1 (followingpage 74 )
I. Jackson Pollock, Number1, 1948, I948.
2. Jackson Pollock, White Cockatoo: Number 24 A, 1948,
1 948.
3· Jackson Pollock, The Wooden Horse: Number Io A,
1948, I948.
4· Jackson Pollock, Cut-Out, ca. 1 948-50.
5· Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm: Number30, 1950,
1 950.
6. Jackson Pollock, Number3, 1951, 1 951.
7· Barnett Newman, Cathedra, 1 951 .
8. Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952.
g. Morris Louis, Trellis, 1 953·
1o. Morris Louis, Intrigue, 1 954
1 1 . Morris Louis, Floral, 1 959.
1 2. Morris Louis, Aleph, 1 g6o.
1 3. Kenneth Noland, YellowHalf, 1 963.
14· Kenneth Noland, Hover; 1 963.
15. Kenneth Noland, Karma, 1 964.
16. Kenneth Noland, Thaw, rg66.
1 7. Kenneth Noland, Via Token, 1 g6g.
xi
xii I ILLUSTRATIONS
18. Jules Olitski, Cleopatra Flesh, 1 962.
19. Jules Olitski, FatalPlungeLady, 1 963.
20. Jules Olitski, Tin Lizzie Green, 1 964-
2 1 . Jules O!itski, Bunga45, 1 967.
22. Frank Stella, DieFahneHock, 1 959.
23. Frank Stella, Union Pacific, 1 960.
24. Frank Stella, Cipango, 1 962.
25. Frank Stella, Sharpeville, 1 962.
26. Frank Stella, Iwana Sonnabend, 1 963.
27. Frank Stella, Moultonb!ffo III, 1 966.
28. Frank Stella, Chocorua III, 1 966.
29. Frank Stella, Conway III, 1 966.
30. Frank Stella, Union III, 1 966.
31. Frank Stella, Effingham III, 1 966.
BLACK-AND-WHITE FIGURES 32-72 (followingpage 184 )
32. Anthony Caro, Midday, 1 g6o.
33· Anthony Caro, Midday, 1 960.
34- Anthony Caro, Sculpture Seven, 1 96 1 .
35· Anthony Caro, 1ztan, 1 964.
36. Anthony Caro, Bennington, 1 964.
37· Anthony Caro, Yellow Swing, 1 965.
38. Anthony Caro, Horizon, 1 966.
39· Anthony Caro, RedSplash, 1 966.
40. Anthony Caro, Carriage, 1 966.
4 1 . Anthony Caro, Span, 1 966.
42. Anthony Caro, Deep Body Blue, 1 966.
43· Anthony Caro, Prairie, 1 967.
44· Anthony Caro, Trefoil, 1 968.
45· Anthony Caro, Orangerie, 1 969.
46. Anthony Caro, Deep North, 1 969-70.
47· Anthony Caro, SunFeast, 1 969-70.
48. Anthony Caro, WendingBack, 1 969-70.
49· Anthony Caro, Tab&Piece VIII, 1 966.
50. Anthony Caro, Tab&Piece XXII, 1 966.
5 1 . Anthony Caro, Tab&PieceXLJX, 1 968.
52. Anthony Caro, Table PieceLIX, 1 968.
53· Anthony Caro, TablePieceLXIV(The Clock), 1 968.
54· Anthony Caro, TablePieceXCVII, 1 969-70.
ILLUSTRATIONS i Xiii
55· Anthony Caro, 7CtblePiece CLXXXII, 1974-
56. Ron Davis, Six Ninths Blue, 1 g66.
57· Ron Davis, Two Ninths Grey, 1g66.
58. Michael Bolus, Untitled, 1971.
59· DonaldJudd, Untitled, 1 966.
6o. Robert Morris, Untitled (Ringwith Light), 1 965-66.
6 1 . Carl Andre, Lever, 1g66.
62. Carl Andre, two floor pieces. Front: 144 Magnesium
Square, 1 g6g. Back: I44 Lead Square, 1g6g.
63. Tony Smith, Die, 1 962.
64- Tony Smith, TheBlack Box, 1 963-65.
65. Vasily Kandinsky, Paintingwith WhiteForm, 1913.
66. Vasily Kandinsky, Composition8, 1923.
67. John Chamberlain, Miss Lucy Pink, 1 962.
68. JasperJohns, Diver, 1962.
6g. Hans Hofmann, Memoria in Aeternum, 1962.
70. Ellsworth Kelly, Blue-on-Blue, 1963.
7 1 . Jacques-Louis David, The Oath ofthe Horatii, 1 785.
72. Jacques-Louis David, The Intervention oftheSabine
Women, 1 799·
COLOR PLATES 1-16 (followingpage 2 38)
1. Jackson Pollock, Out ofthe Web: Number 7, 1949,
1 949·
2. Morris Louis, Terranean, 1 958.
3· Morris Louis, Saraband, 1959.
4· Morris Louis, AlphaPi, 1g6o.
5· Morris Louis, Number 2-76, 1962.
6. Morris Louis, Hot Half, 1962.
7. Kenneth Noland, That, 1 958-59.
8. Kenneth Noland, GoldenDay, 1964g.
Kenneth Noland, 17th Stage, 1964.
10. Jules Olitski, Hidden Combination, 1965.
1 1 . Jules Olitski, PrincePatutsky's Command, 1966.
12. Jules Olitski, End Run, 1967.
13. Anthony Caro, Midday, 1 g6o.
1 4. Anthony Caro, Prairie, 1 967.
1 5. Larry Poons, RailroadHorse, 1971.
16. Larry Poons, Ly, 1 97 1 .
Preface and Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK reprints much, though by no means all,
of the art criticism I wrote between the fall of 1 961 and 1977, the
date of a short catalog introduction for a traveling exhibition ofAnthony
Caro's table sculptures. It is organized in three parts, arranged
in reverse chronological order, but within each part the writings it
comprises are presented in the order in which they were written. (In
part 1 , which includes both longer and shorter texts, the longer ones
come first and then the shorter ones.) This sounds more complicated
than it is. What the reverse chronological arrangement means
is that the reader comes across my best or most mature criticism first
and so is not led to plow through inferior stuff before reaching it.
Moreover, since I have always tended from essay to essay and book to
book to advance my arguments in stages, summarizing what has gone
before and sometimes recycling previous texts, such an ordering
helps neutralize the repetitiveness that can result. In any case, o�ly
when I thought of organizing a selection from my criticism in this
way did I come to feel that it made sense as a book.
The texts are reprinted as they first appeared or were republished
early on, though I have feltfree to make small improvements of style
and punctuation (while longing to make more sweeping changes) ,
to remove italics, to eliminate or simplify footnotes. Here and there I
have added footnotes to supply missing references, to correct factual
errors, or, in a few cases, to cite relevant passages from earlier essays
of mine that I have chosen not to include in this book. I have also
updated certain references, notably to essays by Clement Greenberg
that are now conveniently available in volume 4 ofJohn O'Brian's
edition of The Collected Essays and Criticism, entitled Modernism with a
XV
xvi I PREFACE AND ACKNOWLliDGMENTS
Vengmnce, 1957-1969 (Chicago, 1 993) . On the other hand, in a few
instances where there is a difference in phrasing between an essay as
it is given in O'Brian's edition and as it earlier appeared in ajournal,
anthology, or Greenberg's own one-volume selection from his art
criticism, Artand Culture (New York, 1 96 1 ) , I have remained faithful
to the earlier version on the grounds that it was the one I initially
read and cited. (Other references I have updated are to texts by Stanley
Cavell and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.) Also, in my writings of the
1 g6os the words "modernist" and "modernism" were sometimes
spelled with a capital M and sometimes not; I have opted for the
latter course throughout this book. However, in no instance have
I modified views originally expressed or corrected theoretical or descriptive
points that now seem to me mistaken.
As for the contents of this book, I haven't hesitated to leave out
reviews and essays that now strike me as hopelessly immature or otherwise
not worth republishing. So, for example, I have omitted all
my 1 961-62 monthly reviews from London, an essay on anticompositional
aspects of the art of Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland of
1 965, my contribution to a Brandeis symposium of 1 966, and the
introduction to the catalog for Caro's 1 969 retrospective exhibition
at the Hayward Gallery, and I have reprinted only parts oftwelve of
the fourteen "New York Letters" I wrote for ArtInternationalin 1 962-
64. I have also dropped certain early essays that are superseded by
later ones on the same artist; I have omitted several texts from the
1 98os and after that belong to a different time frame from that of
the book as a whole; and I have kept illustrations to a minimum. On
that score, Hnding photographs and transparencies for the illustrations
in this book has been an ordeal, and in various instances I have
had to resort to reproducing illustrations from earlier publications.
The results are sometimes much inferior to what I would have
wished. Worse, certain key works that I would have liked to reproduce
in color turned out to be available for illustration only in black
and white (that is, the work itself was unlocatable and no reliable
trasparency could be found) .
I wish I could say that I am satisfied with the bulk of the texts that
have made it into this book. For the record, it seems to me I carne
into my own as an art critic and theorist only in the fall of 1 966, with
"Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons" and with "The
Achievement of Morris Louis," which roughly a year later I expanded
to form the text of my book on Morris Louis (reprinted here). That
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS l xvii
I then went on to write "Art and Objecthood" provides the rationale,
as well as the title, for the volume as a whole.
I'm grateful to the editors who printed my criticism, Hilton
Kramer at Arts Magazine, James Fitzsimmons at ArtInternational, and
Phil Leider at Artforum. Leider in particular was a treat to write for:
his years at Artforum are legendary, and it was a privilege to be part
of them. I'm also grateful to the president and fellows of Harvard
College for permission to republish the introduction to ThreeAmerican
Painters: KennethNoland,Jules Olitski, Frank Stella; to Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., for permission to republish the text of my book Morris
Louis, now out of the print; to Anthony Korner, publisher ofArtjorum,
for permission to reprint essays that first appeared in it; to Catherine
Lampert, director of the Whitechapel Gallery, for permission to reprint
my introduction to the exhibition catalog Anthony Caro: Sculpture
1960-1963; and to Jack Cowart, Deputy Director and Chief Curator
of the Corcoran Gallery of Art for permision to reprint my
introduction to the exhibition catalog jules Olitski: Paintings 1963-
1967. I might never have written art criticism at all had I not met
Frank Stella at Princeton; my debt to him and to the other artists
discussed in these pages is unpayable. During the years I wrote the
pieces in this book I discussed many of the ideas in them with Stanley
Cavell,John Harbison, Rosemary Harbison, and Ruth Leys. More recently,
Cavell, Leys, Frances Ferguson, Marc Gotlieb, Herbert L. Kessler,
and Walter Benn Michaels read and commented helpfully on a
penultimate draft of the introduction to this book. Lauren Freeman
assisted in the preparation ofthe manuscript. Among those who were
especially helpful to me in my search for illustrations are Ian Barker,
Robert Brockhouse, Helen Harrison, Steven Harvey, Ann Jareckie,
and Lauren Poster. My sincere thanks to all.
The deepest, though also the most difficult, acknowledgment I
have saved for last. No one familiar with the pieces gathered in this
book will need to be told how indebted they are to the writings of
the late Clement Greenberg, whom I am not alone in regarding as
the foremost art critic of the twentieth century. As I explain in the
introduction, I knew Greenberg personally and on more than a few
occasions visited studios and warehouses to look at recent painting
and sculpture with him, and forseveralyears I enjoyed not his friendship
(the difference between our ages alone might have precluded
that) but at least his qualified approval. Then for reasons I only partly
understand, our relations gradually became impossible. But I would
xviii ! PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
not have been the art critic I was, I would not have become the art
historian I am, had it not been for the need to come to terms with
his thought.
* * *
With joy I dedicate this book to my daughter, Anna Lei Ci Fried.
An Introduction to My Art Criticism
Each answer remains in force as an answer only as long as it is rooted in ques�
tioning.
-Martin Heidegger, "The Origin ofthe Worh ofATt"1
HERE ARE some things I do not do in this introduction.
I do not update the pieces in this book by engaging with developments
or issues that emerged after they were written. So, for
example, I neither address the topic of postmodernism nor discuss
conceptual art, performance art, or other such developments that lie
beyond the scope of my criticism. On the same principle, I say nothing
about the later work of the artists-Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski,
Frank Stella, Larry Poons, Anthony Caro-whose paintings and
sculptures of the rg6os and 1 970s largely inspired my activity as a
critic. Also, "Art and Objecthood" and my critical position generally
have drawn a lot of fire over the years, butby and large I do not reply
to my critics (in the body of the text, at any rate). Here and there I
correct misrepresentations of my views, which of course is a reply of
sorts. But I have read only some of the books and articles that take
me on, and in any case I wouldn't want this introduction to come
across as a reaffirmation of my convictions and rhetoric circa 1967.
Although it hasn't been possible to avoid all selfjustification, that has
been the ideal.
A word about the timing of this book. It's not accidental that I've
waited until now to bring out a selection of my art criticism. Early on
it didn't occur to me to do so, and later, when it began to seem a
good idea, I became involved in a long-term art-historical project, an
2 I AN lNTRODUC'l'ION TO MY ART CRITICISM
attempt to develop an account of the evolution of a central tradition
within French paintingfrom the first genre paintings ofJean-Baptiste
Greuze in the mid-1 750s to the emergence of modernism in the art
of Edouard Manet and the Impressionists in the r86os and 187os.
The core issue for that tradition concerned the relation between
painting and beholder, which is to say that it was a version of the issue
I had invoked in "Art and Objecthood" when I accused Minimalist
art ofbeing theatrical. At that point it made sense to hold offgathering
my art criticism until I had completed the art-historical task
I had set myself, which I have now done in three books: Absorption
and Theatricality:PaintingandBeholderin theAgeofDiderot ( 1 980) , Gaurbet's
Realism ( 1 990), and Manet's Modernism, or, The Face ofPainting
in the r86os ( 1 996).2 This makes it possible to think of the present
book both as a prologue to my art-historical trilogy and as a sequel
to the historical problematic it analyzes. (When I wrote "Art and
Objecthood" and related essays I was a Diderotian critic without
knowing it.)
The remarks that follow are in three parts. In part 1 I give a brief
account of how I began writing art criticism and how and when the
pieces in this book came to be written. In part 2 I try to clarify my
aims in writing various texts as well as to gloss some basic themes and
concerns at work in my criticism generally. Finally, in part 3 I make
a few basic points about the relation of the art criticism gathered in
this book to the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
French painting that I went on to write.
One more preliminary comment. Although the latest text reprinted
here dates from 1 977, the chronological focus of this book
is the 1 96os, in particular the years 1 963-67. I won't try to characterize
those years other than to say that they were intense and eventful,
but I want to suggest that the art mainly discussed in these pagesthe
modernist abstract painting and sculpture of Morris Louis (who
died in 1 962), Noland, Olitski, Stella, and Caro, as well as the Minimalist
critique ofthat art in the interests ofol:!jecthood and theaterwas
fully as central to the period as any other cultural manifestation.
In that sense this is yet another book about the 1 96os by an author
who, then in his twenties, continues to bear their mark.
1. Some Autobiographical Background
I FIRST became interested in wntmg art cnt1osm
while an undergraduate at Princeton (class of 1 959) . In grade school
AN INTRODUCTION TO Mv ART CRITICISM I 3
1 had painted in watercolors and oils, and at Forest Hills High School
in New York City 1 had drawn cartoons for the school newspaper.
Then my freshman year at college 1 met Frank Stella, who was one
year ahead ofme, and through him some time later I met Darby Bannard,
who graduated in 1956 but who continued to live in Princeton,
where he worked in a framing shop and painted. Stella had begun
painting seriously at Andover Academy, and by the time I met
him in the fall of 1 955 he was committed to painting as his life's
work. Princeton during those years had a modest program in the
creative arts, and in the fall of 1 956 Stephen Greene, then thirtyeight,
began a three-year stint as professor of painting. Greene at
once recognizedStella's genius, and they became close. In myjunior
year I too took Greene's course, but what mattered to me even more
than the practical experience ofmaking abstract pictureswasmy participation,
at first mainly as a listener, in conversations with Stella,
Bannard, and Greene about recent painting in New York and about
modern art generally. Greene was up-to-date on developments in
New York and encouraged his students to make the one-hour train
trip to Manl}attan to visit art galleries. Also, it was in the course of
those conversations that I first heard of Clement Greenberg, who
had not yet published Art and Culture and so could only be read in
the library, in back issues of PartisanReviewor the Nation, apart from
the occasional current piece. (Greenberg's eminence once Art and
Culture appeared in 1 96 1 became so great that it's hard for latecomers
to realize that that wasn't always the case.) Greenberg's verbally
austere and intellectually rigorous yet passionately engaged criticism
was at the farthest pole from the low-grade existentialist rhetoric and
"poetic" appreciation that characterized most of the writing in Art
News, the leading magazine of contemporary art of the mid- and late
1 950s, and it says a lot about what Stella, Bannard, and 1 already
thought and felt about painting that Greenberg was the only art critic
we valued and wanted to read.
Throughout my years at Princeton I wrote poetry (1 majored in
English), and by myjunior year 1 had formed the plan of also writing
art criticism (at that time 1 had no definite academic ambitions).
Some time during the spring of 1 958 I wrote a letter to Greenberg
(Steve Greene probably gave me his address) expressing my admiration
for his writing and asking whether 1 might come and get his
advice about starting out as an art critic. Greenberg replied by postcard
inviting me to call and set a time for a visit, whereupon I got
cold feet and did nothing. A few weeks later a second postcard ar-
4 1 AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
rived saying that several pieces of mail he had recently sent out
seemed to have gone astray and maybe that had happened to the
card to me; he again gave me his number and invited me to call. This
time I followed through, and so made my first visit to Greenberg (at
go Bank Street) in the late spring of 1958. I don't remember much
about the visit other than the nervousness I felt being in his presence.
Greenberg was then in the process of revising the essays that
would go into Art and Culture and at one point asked my opinion of
Theodore Roszak's sculpture. I said I didn't like it, which impressed
him. (Greenberg to his wife Jenny: "He sees through Ted Roszak!")
He also said that art criticism as usually practicedwas a pitiful activity
and went on to warn n1e against the dangers of studying art history.
This was one of Greenberg's hobbyhorses: he believed that the historical
approach was inherently nonjudgmental and therefore antithetical
to criticism. I had begun to take art history courses, which I
loved, and was starting to think about becoming an art historian.
During my senior year ( 1958-59) I stayed in close touch with
Stella, who wasliving and painting in New York butwho made several
visits to Princeton, sleeping on the couch in a suite of rooms I shared
with two friends, and I also saw something of Bannard and Greene.
In the fall of 1958 Greenberg gave a series of six Christian Gauss
Seminars in Criticism on modern painting at Princeton, which is
when he met Stella and Bannard for the first time (Stella came down
for at least one and possibly more of the seminars) . The Gauss Seminars,
then under the direction of R. P. Blackmur, my mentor in poetry,
was (and is) a highly prestigious lecture-plus-discussion series
which during those years was open only to members of the faculty
and selected invitees from the larger intellectual community; as a
rule undergraduates and their ilk could not attend, but Greenberg
arranged for Frank, Darby, and me to be admitted. I wish I could
remember more about the content of Greenberg's sessions; my impression
is that they weren't well received, both because Greenberg's
dogmatic and humorless cast of mind chilled discussion from the
start and because his refusal to use slides (on the grounds that they
misrepresented the works they ostensibly reproduced) meant that his
audience had no way of visualizing what he was talking about. But
for Stella, Bannard, and me the seminars were an event, if only because
they brought Greenberg to Princeton for six weeks running
and exposed us to a broad range of his views; as was typical of him,
he was more interested in meeting Stella and Bannard, young paint-
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM l 5
ers whom he knew nothing about, than in exchanging pleasantries
with academics, whom he largely distrusted.
Around Christmas 1 958 I was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to
Oxford for the following two years; I had entered the competition
without imagining that I might be selected, and now was faced with
the unappealing prospect of being away from New York at just the
moment I had thought to begin writing and publishing art criticism.
It must have been during the spring of 1959 that I visited Hilton
Kramer, then editor of Arts Magazine, with a letter of introduction
from Greenberg. Kramer set me to write several trial art reviews, not
for publication but so that he might assess my potential as a critic,
with the thought of perhaps using me when I was in England. In
the meantime Stella had broken through to his first series of black
paintings, which quickly met with enthusiastic responses from
(among others) John Myers of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, who included
one such painting in a group show in April 1 959; Leo Castelli,
whose gallery Stella joined a few months later; and Dorothy Miller,
who chose four large black canvases for inclusion in the important
exhibition Sixteen Americans, which opened at the Museum of Modern
Art in December 1 959. At the age of twenty-three Stella was on
the threshold of a remarkable career, and it was doubly painful to
think of going off to England just at that moment. (A few evenings
before I sailed in September 1 959, Stella and I were taken out to
a Japanese meal by JasperJohns and Robert Rauscbenberg. I often
thought of that dinner during the next two years, and not only at
mealtimes.) In the course of the summer of 1 959, which I spent living
in Princeton and working on an opera libretto for the composer
John Eaton, Bannard too made a remarkable series ofpaintings, only
some of which are extant today. I saw a lot of Bannard during those
months and believed that he too was on the verge of an important
career.
Oxford I loathed. I refused to study for a second B.A. in English;
I wasn't academically advanced enough to write a dissertation without
the sort of graduate training that wasn't available there; the possibilities
for study in art history were effectively nil; and when in desperation
I applied to study for a degree in history, thinking that it
would be useful for later work in art history, I was turned down on
the grounds that I bad never studied history before, which was perfectly
true but from an American perspective was a reason for taking
a subject up, not for being shut out from it forever. So I soon bad no
6 1 AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
academic relation to the university at all. But I made some friends,
both American and English, spent long stretches of time in Paris and
Rome looking at paintings and wandering the streets, worked on my
French, and read more or less systematically on several fronts, including,
for the first time, Marxism and philosophy. (It was then that I
first encountered the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.) I also continued
to write and publish poems. (Among the friends I made at
Oxford was the poet Ian Hamilton, who went on to found and edit
the Review, the leading British new poetryjournal of the 1 96os and
early 1 97os; under its imprint I published a book of poems, Powers,
in 1 973.) In addition to letters from Stella, there were two reminders
of the life I had planned to live before sailing to England: once each
of the two years I spent in Oxford, Hilton Kramer commissioned me
to review a book for Arts. This was encouraging, but by the end of
mysecondyear Iwas sufficiently disoriented not to want immediately
to return to the United States; instead, I decided to live in London
for a year, sharing a small apartment near Primrose Hill with an English
friend, teaching literature in teachers' colleges (as they were
then called) and for the Workers' Educational Association, and
studying philosophy on a part-time basis at University College London,
where I would be tutored by the distinguished philosophers Stuart
Hampshire and Richard Wollheim (I had met Hampshire in Oxford
and arranged this with him in the spring of 1 96 1) .
My year in London ( 1 96 1-62) worked out beautifully. The city
itself-getting into gear for the decade to come-was exciting and
inexpensive, I was glad finally to be earning my living, I was involved
in the founding of the Review, I enjoyed University College as much
as I had abhorred Oxford (Wollheim and I soon became friends) ,
but most important, at the very moment I moved there in September
1 96 1 , Hilton Kramer offered me the post of London correspondent
for Arts. Naturally I accepted. This meantwriting a monthlycommentary
on a selection of shows in galleries and museums (the choice to
be made by me), and it paid enough to meet my share of the rent
(seventy-five dollars a month) . So at the age of twenty-two, unexpectedly,
I was an accredited art critic, publishing regularly in New York!
All this was heady, but it soon became even more so. Early that fall,
following the opening of a show by the painter Robyn Denny at the
Molton Gallery, I attended a group dinner in an Italian restaurant in
Soho; at the table across from me was a somewhat aggressive character
in his midthirties who said he was a sculptor and bluntly asked
when I would come and see his work. We arranged that I would visit
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 7
him the next weekend, and I have a vivid memory of climbing a maze
of streets in Hampstead in search of his address. Finally I arrived;
there was a gate, and as I stepped through it into the courtyard beyond
I found myselfin the presence of two ofAnthony Caro's earliest
abstract sculptures, Midday ( 1 960; figs. 32 and 33, pl. 13) and Sculpture
Seven ( 1 96 1 ; fig. 34) . I was alone with these for several minutes
before Caro came out of the house. But that was long enough to
experience the unshakable conviction that they were two of the most
original and powerful sculptures I had ever seen, that Midday in particular
was nothing Jess than a masterpiece, and that the aggressive
character in the restaurant-whom I had never heard of-was a
great sculptor. I told Caro all this when he joined me in the garden
and he seemed genuinely pleased. Our friendship took off from
there. In the months that followed I saw him often, and before the
year was done (at least I think this is the case) he invited me to write
the introduction for an exhibition of his abstract sculptures to be
held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the East End in the fall of
1 963. One reason why that first experience of Caro's work remains
so present to me is that it was so unexpected, in that sense so "pure."
I don't mean that nothing in my earlier experience had prepared
me for his art: on tbe contrary, I was familiar, within limits, with David
Smith's abstract steel sculptures, and by nature and training I was
already at home in abstraction. But Caro's sculptures weren't at all
like Smith's structurally or expressively, and it was thrilling to discover
in myself so intense, spontaneous, and convinced a response
to work that I had come upon in this way. (Even in the cases ofStella
and Bannard, my friendship with them had preceded my experience
of their crucial early pictures.)
Throughout 1 96 1-62 I wrote my London letters and a few additional
pieces; rereading them for possible inclusion in this book I
found them even more immature than I remembered; but nothing
could have been more valuable than cutting my teeth as a critic in
that way-even the distance from New York was a blessing, shielding
me from external influences and forcing me to write about ar:tists
whose work I was seeing for the first time. In November 1 96 1 Frank
Stella came to London with his fiancee, Barbara Rose; they married
there on November 7, with me as best man. All this while, I had been
trying to figure out what to do when the year was over; finally I applied
to study for a Ph.D. in art history at Harvard, was admitted
to the program, and in the late summer of 1 962 returned to the
United States.
8 I AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
Graduate work at Harvard was demanding, especially at the start:
my first semester saw me enrolled in Sydney J. Freedberg's seminar
on Northern Italian maniera painting without ever having had a
course on the Italian Renaissance. But even before settling in Cambridge
I had been invited by James Fitzsimmons, editor of Art International,
a magazine of contemporary art based in Lugano, to write
a monthly "New York Letter" (I was to be one of two regular critics
from New York, along with Max Kozloff). Art International had recently
emerged as an importantjournal-Greenberg had published
his article "Louis and Noland" there in 1 g6o and in October 1962
would bring out "After Abstract Expressionism" in its pages-and I
was pleased to have the opportunity to continue writing art criticism
on a regular basis. Later that year Barbara Rose wrote an essay on
Pop Art and sent it to Fitzsimmons, and when he published it in Art
International, she too was under way. By the next year she was added
to the New York coverage along with "Kozloff and me. My routine
those firsttwoyears at Harvard was simple but strenuous: most of the
month I lived in Cambridge, attending lectures and seminars, reading
as much as possible in the subjects I was studying, writing seminar
papers, and familiarizing myselfwith the paintings, prints, and drawings
in the Fogg Art Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Then one Friday each month I took the shuttle from Logan Airport
to La Guardia, spent two days visiting art galleries and museums,
usually with Frank Stella, and returned to Cambridge on Saturday
evening or Sunday morning. (In New York I stayed with Frank and
Barbara, first in their apartment on East Sixteenth Street and later
in one on Seventy-third and Madison; they were already the center
of an artistic world-Barbara ran a continual salon-and nothing
could have made a sharper break with my Harvard life than my brief
visits with them. I also saw Greenberg from time to time.) Back in
Cambridge I spent Sunday and Monday writing my "New York Letter"
for Fitzsimmons and by Tuesday immersed myself again in my studies.
(This was not a recipe for distinguished critical prose.) Practically
speaking, I kept my activity as an art critic distinct from my work in
art history; I never considered writing a dissertation on a living artist
or seeking academic credit for my New York reviews. Intellectually,
however, it was another story: from the start the distinction between
art criticism and art history seemed to me a matter of emphasis
rather than of principle, and my understanding of contemporary art
had implications for the questions I began to put to the past. (See,
however, my remarks on the difference between my art-critical and
Ai\' INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM I 9
art-historical writings with respect to the issue of antitheatricality in
part 3 of this introduction.)
At some point in my secondyear at Harvard ( 1 963-64) ,John Coolidge,
then director of the Fogg·Art Museum, invited me to organize
a major exhibition of contemporary art. (The suggestion originated
with Coolidge's assistant at the time, Charles W. Millard III.)" I leaped
at the chance and decided to focus on three painters I especially
admired, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella. I spent the
fall and winter of 1 964-65 writing a long catalog essay in which the
work of each of the three was interpreted in the context of the development
of modernist painting sinceJackson Pollock. (The first part
of that essay, a defense of "formal criticism," had been written some
months previously for the American Scholar.) The exhibition, Three
American Painters: Kenneth Noland,Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, opened in
April 1 965. I had met Noland at a dinner with the Greenbergs on
one of my early visits to New York, and we had hit it off at once; some
time after that I met Olitski, probably at his studio near Bennington,
Vermont, where he taught at Bennington College and where Noland
also lived. (Caro too spent much of the year 1963-64 at Bennington
teaching in the sculpture program; it was there that he made some
of his most original early pieces, including Titan, Bennington, and
Shaftesbury.) In my eyes Noland and Olitski were the strongest painters
of their generation (Noland was born in 1 924, Olitski in 1 92 1 ) ,
and despite their being considerably older than Stella, I thought that
by showing a half-dozen first-rate pictures by each of the three and by
writing a long critical-historical essay it would be possible to convey a
sense of the present state and future prospects of ambitious abstraction.
Coolidge gave over the main second-floor galleries of the Fogg
to the exhibition, which I loved hanging and which made a powerful
impression: the paintings more than held their own in the classical
rooms, and it may be too that the Fogg's distance from New Yorka
distance that was more than simply geographical-gave them a
special radiance. The exhibition was favorably reviewed by Hilton
Kramer in the New York 1zmes, and, most gratifying of all, Greenberg
sent me a postcard (his favorite medium of communication) praising
my introduction.
Around the moment of the Fogg exhibition, Olitski had begun
making paintings by spraying paint into lengths of canvas, which he
then cropped and framed. The new pictures struck me and others as
an event, and in the early fall of 1 965 I wrote an article about them
('jules Olitski's New Paintings") which I have omitted from this
1o \ AN INTRODUCTION To MY ARr CRITlCISM
book. I then spent the rest of the academic year 1 965-66 reading
and thinking about earlier art. As ajunior fellow in the Harvard Society
of Fellows, I had been invited by the Department of Fine Arts to
teach a course or seminar on a subject of my choosing in the spring
semester. I decided to give a series of lectures on the development
of French painting from the middle of the eighteenth century
through the advent of Manet in the r86os; I spent the fall term preparing,
then drafted the lectures as I went along. Going through the
lecture notes that survive, I see that I was taking the first steps toward
the interpretation of that period since put forward in Absorption and
Theatricality, Courbet'sRealism, and Manet'sModernism. Equallyimportant,
the course confirmed my growing sense that my main concern
as an art historian would be the prehistory of modernist painting,
which is how things turned out. Among those in my audience was
the philosopher Stanley Cavell, whom I had first met in the fall of
1 962, when he was visiting Harvard from the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton; Cavell had recently been appointed to a chair in
the Harvard Department of Philosophy, and soon after he took up
that position in September 1 963 we began an intense and wideranging
conversation that, with inevitable lapses, has continued to
this day. During those years, too, I sat in on several of Cavell's courses
and seminars and generally became familiar with his original and
profound readings of the work of J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
As already mentioned, I had become interested in philosophy
during my years in England, and now my friendship with Cavell
gave me access to a style of thinking I found, to the extent that I
grasped it, wonderfully congenial. Cavell himself was deeply concerned
with the arts-originally he had hoped to become a composer-and
the factthat I was internal to modernist poetry, painting,
and sculpture and to the issue of modernism generally gave our relations
a symmetry and equality that the difference in our ages might
have seemed to preclude. At any rate, our conversations soon carne
to explore the question of artistic modernism as well as aspects of
the pictorial developments that were my particular obsession.' (A
third party in many of those conversations was the composer John
Harbison, whom I met in 1 964 and who soon became a close friend
as well. In this connection let me also mention another composer I
came to know and admire, Seymour Shifrin, who died at the age of
fifty in 1 980. He and Cavell had known each other at Berkeley, before
Cavell moved to Harvard and Shifrin to Brandeis. For Shifrin
modernism was a way of life.)
AN INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM I ll
l had assumed that I would follow up that course of lectures hy
working full-time on a doctoral dissertation, but the claims of the
contemporary situation again proved irresistible. During the academic
year 1966-67 (actually starting in August 1 966) I wrote four
essays and several shorter pieces; I didn't know it at the time, but that
year was the high-water mark of my activity as an art critic. First, I
wrote an essay on a new series of shaped, multicolor paintings by
Frank Stella, under the title "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's New
Paintings" (the second half of the title has been changed to "Frank
Stella's Irregular Polygons" in the present book); this was an important
piece for me because in it for the first time I took issue with
Greenberg's theorization ofmodernism in "Modernist Painting" and
"After Abstract Expressionism," and also because I began to develop
the critique ofMinimalist art that would be taken further in "Art and
Objecthood." Next I wrote "The Achievement of Morris Louis," the
introduction to a catalog for the first full retrospective exhibition of
Louis's painting. I had been enthralled by Louis's art ever since reviewing
a show of his late stripe paintings at the Emmerich Gallery
immediately following my return to the United States in the fall of
rg62 (Louis had died a short time before);' so when Henry Hopkins
of the Los Angeles County Museum invited me to organize and write
the catalogfor a large retrospective exhibition of his work, I was glad
to accept. Choosing the works to be shown meant that I had to see
everything Louis had painted between 1 954 (and even earlier) and
the summer of 1 962. Many ofhis paintings hadn't yet been stretched
and could only be viewed unrolled on the floor of the warehouses in
New York and Washington, D.C. On those occasions I wasjoined by
Greenberg, who was serving as artistic adviser to the estate; our relations
had begun to fray toward the end of 1965, but throughout my
labors on the Louis exhibition they were still good enough to make
surveying Louis's oeuvre together a memorable experience. As soon
as the Louis essay was done, I wrote an introduction to the catalog
for an exhibition ofjules Olitski's paintings of 1 963-67 that opened
at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the spring of 1 967. I admired
Olitski's work enormously and had been following it closely for the
previous fouryears, but the introduction never quite rises to its occasion;
nevertheless, I have included it in this volume. I also wrote short
pieces on Caro and a young California painter, Ron Davis. Finally, for
a special issue ofAriforumon sculpture, I wrote "Art and Objecthood"
(reprinted in this book), recognizing as I did so that it was bound to
be controversial but of course not anticipating the full extent of the
12 � fu� INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM
notoriety that was in store for it. With the exception of the Olitski
introduction, the essays I have just cited, long and short, were published
in Artforum, which by the mid-1 96os, under the brilliant and
energetic editorship of Philip Leider, had become the foremost magazine
ofcontemporary art. I first met: Phil at the Stellas in early 1 965,
then spent several days with him when I visited Los Angeles in February
1 967 for the opening of the Louis exhibition. Artforum was
founded in San Francisco in 1 962, moved to Los Angeles in 1 965,
and finally came to New York in June 1 967. Although by then I was
no longer writing art criticism on a regular basis, I saw Phil on all my
frequent trips to New York and considered him a close friend. In
1 972 Phil decided he had had enough of the art world, gave up the
magazine, and moved back to California.
After a short break in the summer of 1 967 I finally turned my
attention to my dissertation, which I wrote on Edouard Manet's
paintings of the 186os, in particular on the meaning of his many
deliberate allusions to the art of the Old Masters. First, though, I
doubled the length of my Louis essay to provide the text of a copiously
illustrated book on his art, which was published by Abrams in
1971 (it is that text, under the title "Morris Louis," that appears in
this book). I then spent the fall of 1 967 in London doing much of
the research for my dissertation in the libraries of the British Museum
and Victoria and Albert Museum. Why didn't I go to Paris, as I
ought to have? Partly because of my friendship with Caro and my
interest in various younger British artists (especially the sculptor Tim
Scott, who in the 1 96os was doing work of great originality) , partly
because I was already familiar with London and had other friends
there, notably Ian Hamilton, whereas in Paris I knew no one and
would be struggling to deal with libraries I had never previously
worked in. In any case, I was living in London when in the fall of
1 967 Caro exhibited Prairie, one of the definitive, some would say
culminating, works of high modernist sculpture, at the Kasmin Gallery.
I admired it greatly and wrote a short article on that show ("Two
Sculptures by Anthony Caro," reprinted in this book) that I'm still
pleased with. Also, on a visit to London in the summer of 1 966, Caro
and I had had a conversation about the problem of making small
abstract sculptures. As a result Caro began making smaller pieces that
included at least one element that ran or extended below the plane
of the tabletops on which the sculptures were placed. I discuss the
significance of that strategy in several essays in this collection (and
will say more about it shortly) , but my point here is that by the fall
AN iNTRODUCTION TO MY ART CR['fiCISM I 13
of 1967 Caro had begun to produce a variety of pieces based on that
structural (or "syntactic") principle, and it was fascinating to be
around and watch them take shape. Finally, later that fall I made a
briefvisit to New York in order to see Noland's exhibition of his first
horizontal stripe paintings at Emmerich's; for those of us in the
color-field, high modernist camp, that too was a dramatic event, and
togetherwith Caro's Prairieand table pieces and Olitski's recent spray
paintings it conveyed a sense of a movement in full flower. (I mention
this because today it is often assumed by writers who weren't
actually there that with the advent of Minimalism in the mid- r g6os
the high modernist groupwas put on the defensive-in fact "Art and
Objecthood" is sometimes read in that light. But the mood in 1 967-
68, artistically speaking, was distinctly upbeat.)
At some point in the fall of 1 967, I don't remember when, I hit
upon the basic argument ofmy dissertation, namely, that Maner's use
of sources in the art of the past was directed, first, toward securing
the Frenchness ofhis own painting and second, toward using Frenchness
itself to secure a kind of universality, which I associated with his
pursuit of a comprehensive totalization of as many of the resources
ofpainting as seemed to him artisticallyviable. From fhen on, writing
the dissertation was a race against the clock (I was scheduled to take
up a teaching appointment at Harvard the following September) ; I
didn't complete my dissertation until the winter of 1g68-6g, toward
the end of my first semester as an assistant professor in the Department
of Fine Arts.
Something else I did during the spring of 1 968 was organize a
retrospective exhibition of Caro's sculptures to be held at the Hayward
Gallery in London in early 1 g6g, and I spent a few weeks
in the fall of 1 968, in the interstices of teaching <)Bd working on my
dissertation, writing the introductory essay for the catalog. The strain
shows, and I have omitted that essay too from these pages. But the
exhibition was beautiful, especially the large downstairs room with a
basketball-court-quality wooden floor in which we displayed about a
dozen ofCaro's sparest, most radical sculptures of the early and midrg6os.
I submitted my dissertation in time to receive the Ph.D. in
January 1 g6g, and two months later Phil Leider published it, under
the title "Manet's Sources: Aspects of His Art, 185g-186s," in a special
issue ofArtforumcontaining nothing else. No other editor would
have dreamed of doing something so infuriating to the bulk of
his readership. The following September Theodore Reff, a leading
scholar ofnineteenth-century painting, raked "Manet's Sources" over
14 I Al\1: INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
the coals in a short article in Artforum, and although I at first imagined
firing off a quick response to his critique, as things turned out
it took me more than twenty-five years to decide on what I wanted to
say. My reply to Reff, along with much new material bearing on the
topic, may be found in chapter 2 of Manet's Modernism.
Thereafter, my activity as a critic lessened sharply. In 1 969 I wrote
a short piece on some paintings by Kenneth Noland. In London for
another half-year in the fall of 1 970, I wrote short reviews of gallery
exhibitions of sculptures by Caro and Michael Bolus, and in 1 972 I
wrote a brief essay on Larry Poons's first "poured" paintings, which
excited me as his previous work had failed to do. (I now feel that I
underestimated his early "Op" pictures.)6 Five years later, at Caro's
request, I wrote an introduction for a traveling exhibition of his table
pieces. Basically, though, I stopped writing about contemporary art,
for several reasons. In the first place, I had pretty much said what I
had to say. My interest as a practicing critic or critic-theorist had always
focused on a small group of artists: Pollock, Louis, Noland, Olitski,
Stella, and Caro. By 1 969 I had written about each of them several
times, and although Noland, Olitski, Stella, and Caro all went
on to develop in surprising ways, whatever I was likely to write about
them was bound to be repetitive. Second, in "Shape as Form" and,
especially, in "Art and Objecthood" I described the emergence of a
basic opposition between the radically abstract painting and sculpture
I most admired and what I characterized, pejoratively, as the
"literalist" and "theatrical" work of a group of artists usually called
the Minimalists-Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Tony Smith, Carl
Andre, et al. (The art I admired I thought of as "antitheatrical.") No
one with even the sketchiest awareness of recent history needs to be
told that "theatricality," not just in the form of Minimalism, went on
to flourish spectacularly while abstraction in my sense of the term
became more and more beleaguered. This too made the prospect of
writing art criticism less attractive: in addition to championing yet
again the same handful ofartists, I would have had to insist yet again
that the dominant avant-garde modes of the day were not worth taking
seriously, and that, I had the wit to realize, was unlikely to interest
anyone. Nothing I could have said would have improved upon the
position laid out in "Art and Objecthood," which continued to be
read and in that sense to express the indifference or hostility I felt
toward much that was taking place.
A third factor in my turn away from art criticism was that I became
engrossed in the art-historical project mentioned earlier, an attempt
fu"J INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 15
to give an account of the evolution of the antitheatrical tradition in
French painting that arose in the middle of the eighteenth century
and climaxed more than a century later in the art of Manet and the
Impressionists. So that even as I sought to recover crucial aspects of
the historical specificity of a large body of earlier painting and art
criticism, I realized that I was also trying to understand the origins
of a set of concerns that I had independently-in my activity as a
critic-detected at work in the contemporary sitnation. And that
made it seem as if! hadn't. abandoned art criticism so much as discovered
a new and, under the circumstances, more rewarding use for
the intellectual energies it had called forth.
Finally, I remember feeling as early as the late r g6os, and with
increasing force during the 1970s and after, that what might be
called evaluative art criticism no longer mattered as it previously had.
No longer was it read with the same interest, no longer could the
critic imagine that his or her words might intervene in the contemporary
situation in the way in which, perhaps delusively, I had sometimes
irnagined my words intervening in it, no longer were there critical
reputations to be made by distinguishing the best art of one's
time from the rest or by analyzing that art with respect to its treatment
of issues that were, in a strong sense of the word, "inescapable."
The inference seems clear that the kind of criticism Greenberg and
I practiced, each in his own way, was intimately linked with the values,
qualities, and aspirations of the high modernist art we found so compelling,
and that with the ever growing eclipse ofhigh modernism in
the later r g6os and 1970s (and after) the role of criticism became
transformed-into cultural commentary, "oppositional" position taking,
exercises in recycled French theory, and so on. (Ifthis book's subtitle
were to be expanded it would perhaps be "Essays and Reviews
from the Close of High Modernism.") In any case, the abandonment
ofevaluative criticism and the disparagement oflate modernist painting
and sculpture have only grown more sweeping with the passage
of time.
2. Some Thoughts on My Art Criticism
As ALREADY mentioned, I regard the reviews I wrote
in London for Arts in r g6 r-62 as apprentice work. The same goes
for the fourteen "New York Letters" I wrote for Art International in
rg62-64, but I have chosen to republish portions of twelve of those
as representative of my views and rhetoric at the time. I see no need
1 6 \ AN lNTRODUC'l'ION TO MY ART CRlTICISM
to comment on them individually, or on the hriefremarks on Stella's
early stripe paintings that I contributed to the catalog of the exhibition
Toward a New Abstraction at the Jewish Museum in 1 963. What
strikes me today, when I consider the "New York Letters" as a group,
is the prominence of a linked pair of motifs: a distaste for "sentimentality"
in an improbably wide range of forms and an urgent concern
with issues of pictorial structure, the tough-mindedness of which
was evidently conceived by me as ruling out the sort of looseness of
feeling I found repugnant (but not as ruling out the expression of
feeling altogether) . Indeed, my enthusiasm for Hans Hofmann was
largely based on what I saw as his ability to redeem otherwise intractably
corny or sentimental paint handling and color as well as his gift
for resolving pictorial problems in artistically satisfying ways without
being a formal absolutist. Not that I had anything against the formal
absolutism ofBarnettNewman or Stella-on the contrary, both were
for me among the exemplary artists of the day. But Hofmann's never
merely "subjective" spontaneity seemed exceptional enough to warrant
special praise. (By the time I wrote my penultimate "New York
Letter" in the spring of 1 964 I had come to see Olitski in not dissimilar
terms.) By the same token, my admiration for Andy Warhol's
paintings of Marilyn Monroe was based in part on the idea that she
was a genuinely mythic figure, hence beyond the unavoidably subjective
element that entered into the same artist's images ofTroy Donahue;
what made the Marilyn pictures moving, it's implied, is that they
came by their expressiveness by properly "impersonal" means. (A
thematics of impersonality would later run through my analyses of
figuration and color in Pollock, Louis, Noland, Olitski, and Stella,
and in general an insistence on making ethically loaded distinctions
between modes of subjectivity is a leitmotif of my criticism from start
to finish.) Another early text, my essay for Caro's 1963 exhibition at
the Whitechapel Gallery, will be discussed in connection with other
writings on Caro later in this section. The first text that seems to me
to warrantspecific commentary, then, is my introduction to the catalog
for the Fogg Art Museum exhibition of paintings by Noland, Olitski,
and Stella. But rather than work through my art criticism item by
item, I shall proceed more irregularly, sometimes dealing with issues,
sometimes with individual artists, and once, toward the end, with a
single essay, "Art and Objecthood" itself.
The appeal to 'formal" criticism
THE FIRST part of "Three An1erican Painters" makes
several related claims: first, that the development of modernist paint-
fu'l" INTRODUCTION TO Mv ART CRITICISM I 17
ing from Maner to the mid-rg6os evinces "an increasing preoccupation
with problems and issues intrinsic to painting itself"; second,
that the nature of those problems and issues is "formal," that is to
say, presumably, a matter of "form"-a term I don't quite use-as
distinctfrom subjectmatter (the tendency toward abstractness would
thus be a function of that order of priorities); and third, that "formal
criticism" as practiced by Roger Fry and, especially, Clement
Greenberg is therefore better suited than any other approach to
throw light on modernist painting, by which I mean not just elucidate
the problems and issues in question but also provide as nearly
objective a basis as possible for specific valuejudgments, which, however,
remain ineluctably su�jective in nature and origin.' (I explain
that "there is nothing binding in the valuejudgments of formal criticism"
and that the "objectivity [the formal critic] aspires to can be
no more than relative.") I further suggest that the best model for fhe
evolution of modernist painting is fhat of the dialectic understood
as an unceasing process ofperpetual radical self-criticism or, as I also
put it, "perpetual revolution"; and I gloss my invocation of the dialectic
by insisting on the latter's nonteleological nature: thus, I say that
"the work of such painters as Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and
Frank Stella . . . aspires to bejudged, in retrospect, to have been necessary
to the finest modernist painting of the fi.tture." The decisive
criterion ofquality or value is thus a certain effectiveness or "fecundity"
that in the nature of the case can be known only after the fact;8
indeed, something of the same situation prevailswith respect to "formal"
or "stylistic" discriminations themselves, in that we are able to
make such discriminations within a given body of work only where
subsequent modernist painting has invested certain differences with
a significance they did not originally have (I make th.is point in the
opening paragraph of part 2 of the Fogg introduction and, focusing
specifically on the relationship between Pollock and Louis, in a footnote
to "Morris Louis
,
') .
There are difficulties with some of these formulations which
should be mentioned before moving on to consider more substantial
matters (one reason for owning up to them is to underscore the fact
that they disappear from my work after this point) :
1 . I say in a brief note in 'Three American Painters" that the difficulties
surrounding the notion of problems and issues "intrinsic" to
painting are begged in that work, and of course that's true. What
does "intrinsic" mean in a situation that I specifically characterize as
one in which the relevant problems and issues are describable as such
only in retrospect, and then only in terms that are determined by
1 8 � AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
later developments? In the same note I remark that the idea that
there are problems intrinsic to the art ofpainting "has to do with the
concept of a 'medium'" (what I ought to have said is that the inadequacy
of my way of putting things called for a certain development
of that concept) and add that this is a topic philosophy and art criticism
might fruitfully discuss. But I don't pursue the topic, which had
to wait for Stanley Cavell's remarks on the concept of a medium in
The World Viewed roughly five years later.
2. My contention that only "formal" criticism is capable ofmaking
"convincing discriminations of value" or, as I also put it, of "objectifying"
critical intuitions which nevertheless remain grounded in subjectivity
isn't helpful either. (By this time I had at least stopped using
"subjective" and "subjectivity" as pejorative notions.) The idea of objectification
in particular is a red herring, which is to say that the
subjective/objective opposition as I invoke it is beside the point.9
What matters is that, as I remark, "alljudgments of value begin and
end in experience"; the task of the critic is, first, not to flinch from
making suchjudgments, which are nothing less than the lifeblood of
his enterprise, and second, to try to come up with the most telling
observations and arguments on their behalf. What those observations
and arguments will turn out to be, what features of the works in
question theywillfocus on and what sorts ofissues theywill involve, is
in principle unknowable in advance, and in any case, as I rightly insist
(following Kant in this if in nothing else) , the arguments themselves
will not be binding, which is what it means to say thatjudgments of
value end in experience as well as begin there.
3· My invocation ofthe dialectic and of an ideal ofperpetual radical
self-criticism implies too simplistic or abstract a model of the evolution
of modernist painting as a whole. What excited me at the time
was the seeming theoretical sophistication of such a model, which in
efrect gave dramatic form to certain Hegelian assumptions behind
Greenberg's avowedly Kantian reading of modernism as selfcriticism
(the joint influence on me of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's remarks
on Hegel in his essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of
Silence" and of Georg Lukacs's History and Class Consciousnesswas important
here).10 But the sophistication, such as it was, came at too
high a price.
4· Similarly, my attempt to use "fecundity" as a decisive criterion
of quality or value-of artistic success-which also had its roots in
Merleau-Ponty's essay,11 was soon afterward put to the test by the advent
of Minimal Art, which involved, as I at once recognized, an at-
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I Lg
tempt to go "beyond" the work ofNoland and Stella in the direction
of what I called "literalism" and "objecthood." As things turned out,
I was sharply critical of those development,, but were they not testimony
to the fecundity of Noland's and Stella's art? No, because in
my view the Minimalist work that ostensibly established that fecundity
was not a legitimate successor to the paintings in question. But
that determination wasn't based on a criterion of fecundity so much
as on my actual, present-tense responses to the works in question.
And in fact, all my subsequent criticism (starting with the rest of my
introduction to Three American Painters) stresses the need for new
work to compel conviction here and now rather than to wait: upon
events.12
5· Not surprisingly, then, I wish I hadn't celebrated "formal" criticism
the way I did. Not that there is no intellectually legitimate meaning
that can be given to the term.13 But myadvocacyofit in the introduction
to ThreeAmerican Painters is inseparable from the belief that
the evolution ofmodern painting has been awayfrom considerations
of subject matter toward an ever more exclusive preoccupation with
problems and issues intrinsic to the art, a narrative I soon came to
think was wrongly conceived, not only because of the problems with
'�intrinsic" I have cited, but also because it assumes that considerations
of subject matter cannot bear directly on issues of form, or, say,
of the medium. (The latter assumption is at odds with everything I
have written about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French
painting.) Unfortunately, the epithet "formal," soon modified to
"formalist," became current to the extent that notjust a certain type
ofcriticism but also the work of Louis, Noland, Olitsk.i, Stella, Poons,
and others came to be characterized in those terms: as if their work
constituted merely one of several or many possible styles of painting
rather than being, as I insisted was the case, thevalid manifestation
of the art of painting at that time. Such are the risks of theorizing
about art and art criticism at an early age.14
The issue of"opticality"
NoTHING IN Greenberg's art CntlClsm or for that
matter in mine has come in for more sustained assault in recent years
than the claim that modernist painting posits or privileges or establishes
the illusion of a purely visual or "optical" space, one addressed
to eyesight alone. I have no wish to defend that claim here, but it
should at least be noted that the idea of opticality (and related notions)
plays a double role in Greenberg's criticism of the early r g6os.
20 \ AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
Consider the following passage from his most famous essay, "Modernist
Painting": "The flatness toward which Modernist painting
orients itself can never be an utter flatness. The heightened sensitivity
of the picture plane may no longer permit sculptural illusion, or
trompe-l'oeil, hut it does and must permit optical illusion. The first
mark made on a surface destroys its virtual flatness, and the configurations
of a Mondrian still suggest a kind ofillusion of a kind of third
dimension. Only now it is a strictly pictorial, strictly optical third dimension.
Where the Old Masters created an illusion of space into
which one could imagine oneself walking, the illusion created by a
Modernist is one into which one can look, can travel through, only
with the eye."15 This amounts to a globalclaim about modernist painting,
which in its drive to distinguish itself from sculpture is said
to have pursued opticality along with flatness from the start. "With
Manet and the Impressionists," Greenberg writes in the same essay,
"tbe question ceased to be defined as one of color versus drawing,
and became instead a question of purely optical experience as
against optical experience modified or revised by tactile associations"
(p. 7 1 ) . I think it is .fuir to say that this is the position that critics of
Greenbergian opticality have been attacking. (A few years before,
in the essay originally called "Sculpture in Our Time" [ 1958],
Greenberg described what he took to be "a new common style" in
painting, sculpture, and architecture in terms that anticipate the
stress on opticality in "Modernist Painting." "Instead of the illusion
of things," he wrote, "we are now offered the illusion of modalities:
namely, that matter is incorporeal, weightless, and exists only optically
like a mirage."16 That all the arts should have converged in that
direction is global in another sense of the term, and there is perhaps
no sentence in Greenberg's essays that has been more often cited by
his critics.)
But in other texts of that moment Greenberg appealed to the notion
of opticality in a distinctly nonglobal, chronologically specific
way, as one of the key stylistic markers of the recent American painting
he had come most to admire-the work, for the most part "keyed
to the primacy of color," of Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Mark
Rothko, Jackson Pollock (in his thinned black Duco enamel paintings
of 1 95 1 ) , Helen Frankenthaler, Louis, and Noland. For example,
in "Louis and Noland" ( 1 960) , whicb I first read while still at
Oxford, be describes Louis's adaptation of Pollock's and Frankenthaler's
stain technique by saying: 'The effect [of staining] conveys
a sense not only of color as somehow disembodied, and there-
A"" INTRODUCTI00.: TO MY ART CRITICISM I 2 1
fore more purely optical, but also of color as a thing that opens and
expands the picture plane."17 As in "Modernist Painting," opticality
is contrasted with its traditional antithesis, tactility: "The more
closely color could be identified with its ground, the freer it would
be f!·om the interference of tactile associations."18 But tactility in turn
is linked, in the important essay "Mter Abstract Expressionism"
(r g62), not with the sculptural as such, but rather with the widespread
tendency within both the American and the European
branches of Painterly Abstraction (a term Greenberg preferred to
Abstract Expressionism) toward a heightened illusion of threedimensional
space. In American painting that tendency led to the
de Kooningesque manner Greenberg calls "homeless representation"
and describes as "a plastic and descriptive painterliness that is
applied to abstract ends, but which continues to suggest representational
ones," while in European painting the taste for illusionism
took the form of a "literal three-dimensionality of piled-on paint"
he dubs "furtive bas-relief."19 In opposition to such a tendency, the
painting of Newman, Rothko, and Still is described as aiming above
all at "an almost literal openness that embraces and absorbs color in
the act of being created by it."20 The term "openness," already hinted
at in "Louis and Noland," was a new coinage for Greenberg and carne
largely to replace "opticality," which nowhere occurs in "Mter Abstract
Expressionism," in his writings of the mid-r g6os.
Not that the two uses of the notion of opticality I have been charting
are entirely distinct in Greenberg's writings. There can be little
doubt fhat his admiration for Still, Newman, and Rothko on the one
hand and Frankenthaler, Louis, and Noland on the other-or perhaps
his belief that the work ofboth groups of artists pointed in the
same direction-helped crystallize the global thematization of opticality
in "Modernist Painting." But he himself seems to have been
uncertain as to whether the recent painting he most admired marked
a return to the optical values and emphases of Impressionism or
whether on the contrary it simply made it apparent that those had
been fhe decisive values and emphases of modernist painting all
along. A sign of that indecision is the removal of a keysentence from
the first version of "Modernist Painting." In the original essay, immediately
following thesentence aboutthe difference between Old Master
and modernist modes of illusionism, the next paragraph began
as follows: "The latest abstract painting tries to fulfill the Impressionist
insistence on the optical as the only sense that a completely and
quintessentially pictorial art can invoke. "21 In the final version ofthat
2 2 I AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
essay, however, the sentence in question has been dropped, which
has the effect of removing all suggestion of a return to earlier priorities
in favor of implying a consistently optical bias from Manet and
Impressionism through Mondrian to the present.22
All this is somewhat tangled, and more than a little confusing. My
aim in going into it here is to point out, first, that recent critiques of
Greenberg on opticality have without exception failed to acknowledge
the double valence of that concept in his writings of the early
1 960s (they treat it exclusively in its global construal) , and second,
that my own exploitation of the notion of opticality in my writings
on Pollock, Louis, Noland, Olitski, Stella, and Caro derives chiefly
from Greenberg's historically more limited use of it (along with the
allied notion ofopenness) in "Louis and Noland" and "After Abstract
Expressionism," the two essays of the early 1 96os that most clearly
articulate his view of the current situation. That is, I had no interest
whatever in the idea ofopticality as a defining characteristic of modernist
painting generally-in fact I mostly failed to recognize the
centrality of that idea in "Modernist Painting" when I finally read it
in 1 965 or 1 966. But as early as the spring of 1 964 I took Greenberg's
analysis of the role of opticality in the art of Louis and Noland
in particular, along with his critique in "After Abstract Expressionism"
ofde Kooningesque PainterlyAbstraction as tactile in its associations,
as the basis for a reading of Pollock's allover drip paintings of
1947-50 as essentially optical despite the sensuous materiality of the
skeins ofpigment out ofwhich they were made (see the introduction
to Three American Painters).23 And I went on from there, in "The
Achievement of Morris Louis" and the enlarged version of that essay
in my Louis book, to develop an account of the complex and shifting
relations between figuration-more broadly, drawing-and color in
Louis's oeuvre that still seems to me valid, an account that gives precise
meaning to the intuition that between Pollock's works of
1947-5 1 (not just the drip paintings but the semirepresentational
ones in thinned black Duco enamel as well) and Louis's mature oeuvre
there exists, if only by Nachtraglichheit, a deep continuity of basic
concerns. In short, although I would no longer baldly state, as I do
in the introduction to ThreeAmericanPainters, that "the materiality of
[Pollock's] pigment is rendered sheerly visual,"24 I continue to believe
that the dyad opticalityItacticality or indeed opticalityImateriality
is pertinent to his and Louis's art, and I continue to have a stake
in my analyses of their achievements (the Louis text in particular
seems to me a high point ofmy criticism) . In any case, a critic inevitably
works with the conceptual tools at hand; what matters in the long
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 23
run is not the inherent allure of the tools themselves, which is bound
to wax and wane with changes of intellectual fashion, but rather the
quality of the critical and/or historical work that is done with them.
(For my appeal to the concept of opticality in connection with Noland,
Olitski, Stella, and Caro, see the sections "The Issue of Shape,"
"The Example ofAnthony Caro," and "The Critique ofTheatricality
in 'Art and Objecthood'" below.)25
The issue ofshape
A CENTRAL concern of the essays in this book is the
problem of shape. The fullest discussion of it is found in two essays
of rg66-67, "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons" and
"Art and Objecthood," but a preoccupation with shape-more
broadly, with pictorial structure-goes back to my earliest writings
on Stella's stripe paintings (e.g., the "New York Letter" of November
25, r g62, reprinted in this book as "New York Letter: Louis, Chamberlain
and Stella, Indiana") and the brief catalog textfor theJewish
Museum's Toward a NewAbstraction exhibition), where it is anchored,
obviously, in the paintings themselves. (See also my insistence on the
importance of structural considerations keyed to the framing edge
in the discussions ofworksby Newman, Noland, and Olitski in several
of the "New York Letters" excerpted in this volume. From the start,
influenced by Stella's practice, I advocated a "strictly logical" relation
of painted elements to the framing edge.) In the introduction to
Three American Painters I tried to generalize the notion of a new concern
with the primacy of shape into a concept of "deductive structure."26
The thin vertical bands (or "zips") in Newman's paintings, I
wrote, "amount to echoes within the painting of the two side framing
edges; they relate primarily to these edges, and in so doing make
explicit acknowledgment of the shape of the canvas. They demand
to be seen as deriving from the framing edge-as having been 'deduced'
from it-though their exact placement within the colored
field has been determined by the painter."" I saw this as a new development
and related it to the recent tendency toward opticality, on
the grounds that the latter took pressure off flatness (a tactile feature)
while putting pressure on shape, the other major physical or
literal characteristic ofthe picture support. But it was in Stella's stripe
paintings of the late 1 950s and early rg6os that the concept of deductive
structure really came into its own:
As early as 1958-sg, partly in reaction against Abstract Expressionist
painting such as that of Kline and de Kooning-both of whom he
24 I A"! INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
strongly admired-and partly in direct response to the work of Barnett
Newm�n, Stella began to make paintings in which parallel stripes
of black paint, each roug·hly 2 Y2 inches wide, echo and reecho the
rectangular shape of the picture support until the entire canvas is
filled. . . . In subsequent series of paintings, executed in aluminum,
copper, and purple metallic paint-in rg6o, rg6r, and 1963, respectively-Stella's
grasp of deductive structure grew more and more
tough minded, until the paintings came to be generated in toto, as it
were, by the different shapes of the framing edge, and variation occurred
only within the series as a whole rather than within a particular
shape of canvas.2s
I went on to argue that in this respect Stella's paintings represented
a significant advance on the work of the Cubists or even Mondrian,
by which I meant that they embodied "more consistent solutions to
a particular formal problem-roughly, how to make paintings in
which both the pictorial structure and the individual pictorial elements
make explicit acknowledgment of the literal character of the
picture support."
Within the next year or so, however, this way of putting the issue
of shape came to seem unsatisfactory on several counts. For one
thing, the notion of deductive structure seemed to imply that what
was at stake was nothing more than a way of arranging pictorial elements
relative to the framing edge, a morphological view I came increasingly
to reject. For another, I no longer believed that the notion
of "deducing"structural elements from the shape of the support adequately
described what Newman and Stella were up to: it didn't fit
Newman's intuitive determinations of where precisely to place his
zips, and it failed to capture the sense in which in Stella's aluminum,
copper, and metallic purple series the stripes and the shapes of the
support are given together in a single gestalt.29 Finally, the remarks
quoted above imply that the Cubists and Mondrian had been engaged
with the same problem as Stella but had failed to resolve it
with equal consistency and rigor, which I came to see was an ahistorical
way of describing Stella's relationship to his predecessors.
By the time I wrote "Shape as Form," my approach to the issue of
shape, indeed to the writing of art criticism, was significantly different,
as the first paragraph of that essay makes clear:
Frank Stella's new paintings investigate the viability of shape as
such. By shape as such I mean not merely the silhouette of the support
(wliich I shall call literal shape), not merely that of the outlines of
elements in a given picture (which I shall call depicted shape), but
shape as a medium within which choices about both literal and
AN INTRODUCTION TO Mv ART CRITICISM I 25
depicted shapes are made, and made mutually responsive. And by
the viability of shape, I mean its power to hold, to stamp itself out,
and in-asverisimilitude and narrative and symbolism used to impress
themselves-compelling conviction. Stella's undertaking in these
paintings is therapeutic to restore shape to health, at least temporarily,
though of course its implied "sickness" is simply the other face of
the unprecedented importance shape has assumed in the finest modernist
painting of the past several years, most notably in the work of
Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski. It is only in their work that shape
as such can be said to have become capable of holding, or stamping
itselfout, of compelling conviction-as well as, so to speak, capable of
failing to do so. These are powers or potentialities-not to say responsibilities-which
shape never until now possessed, and which have
been conferred upon it by the development of modernist painting
itself. In this sense shape has become something different from what
it was in traditional painting or, for that matter, in modernist painting
until recently. It has become, one might say, an object of conviction,
whereas before it was merely . . . a kind ofobject. Stella's new pictures
are a response to the recognition that shape itself may be lost to the
art of painting as a resource able to compel conviction, precisely because-as
never before-it is being called upon to dojust that.
The distinction betweer. an oqject of conviction and merely a kind
of object anticipates "Art and Objecthood," as does much else in
"Shape as Form" (more on this too presently) .30 And my reference
to shape as a medium reflects conversations with Cavell, to whom I
showed "Shape as Form" in draft. But I want to stress certain other
aspects of my argument in the latter essay.
First, the recent tendency toward opticality is again described as
having played a crucial role in neutralizing flatness and thereby shifting
the balance of modernist concern toward considerations of
shape. But it's important to be clear that my analyses of shape in the
art of Noland, Olitski, and Stella don't present opticality itself (or
visual illusionism) as sufficient to enable a depicted shape, or for that
matter a literal one, to compel conviction in the way I begin by claiming
shape now had to do. So, for example, I am troubled, not satisfied,
by Noland's narrow (eight feet by two feet) , diamond-shaped
paintings, whose extreme attenuation together with "the sheerly visual
illusion generated by the interaction of [their] colored bands"
makes their enclosing shapes seem to vibrate and shimmer, with the
result that "the physical limits of [their] support[s] are overrun, indeed
all but dissolved, by the painting's illusionistic presence." More
broadly, I find in Noland's and Olitski's paintings different manifesta-
26 \ AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
tions of a "conflict between opticality and the literal character of the
support," but neither literalness as such (the Minimalist option) nor
untrammelled visual illusionism (as in Noland's narrow diamonds)
is seen by me as capable of resolving that conflict as it then stood.
(Note, by the way, that for all the stress on opticality in my criticism
of the 1 960s, I never followed Greenberg in equating the "strictly
pictorial" with the "strictly optical," as he did in "Modernist Painting"
and other texts of that period.) I do claim that SteHa's irregular polygons
succeed in resolving the conflict by making literalness itself illusive,
but what underwrites that feat in my account is the way in which
his paintings ingeniously and systematically overcome the distinction
between literal and depicted shape, that is, in which at their best they
establish an "unprecedented continuity between the 'outside' of a
given painting (its physical limits) and its 'inside' (everything else)."
(Exactly how they do this is the burden ofmy analysis.) And that in
turn has the effect of "suffusing" literalness throughout the painting,
thereby "unmak[ing], . . . in the event and for the moment, the distinction
between shape as a fundamental property of objects and
shape as an entity belonging to painting alone that emerge [d] for
the first time in Noland's and Olitski's paintings." This amounted, I
thought, to legitimately sidestepping the newly urgent demand that
shape stamp itself out (and in) , which is what I meant when in the
opening paragraph of "Shape as Form" I characterized Stella's
undertaking as therapeutic, restoring shape to health. In "Art and
Objecthood," written several months later, I put all this as follows:
"What is at stake . . . is whether the paintings or objects in question
are experienced as paintings or as objects, and what decides their
identity as paintingis their confronting of the demand that they hold
as shapes. [Legitimately side-stepping thatdemand, a Ia Stella's irregular
polygons, was tantamount to confronting it, evidently.] Otherwise
they are experienced as nothing more than objects. This can be
summed up by saying that modernist painting has come to find it
imperative that it defeat or suspend its own objecthood, and that the
crucial factor in this undertaking is shape, but shape that must belong
to painting-it must be pictorial, not, or not merely, literal."31
I would not deny that my analyses of Noland's, Olitski's, and Stella's
paintings continually strain against their conceptual limits. In
fact, rereading for this book not just "Shape as Form" and "Art and
Objecthood" but 'jules Olitski's New Paintings" ( 1 965; omitted from
this book) and 'jules Olitski" (the introduction to the catalog for an
exhibition of Olitski's work at the Corcoran) , I was struck by the ex-
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 27
tent to which my focus on issues of shape and structure leads me to
devote insufficient space to considerations of color and facture (not
that the latter are wholly neglected) . Nor would I wish to endorse
each and every judgment that contributed to my arguments in
r g66-67: for example, the best of Noland's narrow, diamond-shaped
pictures now seem to me superb, regardless of what takes place at
their edges. But my account of Stella's irregular polygons still feels
largely right, along with my insistence that theyrepresent a renewed
commitment to painting, and I see no reason to back away from the
claim that the issue of shape, understood in the terms I developed
at the time, lay at the heart of the situation of ambitious painting at
that moment. (My impression from conversations with Greenberg,
incidentally, is that he never really approved of paintings that departed
from the rectangle.) It's worth noting, moreover, that in my
last piece of criticism proper, a 1 972 article on recent paintings by
Larry Poons, I observed that starting in the late rg6os there had
been "a shift of pressure away from issues of shape toward issues of
picture surface," and that what was at stake in that shift was precisely
the question·of objecthood. "The most ambitious pictorial art of the
past several years," I wrote, "[has] found itself compelled to declare
its identity as painting . . . by continual acknowledgment . . . that
paintings consist in or are limited to their surfaces in ways that distinguish
them, as it were absolutely, from other kinds of objects in the
world. That is how I understand what has seemed to me the compulsion
of certain recent painting of major ambition to affirm that the
entire surface, which is to say every bit of it, is spread out before the
beholder-that every grain or particle or atom of surface competesfor
presentnesswith every other."32 My point in citing these remarks is not
to praise their perspicuity, though I still think that this too is right
(Poons's snbsequentwork, a body ofmajor painting, would soon confirm
my intuition) . It is rather thatwith the new focus on surface the
previous emphasis on opticality went into eclipse (I went on in the
Poons article to stress the "tactility" of his color) , which confirms the
general point that in my criticism, if not consistently in Greenberg's,
"opticality" functions in a nonglobal, temporally and stylistically specific
way.
The example ofAnthony Caro
As I mentioned earlier, I first met Caro and was
knocked on my heels by his work in London in the fall of rgfir. Not
quite two years later, in the late spring of 1 963, I wrote my first essay
28 ! A..�� INTRODUCTION '1'0 MY i\RT CRITICISM
on his art, the introduction to the catalog for his exhibition at the
Whitechapel Gallery in London in the fall of that year. It's an immature
production: the writing is turgid and studentish, the approach
it takes is indirect and full of pitfalls, the appeal to authoritiesGreenberg,
Mer!eau-Ponty, Blackmur, Stuart Hampshire, Rilke-is
obtrusive, and there is no analysis of specific works to help flesh out
my general claims. (I wrote it with a sense of acute difficulty: I felt I
saw Caro's sculptures clearly, even presciently, but found it almost
impossible to put that vision into words. Welcome to art criticism.)
But I've chosen to republish it, both because Caro's art has remained
basic to my understanding of the modernist enterprise and because
the Whitechapel introduction epitomizes the "mixed" state of my
thinking at that early moment in my critical career. In brief, my
claims on behalf ofCaro's early abstract steel sculptures fell into four
more or less distinct categories.
First, I cited and endorsed Greenberg's account of the consequences
of what he called "the modernist 'reduction'" in sculpture,
consequences that included a tendency toward opticality as well as
a mode of making described as "not so much sculptured as constructed,
built, assembled, arranged."33 Here as elsewhere in my early
criticism, Greenberg's writings provided the framework within which
my own thought gradually found its voice.
Second, although Caro's sculptures, being abstract, in no way depicted
the human figure, they nevertheless seemed to me to evoke
a wide range of bodily feeling and movement. In this connection I
appealed to the writings of the French existential phenomenologist
Merleau-Ponty, whom I had begun to read in England: his major
book, The Phenomenology ofPerception, had recently been translated,
and the French original of his essay "Indirect Language and the
Voices of Silence" (mentioned above in connection with my appeal
in "Three American Painters" to notions of the dialectic and fecundity)
was on my desk as I wrote the Whitechapel introduction. Not
that Merleau-Ponty was required to alert me to the bodily aspects
of Caro's art, or of art in general. Some of my most powerful early
experiences of painting and sculpture had been along those lines,
and when I first saw Midday and Sculpture Seven in Caro's garden I
felt I was about to levitate or burst into blossom. But Merleau-Ponty
provided philosophical sanction for taking those feelings seriously
and trying to discover where they led (one place they eventually led
was to my book Courbet's Realism), and it was my good fortune that I
became aware of his writing when I did.
AN INTRODUCTION TO ?vfy ART CRITICISM I 29
Third, my particular treatment of bodiliness in the Whitechapel
introduction was to emphasize the notion of abstract expressive gesture-a
modality of gesture made possible by the medium of constructed
steel sculpture. Here the influence of my Princeton mentor
in poetry, R. P. Blackmur, author of a collection of essays called Language
as Gesture, reinforced that of Merleau-Ponty, who repeatedly invokes
the notion of gesture in "Indirect Language and the Voices
of Silence."
Finally, one more set ofconcerns is discernible in the Whitechapel
text., and it soon proved the most important of all. It first surfaces in
the claim that a prelingual child in the company of adults conversing
among themselves will respond to the "abstract configurations in
time made by the spoken words as they are joined to one another"
(the point of this was to suggest a crude analogy with our situation
in the face of Caro's sculptures). But what I was trying to say came
into much sharper focus when I wrote: "Everything in Caro's art that
is worth looking at-except the color-is in its syntax." I associated
the notion ofsyntax with that of abstract gesture, but what I sawwas
that the entire expressive weight of Caro's art was carried by the relations
among the girders, I- and T-beam segments, and similar elements
out of which his sculptures were made, not (for example) by
the shapes of individual parts, nor by anything that could be called
imagery, nor by what was then sometimes taken to be the industrial,
modern-world connotations of his materials. (Two years later Greenberg
in an essay on Caro quoted my remarks on syntax and added:
"This emphasis on syntax is also an emphasis on abstractness, on radical
unlikeness to nature. No other sculptor has gone as far from the
structural logic of ordinary ponderable things"31-observations that
I in turn would make use of in "Art and Objecthood" and my introduction
to the catalog for Caro's rg6g retrospective exhibition at the
Hayward Gallery.) Here too "Indirect Language and the Voices of
Silence" played a role in my thinking, in particular its brief account
ofFerdinand de Saussure's theory oflinguistic meaning as a function
of purely differential relations among inherently meaningless elements."
Characteristically, however, Merleau-Ponty found it impossible
fully to subscribe to Saussure's ideas with respect to "creative" or
"truly expressive" (as opposed to "everyday") uses oflanguage, which
he seems to have thought ofas somehow-as ifbodily or gesturallybreaking
through the "lateral" relational network to grasp or express
meaning "directly."36 In this and other respects, the "mixed" nature
of my discourse in the Whitechapel catalog had much in common
30 ! AN INTRODUCTION TO MY .ART CRITICISM
with the tensions and contradictions in "Indirect Language and the
Voices of Silence," but it also perfectly suited Caro's early abstract
sculptures, which in effect combined an evocation of bodiliness with
an emphasis on syntax to extraordinary effect."
In the years that followed I wrote often about Caro's art, to which
I have always felt a special closeness. I have also found it good to
think about on several fronts. Starting around 1 966-67, for example,
I began to try to develop a new, philosophically interesting concept.
of abstraction by recasting in Wittgensteinian terms the largely phenomenological
language of my earliest writings on Caro's work as
well as by mobilizing the contrast, put forward in "Art and Objecthood,"
between literalness and theatricality on the one hand and radical
abstraction and antitheatricality on the other. The short article
"Two Sculptures by Anthony Caro" ( t g68) is an example of such an
attempt, especially the opening paragraphs with their analysis ofDeep
Body Blue (fig. 42) , a seemingly si.mple piece featuring a schematic,
lintel-less "door" (two upright steel flats less than five feet high) .
What is crucial to our experiencing those flats as a door, I remark, is
that they stand in the same plane:
It doesn't matter that they are no more than four feet high [actually
they are four feet, ten inches high], that they lack any sort of lintel,
that we are not tempted nor even able to pass between them: the fact
that they stand several feet apart in the same plane is enough to make
us experience them as an abstract door (and a large, or wide, one at
that) . By the same token, if they are moved even very slightly out of
alignment their "doorness" disintegrates and the sculpture as a·whole
begins to fall apart, to become arbitrary and therefore meaningless as
art. This aspect of Caro's achievement may be described in different
ways. One can say that he discovered what constitutes an abstract door,
or that he discovered the conventions-corresponding to deep needswhich
make something a door. Caro did not consciously set out to
discover anything of the kind. On the contrary, it is because Deep Body
Blue began in a preoccupation with particular modes of being in the
world that its very success as sculpture carne to depend on the making
of the above discovery in, or by, the piece itself. It is as though with
Caro sculpture itselfhas become committed to a new kind ofcognitive
enterprise: not because its generating impulse has become philosophical,
butbecause the newly explicit need to defeat theater in all its man�
ifestations has meant that the ambition to make sculpture out of a
primordial involvement Mth modes of being in the world can now be
realized only if antiliteral-that is, radically abstract-terms for that
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 31
involvement can be found. (At the risk of seeming to overload the
point, I will add that the cognitive enterprise in question is related,
in different ways, both to European phenomenology and to the later
philosophy ofWittgenstein. It isn't only modernist art that has found
it necessary to defeat theater.)
Again, I want to hold offdiscussing "Art and Objecthood" for a while
longer. What I wish to stress is my equating of a certain notion of
abstraction ("what constitutes an abstract door") with the discovery
of the essence of a door, or alternatively with the discovery of the
conventions that make something a door, phrasing that, apart from
the notion of abstractness, comes directly from the later Wittgen­
stein.
Specifically, it comes from a passage in the Remarks on theFoundar
tion ofMathematics in which Wittgenstein, reflecting on the nature
of proofs and of the conviction they elicit, imagines the following
exchange: "It is as if this expressed the essence of form.-! say, however:
ifyou talk about essence-, you are merely noting a convention.
But here one would like to retort: there is no greater difference than
that between a proposition about the depth of the essence and one
about-a mere convention. But what if I reply: to the depth that we
see in the essence there corresponds the deep need for the convention.""
(Minus the first sentence, this serves as the epigraph to 'Jules
Olitski.") In the 'Two Sculptures" article, I interpreted depth ofneed
in phenomenological terms, which I knew was notwhatWittgenstein
meant in the passage in question (but would he have objected?): my
dream was to bring together Merleau-Ponty's concern with modes
of being in the world with a savor of Wittgenstein's "grammatical"
investigations, and although even that may have been overambitious
it still seems to me to have been worth the attempt."
Another, exemplary instance of what I meant by radical abstraction
concerned Caro's efforts, starting in 1 966, to make small sculptures
that, as I first put it in "Caro's Abstractness" ( 1 970; reprinted
in this book) , "could not be seen merely as reduced versions oflarger
ones-sculptures whose smallness was to be secured abstractly, made
part of their essence, instead of remaining simply a literal, quantitative
fact about them." The solution to that problem was, as I explained
in the same article,
to run or set at least one element in every piece below the level of the
tabletop on which the sculpture was to be placed, thereby precluding
its transposition, in fact or in imagination, to the ground. It at once
32 I fu'\' INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
turned out thatby tabling, or precluding grounding, the sculptures in
this way Caro was able to establish their smallness in terms that proved
virtually independent of their actual size. That is, the distinction between
tabling and gi:ounding·, because determined (or acknowledged)
by the sculptures themselves instead ofmerely imposed upon them by
their eventual placement, made itselffelt as equivalent to a qualitative
rather than a quantitative difference in scale. (Not only has the abstract
smallness ofCaro's table sculptures proved compatible with surprising
largeness of actual size; it soon became apparent that a certain minimum
size was required .for their tabling to be experienced in these
terms.) In these and other respects Caro's table sculptures mark the
emergence of a sense of scale for which there is no precedent in earlier
sculpture and no dear parallel in our experience of the world.
As I added in my 1 977 introduction to a traveling exhibition of
Cam's table sculptures: "From this point of view . . . Caro's abstract
sculptures, large and small, grounded and tabled, inhabit another
worldfrom the literal, contingent one in which we live, a world which
so to speak everywhere parallels our own but whose apartness is
perceived as all the more exhilarating on that account.'"10 (See figs.
49-55-)
To elaborate slightly, it's on a table rather than on the ground that
one expects to encounter manipulable objects of a certain small but
not minute size (e.g., cups, scissors, books, telephones, portable computers)
, whence the potential importance of the tabletop as a privileged
locus for Cam's small pieces. But simply placing a physically
small sculpture on a tabletop would not have realized the abstract
smallness Caro sought; the tabletop needed to be incorporated into
the sculpture, not literally, though eventually Caro did that too, but
syntactically, on the plane of "form": only then would a simple phenomenological
truth, that objects of a certain size tend to be found
on tables, be invested with sculptural significance. And that was accomplished,
at a stroke, by going below the plane of the tabletop,
though exactly how a given work makes that move is crucial to its
specific effect.
(Note, by the way, what this account Caro's table sculptures implies
about the issue of esthetic autonomy. It is sometimes assumed
that because in "Art and Objecthood" I criticized Minimalism's foregrounding
of what might be called situationality or exhibitionality, I
believed and perhaps still believe that modernistworks of art exist or
aspire to exist in a void. But I didn't and I don't. In the table sculptures,
for example, Caro found himself compelled to acknowledgeto
find or devise appropriate means for acknowledging-the generic
AN INTRODUCTION TO Mv ART CruncrsM I 33
conditions of their inescapable "framedness." Similarly, in 1 977 I
characterized the momentousness of Caro's elimination of the pedestal
in his abstract steel scalptmes of the early 1g6os by saying that
the latter were the first sculptures [in the Western tradition] "which
demandedto be placed on the ground, whose specific character would
inevitably have been traduced if they were not so placed" [emphasis
added] . In other words, their syntax was such as to require the
ground as their "frame," which in tarn was the precondition for the
posing of the problem of smallness that eventually led to the invention
of the table sculptures. Indeed, it was precisely that relation to
the issue of framing that in my view distinguished Caro's sculptures
from the Minimalist object's emphasis on the installation as snc!L)41
For a while I hoped that a comparable understanding of abstraction
or abstracmess could be broadened to encompass notjust the
whole of Caro's oeuvre but also the other recent painting and sculpture
I most admired, but in the end that proved impossible. However,
my inability to make Caro's work the basis for a rethinking of the
meaning of abstraction in modernist painting and sculpture generally
takes nothing away from the intense philosophical interest of
these and other episodes in his remarkable career.
I will add here, though it doesn't bear directly on Caro, that it
would be hard to overstate the importance of Wittgenstein's later
writings, as expounded and developed by Cavell, to my sense of my
own project not just as a critic but also as an art historian. For example,
the passage from the Remarks on theFoundation ofMathematics
quoted above suggests that rather than give up all thought of "essence"
in connection with painting or sculpture (as doctrinaire antiessentialism
would have one do), one might instead seek to historicize
essence by producing a narrative of the shifting depths over time
of the need for one or more basic conventions within a pictorial or
sculptural tradition. This was what I had in mind when I first criticized
Greenberg's theory of modernism (see below) , and it is also
one way of describing my endeavor in Absorption and Theatricality,
Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Modernism. In particular, the seeming
oxymoron "the primordial convention that paintings are made to be
beheld," which recurs throughout those books, demands to be understood
in the light of Wittgenstein's thought.
My double critique ofGreenberg's theory ofmodernistpainting
and ofMinirnalisrn's Greenbergian advocacy ofliteralism
FROM MY undergraduate years, the idea of modernism
and of modernist painting and sculpture-and poetry and mu-
34 I AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
sic-was important to me. (But not, it's worth remarking, the idea
ofan avant-garde. I believedfrom the first thatwhat in a contribution
to a symposium of 1 966 I called the "traditional avant-garde" was
over and done with, and I had little sympathy for what had taken its
place.)42 In part this had to do with my early education in poetry
under Blackmur, whose chief admirations were the great modernist
poets from William Butler Yeats to Wallace Stevens, but the influence
of Greenberg was surely decisive. It isn't surprising, therefore, that
for the first few years of my activity as an art critic it never occurred
to me to question Greenberg-'s account ofthe inner logic ofmodernism
put forward in such essays as 'The New Sculpture," "Modernist
Painting" (which as I've said I don't think I read until around 1 965),
and "After Abstract Expressionism," though my early notion of perpetual
radical self-criticism or perpetual revolution, taken literally,
was at odds with his ideas. But by the time I wrote "Shape as Form"
in the fall of 1 966 I had arrived at a different understanding of the
modernist dialectic.
Greenberg's accountwas this.43 Starting around the middle of the
nineteenth century, he claimed in "Modernist Painting," the major
arts, threatened for the first time with being assimilated to mere entertainment
(or entertainment as therapy) , discovered that they
could save themselves from that fate "only by demonstrating that
the kind of experience they provided was valuable in its own right
and not to be obtained from any other kind of activity" (pp. 67-68).
(The crucial figure in painting was Manet, whose significance, as
Greenberg saw it, for the inauguration of a truly optical mode of
painting has already been discussed.) He continued:
Each art, it turned out, had to effect this demonstration on its own
account. 'What had to be exhibited and made explicit was that which
was unique and irreducible not only in art in general but also in each
particular art. Each art had to determine, through the operations peculiar
to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself. By doing this,
each art would, to be sure, narrow its area of competence, but at the
same time itwould make its possession ofthis area all the more secure.
It quickly emerged that the unique and proper area ofcompetence
of each art coincided with all that was unique to the nature of its medium.
The task of self-criticism became to eliminate from the effects
of each art any and every effect that might conceivably be borrowed
from or by the medium ofevery other art. Thereby each art would be
rendered "pure," and in its "purity" find the guarantee ofits standards
ofquality aswell as ofits independence. "Purity" meant self-definition,
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 35
and the enterprise of self-criticism in the arts became one of selfdefinition
with a vengeance. (P. 68)
As described by Greenberg, the modernist enterprise involved
testing a wide range ofnorms and conventions in order to determine
which were inessential and therefore to be discarded, and which on
the contrary constituted the timeless and unchanging essence of the
art ofpainting. (Greenberg didn't use either ofthe lasttwo adjectives
but both are implicit in his argument.) By the early 1 g6os, the results
of that century-long project, Greenberg's famous modernist "'reduction,"'
were in. As he wrote in "Mter Abstract Expressionism":
Elsewhere [in "Modernist Painting"] I have written ofthe kind ofselfcritical
process which I think provides the infra-logic of modernist
art. . . . The aim of the self-criticism, which is entirely empirical and
not at all an affair of theory, is to determine the irreducible working
essence of art and the separate arts. Under the testing of modernism
more and more of the conventions of the art of painting have shown
thifnselves to be dispensable, unessential. By now it has been established,
it would seem, that the irreducible essence of pictorial art consists
in but two constitutive conventions or norms: flatness and the
delimitation of flatness; and that the observance of merely these tvvo
norms is enough to create an object which can be experienced as a
picture: thus a stretched or tacked-up canvas already exists as a picture-though
not necessarily as a successfulone.44
Greenberg may have been somewhat uneasy with this conclusion;
at any rate, he went on to state that Newman, Rothko, and Still (the
exemplary artists of "Mter Abstract Expressionism") had "swung the
self-criticism of modernist painting in a new direction simply by continuing
it in its old one. The question now asked through their art
is no longer what constitutes art, or the art of painting, as such, but
what irreducibly constitutes good art as such. Or rather, what is the
ultimate source of value or quality in art?" And the answer he gave
was "conception alone," by which he meant "invention, inspiration,
even intuition (in the usage of Croce, who did anticipate theoretically
what practice has just now discovered and confirmed for
itself) .""
I first took issue with these ideas in "Shape as Form," where I criticized
the idea of '"reduction"' in a footnote:
I take a reductionist conception of modernist painting to mean
this: that painting roughly since Manet is seen as a kind of cognitive
enterprise in which a certain quality (e.g., literalness) , set of norms
36 l AN INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM
(e.g·., flatness and the delimitation of flatness), or core of problems
(e.g., how to acknowledge the literal character of the support) is progressively
revealed as constituting the essence of painting-and, by implication,
as having done so all along. This seems to me gravely mistaken,
not on the grounds that modernist painting is not a cognitive
enterprise, but because it radically misconstrues the kind of cognitive
enterprise modernist painting is. VV'bat the modernist painter can be
said to discover in his work-what can be said to be revealed to him
in it-is not the irreducible essence of all painting but rather that
which, at the present moment in painting's history, is capable of convincing
him that it can stand comparison -with the painting of both
the modernist and the premodernist past whose quality seems to him
beyond question.
The immediate target of my critique of reductionism in "Shape as
Form" was not Greenberg himself so much as the group of artists
known as Minimalists, for whom, I wrote, "all conflict between the
literal character of the support and illusion of any kind is intolerable
and for whom, accordingly, the future of art lies in the creation of
works that, more than anything else, are wholly literal-in this respect
going 'beyond' painting." Hence my introduction of the term "literalist"
as a way of characterizing their views. What I don't quite say,
however-though it's implicit in my definition of reductionism,
which no one could have failed to recognize as a paraphrase of
Greenberg-is that precisely with respect to his understanding of
modernism Greenberg had no truer followers than the literalists. For
if, as Greenberg held, the "testing" ofmodernism led to the discovery
that the irreducible essence of pictorial art was nothing other than
the literal properties of the support, that is, flatness and the delimiting
of flatness, it's easy to see how a cohort of artists might come to
feel that that discovery did not go far enough, in particular that it
stopped short of recognizing that what had mattered all along was
not those particular properties but rather literalness as such, which
in the end could only be incompletely or equivocally expressed
within the art of painting-for example, by Greenberg's notional
stretched or tacked-up canvas or even by Stella's black and metallic
stripe paintings, the recent works which more than any other were
formative for literalist sensibility. From such a perspective, what was
called for was the surpassing of painting in the interests of literalness
or, as I also called it, objecthood: this at any rate was my reading of
the Minimalist pr<(ject. And my further claim in "Shape as Form" was
that Stella himself had refused the literalist option in favor of a re-
fu'-1 li"TRODUC:TION TO Mv ART CRITICISM I 37
newed commitment to the enterprise ofpainting, a comrnitment that
was spelled out, as if in the teeth of the literalist reading of his work,
in the irregular polygons.'16
In "Shape as Form," too, after saying that the Minimalists aspired
to make works that were wholly literal and thus went beyond painting,
I observed that
the literalness isolated and hypostatized in the work ofartists like Donald
Judd and Lany Bell is by no means the same literalness as that
acknowledged by advanced painting throughout the past century: it is
not the literalness ofthe support. Moreover, hypostatization is not acknowledgment.
The continuing problem of how to acknowledge the
literal character of the support-of what counts as that acknowledgment-has
been at least as crucial to the development of modernist
painting as the fact ofits literalness, and that problem has been eliminated,
not solved, by the artists in question. Their pieces cannot be
said to acknowledge literalness; they simply are literal. And it is hard to
see how literalness as such, divorced from the conventions which, from
Manet to Noland, Olitski, and Stella, have given literalness value and
have made it a bearer of conviction, can be experienced as a source of
both of these-and what is more, one powerful enough to generate
new conventions, a new art.
My insistence on a problematic of acknowledgment understood in
this way marks another stress in the difference between my view of
modernism and Greenberg's, and it also represents a further link
between my writing and Cavell's, in which the concept of acknowledgment
plays a fundamental role:" (In this introduction I have already
wielded the concept of acknowledgment as defined above in
the citation from my article on Poons of 1 972 and in the remarks on
Caro's table sculptures in the previous section.)
In "Art and Objecthood," written some months after "Shape as
Form," I took on Greenberg directly (again in a footnote). After
quoting his remarks about a stretched or tacked-up canvas already
existing as a picture though not necessarily as a successful one, I ob­
served:
To begin with, it is not quite enough to say that abare canvas tacked
to a wall is not "necessarily" a successful picture; it would, I think, be
more accurate [what I originally wrote was "less of an exaggeration"]
to say that it is not conceivably one. It may be countered that future
circumstances might be such as to make it a successful painting, but I
would argue that, for that to happen, the enterprise ofpainting would
38 \ AN INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM
have to change so drastically that nothing more than the name would
remain. (It would require a far greater change than that which painting
has undergone from Manet to Noland, Olitski, and Stella!) Moreover,
seeing something as a painting in the sense that one sees the
tacked-up canvas as a painting, and being convinced that a particular
work can stand comparison with the painting ofthe past whose quality
is not in doubt, are altogether different experiences: it is, I want to say,
as though unless something compels conviction as to its quality it is no
more than trivially or nominally a painting. This suggests that flatness
and the delimitation offlatness ought not to be thought ofas the "irreducible
essence ofpictorial art," but rather as something like the tninimal
conditionsforsomething's beingseen as a painting; and that the crucial
question is not what those minimal and, so to speak, timeless conditions
are, but ratherwhat, at a given moment, is capable ofcompelling·
conviction, of succeeding as painting. This is not to say that painting
hasno essence; it is to claim that that essence-i.e., that which compels
conviction-is largely determined by, and therefore changes continually
in response to, the vital work of the recent past. The essence of
painting is not something irreducible. Rather, the task of the modernist
painter is to discover those conventions that, at a given moment,
aloneare capable of establishing his work's identity as painting.
My attempt to historicize the concept of essence in this way was of
course indebted to Wittgenstein on essence and convention. But
what I want to focus on here is the related stress on the importance of
conviction (another Wittgensteinian motif, already present in earlier
quotations) , which has the virtue, among other things, of undoing
the artificial separation that Greenberg was compelled to posit between
two distinct yet somehow continuous phases in the modernist
dynamic: a first phase, lasting from Manet through Abstract Expressionism,
directed toward the discovery of the irreducible working essence
of pictorial art, and a second phase, beginning with Newman,
Rothko, and Still, directed toward the discovery of what irreducibly
constitutes "good" art-a phase, as Greenberg puts it in the quotation
cited above, that asks the question "What is the ultimate source
ofvalue or quality in art?"
I say Greenberg was compelled to posit two such phases for the
simple reason that on his basic account of modernist self-criticism
in "Modernist Painting" the enterprise of painting would necessarily
come to an end with the discovery of its irreducible norms or conventions-a
further point of inadvertent collusion between him and the
Minimalists.'" For Greenberg in 1 962, however, despite the discovery
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 39
of the irreducibility of flatness and the delimiting of flatness, painting
hadn't yet come to an end, by which I mean that certain painters
continued to produce works he greatly admired, and so in "After
Abstract Expressionism" he was forced to devise a second dynamic,
the search for what constitutes value or quality in art, to account for
that otherwise inexplicable fact. But if, as I maintained against him,
the "cognitive" dimension of the modernist dynamic was an attempt
to discover those conventions which, at a given historical conjuncture,
were capable of compelling or eliciting conviction, then there
was no reason to imagine either that that dynamic would have the
shape of a "reduction" or, a fortiori, that it would be succeeded by a
second dynamic aimed at determining the general grounds of value
or quality in art. My way of putting this in "Art and Objecthood" was
to say, "But I would argue that what modernism has meant is that
the two questions-What constitutes the art of painting? And what
constitutes good painting?-are no longer separable; the first disappears,
or increasingly tends to disappear, into the second." (I seem
to have been allowing for the possibilitythatatan earlierstage ofmodernism
they were distinguishable, at least in the minds of its practi­
tioners.)49
My further claim that a tacked-up bare canvas couldn't conceivably
be a successful painting, that is, compel conviction as a painting, is
something else again: in effect I was betting, with perfect confidence
but also in the absence of any possibility of proof, that more than
that was required. What in retrospect may seem surprising or even
ironic about Greenberg's implication that a bare canvas might be
enough is that no one at that moment approached his insight into
the coloristic achievements of Newman, Rothko, Still, and others. But
the reductionist logic of Greenberg's theory of modernism meant
that color or indeed "openness" in recent painting could not assume
the constitutive or essentialist significance of flatness and the delimiting
of flatness, despite his claim that "by the new openness they
have attained Newman, Rothko and Still point to what I would risk
saying is the only way to high pictorial art in the near future";50 they
belonged, in his account, to modernism's supposed second phase,
but therewhat turned out to be decisive was not Rothko's, Newman's,
or Still's (or Louis's, Noland's, or Olitski's) handling of color or attainment
ofopenness but rather the philosophical revelation in their
works of the primacyof conception, invention, inspiration, intuition.
The gulf between Greenberg's critical insights and his theoretical
model was never greater than in "After Abstract Expressionism."51
40 I ;\;.'\!. INTRODUCTION TC) MY ART CRITICISM
(Recently, rereading "Morris Louis" in the light of my insistence in
"Art and Objecthood" on the inevitable insufficiency of tbe bare canvas,
it occurred to me that my discussion of Louis's unfurleds may be
taken as showing what in fact was required in order that a large expanse
of canvas compel conviction as painting, that is, be endowed
with specifically pictorial, not simply literal, significance -''' By the
same token, my account in "Larry Poons's New Paintings" (reprinted
in this book) of the exhaustion of the authority of the bare canvas
ground in all recent pictures in which it had appeared suggests that
by the early 1 970s the evolution ofadvanced painting had been away
from the possibility that Greenberg had glimpsed ten years before.
In the Wittgensteinian terms developed above, this-more broadly,
the shift away from an emphasis on shape toward one on surfaceamounted
to a change in the essence of painting over that period.)
I might add that along with my revision of the logic of modernist
painting went a recognition of the need to rethink the significance
of Manet's art, in particular his momentous canvases of the early
1 86os (the OldMusician, Diijeunersurl'herbe, Olympia, Angels atthe Tomb
ofChrist, etc.) . I have attempted that twice, first in "Manet's Sources"
and recently in Manet's Modernism, where I close by suggesting that
Greenberg's account ofManet as the first modernist painter byvirtue
of the flatness and opticality of his paintings is largely an artifact of
Impressionism. (I return to this point briefly at the end of part 3.)
The critique oftheatricality in ''Art and Objecthood"
IT's HARD to know what should be said at this late
date about my critique ofMinimalist theatricality in "Art and Objecthood."
There is no need to rehearse the details of that critique here.
But several points seem worth making.
1 . The essay largely proceeds by analyzing a series oftexts by three
leading Minimalist, that is, literalist, figures-Donald Judd, Robert
Morris, and Tony Smith. But its chief motivation in the first place had
to do with my experience of literalist works and exhibitions during
the previous several years, in particular my recurrent sense, especially
in gallery shows devoted to one or another artist, of!iteralism's singular
effectiveness as mise-en-scene (Morris and Carl Andre were masters
at this) . As I said in a talk at the Dia Art Foundation in 1 987, it
was as though their installations infallibly offered their audience a
kind of heightened perceptual experience, and I wanted to understand
the nature of that surefire, and therefore to my mind essentially
inartistic (I should have said unrnodernist) , effect.53 I quickly
AN INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM I 41
realized that the basis of that effect was that both work and installation
(in a sense the installation was the work, as Thierry de Duve
has emphasized)"' solicited and included the beholder in a way that
was fundamentally antithetical to the expressive and presentational
mode of the recent painting and sculpture I most admired. And that
led to the further claim that the present moment in advanced art was
marked by an irreconcilable conflict between the "theatrical" workin-situations
of the literalists and the "antitheatrical" painting and
sculpture of the radically abstract artists I championed.
2 . Another source of that vision of conflict was the recognition
arrived at in "Shape in Form" that whereas literalist work aimed to
project and hypostatize objecthood, the abstract painting and sculpture
I admired sought to undo or neutralize objecthood in one way
or another. With respect to painting, the struggle against objecthood
was mainly carried out (as I've said) in and through the medium of
shape; while as regards Caro's sculptures the means chiefly cited in
"Art and Objecthood" were those ofsyntax, radical unlikeness to nature,
and the imitation of the efficacy of gesture. (Unfortunately, I
muddied the issue by quoting Greenberg on the new sculpture offering
the illusion "that matter is incorporeal, weightless, and exists only
optically like a mirage" before going on to stress again the syntactic
nature of Caro's art.)55 I also said of Caro's sculptures that "like certain
music and poetry, they are possessed by the knowledge of the
human body and how, in innumerable ways and moods, it makes
meaning . . . as though the possibility ofmeaning what we say and do
alone makes his sculpture possible." This is obscure, as is my claim
that Caro's sculptures imitate the efficacy of gesture. But especially
in the light of my previous discussions of the evocation of bodiliness
in Caro's art, not to mention my subsequent articles "Two Sculptures
by Anthony Caro" (which includes the discussion of Dee-p Body Blue
quoted above) and "Caro's Abstractness," as well as the introduction
to the catalog for the Hayward Gallery retrospective of rg6g (where
if anything I overstate the role of the body in his work) ,56 it ought at
least to have meant that I can't be charged with denying the body in
favor of conceiving of the viewer as "floating in front of the work as
pure optical ray."57 (Is there another frontline art critic writing in the
rg6os who harped on the importance of bodily experience to the
extent that I did? I can't think of one.)58 The crucial point, however,
is that after writing "Shape as Form" I had a growing sense that something
more was at stake in the struggle over objecthood. And I soon
came to feel that that something more concerned the issue of the
42 I AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
relationship between work and beholder (Morris's "Remarks on
Sculpture" insist� on this) . The literalist projection and hypostatization
of objecthood, I went on to argue, amounted to a new genre of
theater, while the modernist imperative to seek to negate objecthood
expressed a fundamental hostility to theater in all its manifestations.
(My critique ofthe literalist address to the viewer's bodywas not that
hodiliness as such had no place in art but rather that literalism theatricalized
the body, put it endlessly on stage, made it uncanny or
opaque to itself, hollowed it out, deadened its expressiveness, denied
its finitude and in a sense its humanness, and so on. There is, I might
have said, something vaguely monstrousabout the body in literalism.)
3· As the essay makes clear, I saw those as recent developments. For
example, I wrote that "objecthood has become an issue for modernist
painting only within the past several years. This, however, is not
to say that before the present situation came into being, paintings,
or sculptures for that matter, simply were objects. It would, I think, be
closer to the truth to say that they simply were not. The risk, even the
possibility, of seeing works of art.. as nothing more than objects did
not exist. That such a possibility began to present itself around rg6o
was largely the result of developments within modernist painting." I
also wrote that "theater is now the negation ofart" (emphasis added)
and in general strongly implied that the high moderniststruggle with
theatricality was itself something new. But my invocation of Bertolt
Brecht andAntonin Artaud also suggested that theatricality had been
an issue for the theater for decades. And with the publication of my
subsequent books on the French antitheatrical tradition between the
middle of the eighteenth century and the advent of Manet and the
Impressionists in the r86os and 1 87os, it became all too easy to assume,
first, that I believe that a struggle between theatricality and
antitheatricality was continuously central to painting from the mideighteenth
century to the present, and second, that I agree with Diderot
and other antitheatrical critics in their negative and positive
assessments of a host of painters between Greuze and Manet (and
earlier). Both assumptions are mistaken and could only be based on
a careless reading of my work, but I want to postpone discussing the
question of the relation of my art criticism to my art-historical writings
until part 3 of this introduction.
4- In historical retrospect, "Art and Objecthood" was both right
and wrong about the developments it described. On the one hand,
it seems clear that literalism did represent a break with modernism
as regards the terms of its appeal to the viewer. In fact, subsequent
A.� INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 43
commentators who have taken issue with "Art and Objecthood" are
in agreement with it on that score; where they disagree hotly is with
respect to my evaluation of Minimalist theatricality. This is to say that
the terms of my argument have gone untouched by my critics, an unusual
state of affairs in light ofthe antagonism "Art and Objecthood"
has provoked.59 On the other hand, my essay is nowhere near as pessimistic
as future events would warrant from my point ofview; I don't
seem to have imagined the possibility that within a few years the art
I admired would be all but submerged under an avalanche of more
or less openly theatrical productions and practices, as proved to be
the case.
It's important to recognize, however, that the extraordinary efflorescence
of theatricality in the 1 970s and 1 g8os was accompanied by
a conceptual or theoretical crisis as regards the question of artistic
value as such. As I wrote in "Art and Objecthood": 'The concepts of
quality and value-and to the extent that these are central to art,
the concept ofart itself-are meaningful, or whollymeaningful, only
within the individual arts. What lies between the arts is theater."60 And
with the widespread turning away from the high modernist emphasis
on painting and sculpture, not only were the new practitioners
driven to ever more overtly theatrical interventions, but the very notions
of value or quality or conviction lost all relevance to what was
going on. This had been anticipated byJudd's claim, "A work needs
only to be interesting," with which I took issue in both "Shape as
Form" and "Art and Objecthood." In the same spirit, but more programmatically,
Hal Foster commented in 1 987: "There's a line in 'Art
and Objecthood' to the effect that painting must compel conviction.
Now a primary motive of the innovative art of my generation [Foster
was born in 1955] is precisely that it not compel conviction-that it
trouble conviction, that it demystify belief: that it not be what it seems
to be."61 Elsewhere Foster has characterized the postmodern impulse
in terms that relate it to Marcel Duchamp's original expose of the
institutional nature of art:
"Quality," . . . exposed as an imposition of a set of norms, is displaced
as a criterion by "interest," and art is henceforth seen to develop less
by formal historicist refinement (as in "pursue the pure, extract the
extraneous") than by structural historical negation (as in "how can I
as an artist expand the aesthetic and ideological limits of the artistic
paradigm that I have received?"). At this point, too, the object ofcritical
investigation becomes less the essence ofa medium [Foster means
this in Greenberg's sense, not mine, but it would make no difference
44 � AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
to his argument if the reverse were true] than "the social etfect (function)
of a work" in the present, and, perhaps most important, the intent
of artistic intervention becomes less to secure a transcendental
"conviction" in art and its institutions than to undertake an immanent
critique of its rules and regulations. Indeed, this last may be seen as a
provisional distinction between formalist-modernist and avant-gardistpostmodernist
art: "to compel conviction" versus "to cast doubt"; "to
seek the essential" versus "to reveal the conditional."62
In other words, what I have called a crisis with respect to notions of
value is described by Foster, not unreasonably, as the replacement
of one set of concerns by another, altogether different set. But the
question, my question, is how deep or compelling or significant!
would even ask how difficult-an achievement "casting doubt" or
"revealing the conditional" or "troubling conviction" or "demystifYing
belief" finally is? Put the other way around, bow much is lost
· when the modernist enterprise as I have described it is replaced by
Foster's "immanent critique"? To appeal once more to a famous
crux: Tony Smith's night car ride on the unfinished NewJersey Turnpike
led him to some stark conclusions. "I thought to myself;" Smith
said, "it ought to be clear that's the end of art. Most painting looks
pretty pictorial after that. There is no way you can frame it [the car
ride, he seems to have meant], you just have to experience it" (I
quote and discuss this in "Art and Objecthood") . This is perhaps the
exemplary post-Ducharnp instance of the revelation of the conditional,
and how much weight does it finally have? Why should any
experience that is not an experience of art be taken as laying bare
the end of art? Would the experience of a spectacular sunset or a
nuclear explosion do as much, and if not, why not? What's wrong
with painting, even modernist painting, "looking pictorial"? And how
tenable is the contrast between "framing" and "experiencing" on
which Smith insists? (There is no more sacred term in Greenberg's
lexicon than "experience.")"
5· A final crux in "Art and Objecthood" concerns the issue oftemporality.
In the essay's last pages I claimed that literalist sensibility
was preoccupied with experiences that persist in time, and more
broadly that the "presentment" ofduration, of "time itselfas though
it were some sort of literalist object," was central to the new esthetic.
Here too I drew a sharp contrast with the modernist painting and
sculpture I most admired. "It is as though one's experience of [modernistpainting
and sculpture] has no duration," I wrote, "not because
one in fact experiences a picture by Noland or Olitski or a sculp-
A;-; hTRODUCTIOl\ TO lv1Y ART CRITICISM j ,;j,;)
ture by David Smith or Caro in no time at all, but because at every moment
the work itselfis wholly manifest. . . . It is this continuous and entire
presentness [a term I adopted in opposition to literalist "presence"],
amounting, as it were, to the perpetual creation of itself, that one
experiences as a kind of instantaneousness, as though ifonly one were
infmite!y more acute, a single infinitely brief instant would be long
enough to see everything, to experience the work in all its depth and
fullness, to be forever convinced by it."
For de Duve, who endorses my view that Mimimalist work "is an
art of time" ("like theater," he adds) , my invocation of presentness
made me "but the last in a long line of aestheticians who, from Lessing
to Greenberg through Wolfflin, sought in the instantaneous spatiality
of painting the specific essence of plastic art." More broadly,
de Duve argues that the literalist preoccupation with duration-nowhere
more developed than in the work of Robert Morris-gave "a
fatal blow" to that basic tenet of classical and modernist esthetics 6'1
But in the first place my overall insistence on a nonreductive modernist
dialectic militated against there being any "specific essence of
plastic art" as such.65 And in the second, my account of the struggle
between literalism and modernism disputes in advance de Duve's notion
of a "fatal blow." More precisely, a major strand of my argument
in both "Shape as Form" and "Art and Objecthood" was that literalism
arose within modernism as a misreading of its dialectic (a misreading
anticipated, on the plane of theory, hy Greenberg in "Modernist
Painting" and "After Abstract Expressionism") , which implies
that at a certain point in the recent history of modernist painting
and sculpture (mainly painting) , the projection and hypostatization
of literalness and duration (also of endlessness, of resistance to closure)
emerged as inner ternptations which it was now necessary for
the modernist arts to recognize as such and to take positive measures
to refuse and defeat. "It should be evident," I wrote in "Shape as
Form," "that . . . literalist sensibility is itself a product, or by-product,
of the development of modernist painting itself-more accurately,
of the increasingly explicit acknowledgment of the literal character
of the support that has been central to that development." Not that
"inner" and "outer" could be kept wholly distinct from one another.
"Literalist sensibility," "Art and Objecthood" also says,
is . . . a response to the samedevelopments that have largely compelled
modernist painting to undo its objecthood-more precisely, the same
developments seen differently, that is, in theatrical terms, by a sensibility
already theatrical, already (to say the worst) corrupted or perverted by
46 \ AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
theater. Similarly, what has compelled modernist painting to defeat or
suspend its own objecthood is notjust developments internal to itself,
but the same general, enveloping, infectious theatricality that corM
rupted literalist sensibility in the first place and in the grip of which
the developments in question-and modernist painting in generalare
seen as nothing more than an uncompelling and presenceless kind
of theater. It was the need to break the fingers of that grip that made
objecthood an issue for modernist painting.
In an obvious sense, the characterization of theatricality as a corrosive
force external to both modernism and literalism is at odds with
a stress on inner conflict. But in another sense it heightens that stress
by placing modernism and literalism on the same footing: why did
the one fight off theatricality and the other accede to it?66
In any case, the conflict between modernism and literalism evoked
in "Shape as Form" and "Art and O�jecthood" resists being redescribed
as a matter of simple supercession and demystification,
as if modernist painting had in fact come to an end with Stella's
black pictures (Stella himself refused to regard them in that light),67
to be notjust succeeded but invalidated by literalism, which in its e.mhrace
of objecthood and temporality-also by virtue of its frankly
situational character-is imagined to have established not only a
new paradigm of art making but a new, more "contemporary" (e.g.,
nontranscendental, embodied, "externalized," entropic, divided, decentered)
model of the subject or self68 Indeed, a sense of inner
combat motivated the overtly theological cast ofmyessay's rhetorical
frame: "Art and Objecthood" opens with an epigraph from Perry
Miller's wonderful book on Jonathan Edwards and closes with two
sentences that soon became notorious (the second one anyway) : 'We
are all literalists most or all of our lives. Presentness is grace." As for
the epigraph, it quotes Edwards writing in hisjournal, '"It is certain
with me that the world exists anew every moment; that the existence
of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed.' The
abiding assurance," Miller comments, "is that 'we every moment see
the same proof of a God as we should have seen ifwe had seen Him
create the world at first."'69 I meant the epigraph to be taken as a
gloss on the concept of presentness, and in particular as suggesting
that what was at stake in my invocation of that concept was something
other than mere instantaneousness (however that is defined) , which
incidentally is why dutifully rehearsing Derrida's deconstruction of
the Husserlian "now" has no bearing on my argurnents.70 (Note too
my reliance in the passages quoted above on constructions involving
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM ! 47
"as though," which by itself should have ruled out taking instantaneousness
literally, so to speak.) My point, I would say today, was that
at every moment the claim on the viewer of the modernist painting
or sculpture is renewed totally, as if nothing Jess than that is the condition
of its expressiveness. By the sarne token, the viewer's conviction
in a work's seriousness, its "quality," is never for a moment, or is
only for a moment, safe from the possibility of doubt (a modernist
state of affairs with a vengeance) ; conviction-grace-must be secured
again and again, as though continuously, by the work itself but
also, in the act of experiencing, by the viewer, by us.
A further feature of the epigraph is its obvious "sublimity," which
means that from the outset "Art and Objecthood" can't be read in
terms ofan implied contrastbetween the (good) beautiful and (bad)
sublime. I don't. say I fully understood this at the time; if someone
had asked me, I might have consented to the latter equation, if only
because of being struck by the all-too-obviously "sublime" connotations
of Smith's story of his nocturnal car ride or his evocation in the
same interview of the enormous drill ground at Nuremburg. But
what I actually wrote exceeds that frame (in particular, my frame exceeds
that frame) .7l
3· Art Criticism and Art History
As I'vE already suggested, one source of confusion
for readers familiar both with my art criticism and my art-historical
writings turns on the role played in each by the concept of theatricality.
Starting in the mid-1g7os, when I began publishing preliminary
versions of parts of Absorption and Theatricality, and ending with
Manet'sModernism more than twenty years later, I put forward an account
of the evolution of a central tradition within French painting
between the middle of the eighteenth century and the advent of Manet
and the Impressionists in the 1 86os and 1 87os. The core issue in
that tradition-lucidly theorized at the outset by the great philosophe
and pioneer art critic Denis Diderot-concerned the relationship
between painting and beholder, which is to say it concerned the
same relationship as the one that bore the brunt of my analysis in
"Art and Objecthood." Furthermore, throughout that tradition the
same values were in force as in "Art and Objecthood." (As we shall
see, in this context sameness isn't quite identity.) By that I mean that
for Diderot and the French antitheatrical tradition generally, the
painter's taskwas crucially to negate or neutralize what I have called
48 I A.'<. INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
the primordial convention that paintings are made to be beheld.
This was to be done, in the first place, by depicting figures so engrossed
or (a key term in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century criticism)
absorbed in what they were doing, thinking, and feeling that
they appeared oblivious of everything else, including, crucially, the
beholder standing before the painting. To the extent that the painter
succeeded in that aim, the beholder's existence was effectively ignored
or, put more strongly, denied; the figures in the painting appeared
alone in the world (alternatively we may say that the world of
the painting appeared self-sufficient, autonomous, a closed system
independent of, in that sense blind to, the world of the beholder) ,
though it was also true that only by making a painting that appeared
to ignore or deny or be blind to the beholder in this way could the
painter accomplish his ultimate purpose-bringing actual viewers to
a halt in front of the painting and holding them there in a virtual
trance of imaginative involvement.
The antithesis of absorption was theatricality, playing to an audience,
which quickly emerged as the worst ofall artistic faults. Indeed,
the issue of theatricality was from the outset defined in the starkest
possible terms: either the figure or figures in a painting seemed entirely
oblivious to being beheld orthey stood condemned as theatrical.
Equally all-or-nothing was the opposition between drama and
theater: whereas previously the two terms were, if not interchangeable,
at any rate inseparable from one another, for Diderot and the
French antitheatrical tradition they were faced off against one another
by definition. Drama, the positive term, absolutely precluded
all suggestion that the beholder had been taken into account (no
addressing the audience, falsely rhetorical gestures, symmetrical arrangement
of personages, elaborate costumes) ; conversely, the least
hint of theater turned drama into melodrama (to use a third term
that would become current only in the early nineteenth century) .
For obvious reasons, the starkness of those oppositions has reminded
many readers of the evaluative schema of "Art and Oqjecthood" and
related texts. And since my further claim in Absorption and Theatricalityand
its sequels has been that at the heart of the evolution of painting
in France between Greuze and Manet was a constantly renewed
attempt to defeat theatricality by means of absorption and/or drama,
and In the case of Courbet by an effort on the part of the painterbeholder
to merge all but corporeally with the painting on which he
was working, many readers have also assumed that my critical and
AN INTRODVCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 49
art-historical writings form a seamless whole. But that assumption is
wrong in several respects.
For one thing, it ignores my insistence, spelled ont in Courbet's
Realism and implicit in Absorption and Theatricality, on the futility of
trying to determine whether or not a given painting conclusively
succeeded or for that matter conclusively failed in overcoming
the condition I have been calling theater. Consider, for example,
Jacques-Louis David's Oath ofthe Horatii ( 1785; fig. 7 1 ) , the picture
that more than any other marks the early triumphant phase of the
modern French schooL In my reading, the Horatii was intended by
David as a rigorously dramatic, not theatrical, painting, in which each
of the figures and all of them together were meant to be seen as
wholly engaged in the strongly contrasted actions ofswearing an oath
to fight to the death for Rome (the men) and of all but collapsing in
horror and grief (the women) . (The contrastbetween the two groups
was itself a vehicle of the drama.) But we also know that roughly ten
years later, while working on the Intervention of the Sabine Women
( 1 799; fig. 72), David characterized the composition of the Horatii
as theatrical in a pejorative sense, by which I take him to have meant
that the unprecedented evocation of physical and emotional intensity
in the earlier work and perhaps also the starkness of the contrast
between the men and women now struck him as excessive and exaggerated,
which is to say as too deliberately seeking to impress. And
in fact the Sabines marks a deliberate withdrawal from the values and
effects of pictorial drama in favor of a Jess instantaneous and impassioned
representational mode. Within roughly a decade, however,
the Sabines was attacked as theatrical by various commentators precisely
because it was seen to depict personages merely posing (i.e.,
insufficiently impassioned) , and by the time Stendhal wrote in the
mid-1 82os it had come to stand for all that appeared mannered and
unmotivated in the art of the David schooL
Now it may seem that, confronted with these shifting interpretations
of the issue of theatricality on the part of the artist, the task of
the art historian is to try to resolve the matter once and for all by
determining (to begin with) whether David was right about antitheatricality
in 1784-85, when he painted the Horatii, or in 1796-99,
when he found the Horatii theatrical and devised the significantly
different mise-en-scene of the Sabines. (A third possibility is that he
was wrong on both occasions.) But in fact the art historian ought to
do nothing of the kind. From a historical perspective, looking back
50 I A;� INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
at David's paintings from the late twentieth century, the Horatii, like
the Sabines, is inherently neither dramatic nor theatrical. All we are
justified in saying, if I am right in my claims about what David was up
to, is thatwhereas in 1 784-85 he aimed to produce an antitheatrical
work by intensely dramatic means, by the second half of the 1790s
the dramaturgical and stylistic resources he had earlier mobilized in
the interests of visual drama now seemed to him overdone and in
that sense theatrical in effect, and that he was therefore led to modify
his original solution inways that themselves were later found theatrical
on exactly opposite grounds. More broadly, antitheatricality
emerges in my books and essays on French painting as a structure of
artistic intention on the part of painters and as a structure of demand,
expectation, and reception on the part of critics and audiences,
not as a formal or expressive quality inhering or failing to inhere,
timelessly and changelessly, in individual works.
This seems to be a hard idea to grasp. The Sabines in particular
tends to strike the modern viewer as so self-evidently theatrical that
it can feel perverse to reject the temptation to declare it such in favor
of seeking to understand, first, how it carne to be the way it is and
second, how it was seen both by its contemporaries and by succeeding
generations of viewers.72 (This is even truer of Greuze's
genre paintings of the 176os and after.) Perhaps one way of making
that rejection feel less odd is to observe that, in my account, it was
precisely the constitutive instability of the paintings and prints of
the central French tradition-the works ofGreuze, David, Gras, Gericault,
Daumier, Couture, Millet, Courbet, Fantin-Latour, Legros,
Whistler, and others-with respect to the issue of antitheatricality
that provided the tradition's hidden motor, in a manner of speaking.
Because the paintings in question were in themselves neither antitheatrical
nor theatrical, the overarching, transgenerational aim of
making paintings that seemed genuinely indi±Ierent to the beholder
could never be realized definitively and so remained continually in
force. Works that at one moment were felt to satisfy that aim soon
appeared not to do so, though by the same token works that were
once dismissed with scorn could also come back into at least partial
favor (as happened with Greuze in the 186os) . Indeed, in the r 8sos
and r 86os a single artist, Millet, violently divided the viewing public.
For one group of critics, his works were exemplary because they appeared
devoid of the least trace of consciousness of an audience; for
another group, the obviousness of his efforts to produce that effect
made his pictures seem unbearably theatrical-and here too the task
AN INTRODUCTION ·ro Mv ART CRITICISM I 5 1
of the art historian is to try to understand the basis of that division
of opinion, not to seek to resolve the dispute by coming down on
one side or the other.73
It follows that those commentators who have assumed that in my
art-historical writings I share the views and in particular the judgments
of Diderot and other antitheatrical critics whom I cite and
discuss are mistaken. Simply put, my art-historical writings are resolutely
nonjudgmental with respect to individual works and oeuvres
in the antitheatrical tradition (and outside it, e.g., the art ofWatteau
and Boucher), not in the name of an ideal of historical objectivity
(whatever the feasibility of such an ideal) , but rather in the interest
of a particular historical project: tracking the constantly shifting and
by no means unitary structure of valuejudgments keyed to the issue
of antitbeatricality as tbat structure found expression both in paintings
and in art criticism.
In short, between myself as historian of the French antitheatrical
tradition and the critic who wrote "Art and Objecthood" there looms
an unbridgeable gulf. For not only is "Art and Objecthood" harshly
critical of Minimalist theatricality. More important, the present
writer, commenting in this introduction both on his early art criticism
and his later art history, sees no way of negotiating the difference
between the priority given in his criticism tojudgments ofvalue
both positive and negative and the principled refusal of all suchjudgments
in the pursuit of historical understanding, despite the fact that
the developments explored in Absorption and Theatricality, Courbet's
Realism, and Manet's Modernism are part of the deep background to
those discussed in "Shape as Form" and "Art and Objecthood"-and
despite the fact that the latter essays belong to a tradition ofantitheatrical
criticism founded by Diderot more than two centuries before
(as I've said, I wasn't aware of that when I wrote them) . In other
words, my art-historical writings investigate crucial aspects of the genealogy
both of the issues treated in "Art and Objecthood" and related
essays and of the judgments expressed in them. But genealogical
knowledge turns out to be powerless to "historicize" my present
relation to those essays: although I sometimes feel thattheywere written
by another person (or at least in another world, that ofAmerica
in the age ofthe Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights, the assassinations)
, I cannot disconnect my present self from the evaluations
they express (although I could not write those essays now, I have no
choice but to stand behind them) .71 Nor is this simply a matter ofmy
continued indifference to the work of.Judd, Morris, Smith, and other
52 I r'U"'i INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
literalists: those feelings might hy now have found different expression-for
example, the entire issue of theatricality might by now
have come to strike me as a red herring-but that hasn't happened.
It's as if somewhere around rg6o time undergoes a twist, and as if
this side of that twist my relation to that issue remains implacably
critical, not historical."' (To that extent, I find myself in unexpected
agreement with Greenberg's distinction between the judgmental approach
of art criticism and the nonjudgmental stance of art history,
though not of course with bis deprecation of the latter.) And as mentioned
earlier, no one of all those who have written against "Art and
Objecthood" has contended that literalist art was not theatrical; instead,
they have tried to reverse my negative assessment of theatricality
itself, which is understandable but also suggests that the relation
of work to beholder took a new, as yet "unhistoricizable" form
with and around the literalist adventure. Shortly after "Art and Objecthood"
appeared, Robert Smithson wrote a characteristically brilliant
letter to Artforum in which he asked: "Could it be there is a
double Michael Fried?" Whatever the right answer was in 1 967, the
answer now is yes.76
(Actually, the answer is yes only as regards the critical as distinct
from the theoretical claims of "Shape as Form" and "Art and Objecthood."
My case against the argumentsbehind literalism and reductionism
was ahead of its time: I owe to Walter Benn Michaels the
recognition that my disagreement with the literalists on the plane
of theory anticipates by fifteen years crucial aspects of the "Against
Theory" debate in which Michaels and his then Berkeley colleague
Steven Knapp sought to refute the premises of de Manian and other
varieties of linguistic "materialism."77 With respect to those issues,
there is no question of a conflict between history and criticism, distance
and proximity.)
Another assumption I sometimes meet is that I think there exists
notjust a certain parallel but an actual continuity between the antitheatrical
tradition from the 1 750s to the advent of Maner and the
struggle against theatricality in abstract painting and sculpture in the
tg6os. But of course I don't. Not only is there no strict equivalent in
"Art and Objecthood" and related texts for the notions ofabsorption
and drama in my art-historical writing.78 My work on eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century French painting has from the first been governed
by the belief that the antitbeatrical tradition reached a stage of
absolute crisis, indeed was liquidated asa tradition, in and by Maner's
revolutionary canvases of the first half of the 1 86os, and that at least
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 53
as regards the issue of beholding whatever took place after that crisis
·was in an important sense discontinuous with all that had gone before.
In Manet's Modernism I complicate that notion by describing the
radically innovatory status of Manet's pictures of the r 86os as all but
inseparable from the interpretation of those paintings posited by
early Impressionism, but I nevertheless regard their repudiation of
absorption in favor of facingness and strikingness-their embrace
of what I call a "presentational" as distinct from "actional" kind of
theatricality-as breaking fundamentally with the Diderotian tradition
as a whole. And yet the break with that tradition did not mark
the disappearance of the sort of concerns that had motivated it all
along. "Painting after Manet," I write in the coda to Manet's Modernism,
"would be severed from the Diderotian tradition that had made
it possible (it would no longer be a requirement of ambitious painting
that it defeat theatricality, though antagonism to the latter would
remain a live option). But painting after Manet would not. be liberated
from the concerns of that tradition (it would not thereafter be
indifferent to problems of beholding) , least of all when a final step
in a formalist-modernist evolution would purport to go beyond painting
into Minimalist objecthood."79 (For "formalist-modernist" read
Greenbergian.) A great. deal more remains to be discovered about
the vicissitudes of the relationship between painting and beholder
from Manet to Stella. But that is a task for other occasions and in
part for other writers.
Finally, in the introduction and coda to Manet's Modernism I argue
that the basic formalist-modernist view-enshrined in Greenberg's
"Modernist Painting"-that paintings consist essentially in flat surfaces
conjoined to a sheerly visual or optical mode of spatiality
amounts to nothing more nor less than a theoretical rationale for
the Impressionist picture.80 For some time now, as was noted above
in "The Issue of 'Opticality,"' formalist-modernism's overinvestment
in opticality has been under widespread attack. But potentially far
more productive of a genuine change in thinking, I suggest, is the
recognition of lmpressionism's role in virtually rewiring the human
sensorium as far as the experience of paintings is concerned, for it
is only on that. basis that. we can begin to gauge the extent to which
even the most sophisticated-seeming modern commentaries on
painting, including those of formalist-modernism's mostvocal critics,
have remained captive to a set of assumptions that first took shape
more than 1 25 years ago.81 !t was in shifting the focus ofattention to
a consideration of the relationship between painting and beholder
54 I A� INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
that (I don't see how else to put this) I accomplished the arthistorical
work that made that recognition possible, and my closing
point is simply that although ''Art and Objecthood" and the other
pieces in this book were not yet engaged in that work, it was only
once they werewritten that it began to seem a necessary thing to do.
THROUGHOUT THE years when I waswriting art criticism
I alsowrote poems, some ofwhich were collected in the volume
called Powers mentioned in part 1 of this introduction. Andjust over
twenty years later, in 1994, Farrar, Straus and Giroux brought out a
second book of poems, To the Center ofthe Earth, which comprises a
selection from Powers along with new work.82 I have always believed
that the poems, the art criticism, and the art history go together, that
they share a single vision of reality. More than that isn't for me to say.
NOTES
Baltimore, Maryland
May 28, 1 996
1 . Martin Heidegger, ''The Origin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, Language,
Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, 197 1 ) , p. 7 1 .
2. All three have been published by the University of Chicago Press.
3· Millard was then an advanced graduate student at the Fogg; he subsequently
became chief curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
and also wrote art criticism for the Hudson Review. Other graduate students at
Harvard during those yearswho became involved -with contemporary art include
Kermit Swiler Champa, Rosalind Krauss, and Kenworth Moffett. The senior professor
of modern art at Harvard at that time, Frederick B. Deknatel, sympathized
with that involvement. It's fair to say, though, that for all of us the dominant
intellectual presence in the Department of Fine Arts during those years was
Freedberg, arguably the foremost art historian of the Italian High Renaissance
and Mannerism of his generation and a teacher of genius. F'reedberg's "formalist"
methodology no doubt reinforced our interest in Greenberg (see part 1 of
the introduction to the catalog for the exhibition Three American Painters, reprinted
in this book as "ThreeAmerican Painters: Kenneth Noland,jules Olitski,
Frank Stella"), but what the two men, otherwise so different, also had in common
was the distinction of their "eyes": this is evident in Freedberg's writings,
but no one who wasn't present at his extraordinary lectures and seminars can
imagine the inspiration they offered toward a life of looking.
4- For his early response to those discussions see Stanley Cavell, "Music Discomposed"
and "A Matter of Meaning It," in Must We Mean "What We Say?A Book
of&says (New York, 1g6g), and the section entitled "Excursus: Some Modernist
Painting," in his book The World Viewed: Rejlections on the Ontology of.P'ilrn (1970;
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM 1 55
enlarged ed., Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1979). An early essay by Cavell
that meant a great deal to me is "The Availability ofWittgenstein's Later Philoso�
phy" ( 1962), reprinted in Must We Mean 'What We Say?
5· Justover ayear later Iwrote an article, ''Some Notes on Morris Louis" (Arts
Magazine 30 [Nov. 1963]: 22-27), inspired by an exhibition of seventeen of his
paintings at the Guggenheim Museum (organized by Lawrence Alloway) , in
·which I first discussed his relation to Pollock, a point developed further in the
introduction to ThTee American Painters and "Morris Louis" (reprinted in this
book).
6. Through no fault of Stella, who admired them and urged them on me
from the first.
7· As mentioned above, part 1 of 'Three American Painters" was written in
1963-64; itwas published under the title "Modernist Painting and Formal Criti�
cism" in the American ScholaT 33 (autumn 1964): 642-48.
8. See the last sentences of my 1963 text on Stella for the jewish Museum's
exhibition Toward a Newilbstmction (reprinted in this book as "Frank Stella").
g. Cf. Greenberg'sattempt to argue that "the objectivity oftaste is probatively
demonstrated in and through the presence of a consensus over time" (Clement
Greenberg, "Can Taste Be Objective?" Art News 72 [Feb. 1973]: 22-23, 92). See
also his "Complaints ofanArt Critic" ( 1967), where he wrote: "Because aesthetic
judgments are immediate, intuitive, undeliberate, and involuntary, they leave no
room for the conscious application ofstandards, criteria, rules, or precepts. That
qualitative principles or norms are there somewhere, in subliminal operation, is
certain; otherwise aestheticjudgments would be purely subjective, and that they
are not is shown by the fact that the verdicts ofthose who care most about art and
pay it the most attention converge over the course of time to form a consensus"
(Clement Greenberg, A1odernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4 of The Col�
lected Essays and Criticism, ed. John O'Brian [Chicago, 1993], p. 265). Thierry
de Duve rightly takes Greenberg to task for confusing Kant's transcendental account
of estheticjudgment's claim to universality with the empiricist notion of
objectivity in Clement Greenberg between the Lines, trans. Brian Holmes (Paris,
1996), pp. 106-ro.
1o. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence,"
in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, Ill., 1964), pp. 39-83.
The original essay in French, "Le Langage indirect et les voix du silence," was
first published in Les Temps Modernes in 1952 and was included in Merl�au-Ponty,
Sig;nes (Paris, 1g6o). See also Georg Lukacs, History and Class-Consciousness: Studies
inJ.WarxistDialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass., 197 1 ) . Lukacs's
book was first published in German in 1923; I became familiar with it in
the French translation of 1g6o. Another book that influenced me was MerleauPonty's
LesAventures de la dialectique (Paris, 1955). The claim that modernism in
the arts proceeds by acts ofself-criticism is at the heart of Clement Greenberg's
essay "Modernist Painting," which was first made widely available in ATts YeaTbook
4 ( 1961) but which (like almost everyone) I didn't read until it was reprinted in
slightly revised form in Gregory Battcock, ed., The NewArt: A CriticalAnthology
(New York, tg66), pp. 66-77. (The revised version had also been reprinted a
56 ! fu� INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
year earlier in Art andLiterature [spring 1965], but I don't remember seeing that
either.) However, in "After Abstract Expressionism," which I read and absorbed
when it appeared in October 1962, Greenberg spelled out the nature of "the
kind of self-critical process which . . . provides the infra-logic of modernist art"
(Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," Artlnternational 6 [Oct. 25, 1 962]:
30; Greenberg's essay is reprinted with minor changes in 1.\!Iodernisrn with a Vengeance,
pp. 1 2 1-34).
1 1 . As I realized only recently, preparing to teach that essay in a seminar. "A
man isjudged by neither intention nor fact but by his success in making values
become facts," Merleau-Ponty wrote. "VVhen this happens, the meaning of the
action does not exhaust itselfin the situationwhich has occasioned it, or in some
vaguejudgment ofvalue; the action remains as an exemplary type and will survive
in other situations in another form. It opens a field. Sometimes it even institutes
a world. In any case-it outlines a future. History according to Hegel is this
maturation of a future in the present, not the sacrifice of the present to an unknown
future; and the rule of action for hiril is not to be efficient at any cost,
but to be first ofall fecund" ("Indirect Language," p. 72).
12. In the Stella section of the introduction to Tlm;e American Painters I cite
only the first sentence ofthe passage from Merleau-Ponty quoted in the previous
note in my own translation, adding: 'The values in Stella's case are pictorial
values; they are to be found, or found wanting, only in one's firsthand experi�
ence of the paintings in question."
1 3. See, e.g., Yve�Alain Bois, "Introduction: Resisting Blackmail," in Painting
as Model (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
14. Greenberg protested against the idea that there existed a formalist
school of painters or indeed criticism in "Complaints of an Art Critic" (i\!Iodernisrn
with a Vengeance, pp. 265-72). But he himself later wrote: "It remains that
Modernism in art, ifnot in literature, has stood or fallen so far by its 'formalism.'
Not that Modernist art is co-terminous with 'formalism.' And not that 'formalism'
hasn't lent itself to a lot of empty, bad art. But so far every attack on the
'formalist' aspect of Modernist painting and sculpture has worked out as an attack
on Modernism itself because every such attack developed into an attack at
the same time on superior artistic standards" (Clement Greenberg, "Necessity of
Formalism," New Litera?)' flistmy 3 [autumn 1971): 171-75). Incidentally,
Kramer as early as 196 1 referred to both "formalist criticism" and "formalist art"
CHilton Kramer, "Notes on Clement Greenberg," Arts 37 [Oct. 196 1 ] : 62).
15. My reference is to "Modernist Painting" as it appeared in Battcock, ed.,
TheNewArt> p. 73· Subsequent page references to that essay \viii be in parentheses
in the text.
16. In Greenberg, Modernism with a Vengeance, p. 6o. In Greenberg's own selection
of his art criticism, Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston, 196 1 ) , that
essaywas retitled "The New Sculpture."
17. See Greenberg, 1\1odernism with a �ngeance, p. 97·
18. Ibid.
19. Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," p. 25.
20. Ibid., p. zg.
AN lNTRODUCTJON TO MY ART CRITICISM 57
21. Greenberg, Modernism with a Vengeance, p. go.
22. See, however, "Louis and Noland" (1960), ·where he writes: "The 'aes�
thetic' of post-Cubist painting-by which I mean painting after Kline, after Dubuffet,
and even after Hans Hofmann-consists mostly in this renewal oftlte lmjJressionist
emphasis on the exclusivel)' visual" (Greenberg, Modernism with a
Vengeance, pp. 97-98; emphasis added). And from "The 'Crisis' of Abstract Art"
(1964): "What looms beyond, and grows out of, PainterlyAbstraction is a newer
(though not necessarily superior) kind of abstract art that puts the main stress
on color as hue. For the sake of this stress painterliness is being abandoned, not
to be replaced by the geometrical or the 'hard-edged,' but rather by a way of
paint-handling that blurs the difference between painterly and non-painterly.
Harking back in some ways to Impressionism, and reconciling theImpressionist glow with
Cubistopadty, this newer abstract painting suggests possibilities of color for which
there are no precedents in Western tradition. An unexplored realm of picturemaking
is being opened up-in a quarter where young apes cannot followthat
promises to be large enough to accommodate at least one more generation
of major painters" (Greenberg, lviodemism with a Vengeance, p. 1 8 1 ; emphasis
added). The truth seems to be that Greenberg wavered with respect to the question
ofthe persistence ofImpressionist opticality in subsequent modernist paint�
ing, perhaps without fully realizing that he did so. On another kind ofwavering
in Greenberg's texts as �·egards opticality and materiality, see Yve-Alain Bois,
"Greenberg's Amendments," Kunst &i\iuseumjournaal 5 (1993): 1-9.
23. I first presented a version of my reading of Pollock's drip paintings at a
one�day symposium on modern drawings at the FoggArt Museum at Harvard in
the spring of 1964; the other speakers were Kermit Champa and Max Kozloff.
See the remarks on Pollock in Michael Fried, "New York Letter," Art International
8 (Apr. 25, 1964): 57-58 (those remarks are not included in the selection reprinted
in this book as "New York Letter: De Kooning Drawings"). Following
Merleau�Ponty, I also insist in the introduction to ThreeAmelican Painters that the
distinction benveen opticality and tactility isn't absolute-that the senses ofsight
and touch "open onto the same space."
24. I moderated this claim in "Morris Louis." See T.]. Clark's important essay
'Jackson Pollock's Abstraction," in Reconstructing A1odernism, ed. Serge Guilbaut
(Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1990), pp. 172-242, for a thoughtful critique
of my stress on the opticality of Pollock's allover paintings. Clark himself, however,
implies that the viewer loses sight of the materiality of Pollock's picture
surfaces at distances greater than "three feet or so," which he calls "a quite ordinary
viewing distance" (p. 236 n. 6o). But that is not an ordinary distance from
which to view Pollock's allover drip pictures \vith the aim ofseeing them in their
entirety-just try holding your ground no more than three feet or so from Number
One (1948) or Lavender J.\1ist ( 1950). So even for Clark the "optical" reading
of Pollock remains an open question. There is also a strong affinity between
Clark's "agonistic" account of Cut-Out ( 1948) and related works, including The
Wooden Horse (1948), and my own analysis of those works in the introduction to
s8 l AN lNTRonucnoN To Mv ART CRITicisM
Three American Painters (as Clark acknowledges, p. 237 n. 78). Another recent
writer who alludes to the "non-atmospheric opticality" of Pollock's allover drip
paintings is de Duve in Clement Greenberg between theLines, p. 22.
25. By far the most extreme recent critique of Greenberg and me on opticality
is Rosalind Krauss's book The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass., and
London, 1993). But the highly personal tone of her treatment ofGreenberg is
such that readers may fail to grasp that the true target of Krauss's antagonism is
not Greenberg's or my writings on modernist painting and sculpture so much
as modernism itself. Like Greenberg in the revised "Modernist Painting," she
holds an adamantly global vision of "mainstream" modernist painting as optical
from start to finish, which in hercase means that she regards modernist painting
itself as promulgating a single, unchanging set of misconceived values and assumptions
associated with vision (e.g., vision as a vehicle of pure immediacy,
instantaneity, transparence, disembodiedness, self-knowledge, and autonomy)with
the exception of a few seemingly marginal but for her exemplary artistic
episodes in which something she calls the "optical unconscious" comes to the
fore. Her antioptical heroes include Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti
in his Surrealist phase, Georges Bataille the theorist of l'injorme, Pablo
Picasso in certain quasi-"flipbook"drawings, Pollock in his allover drip paintings,
which Krauss reads as "indexically" belonging to the floor or ground to the extent
that they are traduced when hung on a wall (which of course is how they
were made to be viewed), the trio CyTwombly, Andy Warhol, and Robert Morris
in certain Pollock-derivedworks, and Eva Hesse. Krauss's project in her book is
thus to sketch "an alternative history, one that had developed against the grain
of modernist opticality, one that had risen on the very site of modernism only
to defy its logic, to cross the wires ofits various categories, to flout all its notions
about essences and purifications, to refuse its concern with foundations-above
all a foundation in the presumed ontological ground of the visual" (p. 21). Although
I can't begin to assess her alternative history here, the very terms of her
project mean that she has at least as great (and as unexamined) an investment
in the global idea of modernist opticality as any critic or historian before her.
For an acute review ofher book see Stephen Bann, "Greenberg's Team," Raritan
13 (spring 1994): 146-59. There are also pertinent observations in Mikkel
Bogh, "Det beg<erende 0je," 0jeblikket, no. rg (winter 1994): 48-49.
26. I first introduced this notion in the course ofa discussion ofrecent paintings
byJules Olitski in my "NewYork Letter" in the May I964 issue ofArtInternational
(reprinted in this book as "New York Letter: Olitski, Jenkins, Thiebaud,
Twombly").
27. Cf. Greenberg: Newman's straight lines "do not echo those ofthe frame,
but parody it. Newman's picture becomes all frame in itself, as he himselfmakes
clear in three special paintings he has done-paintings three or four feet long
but onlytwo orthree incheswide, that are covered with but two or three vertical
bands of color. What is destroyed is the Cubist, and immemorial, notion and
feeling of the picture edge as a confine; with Newman, the picture edge is repeated
inside, and makes the picture, instead ofmerely being echoed. The limiting
edges ofNewman's larger canvases, we now discover, actjust like the lines inside
AN INTRODUCTlON TO MY ART CRITICISM I 59
them: to divide but not to separate or enclose or bound; to delitnit, but not
limit" ('"American'�Type Painting" [1955; revised version, 1958] , in Greenberg,
ATt and CultuTe, pp. 226-27). I quote this passage in my "New York Letter" for
May 25, 1 963 (reprinted in this book as "New York Letter: Noland, Thiebaud") ,
where I also add that "in Newman's ·work there is still an important zone of
decision left that smacks of geometrical thinking: namely, the decision where
exactlyto place the vertical line or lines. And until this decision itselfis somehow
determined by a..relatively manifest internal logic generated by the painter's
awareness of the framing edge, an element of geometry persists, small but for
the time being irreducible." Obviously I thought the first painter whose paintings
satisfied those "logical" demands was Stella, which is probably why I didn't
follow Greenberg in saying that in NeWman's art the picture edge "makes" the
picture as distinct from "echoing" it.
28. This largely repeats a passage in my "New York Letter: Noland,
Thiebaud."
29. I still rely on the notion of deductive structure in 'jules Olitski's New
Paintings" (ATtforurn 4 [Nov. 1965]: 36-40). For that matter, I still refer to the
literal shape determining the structure of Stella's stripe paintings in "Shape as
Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons" (reprinted in this book), though it's
also in that essay that I first deploy the concept of "acknowledging" the literal
character of the support in the place of that of "deductive structure" (see "My
Double Critique ofGreenberg's Theory," below, for more on "acknowledgment"
in this sense of the term) . I explicitly drop the notion of deductive structure in
favor ofacknowledgment in 'Jules Olitski" (reprinted in this book), where I also
say: ''One trouble with ( the notion of deductive structure] was that it could be
taken to imply that anystructure in which elements are aligned with the framing
edge is as 'deductive' (more or lesS) as any other." My various accounts of the
role ofpictorial structure in Stella's artare criticized by William S. Rubin, FTanh
Stella (New York, 1970), pp. 54-60.
30. See also the Stella section of the introduction to ThneAmerican Painters,
where I resist the view that "the assertion of the literal character of the picture
support manifestedwith growing explicitness in modernist painting from Manet
to Stella represents nothing more nor less than the gradual apprehension of the
basic 'truth' that paintings are in no essential respect differentfrom other classes
ofobjects in the world." The recognition that Stella's stripe paintings simultaneously
emphasize their "thing-nature" and insist on their paintedness is at work
in one ofmy first "NewYork Letters" (reprinted in this book as "New York Letter:
Louis, Chamberlain and Stella, Indiana").
3 1 . From the foregoing itshould be clear that nothing could be furtherfrom
my views in "Shape as Form" and "Art and O�jecthood" than the simplistic notion
that my "concept of the medium ofshape , . , argued for the special importance
ofthe pulverization of edge, the setting up of the illusion that one cannot
secure the experience of distinct objects because one cannot locate their contours"
(Rosalind Krauss, contribution to a panel on "Theories ofArt after Minimalism
and Pop," in DiaArtFoundationDiscussionsin Contemporary Culture, Number
One, ed. Hal Foster [Seattle, rg87], pp. 6o-6r).
6o I Al\' INTRODUCTION To Mv ART CRITICISM
32. I firstused the notion of "competing for presentness" in connection with
Olitski's use of color in his paintings of J963-64 (in 'Jules Olitski"). And of
course the major precedent for Peons's "poured" or "thrown" paintings of the
1970s and after was Olitski's spray paintings from 1965 on.
33· Greenberg, ''The New Sculpture," p. 142.
3+ Greenberg, "Contemporary Sculpture: Anthony Caro," in Modernism with
a Vengeance, pp. 205-06.
35· Merleau-Ponty's essay begins by invoking Saussure as follows: ''What we
have learned from Saussure is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything,
and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence
of meaning between itselfand other signs. Since the same can be said for
all other signs, we may conclude that language is made of differences without
terms; or more exactly, that the terms of language are engendered only by the
differences which appear-among them" ("Indirect Language," p. 39). I was also
struck by Merleau-Ponty's reference to "the primary operation which first constitutes
signs as signs, makes that which is expressed dwell in them through the
eloquence of their arrangement and configuration alone, implants a meaning
in that which did not have one, and thus-far from exhausting itselfin the instant
at which it occurs-inaugurates an order and founds an institution or a
tradition" (p. 67). And ofcourse my evocation ofthe prelingual child is nothing
more than an adaptation of the passage evoking the child's initiation into language
by virtue of the first phonemic oppositions (pp. 40-41 ) .
The "'syntactic' and implicitly Saussurean" aspect of rny early account of
Care's art is recognized by Yve-Alain Bois, "Kahnweiler's Lesson," in Painting as
Model, p. 285 n. 4 1 . See also the exchange over rny account of Caro's work in
"Art and Objecthood" between Rosalind Krauss and myself in the discussion following
the individual presentations in ''Theories of Art after Minimalism and
Pop," pp. 71-75, as well as my "Afterword" to that exchange in Foster, ed., Dia
ATt Foundation Discussions, pp. 86-87, in the latter of which I rebut what I take to
be her view that a differential structure could produce only an effect ofdeferral
or lack of plenitude (as opposed, say, to one of presentness) . In a subsequent
essay, "Using Language to Do Business as Usual," Krauss returns to the topic,
granting my theoretical point but insisting that there is indeed "a contradiction
between the experience described in 'Art and Objecthood,' an experience of
Caro's sculpture, for example, in which the object's physical presence is completely
eclipsed by its utter transparency to us as meaning, meaning which is,
moreover, characterized as timeless and immutable; I see a contradiction benveen
this-which is pamle-and something like a Saussurean connection to
langue" (Rosalind Krauss, "Using Language to Do Business as Usual" in Visual
Theory: Painting and lnterp1·etation, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and
Keith Moxey [New York, 199 1 ] , p. 93). The basic principle she invokes is Gombrichian
in its starkness (also its simplernindedness): "We cannot analyse the
production of illusion at the same time as we are having it" (ibid.). But even
putting aside the question of the accuracy of Krauss's paraphrase of my evocation
of the expedence of Caro's sculpture and forbearing to ask whether in English
one "has" an illusion at all, it seems clear that she has taken my words in
"An and Objecthood" as the record of an experience in the present, which
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM 61
amounts to an almost parodic version of "being swamped by immediacy, by
meaning as presence" (ibid.)-precisely the metaphysical illusion she credits
Saussure and Roland Barthes (in S/Z) with enabling us to get beyond. In fact
there is nothing in my remarks about Caro in "Art and Objccthood" that indicates
that they should be read in that light I nowhere portray myselfas in the
grip of an experience of Caro's art in the moment ofwriting. In effect Krauss both
produces and has that illusion on her own and then taxes me with the failure to
realize that my Saussurean claims are thereby invalidated.
36. For the distinction in question see Merleau-Ponty, "Indirect Language,"
p. 44- See also his claim that "try as each word may (as Saussure explains) to
extract its meaning from all the others, the fact remains that at the moment it
occurs the task of expressing is no longer differentiated and referred to other
words-it is accomplished and we understand something" (p. 8 1 ) . As he also
puts it, speaking subjects have "the power . .. of going beyond signs toward their
meaning" (ibid.). One consequence of this view is that for Merleau-Ponty "language
speaks, and the voices ofpainting are the voices of silence" (ibid.).
37· One other passage from Merleau-Ponty's essay bears on my account of
Caro's art in the "Whitechapel introduction: "Ifit iS characteristic of the human
gesture to signify beyond its simple existence in fact, to inaugurate a meaning,
it follows that every gesture is comparable to every other. They all arise from a
single synta."'<" ( "Indirect Language," p. 68). I first suggested that "the tension
[in Merleau-Ponty's essay] between a Saussurean conception of language as difference
(i.e., as 'pure' relation) and a thematics of gesture and embodiment
captures the difficulty of adequately theorizing Caro's breakthrough achievement"
in "Anthony Caro, Midday," Artfrrrum 32 (Sept. 1 993): 139·
38. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, trans.
G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1956), p. 23e (pt. 1, par. 74).
39· Where I followWittgenstein (in the passage from the Remarks ontheFoundation
ofMathematics) in speaking of conventions, Stanley Cavell prefers to use
the Wittgensteinian concepts of criteria and grammar-of grammar "schematized"
in criteria-drawn from his reading ofWittgenstein's PhilosophicalInvestigations
(trans. G. E. M. Anscombe [Oxford, 1958]) in order to avoid the contractual
or indeed conventionalist implications of the first term, a point developed
at length in Cavell's Claim ofReason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy
(Oxford, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne, 1979) and reiterated in his "Declining
Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture," in This Nw Yet Unapproachable
Amvica: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein (Albuquerque, 1g8g),
pp. 29-75. In both texts Cavell alludes to Wittgenstein's statement, "Grammar
expresses essence" (Philosophical Investigations, pt. 1, par. 371). More recently,
Cavell has exemplified the concept of criteria \vith respect to the question of
"a thing's being a table" in a way that explicitly invokes what might be called
phenomenological considerations, and incidentally invites comparison with the
account of the genesis and meaning of Caro's table sculptures I am about to
summarize (Stanley Cavell, 'The Argument ofthe Ordinary: Scenes of Instruction
in Wittgenstein and in Kripke," in ConditionsHandsome and Unhandsome: The
Constitution ojEmersonianPerfectionism [Chicago and London, 1ggo], pp. 93-95).
40. See "Anthony Caro's Table Sculptures, 1966-77" (reprinted in this
62 l AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
book), where I also discuss Caro's use of handles in his table sculptures to "distance"
the viewer, i.e., to enforce the sculptures' "apartness." C£ my insistence
on the importance of Caro's refusal in his sculptures of the 1 g6os and 1970s to
"allow the beholder to enter a given work, to step or stand inside it," a refusal I
interpret as "only one aspect, albeit an important one, of [his sculptures'] antiliteral,
antisituational character" ("Caro's Abstractness") . (Both texts postdate
"Artand Objecthood" and so presume the struggle against literalism and theatricality
I associate with abstraction in that essay.)
The trope of another world may strike some readers as an idealist one, but
my intention, it should be clear, was to offer an alternative account of the
"apartness" (or, say, "otherness"} of Caro's sculptures to a claim to ideality. The
world of Caro's sculptures, I would like to say (but can I meaningfully?) , isjust
as proximate to us and just as difficult of discovery as is the "ordinary" or the
"everyday" in Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Among many relevant texts by
Cavell, see ''The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy," where the
"knowledge ofwhat Wittgenstein means by grammar" is likened to but also distinguished
from "the knowledge Kant calls 'transcendental'" (pp. 64-65}, "The
Uncanniness of the Ordinary," in In Quest ofthe Ordinary: Lines ofSkepticism and
Romanticism (Chicago and London, 1988), pp. 153-78, and "Declining Decline."
In "Declining Decline" Cavell expands on Wittgenstein's "intuition that
human existence stands in need not of reform but of reformation, of a change
that has the structure of a transfiguration" by saying that the latter's "insight
is that the ordinary has, and alone has, the power to move the ordinary, to leave
the human habitat habitable, the same transfigured" (pp. 46-47) . Cf. my claim
in the introduction for Caro's 1969 retrospective exhibition at the Hayvvard Gallery:
"All the relationships that count [in Caro's work) are to be found in the
sculptures themselves and nowhere else. Even the relation of his sculptures to
the ground is not to the actual ground, the literal floor beneath our feet, but to
the ground as conceived abstractly, in purely relational terms. Though precisely
because this is so, Caro's sculptures have changed forever the ground on which
we stand; while theatrical work, by including the actual ground and the actual
beholder in the situation which it determines, leaves both unaltered, unilluminated"
("Introduction," in Anthony Caro, catalog for exhibition at the Hayward
Gallery, London,Jan. 24-Mar. g, 1g6g, p. 13). Indeed, I speak in that introduction
of Caro's first welded steel sculptures achieving "the new, undistanced connection
with the beholder which he had been seeking since before his American
visit" (p. 10; emphasis added), just as in "Art and Objecthood" I argue that literalist
work distances the viewer. See also the concluding passage of my essay
"Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland: Some Notes on Not Composing" (not included
in this book}, quoted in n. 46 below. Obviously there is room for further
clarification in this area, distancing in one sense of the term being equivalent to
undoing distance in another.
41. It might be helpful if, this once, I were to restate my argument in Derridean
terms. On the one hand, to describe Caro's problem as having to find a
way to make sculptures that would be abstractly or intrinsically or essentially
small, as opposed to literally or extrinsically or contingently small, is to appeal
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM I 63
to a range of oppositions-all organized around the conceptual dyad inside/
outside-that Derridean thought routinely and efficiently deconstructs. But on
the other, Caro's solution to that problem, as well as the sculptural practice that
set the stage for its being posed in the first place, radically recasts, we might say
deconstructs, the very distinction betvveen inside and outside, or to put this
slightly differently, they build a certain "parergonality"-tabling, and before
that, grounding-into the sculptures, and moreover do so perspicuously, in a
way that can't be missed. (SeeJacques Derrida, "Parergon," in The Truth inPainting,
trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian MacLeod [Chicago and London, 1987] ,
pp. 17-147, esp. 37-82.) For Craig Owens, writing in 1979, '"The Parergon'
[pt. 2 of "Parergon"] signals a necessity: not of a renovated aesthetics, but of
transfOrming the object, the work of art, beyond recognition" ("Detachment:
From the Paretgon," in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Powe1; and Culture, ed.
Scott Bryson, Barbara Kruger, Lynn Tillman, andJane Weinstock [Berkeley, Los
Angeles, and Oxford, 1992], p. 38). But this is to draw an impermissibly avantgardist
moral from Derrida's text. I would even suggest that Caro's modernist
interpretation of the issue of framing, with its seemingly more modest logic of
transformation, comes far closer than Owens's hyperbolic "necessity" to the import
ofDerrida's thought.
42. The symposium, "Art Criticism in the Sixties," was held at Brandeis University
on May 7, 1966; the other participants were Barbara Rose, Max Kozloff,
and Sidney Tillim and the moderator wasWilliam C. Seitz. The four papers were
subsequently published as a pamphlet, Art Criticism in the Sixties (New York,
1967).
43· In what follows I make use of portions ofan essay not reprinted in this
book, Michael Fried, "How Modernism Works: A Reply to T.J. Clark," Critical
Inquiry 9 (Sept. 1982): 2 17-34 (in a special issue entitled ''The Politics ofInterpretation").
Clark's essay to which I wasreplying, "Clement Greenberg's Theory
of Art," appears in that issue as well (pp. 1 39-56). Subsequently Clark responded
to my critique ofhis account ofmodernism in "Arguments about Modernism:
A Reply to Michael Fried," in The Politics ofInterpretation, ed. W.J. T.
Mitchell (Chicago and London, 1 983), pp. 239-48. Recently Thierry de Duve
has commented at length on our debate in Clement Greenberg between the Lines,
chap. 2, "Silences in the Doctrine."
44· Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," p. 30. I quote the last two
sentences with approval in the introduction to ThreeAmerican Painters.
45· Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," p. 30.
46. In the course of a 1964 discussion of recent paintings byJules Olitski, I
claim that what is at stake in the work ofNewman, Stella, and Noland "is perhaps
the most radical break to date with the conventions ofeasel painting, along with
the possibility of replacing those conventions with new modes of organization
and seeing-based upon an explicit recognition ofthe framingedge as the most
important single factor in the determination of pictorial structure-which will
somehow open up into a zone offreedom as large, in its own way, as that enjoyed
by traditional painters during the past five centuries" ("New York Letter: Olitski,
Jenkins, Thiebaud, Twombly") . Needless to say, my remarks about the imminent
64 \ AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
opening up of so large a zone of freedom proved to be absurdly utopian, but
\Vhat I want to stress is, first, the suggestion that the structural innovations of
Newman, Stella, and Noland constitute or imply "a radical break . . . with the
conventions ofeasel painting," and second, that I nevertheless envisage not the
abandonment of painting as such but rather, it would seem, a new kind or mod�
ality of painting. This is about as close as my ovvn criticism gets to a literalist
point of view-not very close, in other words-and of course I soon realized
that nothing in Newman, Stella, or Noland broke with or indeed challenged the
conventions ofeasel painting.
Another short-lived point of possible rapprochement between my criticism
and literalism is the suqject of an unpublished essay by Dr. Harry Cooper, who
suggests that two texts omitted from this book, "Anthony Caro and Kenneth
Noland: Some Notes on Not Composing" (Lugano Review 1 [summer 1965}:
198-206) and ':Jules Olitski's New Paintings," appropriate the Minimalist dis�
course ofnoncomposition for distinctly anti-Minimalist ends, i.e., in the interests
of "immediacy, directness, and wholeness of effect." So, for example, I claim in
"Some Notes on Not Composing" (basing myself in part on remarks by Caro)
thatlooking at Caro's sculptures compositionally, in terms ofrelations ofbalance
and the like, "ruins'' the work for us in the sense that "the grip of the sculpture
is diffused" (the sculptor's account of what went wrong when he "composed")
(p. 206). I write in conclusion,
We step back, see how it looks, worry about its appearance-above all we
put it at arm's length: this is what composing, seeing it in compositional
terms, means. We distance it. And our inclination to do this amounts in
effect to a desire to escape the work, to break its grip on us, to destroy the
intimacy it threatens to create, to pull out. And one doesn't step back or
pull out just a little, or more or less. (The relevant comparison is with
human relationships here.) One is either in or out: and if one steps back,
whatever the grip of the thing was or may have been is broken or fore�
stalled, and whatever the relationship was or may have been is ended or
aborted. There is even a sense in which it is only then that one begins to
see: that one becomes a spectator. But of course the object (or person)
now being seen for the first time is no longer the same. (Ibid.)
Cooper detects in the above an early intimation of the argument of "Art and
Objccthood" and further suggests that I was soon led to abandon the issue of
noncomposition when Stella's irregular polygons marked the return ofa certain
son ofcomposition, and more importantly "saved subjectivity [a major concern
of mine, in Cooper's view] from the threat of radical deductivisrn (the stripes)
without devolving to the ambiguous, unrigorous tension betvveen literalness and
depiction (the old ground ofsubjectivity, unavailable, as it were, since the stripes
collapsed it), a tension which Noland and Olitski had brought t() a head." Cf.
my objections to the "composed" quality of recent paintings by Helen Frankenthaler
in "New York Letter," Art International? (Apr. 25, 1963). (The remarks on
Frankenthaler have not been included in the selection reprinted in this book as
"New York Letter: Hofmann"). My thanks to Dr. Cooper for allowing me to see
AN INTRonucnoN To Mv ART CRITicisM 65
his intelligent and interesting essay; the remarks on su�jectivity and impersonality
earlier in this introduction were prompted by his observations.
47· In n. 12 of 'Jules Olitski," I state that the concept of acknowledgment of
the shape of the support is meant to replace that of deductive structure. For
Cavell on acknowledgment see, e.g., the essay "Knowing and Acknowledging,"
in lv!ust We Mean What We Say?; his remarks on acknowledgment in connection
with painting and film in TheWodd Viewed, esp. pp. 109-10 and p. 239 n. 40.; and
chap. 13, "Between Acknowledgment and Avoidance," in The Claim ofReason, pp.
329-496. I should mention that I spoke ofStella's stripe paintings making "explicit
acknowledgment" of the shape of the support in the introduction to Three
American Painters (see the passages quoted above) , but the term itself didn't yet
have the significance I was soon to give it, as the appeal in that introduction to
the notion of deductive structure makes clear. Unfortunately, I continued to
deploy the concept of explicitness in connection with that of acknowledgment
in "Shape as Form" and subsequent essays, which I think was a mistake; part of
the point ofstressing acknowledgment in those contexts was to avoid the pitfalls
of the idea of making explicit, and I wish I had kept the nvo terms rigorously
separate. And yet the tact that I did not, indeed that the phrases "explicit acknowledgment"
and "explicitly acknowledge" came so readily to hand, suggests
that the distinction in question was (and, I think, still is) conceptually insecure.
I'm not sure what to do about this other than to call attention to the problem.
48. In fact, Greenberg writes in "Modernist Painting": "No one artist was, or
is yet, consciously aware of [the self-critical tendency of modernist painting], no-r
could any artist work successfully in conscious awareness of it" (p. 75; emphasis
added)-a surprising claim in view of Greenberg's havingjust elucidated that
tendency with all the clarity at his command. What did he think would become
ofmodernist painting now that he had laid bare its inner workings?
49· "My own views on the question of 'art' and 'good art' are different from
both Greenberg's and Fried's," Thierry de Duve writes apropos of my critique of
Greenberg. "Paraphrasing Fried, I would argue that what modernism has meant
(notice the past tense in Fried's text as in mine) is that the nvo questions 'what
is painting' and 'what is good painting' werenot separable (the past tense is not
in Fried)" (Kant afterDuchamp [Cambridge, Mass., and London, rgg6], p. 236
n. 55). As a logical rather than as a strictly historical point (i.e.! as pertaining to
a certain structural unconscious ofmodernist pictorial practice) thisis undoubtedly
correct; notice, though, how de Duve says "were" rather than "have never
been" (for him modernist painting is over). In general, de Duve's account of
Minimalisrn's relation to Greenberg and Stella closely follows mine in "Shape as
Form" and " Art and Objecthood," though to very different ends.
50. Greenberg, "Mter Abstract Expressionism," pp. 29-30.
5 1 . De Duve, however, feels that Greenberg has been misrepresented by his
critics (starting with me), who have attributed to him an essentialist philosophy
whereas in fact his critical procedures were consistently empiricist (de Duve,
Clement Greenbergbetween theLines, pp. 70-71). But in the first place Greenberg's
c:ritiwlprocedures aren't at issue in what I wrote, and in the second his empiricist
cast of mind didn't prevent him from formulating an ahistorically essentialist
66 I A.� INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
theory of modernism (or perhaps I should say an ahistorically essentialist-also
a highly schematic, but that's not the problem-hi5tory of modernism) . For de
Duvc, Greenberg's statement in "Mter Abstract Expressionism" that "modernism's
self-criticism is 'entirely empirical and not at all an affair of theory,' and
[that] its aim is 'to determine the irreducible workingessence ofart"' (de Duve's
emphasis) should have sufficed to make clear that he wa� not "a Platonist ofpure
painting" (Clement Greenbngbetween theLines, p. 7 1 n. 47). But neither disclaimer
bears on the central issue, which is that Greenberg imagines the (empirical,
atheoretical) operations ofmodernist self-criticism as arriving, indeed as having
arrived, at painting's irreducible norms or conventions-flatness and the delimiting
of flatness. (Italicizing "working" in no way qualifies "irreducible.") It
was preciselyan awareness that the narrative of"ModernistPainting" led conceptually
to a certain impasse that inspired Greenberg to postulate the second dynamic
mentioned above, with all the problems attendant upon it.
In 1978 Greenberg added a postscript to "Modernist Painting" in which he
insists, first, that he doesn't advocate, or subscribe to, or believe in the rationale
of modernist art that his essay describes, and second, that he doesn't regard
"flatness and the inclosing of flatness . . . as criteria of aesthetic quality in pictorial
art" but merely as "the limiting conditions" of that art (i.\1odernism with a
Vengeance, pp. 93-94). But the cr.ucial question is not whether Greenbergshould
be read as explicitly or implicitly encouraging artists to make art in the spirit of
his essay (that would be one version of thinking of him as an advocate of modenlist
self-criticism) but rather whether he subscribes to or believes in the view
that that is how the modernist arts, painting in particular, have actually functioned.
Obviously he does, and I disagree. As for his second point, he is right to
say that he never presented flatness and the inclosing of flatness as criteria of
quality, though whether "limiting conditions" means the same as "constitutive
norms or conventions" and, especially, "irreducible essence" (''working" or not)
is questionable to say the least (see the long quotation from "Art and Objecthood"
above, with its distinction between "minimal conditions for something's
being seen as a painting" and "those conventions which, at a given moment,
aloneare capable of establishing [a} work's identity as painting"). Pace de Duve,
Greenberg never understood the force of at least one line of criticism of his
theory of modernism. See also Greenberg, "Complaints of an Art Critic," pp.
26?-68.
It's interesting, by the way, that as late as 19s8, when Greenberg revised his
essay "'American-Type' Painting," he was still su·uck by the fact, as it seemed
to him, that "painting has turned out to have a greater number of expendable
conventions imbedded in it [than the other arts], or at least a greater number
of con·· '1tions that are difficult to isolate in order to expend" (Art and Culture,
p. 20b, �s he also says, "Painting continues, then, to work out its modernism
with unchecked momentum because it still has a relatively long way to go before
being reduced to its viable essence" (p. 2og). Within four years this perception
would change dramatically, concomitant with, though not I think simply in consequence
of, the emergence ofthe literalist point ofview. See de Duve,Kant aftn·
Ducharnp, pp. 2 15-18.
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITIC.ISM I 67
52. Another, more radical strategy for achieving thiswasnever actualized. In
a letter to the author ofJanuary 1960, Stella, about to start work on the alumi�
num pictures, wrote: "I have figured out what the last stripe paintings will beclear
plastic paint stripes on raw canvas, so that when the canvas is lighted
,
prop�
erly only a bare canvas will be evident." To adapt Duchamp's epithet, a more
infra thin difference from mere bare canvas can scarcely be imagined. (What lay
beyond the last stripe paintings Stella didn't say.)
53· Michael Fried, contribution to "Theories of Art after Minimalism and
Pop," pp. 55-56. See in this connection my early critique ofPoons's " Op" paintings
on the grounds that the effects they seek are "irresistible" and imply a mode
of address "to us as subjects, not spectators" in "New York Letter: Kelly, Poons"
(reprinted in this book) .
54· Thierry de Duve, "Performance Here and Now: Minimal Art, a Plea for
a New Genre ofTheatre," DpenLetter5-6 (summer-fal11g83): 255-56.
55· I had recently stressed the opticality of Caro's sculptures in the last section
of "Shape as Form." Nothing in "Art and Objecthood," however, supports
the claim that "Fried's differentiation between the presence of the (temporal)
object and the presentness of the (timeless) pictorial depended on the opposition
between the optical and the tactile; for optical qualities imparted by modenlist
paintersdefeated the 'Objecthood' ofFried's title, and the tactile qualities
of the works of literalist art identified them as objects" (Margaret Olin, "Gaze,"
in Critical TermsjCffArtHistCffy, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff ( Chicago
and London, 1gg6], p. 2 1 1 ) .
56. The first sentence reads: "Anthony Caro's sculptures have always been
intimately related to the human body" ("Introduction," Anthony Caro, p. 5). Further
on I write: "If there is a single assumption behind Caro's work it is that
anything the body does or feels or undergoes can be made into art" (p. 14) .
Incidentally, there is almost nothing about opticality in that introduction. Indeed,
I say ofCaro's Prairie, a likely candidate for an optical interpretation, that
it "goes further towards completely revoking the ordinary conditions of physicality
than any other sculpture in Care's oeuvre. In the grip of the piece one's
conviction is that the horizontal poles and corrugated sheet are suspended, as if
in the absence of gravity, at different levels above the ground. Though once
again this is done, not by hiding the physical means bywhichthose elements are
supported from below, and thereby seeming literally to suspend them in midair,
but by acknowledging the means of support in such a way as to accomplish
the abstract suspension notjust of the elements in question but of gravity itself.
The result, as in other sculptures by Caro, is something deeper, more radical,
more abstract than illusion" (p. 15). See also the account of Prairie in "Two
Sculptures by Anthony Caro" (reprinted in this book), in which I claim that in
that sculpture ''Caro on the one hand has frankly avowed the physicality of his
sculpture and on the other has rendered that physicality unperspicuous to a
degree that even after repeated viewings is barely credible," and my description
of the second of two untitled sculptures by Michael Bolus in "Problems of Poly�
chromy: New Sculptures by Michael Bolus" (reprinted in this book) , which concludes,
"What remains in doubt, I feel, is whether the sculpture as a whole is
68 ! fou""< INTRODUCTION TO My ART CRITICISM
physical enough to secure a convincing sculptural identity or whether it is finally
too unassertive and attenuated to establish itself other than as a kind of shimmering
mirage."
57· Krauss, contribution to "Theories of Art after Minimalism and Pop,"
p. 6 1 . More recently, in the essay "Using Language to Do Business as Usual,"
she remarks apropos of my quoting Greenberg on opticality: "If 'Art and Objecthood'
quotes this passage from Greenberg with approval this is because it
organizes the model of virtuality that Fried wants to contrast with literalness.
And that model is that of the impossible suspension of the work in space as if it
were nothing but pure optical glitter, withoutweight and without density, a condition
that establishes the corresponding illusion that its viewer is similarly bodiless,
hovering before it as a kind of decorporealized, optical consciousness" (p.
88). I might add that what gives Krauss's attempt to make me (or "Art and Objecthood")
an advocate ofopticality toutcourtjusta tinge ofbad faith is the awareness
she elsewhere evinces of my "bodily" reading of Caro's work (see Rosalind
Krauss, Passages in Modern SculjJture [Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1977], p.
1 86).
58. In addition to the passages already cited, in 'jules Olitski" and again in
my short article on Ron Davis's plastic paintings (reprinted in this bookas "Ronald
Davis: Surface and Illusion") I speak oftheirwork as "address[ing) itself not
justto eyesightbutto a sense that might be called one of directionality,"as if "what
is appealed to is notour ability in locating objects (or failing to) but in orienting
ourselves (or failing to) "-a "bodily" ability, it goes without saying. And in a
slightly different register, the epigraph to my 1965 essay 'Jules Olitski's New
Paintings" is the famous sentence from Wittgenstein's PhilosophicalInvestigations,
"The human body is the best picture of the human soul" (p. 1 81e), a statement
I thought of as resonating with, not against, the paintings in question.
59· See, e.g., de Duve, "Performance Here and Now"; Hal Foster, "The Crux
of Minimalisrn," in Individuals: A Selected History ofContemporary A1·t, 1945 -1986,
ed. Howard Singerman, volume accompanying an exhibition at the Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art in 1986, pp. 162-83; and Douglas Crimp, "Pictures,"
October, no. 8 (spring 1979): 75-88. The sole exception of which I am
aware is an essay that, being a deconstructive reading of my work (also being
somewhat Cavellian in approach) , isn't exactly critical ofmy argument: Stephen
W. Melville's "Notes on the Reemergence ofAllegory, the Forgetting ofModernism,
the Necessity ofRhetoric, and the Conditions of Publicity in Art and Criticism,"
October, no. 19 (winter 198 1 ) : 55-92, reprinted in a collection ofMelville's
writings, Seams: Art as aPhiloso-phical Context, ed.Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe (New York,
1996). Let me take this opportunity to say how much I have learnedfrom Melville's
"Note�"; at the moment it appeared I felt utterly remote from my art criticism,
and his essay gave me back that body ofwork with interest, as it were. See
also Melville, Philosophy beside Itself OnDeconstruction and J.\1odernism, Theory and
History ofLiterature, voL 27 (Minneapolis, 1986), chap. 1, "On Modernism."
6o. See also "Shape as Form," n. 9, and the introduction to Three American
Painters, where, taking offfrom Greenberg's remark (in "After Abstract Expressionism")
that "much more than before lends itself now to being experienced
AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM 6g
pictorially or in meaningful relation to the pictorial," I contrast the "apparent
expansion of the realm of the artistic" in Dada and Neo-Dada with the "[real]
expansion ofthe realm of the pictorial achieved by modernist painting."
6 1 . Hal Foster, in the discussion following the panel "Theories of Art after
Minimalism and Pop," p. So.
62. Foster, 'The Crux of Minimalisrn," p. 177. In this passage Foster is responding
in part to certain claims by Peter BUrger in Theory ofthe Avant-Garde.
In his essay Foster rightly observes that my hostility to Minimalism in "Art and
Objecthood"waspartlymotivated by the former's "reprise ofavant-gardism." For
the suggestion that my characterization of Morris's work as theatrical may be
countered by the recognition that his work poses a series of questions about the
nature ofart, objects, and the self, see Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, "Chapter
3: Modernity and Modernism Reconsidered," in i'v[odernism in Dispute: A1·t
since theFo·rties, by Francis Frascina,Jonathan Harris, Charles Harrison, and Paul
Wood (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1 993), pp. 191-g6.
63. It may seem churlish to pick on Smith again here, but I'm probably reacting
to Georges Didi-Huberman's gross overestimation of his achievement in
Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde (Paris, 1992). It's impossible to convey the
intellectual flavor of that book in a few lines. Suffice it to say that the author
finds in Smith's Diea work ofexemplary profundity, and that he marshals against
"r\rt and Objecthood" a killer lineup ofworld-class intellects-among them Walter
Be�amin, Derrida, Freud, Lacan, and Merleau-Ponty, not to mentionjoyce
and Kafka-all of whom are brought together under a notion of the "image
dialectique" that emphasizes, predictably, "le clivage a I'oeuvre: soit le clivage du
sujet du regard" (p. 178 n. 67). The degree of seriousness of Didi-Huberman's
engagement with my arguments may be gauged in a short passage in which,
glossing a quotation from Smith, he first asserts that Smith himselfdidn't see his
sculptures as "theatrical" (I never said he did and in anycasewhat Smith thought
in that regard is irrelevant), adds that we may envisage them as "monuments of
absorption" (by critical fiat, evidently) and then states in a footnote that this is
to allude to my oppositions (merging "Art and Objecthood" \vith Abscrrption and
Theatricality), which therefore are, in this case, "inoperants" (pp. 74-75).
A few critics have struggled to carry over the concept of value into the new
situation, or at least to indicate how that might be done. For Melville, interested
in performance, this involves enlarging the concept ofpainting, which, however,
has the effect ofleaving the question ofthe medium of perforrnance all the more
unresolved. ''We cast 'postmodernism' at a deeper level ifwe saythat the allegorical
impulse is one which would acknowledge explicitly the futility of trying to
sort the 'mere' from the 'pure'-an impulse to embrace the heteronomy of
painting," he writes in "Notes on the Reemergence of Allegory." (He detects
such an attempt at sorting in "Art and Objecthood.") "Such an acknowledgment
demands that we accept-as best we can-that the field we call 'painting' includes,
and cannot now be defined without reference to, its violations and ex�
cesses-performance work in particular. (Performance continues then to lie between
the arts and has always to be asked what it counts as-for whom it counts.
We will want to say-in this context at least-that perfOrmance is not [yet] an
70 \ AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
art in itself, but a way in which various arts may find themselves outside themselves.
It is not clear to me what itwould take for performance to establish itself
as an art-what, that is, its 'proper' medium is. The undeniable fact that performance
has established itselfas an artistic practice, even a central practice, tells
us nothing about how and where it counts) " (pp. So-81 ) . See also idem, "How
Should Acconci Count for Us? Notes on a Retrospect," Octobet; no. 1 8 (fall 198 1 ) :
79-Sg; idem, "Robert Smithson: 'A Literalist of the Imagination,"' At·ts Magazine
57 (Nov. 1982): 102-5; idem, "Between Art and Criticism: Mapping the Frame
in United States," Theatre}oumal 37 (Mar. 1985): 31-43; and idem, "Moments
Lucid and Opaque like Turner's Sun and Cindy Sherman's Face," Art &Design
7 (Mar.-Apr. 1992): 20-23. The Smithson and Turner and Sherman essays are
reprinted in Seams. For Crimp in "Pictures," on the other hand, it is precisely the
modernist concept ofthe medium that the new work he advocates seems to him
to have called into questi<)n. And as an avant-gardist rather than a modernist
critic (this is the meaning of his postmodernism), he is less concerned with the
idea of value than with ensuring "the possibility that art can [still] achieve a
radicalism or avant-gardism" (p. 87 n. 15).
64- De Duve, "Performance Here and Now," p. 249·
65. See in this connection my earlier reading of Olitski's paintings as involving
a "sequential" mode of seeing (in my "New York Letter: Olitski, Jenkins,
Thiebaud,Twombly" and the section on his artin the introduction to ThreeAmerican
Painters). More recently, I have stressed the "slowness" of Gustave Courbet's
paintings in both CoU?bet's Realism (throughout the book) and !vianet's Modernism
(pp. 294-95). For Greenberg, on the contrary, the requirement that the full
effect of a painting, by which he means its unity or lack of unity, must declare
itself in "a split-second glance" holds fOr all paintings without exception (Clem�
ent Greenberg, "Seminar Four," Art lnternational 19 [Jan. 1975}: 16).
66. In view of the above, I find it strange that W.J. T. Mitchell could write in
a recent essay on Morris: "Both the indictment of minimalisrn (chiefly by Michael
Fried in 'Art and Objecthood') and its canonization by defenders of the
American avant-garde in the sixties are conducted in the language of absolute
breaks with the past, undialectical negations of a reified 'tradition'" ('Wall Labels:
Word, Image, and Object in the Work of Robert Morris," in Robert Morris:
The lviind/Body Pmblem, catalog for exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum and Guggenheim Museum Sobo, New York,Jan.-Apr. 1994, p. 262).
67. Indeed, Stella's close friend, the future Minimalist Carl Andre, in the
earliest and most prescient ofall texts on the painter, wrote apropos of the black
paintings, "His stripes are the paths of brush on_canvas. These paths lead only
into painting" ("Preface to Stripe Paintings," in SixteenAmericans, ed. Dorothy C.
Miller, catalog for exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dec. 16,
1958-Feb. 14, 1959, p. 76). In this connection let me add that in the discussion
following the Dia panel on ''Theories ofArt after Minimalisrn and Pop," taking
issuewith Benjamin Buchloch's literalistreading ofStella'sblack stripe paintings
and more broadly with his anachronistic account of the artistic situation in New
York in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I said of Andre ca. 1959 that "he appeared
to me as a very bright person but a very alien form of intelligence" by
A'I INTRODUCTION TO Mv ART CRITICISM I 7 1
virtue ofwhat might now be called his proto-Minimalism ("Theories ofArt after
Minimalism and Pop," p. 79). I also said apropos of Stella at that time, "In a
sense Carl Andre and I were fighting for his soul, and Andre and I represented
very different things" (ibid.). Following the publication of the Dia volume, Andre
sent me a note gently chiding me for "suggesting that Frank's soul had been
put at risk between us" and reminding me, entirely correctly, that "Frank has
always been too much his own man to let his soul be swayed so easily."
68. In addition to the texts by de Duve, Didi-Huberman, Foster, and Krauss
already cited see, e.g., Maurice Berger, "Wayward Landscapes," in Robe-rt Morris:
The Mind/Body Problem, pp. 1 8-31, and indeed the Morris catalog as a whole.
One sentence from another essay in that catalog is irresistible for its mandarin
ferocity even though it doesn't bear directly on the topic of this note: "The assault
launched by a Modernist critical establishment on 'literalism' and 'theatricality'
thus had the aspect of a desperate defense by the sclerotic theoretical
apparatus of a movement in decline, of a critical orthodoxy unequipped in its
Symbolist-derived fetishization of 'presentness' to deal with the polymorphic,
polysemic renewal of temporally grounded artistic practice" (Annette Michelson,
"Frameworks,"in RobertMonis: TheJVIind/BodyP-roblem, p. 6o). The reference
to Symbolism obviously alludes to my writings on Louis.
69. See Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards ( 1949; rpt., New York, 1959), pp.
328-2g.
70. As Krauss does in The Optical Unconscious, pp. 2 14-15.
7 1. I've been helped to recognize the "sublime" aspects of my texts of
1966-67 by the writing and conversation of Stephen Melville. Robert Smithson,
by the way, cannily saw a metaphor of sublimity in my description of the bare
canvas in Louis's unfurleds as "at once repuls[ing] and engulf[ing] the eye, like
an infinite abyss," though he also believed that the '\veakness" ofthat metaphor
bespoke my "fear" of the unboundedness implied by Smith's car ride ("A Sedimentation
of the Mind: Earth Projects" [ 1 g68], in Robert Smithson: The Collected
Writings, ed.Jack Flam [Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1996] , pp. 103-4).
For Smithson, the car ride was emblematic of"the state of [Smith's] mind in the
'primary process' of making contact with matter," a process "called by Anton
Ehrenzweig 'dedifferentiation"' and involving "a suspended question regarding
'limitlessness' (Freud's notion of the 'oceanic')" (p. 103). Greenberg, for his
part, invokes the eighteenth�century notion of the sublime in connection with
Minimal and Conceptual artistic practices in "Avant�Garde Attitudes: NewArt in
the Sixties" ( l96g), in Modernism with a Vengeance, pp. 302-03.
72. For Norman Bryson, for example, in the Sabines, the "explicit surrender
of the image to an audience . . . signals a regression to such outward�turning
theatrical pictures as [David's earlier] The Death ofSeneca" ( Tradition andDesire:
From David to Delacroix [Cambridge, 1984], p. 94). Here as elsewhere, Bryson's
semiological approach leads him to think he can simply read offmeanings from
the works he considers, without reference to contextual considerations that
would bear on, for example, the very concept oftheatricality in the sentencejust
quoted. For a somewhat fuller critique of Bryson along these lines see Michael
Fried, "David et l'antitheatralit€:,'' in David contre David, 2 vols., acts of a collo�
72 I AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
quium held at the Louvre Dec. 6-10, 1g8g, ed. RCgis Michel (Paris, 1993),
1: rgg-227. My comparison between the Horatii and the Sabines summarizes the
discussion of those works in CowiJetS Reali!>·rn, pp. 15-18.
73· See Fried, Manet's Modernism, pp. 190-92 and passim.
74- I have no choice but to stand behind them inasmuch as I haven't been
led by further reflection or subsequent events to renounce them. 'What I can't
do, it turns out, is disengage from them, which is to say treat the author of those
texts jJUrely as a historical figure.
75· In a recent article, W.J. T. Mitchell writes that I argue in Absorption and
Theatricality
that the emergence ofmodern art [in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries]
is precisely to be understood in terms of the negation or renunciation
of direct signs of desire. The process of pictorial seduction Fried admires
is successful precisely in proportion to its indirectness, its seeming
indifference to the beholder, its antitheatrical "absorption" in its own internal
drama. The veryspecial sort ofpictures that enthrall Fried getwhat
theywant by seeming not to want anything, by pretending they have everything
they need. Fried's discussion ofGericault's TheRaft oftheMedusa and
Chardin's Boy with a Bubble might be taken as exemplary here and help us
see that it is not merely a question of what the figures in the pictures appear
to want, but the legible signs of desire that they convey. The desire
may be enraptured and contemplative, as it is in Boy with a Bubble, where
the shimmering and trembling globe that absorbs the figure becomes "a
natural correlative for [Chardin's] own engrossment in the act ofpainting
and a proleptic mirroring ofwhat he trusted would be the absotption of
the beholder ofthe finished work" (Absmption and Theatricality, p. 5 1 ) . Or
it may be violent, as in The Raft ofthe Medusa, where the "strivings of the
men on the raft" are notsimply to be understood in relation to its internal
composition and the sign of the rescue ship on the horizon, "but also by
the need to escape our gaze, to put an end to being beheld by us, to be
rescued from the ineluctable fact ofa presence that threatens to theatricalize
even their sufferings" (ibid., p. 1 54) .
The end point of this sort of pictorial desire is, I think, the purism
of modernist abstraction, whose negation of the beholder's presence is
articulated in Wilhelm Worringer's Abstmction andEmpathy and displayed
in its final reduction in the white paintings of the early Rauschenberg.
Abstract paintings are pictures that want not to be pictures. But the desire
not to show desire is, as Lacan reminds us, still aform of desire. The whole
antitheatrical tradition reminds one again of the default feminization of
the picture, which is treated as something that must awaken desire in the
beholder while not disclosing any signs ofdesire or even awareness that it
is being beheld, as if the beholder were a voyeur at a keyhole. ("What Do
Pictures Really Want?" October, no. 77 [summer 1996]: 7g-8o)
There is much I disagree with in the second paragraph, but what I want to
stress is that Mitchell misreads Absorption and Theatricality when he speaks of me
AN INTRODUCTION TO ::vfy ART CRITICISM 73
admiring an indirect process of pictorial seduction or being enthralled by Chardin's
Boy with a Bubble and Gericault's R{ift ofthe i\1edusa, as if my stance to-ward
the problematic traced in that. book and the two that followed it were that of a
knowing aficionado instead of a hard-working art historian.
The same issue of Octobercontains an article by Rosalind Ktauss, the next to
last paragraph ofwhich states:
If this peculiar convergence between Lacan [in The FourFundamental
Concepts ofP�)'choanal)'sis] and Michael Fried's [analysis of Pollock's Out of
the Web] is interesting to contemplate, it is because Fried has generalized
his analysis beyond Pollock or even modernism, to a condition he advocates
as highly desirable for painting (and indeed for art itself) , and which
he calls "absorption.'' That "absorption" should now be welcomed by "picture
theory" [Krauss refers here to Mitchell's article], which is to say, that
a convergence between it and concerns with image-as-identification that
are generalized throughout Cultural Studies should be conceivable, seems
unsurprising insofar as "absorption" itself is symptomatic of the way art
history is recutting even its most "proper" concerns to meet the requirements
ofthe "cultural revolution." ("Welcome to the Cultural Revolution,"
Octobe>; no. 77 [summer 1996]: 96)
Here as often when Krauss writes about mywork the crucial question is whether
she is being disingenuous or whether she really doesn't understand what I've
said. For a long time I thought I knew the answer, but I'm no longer sure.
Someone else who conflates my art-critical and art-historical writings, to the
extent ofclaiming that "Didcrot's criticism ofart and of the theater is the touchstone
of Fried's entire critical project, whether it concerns eighteenth- or
nineteenth-century French painting or sculpture made in the United States in
the Ig6os," is Margaret Iversen in AloisRiegl:Art History and Theory (Cambridge,
Mass., and London, 1993), pp. 1 3 1-32.
76. See Robert Smithson, "Letter to the Editor," in The Collected Writings, pp.
66-67. The key sentences read: "Every refutation is a mirror of the thing it refutes-ad
infinitum. Every war is a battle with reflections. What Michael Fried
attacks is what he is. He is a naturalist who attacks natural time. Could it be there
is a double Michael Fried-the atemporal Fried and the temporal Fried?" (p.
67). Although I didn't realize it then (Phil Leider did though), Smithson's writings
of the late 1 g6os amounted to by far the most powerful and interesting
contemporary response to "Art and Objecthood."
77. Knapp and Michaels's original essay (1982), alongwithvarious responses
to it and two replies by them to their critics, are usefully gathered in W. J. T
Mitchell, ed., Against Them·y: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism (Chicago,
1985). In this connection it's significant that Smithson argued for a proto-de
Manian view of language in the same essay in which he responded to "Art and
Objecthood" ("A Sedimentation of the Mind," p. 107), which is to say that he
alone among contemporary artist-writers seems to have been aware ofthe impli�
cations for the question of linguistic meaning of my assault on literalism (or
at least of his antithetical position). Smithson's linguistic materialism rnay be
74 I AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ART CRITICISM
contrasted in turn with the altogether different (i.e., "against theory") view of
writing and its materiality put forward in the introduction and Crane chapter of
my book Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (ChiM
cago and London, 1987). Michaels is currently preparing an essay on questions
of theory in the 1 g6os that will deal in part with this aspect of the controversy
over "Art and Objecthood."
78. A point missed by Didi-Huberman when he characterizes Tony Smith's
sculptures as "monuments of absorption" and by Krauss when she says that absorption
is "a condition [Fried] advocates as highly desirable for painting (and
indeed for art itself)" (see notes 63 and 75 above, respectively). The term "absorption"
does occur once in "Art and Objecthood," where I remark in deprecation
of the cinema, or at any rate in explanation of my claim that it isn't a modernist
art, that it provides "a refuge from theater and not a triumph over it,
absorption not conviction."-But this is a contrast thathas no place in mywritings
on earlier art.
79· Fried, Manet:S Modernism, p. 407. It's noteworthy, too, the extent to which
photography-based (or simply photographic) work of the 1970s and after-for
example, that of Cindy Shennan, Jeff Wall, and Gerhard Richter-has found
itself compelled to address issues ofbeholding, often by an appeal to absorptive
means and effects. This is a large topic.
So. Ibid., pp. 17-19, 407-9.
8 1 . Among those assumptions is the basic modernist tenet that what matters
is the ability of new paintings to "sustain comparison" with older works whose
quality is not in doubt, a tenet I unequivocally endorsed even as I first forrnu�
lated rny critique of a reductionist conception of modernist painting in "Shape
as Form" and then reiterated in "Art and Objecthood." On the historical roots
of that idea see Manet's Aiodernism, pp. 414- 1 5; for its indispensableness to my
project in that book, see ibid., p. 416; for fresh evidence ofits continued life see
de Duve, Clement Greenbergbetween theLines, chap. 2, "Silences in the Doctrine."
82. Michael Fried, Powers (London, 1973); and idem, To the CenteroftheEarth
(New York, 1994).
Figure 1 . Jackson Pollock, Numher I, 1948, 1 948. Oil on canvas, 68 x 104 inches. The
Museum ofModern Art., NewYork. Purchase. © 1997 Pollock-Krasner Foundation I Artists
Rights Society (ARS) , NewYork. Photo: © 1997 The Museum ofModern An, NewYork.
Figure 2. Jackson Pollock, VVltite Coclwtoo: Number 24A, 1948, 1 948. Enamel and
oil on canvas, 35 x 1 14 inches. Private collection. Photo: Oliver Baker. © 1997 The
Pollock-Krasner Foundation I Artist.s Rights Society (AR.S), NewYork.
Figure 3· Jackson Pol!ock, The Wcoden H1:rrse: Number roA, 1948, 1948. Oil, enamel, and
wooden hobby horse head on brown cotton canvas, mounted on board, 35'l2x 75 inches.
Moderna Museet, Stockholm. © 1997 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation I Artist� Rights
Society (ARS), NewYork. Photo courtesy Statens Konstmuseer, Stockholm.
Figure 4· jackson Pollock, Cut-Out, ca. 1 948-50. Oil on cut-oul paper mounted on
canvas, 30Y:! x 23Y2 inches. Ohara Museum ofArt, Kurashiki,japan. © 1997 The PollockKrasner
Foundation I Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork. Photo: Ohara Museum of
Art, Kurashiki,japan.
I
I
Figure 5· Jackson PoHock, Autumn R.hythrn:
NumberJO, 1950, l9EJO. Oil on canvas, 106Y2 x
2 l 2 in<.::hes. The Metropolitan Museum ofArt,
NewYork. GiftofFrancisV. O'Connor and
Eugene V. Thaw. © 1 997 The Pollock-Krasner
Foundation I Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum ofArt,
NewYork. George A. Hearn Fund, l957
(57·92).
Figure 6. Jackson Pollock, Number 3, 1951,
1931. Enamel on canvas, 56 x 24 inches.
Private collection. Photo: © 1997 The
Pollock-Krasner Foundation I Artists Rights
Society (ARS), NewYork.
Figure 7· Barnett Ne>vman, Cathedra, 1951. Oil and Magna on canvas, 96 x 213 inches.
Stedeltjk Museum, Amsterdam. © 1997 The Barnett Newman Foundation I Artists Rights
Society (ARS), NewYork.
Figure 8. Helen Frankenthalcr, Mountains and Sea, 1 9:)2. Oil on canvas, 86'1.� x 1O!)Y.'t
inches. Collection of the artist, on extended loan to the National Gallery ofAn, Washington,
D.C. © 1 997 Helen Frankenthaler. Photo: © Board ofTrustees, National Gallery of
Art, VVashington, D.C.
Figure g. Morris Louis, 'Trellis, 1953· Acrylic resin on canvas, 76 x 104 inches.
Estate ofthe artist.
Figure 1o. Morris Louis, Intrigue, 1954. Acrylic resin on canvas, 8oY2 x 105Y2 inches.
Private collection, New York. Estate ofthe artist.
Figure l l . MorrisLouis, I'Yaral, 1 959· Acrylic resin on canvas, 103 x 142 inches.
Collection ofMr. and Mrs. Irwin Green, Detroit. Estate ofthe artist.
Figure 12. MorrisLouis, Aleph, 1g6o. Acrylic resin on canvas, 104 x 93 inches.
Private collection, NewYork. Estate ofthe artist.
Figure 13. Kenneth
Noland, YellowHalf,
1963. Acrylic resin on
canvas, 70 x 70 inches.
Albright-Knox Art
Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. Gift
ofSeymour H. Knox,
1964. © 1997 Kenneth
Noland I Licensed by
VAGA, NewYork, N.Y.
Photo: Albright�Knox An
Gallery, Buff'<tlo, N.Y.
Figure 14. Kenneth
Noland, Hovm; 1963.
Acxylic resin on canvas,
Gg x 69 inches. FoggArt
Museum, Harvard
University Arl Museums.
© 1997 Kenneth Noland
I Licensed byVAGA,
New York, N.Y. Photo
courtesy ofthe Fogg Art
Museum, Harvard
University Art Museums,
Louise E. Bet.tens Fund.
Figure 15. Kenneth Noland, Karma, 1964.
Acrylic resin on canvas, 102 x 144 inches.
FoggArt. Museum, Harvard UniversityArt
Museums. Gift ofKenneth Noland. © 1997
Kenneth Noland I Licensed by VAGA,
New York, N.Y. Photo courtesy of the Fogg Art
Museum, Harvard UniversityArt Museums.
Figure 16. Kenneth Noland, Thaw, 1966.
Acrylic resin on canvas, 102 x 1g inches. Private
collection. © 1997 Kenneth Noland I Licensed
by VAGA, New York, N.Y.
Figure 17. Kenneth Noland, Via Token, tg6g. Acrylic resin on canvas, 100 x 240
inches. David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto. © 1997 Kenneth Noland I Licensed byVAGA,
NewYork, NY
Figure 18. Jules Olitski, Cleopatra Flesh, 1 g62. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas,
8' 8" x 7' 6". The Museum ofModern Art, NewYork. Gift ofG. David Thompson. © 1997
Jules Olitski I Licensed byVAGA, NewYork, N.Y Photograph © 1997 The Museum of
Modern Art, NewYork.
Figure 1 9. Juks O!itski, Fal(d Plunge Lady, 1 963. Oil-miscible acrylk on canvas, 100 x 72
inches. Private collection. © 1997 Jules Olitski I Licens<�d by VAGA, New York, N.Y.
Figure 20. Jules Olitski, Tin Lizzie Green, 196+ WateNniscible acrylic on canvas, 130 x 82
inches. Muse·.tm ofFine Arts, Boston. © 1997Jules Olitski I Licensed byVAGA, NewYork,
N.Y. Photo: Purchased with the aid offunds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Figure 2 L jules Olitski, Bunga 45, 1967. Aluminum with acrylic paint.
Robert Rowan Trust, Pasadena, Calif © 1997jules Olitski I Licensed by
VAGA, NewYork, NY.
Figure 22. Frank Stella, DieFalmeHoeft, 1959· Enamel on canvas, 1 2 1% x
73% inches. Collection ofWhitney Museum ofAmerican Art, NewYork. Gift
ofMr. and Mrs. Eugene M. Schwartz and purchase, with funds from theJohn
I. H. Baur Purchase Fund; the Charles and Anita Blatt Fund; Peter M. Brant;
B. H. Friedman; the Gilman Foundation, Inc.; Susan Morse Hilles; the Lauder
Foundation; Frances and Sydney Lewis; the AlbertA. List Fund; Philip Morris,
Inc.; Sandra Payson; Mr. and Mrs. Albrecht Saalfield; Mrs. Percy Uris; Warner
Comrnuncations, Inc.; and the National Endowmentfor the Arts. © 1997
i ;·;.mk Stella I Artists Rights Society (AR.';), NewYork. Photo: Copyright
�) 1997 'Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art, NewYork.
Figure 23. Frank Stella, Union Pacific, 1960. Aluminum paint on canvas, 77 x 154 inches.
Des Moines Art Center. © 1997 Frank Stella I Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.
Photo: Purchased with fundsfrom the Coffin Fine Arts Trust; Nathan Emory Collection
ofthe Des Moines ArtCenter, 1975.62.
Figure 24- Frank Stella, Cipango, 1962. Alkyd on canvas, 85Y! x SsY� inches. Private
collection. © 1997 Frank Stella I Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork. Photo: Courtesy
Knoedler & Company, NewYork.
Figure 25. FrankStella, SharjJeville, 1962. Alkyd on canvas, 85 x 85 inches.
Private collection. © 1997 Frank Stella I ArtistsRightsSociety (ARS), NewYork.
Photo: Courtesy Knoedler & Company, NewYork.
Figure 26. Frank Stella, Ileana Sonnabend, 1 963. Oil on canvas, 72:Y.1 x 1 28 inches.
Private collection. © l997 Frank Stella I Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.
Photo: Ken Cohen; courtesy Knoedler & Company, NewYork.
Figure 27. Frank Stella, Moultonbaro Ill, 1g66. Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy
paint on canvas, 1 10 x 120!1.! inches. Private collection. © 1997 Frank Stella I Artists
Rights Society (ARS), NewYork. Photo: Eric Pollitzer:
Figure 28. Frank Stella, Chocorua III, 1966. Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paint
on canvas, 120 x 128 inches. Private collection. © 1997 Frank Stella I ArtL�ts
Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Eric Pollitzer.
Figure 29. Frank Stella, ConwayIII, 1966. Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paint
on canvas, So x 1 22 inches. Private collection. © 1997 FrankStella I Artists
Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.
Figure go. Frank Stella, Union Ill, tg66. Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paint on canvas,
1 og% x 173% inches. Private collection. © 1997 Frank Stella I Artists Rights Society
(ARS), NewYork.
Figure 31. Frank Stella, Effingham Ill, 1966. Fluorescent
alkyd and epoxy paint on canvas, 128 x 132 inches. Private collection.
© 1997 FrankStella I Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.
Photo: Eric Pollitzer.
P A R T O N E :
1966=77
Shape as Form:
Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons
The craving for simplicity. People would like to say: 'What really matters is only
the colors." You say this mostly because youwish it to be the case. Ifyour explana�
tio'n is complicated, it is disagreeable, especially ifyou don't have strong feelings
about the thing itself.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein1
I
FRANK STELLA's new paintings investigate the viability
ofshape as such. By shapeassuchI mean not merely the silhouette
of the support (which I shall call literal shape) , not merely that of
the outlines ofelements in a given picture (which I shall call depicted
shape) , but shape as a medium within which choices about both literal
and depicted shapes are made, and made mutually responsive.
And by the viability of shape, I mean its power to hold, to stamp itself
out, and in-as verisimilitude and narrative and symbolism used to
impress themselves-compelling conviction. Stella's undertaking in
these paintings is therapeutic: to restore shape to health, at least temporarily,
though of course its implied "sickness" is simply the other
face of the unprecedented importance shape has assumed in the
Originally published in ATtjorurn 5 (Nov. 1966): 18-27 (originally subtitled "Frank Stella's
New Paintings"), Reprinted as the catalog textforthe exhibition Frank Stella:An£Xhibition
ofRecentPaintings at the Pasadena Art Museum, Oct. 18-Nov. 20, 1966; and the Seattle
Art Museum Pavilion, Jan. 1 2-Feb. 12, 1967, and with slight revisions (retained in this
book) in New YmkPainting and Sculpture: I940-1970, ed. Henry Geldzahler (New York,
1g6g), pp. 403-25.
77
78 I SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS
finest modernist painting of the past several years, most notably in
the work of Kenneth Noland andJules Olitski. It is only in their work
that shape as such can be said to have become capable of holding,
or stamping itself out, or compelling conviction-as well as, so to
speak, capable of failing to do so. These are powers or potentialities,
not to say responsibilities, which shape never until now possessed,
and which have been conferred upon it by the development ofmodernist
painting itself. In this sense shape has become something different
from what it was in traditional painting or, for that matter, in
modernist painting until recently. It has become, one might say, an
object of conviction, whereas before it was merely . . . a kind of object.
Stella's new pictures are a response to the recognition that shape
itselfmay be lost to the art of painting as a resource able to compel
conviction, precisely because-as never before-it is being called
upon to dojust that.
The wayin which this has come about is, in the fullest sense of the
word, dialectical, and I shall not try to do justice to its considerable
complexity in this essay. An adequate account of the developments
leading up to Stella's new paintings would, however, deal with the fol­
lowing:
I. The emergence ofa new, exclusively visual mode ofillusionism in the
work ofJackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Morris Louis. No single issue
has been as continuously fundamental to the development of
modernist painting as the need to acknowledge the literal character
of the picture support. Above all this has tended to mean acknowledging
its flatness or two-dimensionality. There is a sense in which a
new illusionism was implicit in this development all along. As Clement
Greenberg has remarked:
The flatness toward which Modernist painting orients itself can never
be an utter flatness. The heightened sensitivity of the picture plane
may no longer permit sculptural illusion, or trompe�l'oeil, but it does
and must permit optical illusion. The first mark made on a surface
destroys its virtual flatness, and the configurations of a Mondrian still
suggest a kind of illusion of a kind of third dimension. Only now it is
a strictly pictorial, strictly optical third dimension.2
But the universal power of any mark to suggest something like depth
belongs not so much to the art of painting as to the eye itself; it is,
one might say, not something that has had to be established so much
as something-a perceptual limitation-that cannot be escaped.' In
contrast, the dissolution of traditional drawing in Pollock's work, the
SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's lRRI\GULAR PoLYGONS I 79
reliance on large and generally rather warm expanses of barely fluctuating
color in Newman's, and the staining of thinned acrylic pigment
into mostly unsized canvas in Louis's were instrumental in the
creation of a depth or space accessible to eyesight alone which, so to
speak, specifically belongs to the art of painting.
2. The neutralizing oftheflatness ofthepicture support by the new, exclusively
opticalillusionism. In the work of Pollock and Newman, but even
more in that of Louis, Noland, and Olitski, the new illusionism both
subsumes and dissolves the picture surface-opening it, as Greenberg
has said, from the rear4-while simultaneously preserving its
integrity. More accurately, it is the flatness of the picture surface, and
not that surface itself, that is dissolved, or at least neutralized, by the
illusionism in question. The literalness of the picture surface is not
denied; but one's experience of that literalness is an experience of
the properties of different pigments, of foreign substances applied
to the surface of the painting, of the weave of the canvas, above all
of color-but not, or not in particular, of the flatness of the support.
(One might say that the literalness of the picture surface is not an
aspect of the literalness of the support.) Not that literalness here is
experienced as competing in any way with the illusionistic presence
of the painting as a whole; on the contrary, one somehow constitutes
the other. And in fact there is no distinction one can make between
attending to the surface of the painting and to the illusion it generates:
to be gripped by one is to be held, and moved, by the other.
3· The discovery shortly before 1960 ofa new mode ofpictorial structure
based on theshape, rather than theflatness, ofthesuj!port. With the dissolution
or neutralizing of the flatness of the support by the new optical
illusionism, the shape of the support-including its proportions and
exact dimensions-came to assume a more active, more explicit importance
than ever before. The crucial figures in this development
are Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland. In Stella's aluminum stripe
paintings of tg6o, for example, 2 Y,-inch-wide stripes begin at the
framing edge and reiterate the shape of that edge until the entire
picture is filled (fig. 23); moreover, by actually shaping each picture-the
canvases are rectangles with shallow (one-stripe-deep)
notches at two corners or along the sides or both-Stella was able to
make the fact that the literal shape determines the structure of the
entire painting completely perspicuous. That is, in each painting the
stripes appear to have been generated by the framing edge and, starting
there, to have taken possession of the rest of the canvas, as
though the whole painting self-evidently followed from not merely
8o I SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR POLYGONS
the shape of the support, but its actual physical limits. Noland, on
the other hand, cannot be said to have confronted the physical limits
of the support until his first chevron painting'S of 1 962. His initial
breakthrough to major achievement in the late 1 950s came when he
began to locate the center of concentric or radiating motifs at the
exact center of square canvases (pl. 7). This related depicted shape
to literal shape through a shared focus ofsymmetry. Whether or not
Noland recognized that that was the significance of centering his
rings and armatures of color is less important than that he experienced
the centering itself as a discovery: a constraint in whose necessity
he could believe, and in submission to which his magnificent gifts
as a colorist were liberated. His shift to chevron motifs a few years
later was, I believe, inspired in part by the need to achieve a more
active or explicit relation between depicted and literal shape than
the use of concentric rings, none ofwhich actually made contact with
the framing edge, allowed. Within a few months Noland discovered
that suspending his chevrons from the upper corners of the support
(the bottom edge of the lowest chevron running into each corner)
empowered him, first, to prize loose the point of the bottommost
chevron from the midpoint of the bottom framing edge, and second,
to pull all the chevrons away from the central axis of the paintingthereby
enabling him to work with rectangular formats other than
the square (figs. 13, 15, pls. 8, g). In those paintings-the asymmetrical
chevrons of 1 964-the exact dimensions of the support become
important in this sense: that if the edge of the bottommost chevron
did not exactly intersect the upper corners of the canvas, the relation
of all the chevrons-that is, of the depicted shapes-to the shape of
the support became acutely problematic and the ability of the painting
as a whole to compel conviction was called into question. Since
that time, apparently in an attempt to make depicted shape relate
more generally to the shape of the support in its entirety, Noland too
has shaped his pictures. (His recent work includes a number of narrow,
diamond-shaped pictures that I shall discuss further on.) It cannot
be emphasized too strongly, however, that Noland's chief concern
throughout his career has been with color-rather, with feeling
through color-and not with structure, which makes the role that
structural decisions and alterations have played in his development
all the more significant. This is not to say that Noland's colorism has
had to maintain itself in the teeth of his forced involvement with
structural concerns. On the contrary, it is precisely his deep and
impassioned commitment to making color yield major painting that
SHAPE AS FORM: FRANK STEtLA'S IRREGULAR POLYGONS I 8 1
has compelled him to discover structures in which the shape of the
support is acknowledged lucidly and explicitly enough to compel
conviction.
4· Theprimacy ofliteraloverdepictedshape. In both Noland's work and
Stella's stripe paintings the burden of acknowledging the shape of
the support is borne by the depicted shape or, perhaps more accurately,
by the relation between it and the literal shape-a relation
that declares the primacy of the latter. And in general the development
of modernist painting during the past six years can be described
as having involved the progressive assumption by literal
shape of a greater-more active, more explicit-importance than
ever before, and the consequent subordination of depicted shape. It
is as though depicted shape has become less and less capable ofventuring
on its own, of pursuing its own ends-as though unless, in a
given painting, depicted shape manages to participate in, by helping
to establish, the authority of the shape of the support, conviction is
aborted and the painting fails. In this sense depicted shape may be
said to have become dependent upon literal shape-and indeed unable
to make itselffeltas shape except by acknowledging that depen­
dence.
2
LET THIS stand as the general background of concerns
from which Stella's new paintings emerge. A fuller delineation
of their immediate context is still required, however, if the concentrated
and radical exploration of shape which they undertake is
meaningfully to be described.
Although Noland has found it necessary to develop structures in
which the shape of the support plays a determining role, his continuing
ambition to liberate feeling through color has made him reluctant
to call attention to the physical limits of the support-the way,
for example, Stella's stripe paintings call attention to them. In the
latter, Stella identifies the shape of a given picture with its framing
edge, thereby assimilating the first to the second. Noland, on the
other hand, is anxious to keep this from happening; or rather,
the same concerns that compel him to acknowledge the shape of the
support also compel him to try to keep our awareness of the support's
physical limits to an absolute minimum. Above all, Noland is
anxious to keep us from experiencing the shape of his paintings as
edge, hence as something literal and nonillusive; and in order to make
82 I SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS
sure this does not happen, he tries to keep us from experiencing the
shape at all. It is as though, for Noland, to experience the shape of a
painting is inescapably to experience the painting itself as something
literal, as a kind of object; and this would compromise its presence
as visual illusion. And in fact the shapes of his paintings are never
experienced as acutely as the limits of and boundaries between the
depicted elements within them.
That Noland's paintings avoid calling attention to their physical
limits does not mean that those limits are not still there-and there
to be felt. What put them there to be felt is the acknowledgment of
literal shape that the paintings themselves make-an acknowledgment
that exerts upon the edge a kind of pressure, or inquisition,
from which it cannot escape. If Noland's paintings offered some alternative
to our experiencing their shapes as an aspect of their literalness-either
by positively identifying literal shape with illusion, or
by repudiating it altogether-their efficacy as illusion or presence
would not be, as I sometimes find them to be, threatened by, or at,
the edges. (The suggested alternatives are those explored in Olitski's
spray paintings and Stella's new pictures, respectively.) This is not to
deny that throughout Noland's masterful paintings of the past several
years the literal shape of the support is made to seem the outcome
or result of the depicted shapes-rather than, as in Stella's
stripe paintings, the other way around. But the fact remains that a
painting by Noland cannot be said to hold as shape-it cannot be
said to need to, either-but merely to haveone, like any solid object
in the world. Or rather, it is as though the shape were itself a kind of
object in the world-an object that has been prized loose from the
illusionistic presence of the painting by its very importance to the
structure of that painting. One is made to feel, that is, that. in these
paintings the distinction between depicted and literal shape marks a
difference not simply between two kinds ofshape-each, so to speak,
conceived of as a pictorial entity-but between two utterly distinct
and different kinds of entities. The first of these, depicted shape, is
powerless to make itself felt except by acknowledging the primacy of
the other, while that other, literal shape, does not hold as shape. It is
a shape, but what this now seems to mean is only that it is an object
in the world-an object whose relevance to our experience of the
painting is not clear.
The fact that in some of his recent paintings Noland has not been
content simply to minimize the shape of the support, but has instead
begun actively to subvert it, suggests that his previous paintings may
SHAPE As FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGoNs I 83
have come to seem problematic to him for the sorts ofreasons I have
been discussing. For example, his last show at the Emmerich Gallery
included four eight-by-two-foot diamond-shaped paintings in each
of which four relatively broad bands of color run parallel to one or
the other pair of sides, thereby acknowledging the shape of the snpport
(fig. 16). At the same time, however, the extreme attenuation
of these pictures makes them unable to contain within the limits of
the support their own extraordinary presences as color and illusion.
In the grip of the sheerly visual illusion generated by the interaction
of the colored bands, the acute-angled corners of the support appear
to vibrate and shimmer, to erode both from within and without, to
become even more attenuated and needlelike than they are, while
the obtuse-angled corners tend to round off, to appear dull or blunt.
The result is that the physical limits of the support are overrun, indeed
all but dissolved, by the painting's illusionistic presence. At the
same time an effect like that of simultaneous contrast between the
colored bands makes them appear to overlap one another physically,
like shingles. So that, while the physical limits of the support are assaulted
by illusion, the (depicted) boundaries between the bands are
the more acutely felt-as if absorbing the literalness or objecthood
given up by the support. Moreover, because some sort of progressive
sequence (e.g., of value) among the bands appears to be required
for the illusionistic overlapping I have just described, one's experience
of these paintings involves a sense of directionality. One
is aware, that is, of being held and moved by a progression or sequence-a
resource until now foreign to modernist painting-and
this further intensifies the assault these paintings make on their own
static, literal shapes. In several other paintings in the same showlong
horizontal rectangles with a few parallel bands of color, again
arranged progressively, running their entire lengths-Noland
achieved an equal subversion by somewhat simpler means: the rectangles
are too long, and proportionally too narrow, to be experienced
as discrete shapes. Instead, confronted head on, they seem to
extend almost beyond the limits of our field of vision, to become
nothing but extension, to only endup being rectangular; approached
from the side (their length makes this inviting) what is striking is
not their rectangularity but the speed with which that rectangle-or
rather, the speed with which the colored bands-appear to diminish
in perspective recession.' Here, again, although the relation of depicted
to literal shape within each painting acknowledges in the
simplest possible way the primacy of the latter, the actual limits ofthe
84 \ SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS
support do not quite manage to constitute a single, definite shape,
while the boundaries between the colored bands seem almost tactile
or stepped by comparison.
I have argued elsewhere that the desire to oppose the kind of
structure at work in Noland's and Stella's paintings provided much
of the motivation behindjules Olitski's first spray paintings of 1 965
(pl. 1 0).6 Those pictures are completely devoid of depicted shape,
and in fact represent what is almost certainly the most radical and
thoroughgoing attempt. in the history of modernism to make major
art out ofnothing but color. At the same time, no paintings have ever
depended so completely or so nakedly for their success on the shape
(and in particular the proportions) of their supports, experienced,
one might say, in relation both to nothing particular within each
painting and to everything it contains.' It is, I think, true of those
paintings-and of no others-that they succeed as paintingsjust so
far as-they succeed, or hold, or stamp themselves out, as shapes. And
in fact no shapes, depicted or literal, have ever stamped themselves
out more compellingly or more feelingly. In the sense in which I have
been using the word, it is not true to say that these paintings "acknowledge"
the shape of the support; but the quality of individual
works depends even more intimately upon it. (In this respect they
differ sharply from Noland's pictures, whose success or failure as art
does not depend on their efficacy as shapes.) So that while they were
made in opposition to a mode of pictorial organization which established
the primacy of literal over depicted shape, in Olitski's early
spray paintings literal shape's assumption of authority has become
not merely relative but absolute, as though it alone were capable of
performing the office of shape, of being felt as shape.
The very success of Olitski's paintings as shapes lays bare the conditions
thatmake thatsuccess possible-conditions it is hard to imagine
any paintings but his being able to fulfill. It is, to begin with,
clearly central to their potency as shapes that they are wholly devoid
of depicted shape; but it is also clear that two paintings equally devoid
of depicted shape may succeed unequally as shape (and, therewith,
as works ofart) . Moreover, virtually all the best earlyspray paintings
belong to a single format-the narrow vertical rectangle-and
the more any painting departs from that format toward the horizontal
or square the more likely it is to fail. This is connected with the
fact that when the early spray paintings fail-relatively speaking-we
tend to see the framing edge as marking the limits of a spatial container
and the sprayed canvas itself as something like background in
SnAPE As FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRRI�cur.AR PoLYGoNs I s5
traditional painting. The narrow vertical format somehow keeps this
from happening, not by denying the illusion but, so to speak, by making
it self-sufficient, a presence, like that of a human figure, instead
of a void waiting to be filled. In the best narrowvertical paintings tbe
framing edge does not appear to contain the illusion; on the contrary,
the illusion "contains" the limits of the support. So thatwhereas
the relatively square paintings can often be seen as receptacles which
may happen to be empty but which could be filled, could contain
objects, the best narrow vertical pictures already contain their object,
namely, the edges ofthe painting, its outermost and tactile limits. (In
this connection it is significant that, in the paintings in question, all
relatively well-defined bursts of color and variations in value are restricted
to the vicinity of the edges and corners of the canvas.) One
might say that whereas in traditional painting the illusion of a tactile
space commences at the inside of the framing edge, in the best early
spray paintings the illusion of something like depth or space accessible
to eyesight alone ends at the outside of that edge. And that
whereas traditional illusionism begins at the surface of the canvas,
the strictly visual mode of illusionism of the Olitskis in question
ends there.
In recent paintings, such as those exhibited at the 1 966 Venice
Biennale, Olitski has taken to masking out all but thin bands around
two or three sides of the sprayed canvas, spraying some more and
then removing the masking (pl. 1 1 ) . The result is a clear difference
between the previously masked and unmasked areas, a difference
that can be subtle or blatant and can vary enormously from place to
place along the boundary between the bands and the rest of the picture
which they partly frame. Further, this internal "frame" is not
strictly parallel to the edges ofthe canvas; sometimes its long vertical
component is inflected slightly away from the perpendicular. Both
these developments can be understood, at least in part, as undermining
or mitigating the absoluteness of the primacy which literal shape
assumes in his first spray paintings. To begin with, the partial internal
"frame" amounts to something like depicted shape; and this in itself
means that the quality of individual paintings no longer solely depends
on the almost unanalyzable relation between the sprayed canvas
and the shape of the support that apparently governs the success
or failure of the early spray paintings. But because the boundary between
the framing bands and the rest of the painting consists of the
same pictorial stuff-the same sprayed color-as the areas it delimits,
the role of the internal "frame" as a kind of middle term be-
86 I SHAPE AS FORM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR POLYGONS
tween the shape of the support and the rest of the painting is far
more complex than that played by depicted shape in Noland's paintings
or Stella's stripe paintings. To be sure, the internal "frame"more
accurately, the boundary between the "framing" bands and the
rest of the painting-relates structurally to the shape of the support.
But it also establishes an extraordinary, indeed unprecedented,
continuity across that boundary. This enahles the paintings in question
to contain depicted shape, or something like it, and yet be seen
as pictorially seamless and integral-like the early spray paintings.
Moreover, the fact that the long vertical component of the internal
"frame"-or the vertical boundary between that "frame" and the rest
of the picture-is sometimes inflected away from the perpendicular
further reduces the perspicuousness ofliteral shape's primacy at the
same time that it acknowledges, or is made possible by, that primacy.
That is, in these paintings the primacy of literal shape is such that
even a slight departure from verticality within the painting makes
itself felt with an intensity of expression that I for one find astonishing.
But it is precisely the strength of that primacy that enables
the paintings in question both to tolerate the departure and to move
us by it. The very acuteness, even poignancy, of our experience of
what is, after all, an extremely slight inflection acknowledges the
strength, and more than that, the depth, of the norm from which
that inflection departed-in this case, the rectangular shape of the
support. But the fact remains that what we actually feel, and are inexplicably
moved by, is the inflection from the norm rather than the
norm itself. All these differences between his early and later spray
paintings have enabled Olitski to realize his ambitions across a considerably
wider range of formats. And if it is true, as I believe it is,
that none of the later spray paintings (none that I have seen at any
rate) stamps itself out as shape quite as powerfully as the best of the
early ones, part ofwhat these differences have meant is that the quality
of a given picture no longer depends entirely on its success or
failure as shape.
There is, then, a sense in which the conflict between a sheerly
visual or optical mode of illusionism and the literal character of the
support is central to both Noland's and Olitski's paintings. In
Olitski's pictures-at any rate, the early spray pictures-the conflict
is naked and direct. It is, for example, felt in the threat that the illusion
will seem almost to come detached from the framing edge, to
leave the literal shape hanging on the wall and situate itself indefinitely
further back. This is not to say that when this doesn't happen
SnAPE AS FORM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS I 87
the illusion is properly described as attached to the edge of the support.
Rather, the physical limits of the support mark or declare or
simply are the limits of the illusion itself We become aware of the
conflict in question only when, in relatively less successful paintings,
illusion and literal shape actually part company-despite the fact
that when that happens, the illusion can no longer he described as
sheerlyvisual, any more than background in traditional painting can
be characterized in those terms. In Noland's paintings, on the other
hand, opticality and the physical limits of the support are not juxtaposed
against one another as in Olitski's paintings. Instead, it is the
structure of his paintings-the relation between depicted and literal
shape in them-that brings the two into conflict with one another.
This is what makes the fact that his paintings do not stamp themselves
out as shapes feel like a failure or refusal to do so-a failure or refusal
that, especially in the light of Olitski's spray paintings, leaves
the literalness or objecthood of the limits of the support there to be
felt. I said earlier that Noland himselfseems to have become increasingly
troubled by this and in his recent narrow diamond and long
horizontal rectangle paintings appears to have tried to subvert their
shapes. But it should be remarked that this does not resolve the conflict
between opticality and the literal character of the support that,
I have claimed, is central to both Noland's and Olitski's work; if anything,
it intensifies it.
3
IT IS only in the presence of this conflict that fhe
question ofwhether or not a given painting holds or stamps itself out
as shape makes full sense-or rather, only here that the issue of "the
viability of shape as such" characterizes a specific stage in resolving
or unfolding problems of acknowledgment, literalness, and illusion
which, as I said at the beginning of this essay, have been among the
issues of modernism from its beginning. In Stella's stripe paintings,
for example, the reiteration by the stripes of the irregular shapes of
the support makes the dependence of depicted on literal shape far
more explicit than Noland's paintings ever allow it to seem. But if
one asks whether Stella's paintings hold better or make themselves
felt more acutely as shapes than Noland's paintings, the answer, I
think, is notjust that they do not, but that the whole issue ofholding
or failing to hold is much less relevant to them. That is, because they
88 � SHAPE AS FORM: fRANK STELLA'S IRREGULAR POLYGONS
are not illusive in anything like the way Noland's and Olitski's paintings
are, there is nothing· for them to hold as shapes against.•
I must emphasize that in defining this conflict between visual illusionism
and literal shape in Noland's and Olitski's paintings I have
not meant to imply an adverse criticism either of the quality of their
best paintings or of the general level of their respective achievements.
This is worth stressing precisely because there are certain
younger artists to whose sensibilities all conflict between the literal
character of the support and illusion of any kind is intolerable and
for whom, accordingly, the future of art lies in the creation ofworks
that, more than anything else, are wholly literal-in that respect going
"beyond" painting. It should be evident thatwhat I think of as literalist
sensibility is itself a product, or by-product, of the development of
modernist painting itself-more accurately, of the increasingly explicit
acknowledgment of the literal character of the support that has
been central to that development But it ought also to be observed
that the literalness isolated and hypostatized in the work of artists
like DonaldJudd and Larry Bell is by no means the same literalness
as that acknowledg·ed by advanced painting throughout the past century:
it is not the literalness ofthe suj!port. Moreover, hypostatization
is not acknowledgment. The continuing problem of how to acknowledge
the literal character of the support-of what counts as that acknowledgment-has
been at least as crucial to the development of
modernist painting as the fact of its literalness, and that problem has
been eliminated, not solved, by the artists in question. Their pieces
cannot be said to acknowledge literalness; they simply are literal. And
it is hard to see how literalness as such, divorced from the conventions
which, from Manet to Noland, Olitski, and Stella, have given
literalness value and have madeit a bearer of conviction, can be experienced
as a source of both of these-and what is more, one powerful
enough to generate new conventions, a new art.9
Because Frank Stella's stripe paintings, especially those executed
in metallic paint, represent the most unequivocal and conflictless
acknowledgment of literal shape in the history of modernism, they
have been crucial to the literalist view I have just adumbrated, both
because they are seen as extreme instances ofa putative development
within modernist painting-the increasingly explicit acknowledgment
ofliteralness per se-and because they help make that development
visible, or arguable, in the first place. They are among the last
paintings that literalists like Judd are able to endorse more or less
without reservation, largely because the ambition to go beyond
SHAPE AS FORM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS I 8g
them-to pursue their apparent implications-was instrumental in
the abandonment of painting altogether by these same artists.
In Stella's new paintings, however, the relation between depicted
and literal shape seems nowhere near as straightforward in its declaration
of the latter as in the stripe paintings-or, for that matter, in
Noland's work. Rather, there is a new and somewhat startling freedom
both in the variety of shapes used in a given picture and in their
disposition relative to one another and to the support. This is not to
say that the shape of the support is either ignored or denied. On the
contrary, it is very clearly taken into account; but the way in which
this is accomplished does not affirm the dependence of depicted on
literal shape so much as it establishes an unprecedented continuity
between them. In Moultonboro Ill ( 1 g66; fig. 27) , for example, the
shape of the support is an irregular polygon formed by superimposing
a triangle and a square, the firstapparently having come slanting
down from the upper right to wedge itself deeply into the second.
(In Chocorua Ill [ 1 g66; fig. 28] a triangle is superimposed on a rectangle;
the same is true of TuftonboroIII [ 1 g66] except that the rectangle
is missing its upper right corner; while in Conway III [1g66; fig.
29] a parallelogram is superimposed on another, this time more horizontal,
rectangle. These are the only formats among the eleven Stella
has used for his new paintings that have been arrived at by superimposition
pure and simple.)10 The triangle itself comprises two elements-an
eight-inch-wide light yellow band around its perimeter
and the smaller triangle, in Day-Glo yellow, bounded by that bandboth
of which seem to be acknowledging, by repeating, the shape of
the support. For that reason it is almost startling to realize that only
a relatively small segment of the triangle coincides with, is part of,
the shape of the support. Most of the triangle lies wholly inside the
picture and, in the terms proposed at the outset, exists only as depicted
shape. Even more surprising, however, is the fact that realizing
this does not in itself undermine the triangle's efficacy as shape. It is
as though that segment which coincides with the literal shape of the
painting somehow implies the rest of the triangle-the merely depicted
portion of it-strongly enough for the latter to succeed as
shape despite its failure to relate self-evidently to any other segment
of the framing edge. But it would, I think, be just as true to one's
experience ofMoultonboroIIIto claim that what enables the relatively
small segment of the triangle that coincides with the shape of the
support to make itself felt as shape is what might be called the implicative
power, in this context, of the merely depicted portion of the
,i !
go l SHAPE AS fORM: FRANK STELLA'S IRREGULAR POLYGONS
triangle. The yellow triangular band and the Day-Ghtriangle within
it are, after all, what make that segment intelligible: without them,
and without another largely internal shape-the blue Z-form in
which the triangular band (and hence the triangle as a whole)
rests-the upper right-hand segment of the support would not be
part of a triangle but would belong instead to the literal shape of the
painting perceived in its entirety as an irregular seven-sided polygon,
whereas in the painting as it stands roughly the opposite is the case.
The beholder is in effect compelled not to experience the literal
shape in its entirety-as a single entity-but rather to perceive it segment
by segment, each of which is felt to belong to one or another
of the smaller shapes that constitute the painting as a whole.
This last point is important. For one thing, it indicates a crucial
difference between Stella's new paintings on the one hand and Noli!nd's
and Olitski's pictures, as well as Stella's own previous work, on
the other. In this respect Noland's paintings in general are closer to
Olitski's spray pictures than to Stella's new work, despite the fact
that-unlike Olitski-both he and Stella work with nonrectangular
supports and discrete areas of color. It also suggests that, confronted
by Stella's new paintings, the distinction between depicted and literal
shape becomes nugatory. It is as though in a painting like Moultonboro
IIIthere is no literal shape and, therefore, no depicted shape either;
more accurately, because none of the shapes that we experience in
that painting is wholly literal, there is none that we are tempted to
call merely depicted. There areshapes that lie entirely inside the picture
limits-that do not make contact with those limits-just as there
are others that partly coincide with the edge of the support. But
neither kind of shape enjoys precedence over the other-neither
sponsors nor guarantees the other's efficacy as shape-any more
than either the depicted or the literal limits of a shape that partly
coincides with the edge of the support are experienced as more
fundamental to that shape's efficacy than the other. Both types of
shape succeed or fail on exactly the same grounds-grounds that do
not concern the relation ofa given shape to the shape of the support
seen in its entirety. Each, one might say, is implicated in the other's
failure and strengthened by the other's success. But the failure and
success of individual shapes cannot be understood in terms of the
distinction between depicted and literal shape with which I have
been working until now.
The relation between depicted and literal shape that holds in the
stripe paintings no longer holds in these, not because the relation
SHAPE, AS Fom...r: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS I 91
has been altered or defied but because the distinction is defeated by
the paintings themselves. Nothing, apparently, is more central to
their conception than the desire to establish all shapes on an equal
footing-to make pictures that comprise nothing but individual
shapes, each of which is felt to stand or fall without reference, or
appeal, to a single master shape, the support seen as a single entity.
In fact, because in most of the new pictures the physical limits of the
support are not perceived as constituting a single shape, there is even
a sense in which-despite the nonrectangularity of their supportsthe
pictures in question are not shaped: if being shaped implies having
an enclosingshape, the term is less applicable to Stella's nonrectangular
pictures than, for example, to Olitski's rectangular ones. (In
this same sense the physical limits of the support can be said not to
constitute a framing edge.) It should be remarked, however, that
Stella could not have made paintings of which this is true except by
using irregular supports-that is, by avoiding not only the rectangle
but geometrically regular figures of any kind-in order to prevent
the eye from instantly perceiving the shape of the support as a single
entity. Moreover, the fact that in perhaps the three most successful
subseries of the new paintings-the Union, Effingham, and Wolfeboro
pictures (all 1 966) -Stella has not used regular geometric shapes at
all seems to me to have something to do with their success (figs. 30,
3 1 ) . In certain other of the new paintings, the eye pounces on a
shape of that kind and only then takes in the rest of the painting.
When that happens, the rest of the painting is put under enormous
pressure by the geometrically regular shape to match its own sheer
perspicuousness-which, inevitably, it cannot do. In other words,
regularity of shape seems to be enough in itself to disturb the parity
among shapes on which the success of Stella's new pictures seems
largely to depend. In Moultonboro III, as in the Chocorua and Tuftonboro
paintings mentioned earlier, the desire for parity manifests itself
in the impliedjuxtaposition of two equally regular and hence equally
perspicuous shapes (a triangle and a rectangle) . But in each of the
above works the two shapes compete for one's attention, almost as
though they werejuxtaposed to one another within a larger conventional
painting with the result that one tends to pull back, to distance
the works in question, and, as it were, to surround each of them with
an imaginary rectangular frame large enough to contain the actual
painting and some space around it besides. In the Union, Effingham,
and Wolfeboro canvases, in contrast, no such competition for one's
attention takes place: none of the elements they comprise is in any
92 I SHAPE AS FORI>.,I: FRANK STELLA'S IRREGULAR POLYGONS
way perspicuous, or even particularly interesting in itself; one does
not "recognize" any of them-except perhaps the trapezoid at the
bottom of Wolfeboro (and then, as we shall see, it is an open question
what one "recognizes" it as). And far from being inclined to distance
or frame these pictures, I for one feel strongly that, more than any
pictures I have ever seen, they ought not to be framed at all.
Moreover, the fact that the physical limits of the support do not
make themselves felt as a single entity but in effect belong segment
by segment to individual shapes the remainder of whose limits do
not coincide with those of the support implies a strong and, I think,
unprecedented continuity between the "outside" of a given painting
(its physical limits) and its "inside" (everything else) . The eight-inchwide
colored bands deployed throughout the new paintings are a
kind ofparadigm for that continuity. In general one such band begins
by running along at least one side of the support (in Union Ill
the same band runs along four or five sides) until at some point or
other it encounters another shape whose "merely" depicted portion
it follows into the heart of the canvas, taking the beholder with it.
That is, a particular stretch ofthe edge ofthe painting is first isolated
from the rest ofthat edge-the band broadens and usurps the office
of the edge-and is then carried into the interior of the painting.
The result is both that the paintings are infused with an extraordinary
and compelling directionality, and that one is made to feel that
the important difference in them is not between "outside" and "inside"
but between open and closed. The side or sides along which
the bands run are experienced as closed (or closed ojf) while the
others are felt as open-and when, as in Union Ill and Effingham Ill
(figs. 30, 3 1 ) , the open side or sides are at the top of the painting,
the effect can be one ofan astonishingvertical acceleration, soaring,
or release. There is, one might say, no more "outside" or "inside" to
the best of Stella's new paintings than to the individual shapes they
comprise; and to the extent that a given shape can be said to have
an "outside" and "inside" the relation between the two is closer to
that, say, between the edge ofa tabletop and the rest of that tabletop
than to the relation between the edge of a Noland or an Olitski or
even a Stella stripe painting and the rest of that painting. This is not
to say that Stella's new pictures are nothing more than objects. Unlike
Judd's constructions, for example, or Bell's glass boxes, they do
not isolate and hypostatize literalness as such. At the same time, however,
literalness in them is no longer experienced as the exclusive
property of the support. Rather, it is suffused more generally and, as
SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's lRREGUCAR PoLYGONS I 93
it were, more deeply throughout them. It is as though literalness in
these pictures does not belong to the support at all except by coincidence:
specifically, the coincidence between the limits of the individual
shapes that constitute a given painting and the physical limits
of the support-as though, that is, one's experience of literalness is
above all an experience of the literalness of the individual shapes
themselves. Though ofcourse what I havejust called their literalness
is identical with their success as shapes-and that, while not a direct
function of the literalness of the support, is at any rate inconceivable
apart from that literalness.
The dissociation of literalness from the support that I have just
tried to describe is intimately related to another aspect of Stella's
new paintings, namely, their extraordinary, and sheerly visual, illusiveness.
This is not to say that, in a given picture, each shape seems
to lie in a definite or specifiable depth relation to every other. On
the contrary, nothing is more fundamental to the nature of the new
paintings' illusiveness than the extreme ambiguity, indeterminacy,
and multivalence of the relations that appear to obtain among the
individual shapes, as well as between those shapes and the surface of
the picture (or, at any rate, the plane of that surface) . In Moultonboro
Ill, for example, although one is not made to feel that the light yellow
triangular band stands in any single or definite spatial relation to
the turquoise blue Z-shaped band into which it fits, one nevertheless
experiences their juxtaposition somewhat as though both were objects
in the world, not simply or even chiefly shapes on a flat surface-objects,
moreover, whose relation to one another, and indeed
whose actual character, are ineluctably ambiguous. This is most salient
in the case of the Z-shaped turquoise band, largely becauseor
so it seems-its top and bottom segments are not parallel to one
another. (The first, running as it does along the upper edge of the
square, is horizontal, while the second, flush with the lowest side of
the triangle, slants from the lower left toward the upper right.) That
is, one tends to see the bottom segment, or the bottom two segments,
as though somewhat from above and in perspective-while at the
same time one is not given enough data to locate them in a definite
spatial context, in relation either to contiguous shapes or to some
ground plane. Moreover, because the top segment ofthe Z-form runs
across the upper edge of the square and is therefore horizontal, one
tends to experience that segment as frontal. But this would mean
that the Z-form is not only irregular in two dimensions but bent or
warped in three-though it is not at all clear which segment or seg-
94 I SHAPI<: AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR POLYGONS
ments are bent orwarped and which, ifany, are to be taken as normative.
The beveled ends of the Z-form, each parallel to nothing else in
the painting, compound the ambiguity by implying that the respective
planes of both the bottom and top segments are warped away
from, or are oblique to, that of the picture surface-though, of
course, they might notbe. (Almost all the bands in Stella's new paintings
are beveled in this way, a factor that adds immeasurably to the
illusionistic power and general complexity of the paintings in question.
In fact, its absence from Conway is partly responsible for the
relatively flat and conventional appearance of that picture.) The result
is that the Z-form is seen as participating in a wide range of
equally ambiguous and indeterminate spatial situations-more accurately,
an entire gamut of such situations, each ofwhich is simultaneously
not merely compatible with but continuous with or transparent
to every other. But it is not just the situations in which the Z-form
finds itself or the relationships into which it enters that continually
escape one but-more than anything else-its "real" shape. (Similarly,
when one "recognizes" the shape at the bottom of Wolfeboro Ill,
does one "recognize" it as a trapezoid-its configuration on the surface
of the canvas-or as a rectangle seen in perspective?) It is as
though across the entire gamut of illusionistic possibilities the "real"
Z-form-flat or warped, regular or irregular, partly or whoHy parallel
or oblique to the picture surface-lies somewhere out there, beyond
the painting, waiting to be known. There is, ofcourse, a "real" Z-form
on the surface ofthe canvas. But the configuration on that surface of
the individual shapes that constitute a given picture is no more definitive
in this regard than their possible configurations in illusionistic
space: above all because, as I have claimed, literalness in these
paintings is primarily experienced as the property not ofthe support,
but of the shapes themselves. All this makes Stella's new paintings
as radically illusive and intractably ambiguous as any in the history
of modernism. Radically illusive in that what is rendered illusive in
them is nothing less than literalness itself; and intractably ambiguous
in that the shapes they comprise are experienced as embracing an
entire gamut of existential possibilities, including theirjuxtaposition
on the surface ofthe canvas, each ofwhich is "continuous" with every
other and none of which is sufficiently privileged to make one feel
that it, at any rate, is really there. There is, one might say, no it at all.
Stella's new paintings, then, depart from his stripe paintings in
two general respects-first, by not acknowledging literal shape, and
second, by resorting to illusion-both ofwhich ought to make them
SHAPE AS fORM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR POLYGONS l 95
unpalatable to literalist sensibility. Indeed, I suggest that it is one of
the most significant facts about his new pictures that Stella seeks in
them to repudiate not literalist taste or sensibility exactly, but the
literalist implications which, in the grip of a particular conception of
the nature of modernist painting, his stripe paintings appear to
carry. This is not to claim that his new pictures are chiefly a response
to the drawing of those implications by Judd and others. Rather, I
am suggesting that it was in his own unwillingness, even inability, to
pursue beyond painting whatwere to him as well, if not indeed before
anyone else, his stripe paintings' apparent implications in that direction
that Stella discovered both the depth of his commitment to the
enterprise of painting and the irreconcilability with that commitment
of what may be called a reductionist conception of the nature
of that enterprise.11 At the same time, it is hard not to see their relation
to Noland's and Olitski's paintings as issuing, at least in part,
from a dissatisfaction or an uneasiness with their work that-to my
mind, at any rate-has much in common with that which literalist
sensibility appears to feel. Moreover, it is tempting to regard this in
turn as evidence in favor of the suggestion that the impulse behind
the work ofliteralists likeJudd and Bell is anything butalien to Stella.
Because ifit is true that, unlike Noland and Olitski, Stella has actually
felt a reductionist conception of his undertaking urge toward the
isolation and hypostatization of literalness, it would be surprising
if there were not at least some agreement between his response to
painting other than his own and the literalist attitude toward that
same painting. And in fact Stella's new paintings can, I believe, be
seen as responding critically to the same aspect of Noland's and
Olitski's paintings that, I suggested earlier, literalist taste finds unacceptable,
though here again the differences between Stella and the
literalists lie deeper than their apparent agreement. From a literalist
point of view the aspect in question is experienced as a conflict between
pictorial illusion of any kind on the one hand and literalness
as such on the other; the conflict is unacceptable because it compromises
the latter; and its elimination entails making works of art (or
putative works of art) that are nothing but literal-works in which
illusion, to the extent that it may be said to exist at all, is itself literal.
Whereas Stella's new paintings, by making literalness illusive, not
only come to grips with but actually resolve what I described earlier
as the conflict in Noland's and Olitski's paintings between a particular
kind of pictorial illusionism-addressed to eyesight alone-and
the literal character of the support. And by so doing they unmake,
g6 I SHAPE AS FORM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR POLYGONS
at least in the event and for the moment, the distinction between
shape as a fundamental property of objects and shape as an entity
belonging to painting alone that emerges for the first time in Noland's
and Olitski's paintings.
4
IN CLOSING I want merely to touch on another aspect
of Stella's new paintings: what seems to me their intimate and profoundly
significant relation to the finest modernist sculpture of the
recent past. (I am thinking chiefly of the work of English sculptor
Anthony Caro.) Almost any of the remarks and observations I have
made about the new pictures could, I think, lead to an obvious comparison
with Caro's sculptures: in pieces like Bennington (1 964; fig.
36) and Yellow Swing ( 1 965; fig. 37) , is not literalness made illusive?
Moreover, the relation between Stella and contemporary sculpture
is far from superficial or coincidental. Rather, it has to do with the
problematic character ofshape in the most advanced painting of our
time-even, I want to say, with the nature of shape itself, with what
shape is. In any case, I am suggesting that one result of the development
within modernist painting discussed in this essay is thatfor the
first time since the late eighteenth century sculpture is in a position
to inspire painting, and that in Stella's recent paintings this has actually
begun to happen. At the same time, however, painting is in a
position not simply to be inspired by advanced sculpture, but in certain
respects fundamental to that sculpture actually to have certain
advantages-though not ofquality-over it. I will mention three: ( 1 )
The intractable ambiguity of the visual illusionism in Stella's new
pictures goes beyond advanced sculpture in the direction of the
opticality and illusiveness-of seeming a kind of mirage-that, as
Greenberg was the first to remark, is basic to the latter.12 Because
sculpture is literal it can, in the end, be known; whereas the shapes
that constitute Stella's new paintings, and the new paintings as experienced
wholes, cannot. (2) The fact, or the convention, that paintings
hang on a wall means that Stella's new paintings begin off the
ground, whereas advanced sculpture-which, as Greenberg has
again remarked, is illusively weightless-has to begin at ground level
and literally climb to whatever height it reaches. This "advantage" is
perhaps most strikingly evident in Effingham Ill, largely because that
painting as a whole is most like a ground plan. UnionIIIas well profits
from it immensely. And in general Stella can float or suspend ele-
SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS I 97
ments as though without visible means of support. (3) There is no
general difficulty about the use of color in Stella's paintings, but the
problem of color in contemporary sculpture is in important respects
acute. By this I mean not simply the propriety of applied color but
the fact that all sculpture, like all solid, opaque objects, is colored, or
has color, or anyway has surface. It is as though, finally, the opticality
toward which advanced sculpture aspires brings one up short, not
against its literalness exactly, but against the fact that when we perceive
a solid object, eyesight makes contact with no more than its
surface (and then only part of that) . Put slightly differently, it is as
though advanced sculpture, such as Caro's, makes that fact a disturbing
one, and in effect thrusts it into our awareness. In comparison
with such sculpture, painting, I want to say, is all surface."
(Which is not the same as saying that it is done on a flat and very
thin surface; an element of equal thinness in a Caro is experienced
as solid.) Stella's paintings, by the closeness of their relation to advanced
sculpture, make that difference more salient than it has
ever been.
NOTES
1 , Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Lectures on Aesthetics," in Lectures and Conversations
on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, compiled ffom notes taken by
Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees, and James Taylor, ed. Cyril Barrett (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1g66), p. 36.
2. Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting," in The New Art: A Critical Anthology,
ed. Gregory Battcock (New York, 1966), p. 73·
3· Mondrian, in his paintings of the 1920s and after, often seems to be attempting
to combatjust this minimal illusionism. Sometimes, fOr example, he
stops his black lines short of the framing edge, thereby emphasizing their paintedness,
i.e., the fact that they are marks on a flat surface. In other paintings he
takes the more radical step of continuing the black lines and even the blocks of
color j;ast the edge onto the sides of the canvas (which was to be exhibited with
its sides visible). The result is that one tends to see these paintings as solid slabs,
which helps to counteract-though it cannot efface-their minimal illusionism.
4· Greenberg says this of Noland's paintings in Clement Greenberg, "Louis
and Noland," Artlnternational4 (May 1g6o): 28.
5· That Noland's long horizontal paintings make their own shapes ungraspable
in this way was observed by Rosalind Krauss in "Allusion and Illusion in
DonaldJudd," Art[orum 4 (May 1966): 24-26.
6. In my essay 'Jules Olitski'sNewPaintings," Artforum 4 (Nov. 1965): 36-40,
not reprinted in this volume.
7· In his brief remarks on Olitski's work, published in the catalog to the
98 ! SHAPE AS FORM: FRANK STELLA'S IRREGULAR POLYGONS
United States pavilion at the last Biennale, Clement Greenbergwrote, "The degree
to which the success ofOlitski's paintings depends on proportion ofheight
to width in their enclosing shapes is, I feel, unprecendented." Greenberg goes
on to note the relative superiority of the pictures with tall, narrow formats. See
Greenberg, "Introduction toJules Olitski at the Venice Biennale," in Modernism
with a Vengeance 1957-1969, val. 4 of The Collected Essays and Criticism, ed. john
O'Brian (Chicago, 1993), pp. 228-30. [In fact, Greenberg wrote: "Because they
attract too little notice as shapes, and therefore tend to get taken too much for
granted, he has had more and more to avoid picture formats that are square or
approach squareness. He has had also to avoid picture fOrmats that are long
and narrow, simply because these tend to stamp themselves out as shapes less
emphatically than formats that are tall and narrow do" (pp. 229-30). In 'Jules
Olitski's New Paintings" I had previously observed that "despite their hostility to
deductive structure, Olitski's spay paintings depend for their success upon the
new and more acute awareness of the shape and size of the support embodied
for the first time in deductive structure. . . . In fact, no paintings, Noland's and
Stella's included, have ever been put under greater pressure by considerations
ofshape and size; or, more accurately, have ever put those considerations under
greater press�re" (p. 40).-M. F., 1996]
8. The aluminum paintings of 1960 are an exception to this. Although not
illusionistic, they can, I think, be said to hold as shape-chiefly by virtue of the
fact that their supports depart from the rectangular only by a few shallow
notches at the corners and sides. As a result the paintings are seen as restrained
or held back by those notches from completing the rectangles they all but occupy.
This gives the shapes of these paintings something to hold against, i.e., the
pressure from within each painting toward the rectangle it almost is, and in
effect makes the question ofwhether or not they compel conviction as shape a
real one.
9· Judd, almost certainly the foremost ideologist ofthe literalist position, has
written: "A work needs only to be interesting" (DonaldJudd, "Specific Objects,"
Arts Yearbook, no. 8 [ 1 965], p. 78). It is hard to know exactly what this means,
because some work, such as Noland's, Olitski's, and Stella's paintings, is more
than just interesting. It is, I want to say, good-more accurately, good painting.
And in fact-despite the proliferation ofwork that is neither painting nor sculpture,
and despite the pervasiveness of the facile notion that the arts in our time
are at last heading towards synthesis-what modernism has come increasingly
to rnean is that, more than ever, value or quality can persuasively be predicated
ofwork that lies only within, not between, the individual arts. (Though it has also
come to mean that that work must challenge, in characteristic ways, what we are
prepared to count as belonging more than trivially to the art in question.) The
circularity of this state of affairs will be repugnant to many, and it is certainly
harrowing, but I do not think that it is self-condemning. The crucial question,
after all, is not so much whether anything artistically valuable lies outside the
circle, as whether a meaningful concept of artistic value or a significant experi�
ence of it can reside anywhere but in its coils.
Myown impulse is to say that interest is basic to art-but not to either making
SHAPE AS FoRM: FRANK STELLA's IRREGULAR PoLYGONS I 99
orjudging it. And if it is objected that what we ought to try to do is enjoy art
rather than judge it, I would simply say that that may have been possible once
but isn't anymore. This, however, is not to contrast enjoyment withjudging-it
is rather to insist that there is no real enjoyment, or no enjoyment of what is
really there, apart fromjudging. One can still erUoy Olitski's paintings simply as
color, if one wants, but that is not to enjoy them or be moved by them or see
them as jJaintings. And this means that there is an importantsense in which one
is not seeing them at all. But to experience painting as painting is inescapably
to engage with the question ofquality. This, too, is the work of modernism, and
if one does not like it one ought to face the fact that \Vhat one does not like is
painting, or at leastwhat painting has become.
1o. Stella madefourpaintingsin each ofthe eleven formats. There are, then,
eleven subseries within which not only the shape ofthe supportbut the configurations
on the surface of the canvas are identical.
1 1 . I take a reductionist conception of modernist painting to mean this: that
painting roughly since Manet is seen as a kind ofcognitive enterprise in which
a certain quality (e.g., literalness), set of norms (e.g., flatness and the delimitation
offlatness) , or core of problems (e.g., how to acknowledge the literal character
ofthe support) is progressively revealed as constituting the essenceofpainting-and,
by implication, ofhaving done so all along. This seems to me gravely
mistaken, not on the grounds that modernist painting is not a cognitive enterprise,
but because it radically misconstrues the kind ofcognitive enterprise modernist
painting is. What the modernist painter can be said to discover in his
work-what can be said to be revealed to him in it-is not the irreducible essence
of allpainting but rather that which, at the present moment in painting's
history, is capable ofconvincing him that itcan standcomparisonwith the painting
of both the modernist and premodernist past whose quality seems to him
beyond question. (In this sense one might say that modernist painting discovers
the essence ofall painting to be quality.) The object ofhis enterprise is therefore
both knowledge and conviction-knowledge. through, or better still, in, conviction.
And that knowledge is simultaneously knowledge of painting (i.e., what it
must be in order to elicit conviction) and ofhimself (i.e., what he finds himself
convinced by)-apprehended not as two distinct entities but in a single, inextricable
fruition. It should be clear that the conception of modernist painting that
I havejust adumbrated is not only antireductionist but antipositivist; in this respect
I believe it has significant affinities with the persuasive account of the
enterprise of science put forward by Thomas S. Kuhn in TheStmcture ofScientific
Revolutions (Chicago, 1962). The further exploration of these affinities would, I
am sure, prove rewarding. But a footnote is not the best place to begin.
12. Clement Greenberg, 'The New Sculpture," in Art and Culture (Boston,
196 1 ) , p. 14+
1 3. See Thompson Clarke's essay, "Seeing Surfaces and Physical Objects," in
Philosophy in America, ed. Max Black (London, 1966), pp. g8-1 q. The fact that
eyesight touches only the surface of solid objects, and then only part of that
surface, has traditionally played an important role in philosophical skepticism.
Morris Louis
The forming ofthe fiVe senses is a labor of the entire history ofthe world down
to the present.
-Karl Marx1
MORRIS Loms was born Morris Bernstein in Baltimore,
Maryland, on November 24, 1912, and died of lung cancer
in Washington, D.C., on September 7, 1962. He lived for painting.
According to his widow, the former Marcella Siegel and now Mrs.
Abner Brenner, he habitually rose early and worked at least as long
as there was daylight in a small, first-floor room in their suburban
Washington house. The period ofLouis's m4jor accomplishment began
some time in 1 954 after he had given up traditional easel painting
in favor of staining acrylic paint into lengths of canvas (at first
sized and later unsized) and continued until about three months before
his death, when the malignant')' was first diagnosed. Louis's technique
during these years entailed constant stooping and bending,
which resulted in a chronic condition of the lower back that caused
him great pain but could not keep him from working. Among those
who knew him there is universal agreement that Louis's integrity was
remarkable. This integrity-which, not surprisingly, appears to have
made itself felt from time to time as something harsh, secretive, even
This is the text of Morris Louis (NewYork, 1971), which forsome years has been out of
print. Afirstversion ofthe presentessay, roughly halfits length, served as the introduction
to the catalog ofthe full Louis retrospective exhibition of 1 966-67 (Los Angeles, Boston,
and St. Louis) and was published under the title "The Achievement of Morris Louis" in
Artf<rrums (Feb. 1967)' 34-40.
100
MORRIS Lours I 1o1
ungenerous-went hand in hand with a deep confidence in his own
powers, though not necessarily in the value of what he had already
done. Mrs. Brenner has remarked that Louis always thought of himselfas
young, his life's work still in front of him, but never doubted
that he would accomplish what he had to do. Louis's beliefin himself
survived not only the long maturing ofhis art but, after 1 954, periods
of uncertainty about what to do next. It is characteristic of Louis's
strength of mind that he was able to ride each such episode out and
then put it behind him: once he found himself in a new vein all
uncertainty vanished. Throughout his career Louis destroyed large
numbers of paintings that failed to satisfy him. On one occasion,
when he became convinced thatan entire series ofpaintings thathad
just been exhibited in New Yorkwas inferior to his previous work, he
did not hesitate to destroy all those within his reach-atleast ayear's
work.2 There can be little doubt but that the sudden onset of his
terminal illness prevented him from pruning his oeuvre as thoroughly
as he would have done had he had more time and strength.
Louis seems to have had little taste for artistic gatherings ofany kind.
He never learned to tolerate light conversation about painting, nor
to reconcile himself to the inevitable circumstance that his students
were often less passionately devoted to painting than he. Above all
Louis appears to have been profoundlyserious and to have respected
only those individual men and women whose integrity, discipline,
and seriousness could stand the test of his own. The assumption behind
these remarks is that the impress of Louis's seriousness can be
felt throughout his mature work: the sensuous, subtle, sometimes
electrifYing color of his finest paintings ought not to numb us to the
fact that, for Louis, painting consisted in far more than the production
of sensuously pleasing or arresting objects. Rather, it was an enterprise
which unless inspired by moral and intellectual passion was
fated to triviality and unless informed by uncommon powers ofmoral
and intellectual discrimination was doomed to failure.
The ambition to make good paintings has always entailed a stringent
artistic morality. But for Louis, as for modernist painters generally,
the relation of his personal integrity to that actually manifest in
his paintings seems to have been acutely problematic. Louis's notorious
reluctance to visit New York, both before and after his breakthrough
to m'\jor achievement in 1 954, is a case in point. In an obvious
sense it was characteristic of his integrity: he seems always to have
been reluctant to expose himself to much contemporary painting,
perhaps because by not doing so he minimized the risk of coming
102 I MoRRIS Louts
under the influence of another's art. But it is also possible that that
reluctance played him false: Clement Greenberg has remarked that
Louis might not have executed the series of paintings he later carne
to repudiate and destroy had he allowed himself to visit New York
more often in order to see what kind of paintings he did not want to
paint." Such visits, Greenberg seems to be claiming, not only would
nothave compromised Louis's integrity; they would have helped him
to make it count pictorially. This is a characteristically modernist insight
into a characteristically modernist situation. It implies that even
the most incorruptible integrity in combination with even the highest
gifts cannot guarantee that the paintings that result will evince
integrity in pictorially significant terms. And this in turn suggests
that, in modernist painting, integrity is not only a moral condition ·
but a pictorial task. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that
this has always been the case, but that under modernism the fact that
this is so has been made lucid and explicit, with the result that the
problem is experienced with unprecedented sharpness.
The kind of problem this is becomes clearer if one considers the
most important event in Louis's career, his breakthrough to major
achievement. Until 1954 Louis's work is oflimited significance. One
is tempted to characterize it, what has survived of it, as both minor
and provincial. This is not to say that by the late 1 940s Louis was not
an extremely accomplished painter, or that his dedication to painting
was incomplete. But there is nothing about The Ladder of 1 950,
or the Charredjournalpictures of 1 95 1 , or the collages of l 953 that,
even in retrospect, presages his subsequent emergence as a painter
of the first importance. In 1 952 Louis entered into friendship with
another Washington painter, twelve years younger than himself,
Kenneth Noland. Noland had previously studied at Black Mountain
College, where he had met Clement Greenberg, and in April 1 953
Noland persuaded Louis to come with him to New York to visit
Greenberg and see what they could of current painting. In both respects
their trip (April 3-5) was a success. They talked at length with
Greenberg, who arranged for them to visit Helen Frankenthaler's
studio, where a recent painting, Mountains and Sea ( 1 952; fig. 8),
impressed them powerfully. Noland recalls that Louis in particular
was struck by Frankenthaler's picture, which seemed to both men
charged with implications they were anxious to explore. For several
weeks after their return they worked together, sometimes on the
same canvas; Noland has described their cooperation at this moment
as an attempt to defeat their previous assumptions about painting.
MORRIS LOUIS I l 03
This entailed trying to eliminate everything recognizable-because
familiar-as structure, as well as experimenting with new techniques.
Within a short while each returned to working alone.
In January 1 954 Greenberg visited Washington to see if either
Louis or Noland had done anything that ought to be included in an
exhibition of "Emerging Talent" he was then choosing for the Kootz
Gallery in New York. Greenberg recalls being shown about thirty
paintings that Louis had made since their first meeting. Many contained
floral motifs and all but five or six seemed to Greenberg to
depend too obviously on Jackson Pollock. From these five or six
Greenberg finally chose three- Trellis (1 953; fig. g) and SilverDiscs
(1 953) among them-for the exhibition at Kootz. In the light of
Louis's subsequent development the tentative, unrealized character
of these paintings is unmistakable. At the same time they document
Louis's desire to bring his work into close relation with that of Pollock
and Frankenthaler. In SilverDiscs, for example, the use ofaluminum
paint, with its high reflectance, derives from Pollock; and the
looseness of handling represents, it seems, an atternpt to get away
from the packed, fundamentally Cubist structural mode of Willem
de Kooning and his followers. But Louis had not yet found anything
that could be called an alternative either to Cubist principles ofstructure
or to Abstract Expressionist brushwork, and in the end Silver
Discs remains at least as close to de Kooning as to Pollock. Trellis, with
its dripped pigment and expanse of bare canvas, is closer in spirit to
Louis's mature work but seems in retrospect to derive from Pollock
and Frankenthaler rather than to go on from them. Color begins
rather tentatively to make itselffelt here, but without more than hinting
at the in1portance it was soon to assume.
Later that year Greenberg suggested to the dealer Pierre Matisse
that he consider giving Louis a one-man show. Matisse agreed to look
at his work, and sometime during the winter of 1 954 Louis sent nine
large, unstretched paintings to New York. All had been made since
Greenberg's visit, by staining waves of the acrylic paint Magna into
lengths of canvas that had previously been at least partially sized.
When, together with Helen Frankenthaler, Greenberg unrolled
them, he was astonished to find himself for the first time in the presence
ofLouis's mature art.
Because similar transitions have taken place in the careers of several,
though by no means all, important modernist painters, certain
aspects of Louis's breakthrough have a significance that is more than
personal. I will cite four:
104 I MORRIS LOUIS
1 . Louis was pastforty when it took place. This indicates that modernist
painting may exact a far longer term of apprenticeship. if I
may call it that. than traditional painting ever did.
2. The paintings that constitute his breakthrough represent a radical
departure from his previous work, especially work executed before
his visit to New York, as regards both technique and general
appearance. This means that if his development up to 1 954 is
thought ofas a period ofapprenticeship, the relation that his mature
pictures bear to his apprentice work is without precedent in traditional
painting. Pictures like Intrigue (fig. 1 0), Salient, and Iris (all
1 954) do not represent a culmination or fruition of specific tendencies
visible in his previous work. On the contrary, they amount.. to a
repudiation of that work and its underlying assumptions. They are,
to be sure, the fruition of his lifelong commitment to painting. But
the discontinuity between Louis's mature work and what has survived
of his previous painting inclines one to say that the commitment, or
the depth of it, did not find its way into his art until the breakthrough
itself.
3· Indeed, it can be said that what Louis broke through to was
not just a new kind of painting but his own artistic identity as well.
Greenberg has described Louis's response to Pollock and Frankenthaler
in the following way:
Abandoning Cubism with a completeness fOr which there was no precedent
in either influence, he began to feel, think, and conceive almost
exclusively in terms of open color. The revelation he received became
an Impressionist revelation, and before he so much as caught a
glimpse of anything by [Clyfford] Still, [Barnett] Newman, or [Mark]
Rothko, he had aligned his art with theirs. His revulsion against Cubism
was a revulsion against the sculptural. Cubism meant shapes, and
shapes meant armatures of light and dark. Color meant areas and
zones, and the interpenetration of these, which could be achieved better
by variations of hue than by variations of value. Recognitions like
these liberated Louis's originality along with his hitherto dormant gift
for color.4
It ough� I think, to strike one as strange to speak of recognitions
liberating an artist's originality or his gifts. Much of the strangeness
resides in the implication that prior to those recognitions his originality
and his gifts were simply not. in evidence. But the discontinuity
between Louis's breakthrough pictures and his previous work suggests
that something of the sort was in fact the case. Louis's break-
MORRIS Loms I 1 05
through consisted, one might say, not in suddenly covering a great
deal of ground which until then he had been traversing slowly, but
in discovering, suddenly, where he really was-a discovery that gave
him access at last to his own powers, originality, vision, experience,
integrity. . . . In pictures like Intrigue, Salient, and Iris Louis broke
through to these-he made them count in his work-for the first
time.
4· The relation of Louis's mature paintings to those of Pollock
and Frankenthaler on the one hand, and to the work of subsequent
modernists such as Noland and Jules Olit,ki on the other, makes it
tempting to describe Louis's breakthrough as one in which painting
itself broke through to its future. Louis said of Frankenthaler, "She
was a bridge between Pollock and what was possible."5 This remark
is extremely suggestive. For one thing, it implies that Pollock's
achievementdemanded to be taken into accountby anypainterwho,
like Louis, wanted to make paintings capable of eliciting the kind of
conviction Pollock's paintings elicited-that the very possibility of
making convincing painting had come to seem, in large measure, a
function ofwhat Pollock had done. At the same time, Louis's remark
implies that it was far from clear exactly how Pollock's work ought to
be used in order to realize that possibility. Louis had been interested
in Pollock, chiefly on the basis of reproductions, before visiting New
York, and one can say of the 1951 Charredjournal pictures that they
are influenced by him. But Pollock remains exactly that, an influence,
in those paintings; as a result the paintings themselves remain
of minor importance. Whatever else the right use of Pollock was to
mean, it had at least to signify a relation to his work which did not
allow him to remain an influence, that is, one which could not be
described in terms of anything that might be called their respective
"styles."6 And it was Frankenthaler who gave Louis the decisive clue
as to how this relation might be achieved.
As Greenberg has remarked, one of the consequences of Louis's
exposure to theworkofFrankenthaler and Pollock was the liberation
of his gift for color. The question which now arises for me is: What
was it in Pollock's work, revealed through Frankenthaler's, which effected
this liberation? What possibility, hitherto unrecognized, was
now opened? I am going to claim that the crux of Louis's relation to
Pollock concerns the role, function, and status of drawing in their
respective oeuvres, and that, in general, issues and considerations
associated with drawing are central to Louis's achievement. This is
not to say that his accomplishments as a colorist have been overrated
1 o6 I MoRRIS Loms
by his admirers. Louis ranks among the supreme masters of color in
modern art: if this is not yet orthodox opinion, it will be soon
enough. It is, however, to suggest that his mastery of color must be
understood in relation to certain issues raised for the first time, it
now seems, in Pollock's paintings of 1 947-50-above all by the refusal
of his dripped, allover line to be perceived as bounding or circumscribing
shapes and figures, whether abstract or representa­
tional.7
In Pollock's finest paintings of this period, such as Cathedral
( 1 947), Number I, I948 ( 1 948; fig. 1 ) , Number I, r949 ( 1 949), and
Autumn Rhythm ( 1 950; fig. 5), line is no longer contour, no longer the
edge of anything. It does not, by and large, give rise to positive and
negative areas: we are not made to feel that one part of the canvas
demands to be read as figure, whether abstract or representational,
againstanotherpart ofthe canvas read as ground. This is tantamount
to the claim that, in Pollock's allover drip paintings of 1 947-50, line
has been freed at la�t from the job of describing contours and
bounding shapes-that it has been purged ofits figurative character.
And this amounts to the claim that, in these paintings, traditional
drawing is revoked, or dissolved, at any rate drastically undermined.
Not that in Pollock'swork of this period there is nothing to be called
drawing. But starting with this work the determination of what, in a
given instance, constitutes drawing is a problem without a general
answer: we no longer know beforehand what drawing is, though we
may find ourselves recognizing something as drawing, often to our
surprise.' It should also be remarked that in Pollock's 1 947-50 pictures
the dripped, allover line is not experienced as though it were
some kind of tangible object in its own right-the way, for example,
individual lines in Vasi!y Kandinsky's paintings often seem like segments
ofwire suspended in space. On the contrary, the illusion established
in these paintings is not of tangibility but of its opposite: as
though the dripped line, indeed the paintings in their entirety, are
accessible to eyesight alone, not to touch. This is not to minimize the
sensuous, often opulent materiality of their surfaces; it is to claim
that that materiality is subsumed within a pictorial whole which, in
an important sense, is based on the negation of materiality as such.
It is what I shall call the opticality of the 1 947-50 paintings, founded
on the negation not only of traditional tactile illusionism but of traditional
drawing as well, that lies at the heart of Louis's relation to
Pollock.
Even during these years, however, Pollock seems to have chafed at
MORIUS LOUIS I l 07
the deep need to expunge figuration from his work and on several
occasions made paintings that may be described as attempts to combine
figuration and opticality-more precisely, to achieve a kind of
figuration whose limits, while distinct, are not perceived as illnsively
tangible, as contour or edge. Only one of these paintings was wholly
successfhl: Outofthe Web (1 949: pl. 1 ) , in which Pollock accomplished
figuration by negating-actually cutting and scraping away-parts of
an allover field dripped onto the smooth side of a piece of brown
Masonite. In Out ofthe Web figuration is not seen as an oqject in the
world or shape on a flat surface; it is not seen as the presence of
anything, but rather, one might say, as the absence of portions of
one's visual field. This impression is strengthened if one asks oneself
where the excised and scraped portions appear to be situated in relation
to the rest of the dripped field. For me, at any rate, they do not
exactly seem to lie behind the field, despite the fact that where the
paint has been removed one sees the brown Masonite beneath it, and
they do not seem to lie either on the surface itself or in some close,
ambiguous, essentially Cubist relation to it. In the end the relation
between the figuration and the painted field virtually defeats description:
it is as though the figuration is situated within one's eyes, as
strange as this may sound. And indeed, the figuration in question,
which seems on the verge both of dancing off the visual field and of
dissolving into it, is almost as hard to focus on as a sequence ofactual
blind spots would be. In Out ofthe Web Pollock succeeded by the most
radical of means in achieving figuration whose limits, while razor
sharp, are not perceived as contour or edge, as the limits of something
tangible. Characteristically, however, Pollock abandoned the
solution. It could not be improved upon and repetition would have
debased it.
In 1951 Pollock returned to traditional drawing with a vengeance
in a series ofpaintings executed on rawcanvas in black Duco thinned
with turpentine. In comparison with the type ofpainting then dominant
in New York-the style associated chiefly with de KooningPollock's
1 95 1-52 pictures are devoid of a whole range of tactile
connotations. But this has mostly to do with their general openness
and extraordinary facture-the paint is, in effect, soaked into the
canvas-rather than with the character of the figuration, whose
drawnness ineluctably alludes to the world of tangible things. This is
true even though a stained edge or line is, in a sense, neither hard
nor sharp; in Greenberg's words it is not a "cutting" edge.9 There
are, however, a few paintings made at this time-for example, Number
1o8 I MoRRIS LoUis
3, 195I ( 1 951; fig. 6)-in which the limits of the configurations
made by the thinned enamel defy being read as drawn, as having
been circumscribed by a cursive, draftsmanlike act. (This is entirely
compatible with the observation that each such configuration appears
to have been produced as a whole by a single large act of drawing.)
As a result the paintings in question are experienced in exclusively
visual terms and anticipate perhaps more closely than any other
paintings by PollockwhatLouis accomplishedroughlytwoyears later
in his own breakthrough. In fact, one way of describing Louis's accomplishment
might be to say that he found in stained color the
means to a synthesis of figuration and opticality equivalent to that
which Pollock achieved in the few pictures like Number3 in which the
thinned pigment has soaked into raw canvas in such away as to seem
to have assumed its limits-as it were, by capillary action alonerather
than to have been circumscribed by them. Pollock is said to
have regarded Number3 as one of the strongest of his pictures of this
period, and it is an open question why he never pursued what are
from our present vantage its apparent implications. Perhaps it was
because those implications were not apparent to him. There is, for
example, an unmistakable allusion to the human figure in Number3,
and it is likely that this, rather than any quality of figuration, is what
Pollock mostly saw in it.
In Frankenthaler's Mountains and Sea, which appears to have
struck Louis with the force of revelation, Pollock's stain technique is
adapted to the making ofa kind ofabstract landscape. Areas ofcolor
allude more or less frankly to the world of objects and appear to be
juxtaposed to one another, however loosely, in something like the
space of that world. Frankenthaler's characteristic reliance on a fundamentally
drawing gesture, at once more cursive and less emphatic
than Pollock's, is evident throughout the painting. In places she even
bounds or subdivides areas of color with thin, wiry lines; and in general
the perimeters of these areas strike one as drawn and therefore
as tangible. It is, of course, in its exploitation of stained color-whatever
the character of the figuration in it-that Mountains and Seais
the bridge between Pollock and Louis which the latter knew it to
have been. What is Jess clear is how that bridging relation ought to be
described. It might be claimed, for example, that what Frankenthaler
revealed to Louis were certain possibilities for color opened up by
staining. But this, although not exactly wrong, fails, I believe, to account
for the fundamental differences between Frankenthaler and
MoRRIS LOUIS 1 og
Louis as well as for the depth of Louis's relation to Pollock. I want to
suggest instead that what Louis may be said to have found in Mountains
and Seawere certain new and hitherto unimagined possibilities
forfiguration-for combining figuration and opticality in a new synthesis
of seemingly limitless potential-which the staining of different
colors, rather than just black as in Pollock, opened up, and that
it was the realization of those possibilities that liberated Louis's gift
for color. Merely staining thinned pigment of various hues into bare
canvas was not enough to do this. It was only when Louis discovered
in the staining of such pigments the means to a kind of figuration
capable of sustaining a broad gamut. of internal articulations all of
which are experienced as illusively intangible-as accessible to eyesight
but not to touch-that his breakthrough was at last under way.
Roughly, Louis discovered that if successive waves of thinned pigment,
each a different color, are stained into a length ofcanvas, what
is produced is a single, visually continuous configuration within
which the individual configurations left by each wave in turn, or at
least the limits of or transitions between those configurations, are
still visible. By laying down wave on top of wave of liquid pigment
Louis literally put color into color-more precisely, color configuration
into color configuration-so that, within the stained portion of
any veil painting, the perception of a change in hue, almost no matter
how slight or seemingly insignificant, indicates a transition between
configurations. One might say that the perception of such a
change is the perception of figuration. This is true even when, as
often happens, one cannot make out the shape or the original color
of the configurations involved. The fluctuations range from minute
gradients fragile enough to be quenched by artificial illumination to
abrupt, linear, sometimes almost crystalline transitions both of hue
and, up to a point, of value. But even at their most salient. the limits
of individual color configurations are not experienced as though
they were the edge of some kind of tangible thing; rather, one's eye
is gripped and moved by an extraordinarily compelling continuity
across those limits which in effect forestalls their assuming tactile sig­
nificance.
At least three factors establish such continuity. First and perhaps
most important, there is the unbrokenness of color itself across the
limits-an unbrokenness of pigment belonging both to the individual
color configurations and to the last, unifying wave of darkish
color which, almost from the start, Louis spread across the entire
1 1o I MoRRIS Lours
stained portion of the veils. Second, the characteristic facture produced
by staining reinforces the experienced continuity of color. As
early as 1960 Greenberg wrote:
Louis spills his paint on unsized and unprimed cotton duck canvas,
leaving the pigment almost everywhere thin enough, no matter how
many different veils of it are superimposed, for the eye to sense the
threadedness and wovenness of the fabric underneath. But "under�
neath" is the wrong word. The fabric, being soaked in paint rather
than merely covered by it, becomes paint in itself, color in itself, like
dyed cloth: the threadedness and wovenness are in the color.10
Because the colors are, in Greenberg's words, "identified with the
raw cotton surface,"11 the continuity of the actual fabric across the
portion of the picture surface impregnated with paint literally is one
with that of the color itself. Third, the limits of the individual color
configurations themselves-remarked, so far as is possible, in their
own right-often do not strike one as drawn. In this respect, though
not morphologically, they are like the dripped, allover line in Pollock's
paintings of 1947-50 or the perimeters of the stain configurations
in the few sheerly optical black-and-white pictures of 1951-52.
But Pollock himself never abandoned the physical act of drawing,
and it has been remarked how the "figure" in Number3 seems to have
been laid down as a whole by such an act. In several of Louis's early
stain pictures as well, something analogous makes itself felt-more
strongly, in fact, than in any prebreakthrough paintings that have
survived. For example, in Untitled B (1 954) various color configurations
seem to have been flung onto the canvas. But this appears to
have been a brief and perhaps purging episode, and .Louis's fullblown
veil paintings of 1954-Salient, Iris, Intrigue-give the impression
of not having been drawn, or acted on in any way. Among other
things this seems to have meant that the risk of simply falling back
into the constraints and gratifications of traditional drawing, and
thereby into conventions ineluctably tactile in their connotationsa
risk whose imminence is felt throughout Pollock's masterpieces of
the late 1940s-was not one that Louis had to face. The opticality of
his postbreakthrough work was much less precarious, much more
firmly established than that of Pollock's allover drip paintings. Not
that this saved Louis from losing his way. He seems to have spent the
years 1955-57 making paintings whose figurative mode was close to
that ofAbstract Expressionism and all of which, except for a very few
MORRIS LOUIS I 1 1 l
not in his possession at the time, he subsequently destroyed. But losing
hisway entailed as drastic and general a reorientation ofhis art as
breaking through did in the first place, and the paintings produced
during that period seem, on the strength of the few that still exist, to
have almost nothing in common with the 1954 veils. This proved to
be an advantage when, inJanuary 1958, Louis decided that the work
of the preceding years was inferior to his 1954 paintings. The very
discontinuity between the two meant that Louis did not have to reverse
himself; rather, he was able simply to go back to painting veils
as though he had never left off. (It was, one might say, not until early
1958 that Louis came t:o recognize the full significance of the early
veils. Nothing like Louis's return to a previous moment in his development
can be found in the career of any other m'!jor artist. I suggest,
however, that precisely the same possibility of radically discontinuous
development that first appeared in the characteristically
modernist phenomenon of breakthrough has here become manifest
in that of a painter who has already broken through losing his way
and then finding it again, years later, where he lost it.)
But while the later veils are continuous with the earlier ones, there
are important differences between them-differences that can perhaps
be summed up in the claim that throughout the later veils color
is much more closely and specifically answerable to figurative concerns
and impulses, including the impulse to do away with figuration
within the stained portion of the canvas altogether, than in the earlier
paintings. The figuration within the stained portions of the later
veils tends to be simpler, starker, more regular than in the 1954
paintings-less a function of slight changes of hue, faint bleeds of
thinner, and coarse granular deposits than of definite, readily apparent
limits. One no longer has to look for it-in the color, for example.
In fact one does not look into so much as at the color of the
later veils, and one's sense of the continuity of color in them is not,
as in the earlier veils, largely the result of its continuous fluctuation
so much as of its uniform, or uniformly dense, extension across the
entire stained portion of the canvas. Individual color configurations
no longer flow across one another but, instead, tend to be laid down
either alongside and often partly overlapping one another or in laterally
extensive but vertically oriented (e.g., flamelike, stalagmitelike)
strata: the lateral expansiveness of the color is not enacted by any
apparent flow in that direction but is simply stated by the breadth of
the painted field. It is not surprising that all but a very few of the
1 1 2 I MoRRIS Louis
later veils are physically much larger than the earlier ones. Similarly,
the coloristic richness of the strongest 1958-59 veils consists not in
the simultaneous presence ofseveral more or less disembodied hues
in the same portion of the canvas, but in the binding together in a
single darkish tonality-often brown, bronze, or green-of the comparatively
few, and for the most part clearly delimited, hues they comprise.
Traditionally, shading to a dark monochrome has meant the
extinguishing ofcolor. But throughout the later veils individual configurations
are made coloristically continuous with one another by a
shared toning, a shared banking of their fires. Indeed, definiteness
offiguration and darkness of tonality seem closely related, as though
such definiteness necessitated an even stronger, more compelling
continuity of color than the superimposition of successive waves of
thinned pigment alone could provide. Whereas experiencing the
1954 veils involves the recognition that various fugitive, seemingly
insignificant phenomena have assumed the import offiguration, one
is met and struck in the later veils by figuration whose perspicuousness
is equal to that of traditional drawing and which only subsequently,
as it were, one realizes consists in an unbroken, and in an
important sense uniform, continuum of color.
That changes such as these went hand in hand with a significant
gain in monumentality, ifnot in sheer quality, can be seen by comparing
Intrigue, probably the strongest of the 1954 pictures and an unquestionable
masterpiece, with Terranean ( 1958; pl. 2), which along
with others among the later veils establishes a magnitude of realized
ambition which perhaps only Pollock among Americans had previously
achieved. Intrigue ravishes the beholder with its fullness of
something like detail: the subtle, modulating color, simultaneously
metallic and floral, the warm soft sepia graining of what may have
been the last wave ofpigment, the delicate, irregular, fugitive pattern
of the overlapping configurations, the fragile, cloudlike crests of
those configurations, aureoled by faint bleeds of thinner, evoking distance.
. . . Terranean on the other hand strikes one as wholly devoid
of incidental felicities. The stained portion looms as though just
risen, its proportions together with the dense brown tonality of the
whole connoting overwhelming mass, its internal figuration stark,
sharp, almost menacing, at once flarnelike and mineral in character.
And yet, for the reasons I have given, one's perception both of the
stained area as a whole and of the figuration it contains is not of
things that are precisely tangible. Rather, it is as though the apparent
massiveness and solidity of the one and the apparent hardness and
MORRIS LOUIS I 1 13
sharpness of the other were experienced by eyesight alone, without
reference to the sense of touch; as though massiveness, solidity, hardness,
and sharpness as such were known to eyesight alone and not to
touch; as though the sense of touch itselfwere strictly visuaL
The result, in this and other 1958-59 veils, is an extraordinary
illusion: not of bodies in space, and not ofspace alone, but ofmodes
of matter, modes of substance, none of which are wholly alien but
none of which are entirely familiar either. It is as though some time
after his return in early 1958 to painting veils, Louis discovered in
the staining of successive waves of thinned pigment into raw or partially
sized canvas the illusion of a new substance-a new, or fifth,
element-whose properties he went on both to explore and to exploit,
not systematically but with characteristic imagination, discipline,
and resourcefulness. In comparison with the later veils one
feels that the 1954 pictures explore and exploit the properties and
behavior of thinned pigment itself.
If there is one aspect of the 1958-59 veils which Louis himself
regarded as problematic, it is the relation of the stained portion of a
given picture to the rough "border" of bare canvas which he consistently
chose to leave between its sides and top and the framing edge.
Nothing could have been simpler than to have placed the limits of
the support wholly within the stained portion of the canvas, and
Louis's refusal to do so more than twice-in Atomic Crest and Longitude
(both 1954) "-strongly implies that the contrast between the
stained and the bare canvas was important to him, perhaps because
it virtually ruled out the possibility of seeing the interior of the veil
configuration as a kind of spaceand thereby helped secure its illusive
substantiality. At the same time it seems clear that Louis did notwant
the veil configuration to be seen purely and simply as a physical object,
or its limits to be perceived as the edges of some sort of planar
or otherwise tangible thing. In order to prevent this he tended to
keep the amount of bare canvas at the sides and especially at the top
of the veil configuration to a minimum: the less there was, the less
the stained portion would be seen as silhouetted against it, and the
less the bare canvas itself would assume the character of an independent
spatial container in its own right. (Significantly, whenever Louis
changed his mind about how much canvas was to be leftbetween the
veil configuration and the framing edge it always was to reduce the
amount, never to increase it.) The desire to prevent the veil configuration
from being seen principally as a silhouette, and instead to direct
attention to its internal articulation, was almost certainly a factor
1 14 I MORRIS LOUIS
in the consistentlyJarge size of the later veils. (The paintings that are
the hardest to understand in this context are the split.or "open" or
"columnar" veils, in which Louis chose to divide the veil configuration
vertically into several slightly fanned-out prongs or limbs. This
inevitably tends to emphasize the silhouette-like, therefore sculptural,
character of the stained portion of the canvas, though it is also
true that the generally rather loose, often scrubbed handling of the
darkish segments themselves, in COf\junction with the bare canvas
intervals between them, invites one to experience the paintings in
question as above all atmospheric.) Finally, in numerous paintings
made during these years Louis took to hanging "tails" of thinned
pigment fi·om the outward-sloping sides of the veil configurationin
the split veils, from the individual segments-so as to soften tbe
transition between the stained and the bare canvas. If this interpretation
of the darkish "tails" in paintings like Terranean and Tzadik
( 1958) is correct, it seems fair to say that Louis need not have bothered;
the ability of the 1958-59 veils to subsume under a sheerly
optical mode ofillusionism an extraordinary range oftactile qualities
and effects, including the apparent hardness of the limits of the veil
configurations themselves, has proved virtually limitless. But it would
not be surprising ifLouis, isolated by the advancedness ofhis sensibility,
was less confident that this was so than we are now.
Because Louis painted in complete privacy we have no eyewitness
account ofhow he worked. But it seems clear that the veils were made
chiefly by pouring thinned Magna, the acrylic paint manufactured
by his friend Leonard Bocour, onto a length of canvas which he had
partly stapled to a kind ofscaffolding or support. The paint ran from
top to bottom as the paintings are reproduced here, and by tilting
the scaffolding and manipulating the canvas itself Louis seems to
have been able to control the flow of pigment across its surface. One
can usually see the crests of the original configurations along the top
of the veil configuration, where the first bright washes bellied before
beginning their descent toward the bottom of the canvas. The darkish
cusps often found at the bottom of these paintings are the result
of unabsorbed paint having collected there in shallow pools after
having flooded down the rest of the canvas. In some paintings the
character of the figuration within the stained portion of the canvas
suggests that Louis may have clipped folds together to make a series
of pleats, into which the paint was allowed to flow and which were
removed after it had dried, though there is evidence that at least
MORRIS LOUIS I l 15
some of the time he employed a stick wound with cloth to direct the
paint flow and perhaps even to determine rather precisely the limits
of individual configurations. Some such implement was clearly used
to help spread the last wave of thinned pigment across the stained
portions of many of the 1958-59 veils. The room in which Louis
worked was smaller than many of the veils he painted during 1957-
59, and the vertical divisions which in some pictures punctuate the
spreading color at approximately the middle and again about two
feet to the right are almost certainly the result of his having had to
fold the canvas in order to work on it in sections.13
It was Pollock who first removed the canvas from both stretcher
and easel. Louis clearly found this liberating, but there is a difference
between the two men that must be noted. Pollock placed the unstretched
canvas on the floor or, at least up to 1947, tacked it to the
wall; he needed, he said, "the resistance ofa hard surface."11 Whereas
Louis seems to have needed nothing more, but nothing less, than
the resistance of the canvas itself
The exact chronology of Louis's career is obscure and likely to
remain so.15 He seems not to have kept any records of his work as it
progressed, and signed and dated his paintings only when they were
stretched and framed for exhibition. It even appears that he may
have dated some of them according to when they were stretched and
framed rather than according to when they had been painted. As a
result we have only the roughest idea of the order in which Louis
painted the 1958-59 veils, and so cannot hope to speculate intelligently
about his development during that period. (For example, it
would be useful to know when the split veils were painted relative to
the others.) Nor do we know exactly when Louis painted the last veils,
though it seems to have been around the time-either just before
or, more likely, just after-of his first show at French & Company in
April 1959·
He appears not to have found himself in the next major vein of
his career, that of the paintings known as the unfurleds, until June
orJuly 1960. That leaves about fourteen or fifteen months between
the last of the veils and the first of the unfurleds. In retrospect this
seems to have been a period of considerable uncertainty for Louis,
during which he explored several disparate pictorial modes and even
submitted to various influences. It would be wrong, though, to compare
this period with the one that falls between the earlier and later
veils. Between the late spring of 1959 and the early summer of 1960
1 16 \ MORRIS LOUIS
Louis did not so much lose his way as launch a number of more or
less tentative excursions from the place he found himself at the end
of the veils. The pictures he made during this period are therefore
of great interest. The best of them are also very good, though none
achieves the same level of quality as the strongest of the veils, unfurleds,
or stripes.
The magnificent Saraband (1959; pl. 3) , one of Louis's masterpieces,
seems to have been among the last of the veils and therefore
brings us to the verge of the period in question. One can see in it
how the fundamental conception ofthe veils-the binding together
ofindividual color configurations in a single, continuous, completely
integrated pictorial fabric-began to be called into question by the
separating out of the various components. In particular, the final,
hitherto unifYing wave of darkish pigment now appears independent
of, almost billowing in front of, the underlying configurations-an
effect Louis did not pursue. In other paintings, notably While and
Where (both 1960), Louis chose to do without the last wave of dark
pigment entirely: both consist simply of what lies under the dark
wave in a painting like Lamed ( 1959) . 16 And it is in the direction of
specifying and juxtaposing individual color configurations in a way
that the medium of the veils did not allow that Louis moved, at least
for a time.
For example, the paintings known as florals (1959; fig. 1 1 ) that
Louis made during this period-exactly when is not certain-may
be seen as an attempt to make individual color configurations perspicuous
as discrete entities, as specific shapes, and thereby to match
traditional drawing's ability to describe and specifY shapes or figures.
In this respect they break with the figurative mode of the veils, in
which the limits ofa given configuration are never seen as enclosing
that configuration and often not even as belonging to it. At the same
time, the fact that individual configurations are not literally isolated
from one another on an expanse of blank canvas, but instead are
allowed to overlap, and in some cases are partly or almost wholly
overlaid with a wash of thinned pigment, evinces, it seems, a considered
reluctance to give up what was after all the medium of his initial
breakthrough. But it is also true that while the individual color configurations
in the florals overlap one another, they do so in such a
way as to leave no doubt where any single configuration begins or
ends-for instance, by crossing at different angles. In fact, the specifying
of individual configurations as discrete shapes seems to have
MoRRIS Loms I t 1 7
been concomitant with a reaction against the predominantly northsouth
orientation of the veils. The colors, too, are rnore intense,
more nearly opaque than in the veils, and contrast more among
themselves. Even in those pictures in which Louis laid down a uniform
wash across at least some of the individual configurations, their
original hues make themselves felt from beneath as if by force. The
result is that whereas experiencing the veils involves becoming sensitive
to a new kind of internal articulation of what remains a single,
comprehensive configuration-a single continuum of color-the
emphasis in the florals falls on the individual configurations themselves,
in their discreteness and profusion.
It is hardly surprising that the florals encounter certain difficulties
which the veils do not. The most important of these is that the individual
color configurations tend almost invariably to assume a kind
of plastic or tactile identity-to be seen as tangible entities nosing
past and across one anotber in something like traditional space. In
some pictures the configurations seem flatter, more nearly planar,
in that respect more Cubist in feeling, than in others. But whether
apparently flat or more full-bodied, they seem to float in a watery
space of uncertain depth, a space that not only contains objects but
is itself contained by the limits of the support. One's sense of the
illusive tangibility of the configurations is exacerbated when, as is
often the case, one comes to see their limits as determined by the
artist's wrist, which is to say as drawn. (Figuration in the veils, in contrast,
gives the impression of having been determined by uniform,
impersonal, notjust natural but elemental forces.) More generally,
there is something slightly lopped or summary, in that sense arbitrary,
about the shapes of the individual configurations in the florals-as
though the shape of a given configuration derives whatever
conviction it can be said to possess from the illusive tangibility of that
configuration rather than from the character of the shape itself. And
this makes the color of that configuration seem arbitrary, as ifmerely
added or applied: what matters, one feels, is the illusion of discrete
forms milling in somewhat liquid space rather than the precise
shapes and colors of those forms. To say this is not to deny that the
florals contain passages of great loveliness and originality, especially
toward the outer reaches of the stained areas, or that some of the
florals overcome these difficulties to a remarkable degree. That this
is so is a measure of Louis's genius for improvisation. There is, however,
a group of floral-type paintings, the so-called Aleph Series (fig.
1 18 I MORRIS LOUIS
1 2) , which postdate the "pure" florals-they were painted, it seems,
in the late spring of rg6o, ati:er Louis's second show at French &
Company-to which the above strictures do not quite apply. The
most obvious differences between the "pure" florals and the Aleph
Series paintings are also the most important: in the first the individual
configurations almost always seem to drift in toward the middle
ofthe canvas, crossing one another at various angles as they go, while
in the second they appearinsteadto radiate outward from a common
center. Furthermore, the entire central portion of the Aleph Series
paintings, amounting in some cases to most of the canvas, is covered
by a copious dollop of heavy, mostly brownish pigment. The result is
that the individual configurations no longer seem to slide past one
another at different depths but instead are seen as belonging to a
single, compound image. It is also true that in several of these paintings
the dollops themselves are perceived as tangible if somewhat
amorphous, somewhat fluid entities in which the individual configurations
are mostly embedded. In Aleph I, II, III, V, and VI, however,
the compound image made by the radiating configurations and central
stain is experienced not as flowing off the bottom of the canvas,
but rather as suspended at its center, and this has the surprising effect
of rendering that image comparatively disembodied, insubstantial,
intangible. Kenneth Noland, in his own breakthrough paintings
of the late 1950s, was the first to discover the dephysicalizing, dematerializing
power of centering and suspending as such. Aleph I, II, Ill,
V, and VI are, accordingly, closer in conception to Noland's work
than anything else in Louis's oeuvre, and may in fact owe something
to his example. Whether or not this is so, the fact that Louis did not
pursue this mode of pictorial organization suggests that it may have
been alien to his imagination. Throughout his career he seems to
have experienced a need to anchor the stained portions ofhis paintings
to the limits of the support: one might even say that for Louis
the task ofstructure consisted largely in the resolution or satisfaction
of that need.
During this period Louis also painted many other pictures. The
most important among them are probably the oneswhich Greenberg
has described as geometric, in which Louis, perhaps partly in_ response
to Newman, divided the canvas into clearly (though not rigidly)
delimited areas of single colors. His motivation seems to have
been toward clarity and simplicity of structure, but there is a schematic
quality to these paintings which seems foreign to Louis's art
MORRIS LOUIS I 1 19
and to which he never returned. There are yet other paintings which
seem to evince the influence of Still, hut these are by and large less
successful than the ones already mentioned.
Louis himself regarded the unfurleds, which he seems to have
worked on from the early summer of 1960 until (at the latest) early
196 1 , as his most ambitious statement (pl. 4).17 In these pictures parallel
but irregular rivulets of intense, generally opaque color are arranged
in inward-slanting banks on both sides of large canvases. The
rivulets are a new kind of figuration in Louis's work. Neither line nor
shape, they have the self-sufficiency of the first and the corporeality
of the second. Not only do they not strike one as drawn, one cannot
for the most part even read around, or along, their perimeters. It
is, one might say, as though they have none-more accurately, as
though even at their broadest they are all perimeter, all limit. That
one is driven to formulations of this sort is 'due largely to their color,
the intensity and constancy ofwhich across each rivulet prevents one
from distinguishing, in the act ofperception, between perimeter and
interior. Instead, the eye incorporates each rivulet whole.
But the unfurleds' relation to drawing concerns more than just
the rivulets ofcolor. It has to do as well with the vast expanse ofcanvas
into which they are stained and whose original blankness (the
blankness, one feels, of an enormous page) they simultaneously destroy
and make pictorially meaningful. Specifically, it is as though
drawing's primitive character as mark, as something decisive, irreversible,
even cataclysmic that happens on, and to, the blank page or
canvas-something that, thereafter, is manifest both in its own right,
as a unique entity, and in its ineluctable consequences for the perfect
blankness and apparent flatness of the original sheet-is, in these
paintings, made perspicuous as never before. 'The first mark on a
surface," Greenberg has observed, "destroys its virtual flatness."18 In
the unfurleds Louis made major art out ofwhat might be called the
firstness of marking as such-a firstness prior to any act of marking
(e.g., drawing) , prior to individuation as a type ofmark (e.g., a line) ,
and prior as well to any draftsmanly task (e.g., the circumscription
of shapes and figures) . One's experience of the unfurleds can be
vertiginous. The banked rivulets-here again their vibrant, biting
color is crucial-open up the picture plane more radically than ever
before, as though seeing the first marking we are for the first time
shown the void. The dazzling blankness of the untouched canvas at
once repulses and engulfs the eye, like an infinite abyss, the abyss
120 I MoRRIS Loms
that opens up behind the least mark we make on a plane surface, or
would open up if innumerable conventions both of art and of life did
not limit the consequences of our act.
Greenberg has remarked on the probable importance ofNoland's
paintings of the late 1950s to Louis's development beyond the veils:
[Louis's] art would have evolved anyhow, I feel, towards intenser and
more opaque color, and vertical stripings were already emerging from
under his "veils" in the years previous. Noland's influence served, however,
to speed their emergence, and his example also demonstrated
the uses of the off-white of the unprimed cotton duck as a field on
which to float vertical as well as concentric stripes. One of the effects
achieved was that of boundlessness, of anonymous and ambiguous
space, and the particular triumph of Noland's painting is the way in
which it specifies and at the same time generalizes off-white (or, for
that matter, brown or yellow or red) "space," making it seem both very
literal and very abstract.H1
This is doubtless true. It is also true that the emphasis Louis places
on the bare canvas in the unfurleds, the sheer primacy he gives it,
has no equivalent in the work of any other painter, and that what
one registers, however obscurely, as the meaning of that emphasis,
that primacy, is something utterly and profoundly personal. It is as
though what throughout the veils had been Louis's deep but ultimately
private involvement with the canvas on which-more accurately,
with which-he painted is in the unfurleds made fully manifest
for the first time; as though that involvement alonetakes the place
of what I have described as the medium of his initial breakthrough
and of the veils generally, the superimposition of successive waves of
thinned pigment. At the same time, it is above all the character and
placement of the figuration in the unfurleds that both establish the
primacy of the bare canvas and articulate its significance. For example,
the slight but reiterated undulations of the banked rivulets of
color are experienced as a kind of billowing, not just of the rivulets,
and not of the entire canvas exactly-the latter is not seen as other
than taut and flat (indeed, that the canvas is not just flat but
stretched taut becomes meaningful in a new way) -but of the
breadth and depth ofeverything, or of the nothing, the blank canvas
opens onto. It is as though in the unfurleds tautness and flatness
themselves billow in a wind whose source and nature remain wholly
mysterious. This is, I want to claim, the vision of the unfurleds, one
which, for all its metaphysical reach and power, Louis achieved only
MORRIS LOUIS ! 12 I
on the strength of, only within, his ongoing involvement with canvas
and its various properties and qualities. In this sense the billowing I
have remarked is at bottom that of canvas as such, Louis's canvas as
such, though it is also, I have wanted to suggest, something more.
The primacy of the bare canvas is also established by the grouping
of the rivulets of color in facing banks at the sides of the unfurleds,
not simply because that arrangement leaves the central portion of
each painting blank, but, more important, because it obstructs one
from being able to focus one's attention on all the rivulets simultaneously.
One can, of course, bear down with the utmost concentration
on either bank of rivulets; what one cannot do is bear down with that
intensity on both banks at the same time. (This is especially true of
the unfurleds with a large number of narrow rivulets in each bank,
which is perhaps why the strongest of these seem the purest realization
of the unfurled conception.) And because one cannot, each
bank enjoys a special autonomy relative to the other as regards color.
There are, for example, unfurleds like Theta (rg6o) in which each
of the two banks contains a different range or family of colors; and
there are others like Pi (rg6o) in which both the colors and their
ordering are the same in the two banks. But the first are not perceived
as divided or contrasting any more than the second are experienced
as symmetrical or balanced. Rather, it is only by a distinct act
of comparing one bank against the other that whatever differences
and similarities between them there are become salient. One might
even say that it is impossible to see both banks at the same time; one
might, that is, if there were not a clear sense in which this is not
true-namely, the sense in which everything a given unfurled contains
is seen when one's attention is brought to rest on the painting
as a whole. In other words, experiencing the unfurleds means seeing
but being unable to bear down on the rivulets of color: as though
one were physically too close to the unfurleds to be able to bring
everything they comprise into simultaneous focus-as though one
were compelled by that closeness to focus, to look, infinitely beyond
them. And yet stepping back changes nothing. The illusory closeness
of the unfurleds-which is what mahes the blankness of the canvas
seem like that of an enormous page-as well as the vertiginous "beyond"
they open onto, belong not to one's actual situation viewing
them, but to the paintings themselves. For example, that the two
banks of rivulets slant in opposite directions is instrumental in obstructing
one from bearing down on both at the same time. And here
again I suggest that that closeness is at bottom Louis's closeness to
j
122 \ MORRIS LOUlS
the large expanses ofunsized and unprimed canvas which he wielded
and mastered-not, one imagines, without enormous difficulty-in
a room smaller than them.
In his stripe paintings ( 1 96 1-62; pl. 5), which Louis moved to
after the unfurleds, and on which he worked until just before his
death, the relation to drawing shifted once more. Instead of banked
rivulets there are vertical, perfectly straight paths, belts, bands, oras
they are generally called-stripes of color, often of somewhat different
thicknesses, grouped in bunches or stacks at least some distance
from the sides of the picture. To describe the stripes as perfectly
straight is not to deny that a single stripe may vary in width at
different points on its trajectory: it is the trajectory itselfthat counts,
and that, one feels, could not be straighter (or, one might say,
shorter). Except in rare cases, which appear to have been accidental
in origin, adjacent stripes touch down their entire lengths. In the
early paintings the stripes have a tendency to overlap, and therefore
to partly blend into one another. But after a while Louis chose to
prevent this from happening and found the means to do so. Unlike
the rivulets in the unfurleds, the stripes are the focus, almost the
subject, of these paintings. They do not open the picture plane so
much as cauterize it, and one is not, as in the unfurleds, precipitated
beyond them so much as transfixed by them: the precipitousness
which, in the unfurleds, looms in the relation between the rivulets of
color and the blank canvas is, in the stripe paintings, virtually embodied
in the stripes themselves. Like the rivulets, though perhaps even
more emphatically, the stripes are not seen as circumscribed by a
cursive gesture, as bounded by an outline or contour.20 In this sense,
a crucial one, they are not drawn. But whereas in the unfurleds the
rivulets seem the manifestation of natural forces-one sees them as
having flowed across or broken through from behind the blank canvas-in
the later series one experiences the stripes as in some important
sense intentional, as issuing from a distinctively human and
notjust natural action. They are wholly abstract embodiments or correlatives
of human will or impulse-specifically, the will or impulse
to draw, to make one's mark, to take possession, in characteristic
ways, ofa plane surface. In this sense they can be seen as drawn: not,
however, as the fruit of any imaginable act of drawing-the sheer
apparent velocity of their paths across the canvas precludes that possibility-but
as the instantaneous, unmediated realization of the
drawing impulse, the will to draw.
This is largely but not entirely the work of color. For example, it
MORRIS LOUIS ) 123
is above all because the stripes are ofcolor that one is forced to speak
of their apparent velocity, and therefore of them as having trajectories.
Moreover, the very contiguity of the stripes would be not just
technically unattainable but literally inconceivable if it were not for
the fact that they are of different. colors. At the same time, the nature
of that contiguity, even of what one experiences as contiguous, depends
intimately on the breadth of the stripes in a given painting:
whereas the relatively broad stripesare seen as touching one another
along their limits, the narrow stripes are perceived as touching in
their entirety, so to speak-as though all of each narrow stripe were
contiguous with all of each of the stripes on either side of it. Put
slightly differently, it is as though what one experiences as contiguous
in the narrow-stripe paintings are, if not exactly lines, at any rate vectors
of color. One might say that the nature or essence of a line or
vector-that it has no breadth-is what enables these particular
paths of color to be made laterally contiguous with one another as
never before, while the nature of color-that it is irreducibly multiple
and spatially absolutely specific-is what enables these lines or
vectors to be made contiguous, and moreover allows them to have
width, up to a point, and still be seen as touching in their entirety.
All this, I suggest, constitutes in turn an unprecedented relation between
colors. It is not a relation between the colors of the colors, so
to speak-which is expressible in terms of hue, intensity, contrast,
and so on-but between the sheer and simultaneous occurrences of
colors. The significance of that relation is that it releases a response
to two of the logical features of the concept of a color: first, to the
fact that there should be different colors (i.e., to the tact that if there
is something that we call color in the world at all, there must be more
than one of them); and second, to the fact of the infinite and absolute
identityof colors (e.g., if thiscolor is here, then no other color can
be-where, of course, the "here" is defined by its color) . One might
say that in the stripe paintings both the multiplicity of colors and the
identity of colors are made the medium ofpainting as never before.
Again, exactly how Louis executed these paintings is not known.
Noland has suggested that he may have dripped a thin ribbon of
paint, about the consistency of syrup, down the center of the intended
stripe and then have spread the ribbon to the desired
breadth with a putty knife.21 In any case, once the stripes were laid
down Louiswas facedwith the related problems ofwhere to place the
limits of the support and how to hang the otherwise final painting.
According to Greenberg, Louis originally wanted the stripes to be
124 I MoRRIS Loms
cut off by the framing edge both at the top and at the bottom but
allowed himself to be persuaded to leave a few inches ofblank canvas
between the apparent "end" of the stripes, which seems to be where
they were begun, and the edge of the support. (There are, however,
a number of pictures which Louis went ahead and marked to be
framed as originally intended.) Greenberg now feels that Louis's
original intentions were invariably correct, and that he was always in
advance of his admirers. He describes Louis's attitude to the hanging
of his pictures in the following terms:
The decision as to which side of a portable painting is top, bottom,
left or right is not irrevocable, and Louis felt that his particular kind
of art allowed for a new kind of latitude here.... He was always ready
to allow fOr the possibility that further acquaintance might lead him
to change his mind about the direction in which a picture was to go.
He was willing· even to allow others to experiment with his pictures in
this respect; in any case he felt that if a painting of his was good
enough it would stand up no matter how it was hung.
Greenberg goes on to remark:
Towards the end of his life he began to think of hanging some of the
narrow-striped [pictures] sideways, that is 'With the stripes running
horizontally; and in certain of these he decided to leave the stripes
unanchored on either side, that is with their tips stopping short of
the edge of the canvas. But there too he was prepared to leave the
matter undecided.22
When the physically narrowest ofthe stripe paintings-those with
the least raw canvas to the sides of the stripes-are hung vertically
they risk seeming too literal or objectlike, almost as if they were a
kind of wall sculpture; hanging them sideways, it turns out, eliminates
this risk at a stroke. As for the horizontally hung paintings in
which the stripes, always gathered in two stacks, stop short of the
edge of the support, they are the first in Louis's oeuvre in which he
seems to have been wholly comfortable suspending anything in an
expanse of blank canvas. Even in these, however, one feels that each
stack of stripes suspends the other by a kind of mutual attraction or
repulsion rather than that both are suspended, as if by an outside
force, in the blank field.
Louis's involvementwith drawing underwent one further development.
Just over a month before he died Louis gave James Lebron the
precise dimensions to which the eight stripe paintings posthumously
exhibited at the Emmerich Gallery in October rg62 were to be
stretched. The format of five of these was the normal one-the
MORRIS LOUIS I 125
stripes vertical, the canvas itself a vertical rectangle. But in three
paintings-No End, Equator, and Hot Half (pl. 6; all 1962)-Louis
chose to have the stripes run diagonally across the canvas and the
canvas itselfstretched as a square. Louis's decision to depart from his
previous norm in these respects had several consequences. To begin
with, the division of the canvas by the diagonal stripes (in NoEndand
Equator, grouped in two stacks) compels an awareness of these pictures
as composed. Throughout the stripe paintings, of course, Louis
determined the placement of the stripes and the dimensions of the
canvas with great exactness. But whereas in most of the stripe paintings
that exactness is not felt as such in the works themselves, in the
three late diagonal paintings the fact that the canvas is actually divided
into several segments makes the viewer acutely aware that the
slightest. change would alter everything. Moreover, the relations that
obtain among the different segments within each painting are essentially
drawing relations: the areas of bare canvas are seen as shapes,
and each picture is experienced as constituting a compound, almost
plastic unity. The stripes themselves are more like lines of color than
ever before, and allude to a plasticity foreign to the stripe paintings
generally. Thesestripes, one feels, are beams of color or colored light,
somehow frozen or congealed into weightless, highly tensile elements
that span the canvas like a kind of bridge. It is as though the
square shape of the canvas came first, and was only later divided and
composed, as well as made securely rigid, by the diagonal stripes.23
There is no sense in which Louis's final paintings strike one as late
works, in which they seem to mark a close. Louis died, one feels, not.
only at the height of his powers but also no more than part. of the
way through the natural unfolding of his genius. We can have no
idea what Louis would have done next. The more one studies his
development, the more profoundly unexpected each stage, even
each moment in it is seen to have been. This is to say more than that
Louis was an extremely original artist. It is also to claim that he was
a deeply personal one, and that at every moment his art is to be understood
in the most personal of terms. Here it is vital to recognize,
however, not merely fhat such an understanding of his art may be a
long time corning, but that it is not at all clear what thatunderstanding
would consist in. For example, it would be wrong to think that
an account of Louis's art that sought to discover its meaning for
Louis must necessarily be psychological in character or, for that matter,
to fhink that a psychological account of his art. must concern
certain classes of relationships and feelings (e.g., those associated
with his "private" life) rather than others (e.g., those connected with
1 26 I MoRRIS LoUis
painting itself), It is as though all of Louis's life was equally privateand,
by the same token, equally accessible to painting. Louis's insistence
on working in complete privacy, and on keeping secret even
from friends the means by which his art was made, ought, I think, to
be seen partly in this light When Leonard Bocour, astonished at the
effects Magna had been made to yield in the stripe paintings, asked
how they had been achieved, Louis replied, "You have something to
say, you say it," and dropped the subject24 And in general there is no
evidence in Louis's work of any conflict, indeed of any felt distinction,
between the demands of life and those of art. This is perhaps
the most important difference between Louis and Pollock, whose development
seems to have involved a continual struggle between the
literalness and specificity of urgent personal feeling and the impersonal,
and in that sense abstract, demands of painting itself. It was
above all the depth and ferocity of that struggle that, in his work of
the years 1947-50, drove Pollock to dissolve or revoke traditional
drawing and thereby to divest himself of probably the most rudimentary,
direct means of specifying feeling he had had; that inspired
him to accomplish figuration by acts of excising in Out of the Web;
that impelled him, when he abandoned the allover drip technique,
to return both to traditional drawing and to the affect-charged imagery
of his earlier work. In contrast, Louis's imagination strikes one as
radically abstract in a way that notjust Pollock's but that of any modernist
painter before Louis, except perhaps Matisse, does not.
One consequence of this is that Louis's art may strike one as extraordinarily
impersonaL In fact Louis's eschewal oftraditional drawing
amounted to the refusal to allow his hand, wrist, and arm to get
into his paintings; and this, I suggest, amounted to the refusal to
allow himself to get into his paintings in what he felt was the wrong
way. Indeed, Louis's paintings, more than those of any previous
painter, give the impression of having come into existence as if of
their own accord, without the intervention of the artist
It is tempting, and perhaps not beside the point, to connect this
aspect of Louis's work with Symbolist poetic theory and practice as
they arose in France during the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Here for example is Mallarme:
The pure work implies the elocutionary disappearance of the poet,
who yields place to the words, imrnobilised by the shock of their inequality;
they take light from mutual reflection, like an actual trail of
fire over precious stones, replacing the old lyric afflatus or the enthusiastic
personal direction of the phraseY'
MoRRIS LoUis I 1 27
There is in Louis's painting precisely the "elocutionary disappearance"
of the artist, amounting to the illusion of a sovereign impersonality,
that Mallarme called for in poetry. I am, of course, not suggesting
that Louis consciously adhered to Symbolist doctrine and
sought to realize it in his art. But I am suggesting that Louis's imagination,
by virtue of what I have called its radical abstractness, has
significant affinities with the imaginations ofcertain modernistpoets
for whom Symbolist theory and practice were offundamental importance.
It is revealing to consider Louis's work in the light of the followingpassages
from the American poet Hart Crane's "General Aims
and Theories," written in 1925:
It may not be possible to say that there is, strictly speaking, any "absolute"
experience. But it seems evident that certain aesthetic experience
(and this may for a time engross the total faculties of the spectator)
can be called absolute, inasmuch as it approximates a formally
convincing statement of a conception or apprehension of life that
gains our unquestioning assent.Z6
It is rny hope to go through the combined materials of the poem, using
our "real" world somewhat as a spring-board, and to give the poem as
a whole an orbit or predetermined direction of its own. I would like to
establish it as free from rny own personality as from any chance evaluation
on the reader's part. (This is, of course, an impossibility, but it is
a characteristic worth mentioning.) Such a poem is at least a stab at a
truth, and to such an extent may be differentiated frorn other kinds
of poetry and called "absolute." Its evocation Mil not be toward decoration
or amusement, but rather toward a state of consciousness, an
"innocence" (Blake) or absolute beauty. In this condition there may
be discoverable under new forms certain spiritual illuminations, shining
with a morality essentialized from experience directly, and not
from previous precepts or preconceptions. It is as though a poem gave
the reader as he left it a single, new word, never before spoken and
impossible to actually enunciate, but self-evident as an active principle
in the reader's consciousness henceforwardP
Crane's notion of the ideal independence of the poem from the personality
of its maker is essentially the same as Mallarme's, and bears
the same intimate relation to the illusive impersonality ofLouis's art.
More important, the "evocation" of Louis's paintings is not toward
decoration or amusement but rather toward what Crane seems to
have meant by "absolute" experience, even toward what he seems to
have meant by "illumination." In fact, Crane's vision ofthe "absolute"
poem as present to consciousness and memory not as something
u�8 \ MORRIS LOUIS
which has duration but as a single, new, unsayable "word" is, I suggest,
a vision of it as somehow attaining to the nontemporal, as it
were instantaneous, presentness of paintings: as though itwere to the
condition of painting, rather than to that of music, that Symbolist
and Post-Symbolist poetry had been aspiring all along.
Within the past several years, roughly since Louis's death, that
presentness has for the Hrst time become an issue for painting. It is
no longer something which the ambitious painter is able to take for
granted, which he need never think about or even recognize. Rather
it is something which he must, if not actually intend, at any rate secure-for
example, through the medium of shape-if his paintings
are to compel conviction aspaintings. Otherwise tht.)' will be experienced
as a kind of object, and as having, rather weakly at that, the
essentially theatrical kind of presence that exhibited objects have.
These remarks are perhaps impenetrably obscure, but I cannot here
provide the account of modernist painting since about rg6o which
they require to be made clear. For present purposes what is important
is that Louis was the last major painter who did not have to
deal explicitlywith these issues, who did not have to confront tbe risk
that his paintings might be seen as objects,28 for whom shape was not
yet the medium ofpainting that it subsequently became for Noland,
Olitski, and Stella. This is largely what makes Louis's last paintings,
in which the stripes are stretched diagonally across square canvases,
especially haunting: they suggest thatjust before he died Louis may
have begun to move in the direction of an explicit involvement with
the shape of the support.
What is nakedly and explicitly at stake in the work of the most
ambitious painters today is nothing less than the continued existence
ofpainting as a high art. Louis's death in September rg62 at the age
of forty-nine deprived us not only of the paintings he would have
made had he lived longer, but of the now unimaginable possibilities
for the future ofpainting they would have opened up.
NoTES
1. Karl Marx, Economic andPhilosophic A1anusnipts ofr844 (Moscow and London,
1959), p. 108 (in the original the word "forming" is italicized). (A more
recent translation by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton renders the sentence
in question as 'The cultivation of the five sense is the work of all previous
history" (Karl Marx, Early Writings [New York, 1975], p. 353) .-M. F., r996]
2. The paintings in question were shown at the Martha Jackson Gallery in
November 1957.
MORRIS LOUIS ! 1 29
3· This was said in conversation. On a visit to Washington in April 1955
Greenberg urged Louis to come to New York more often on those grounds.
4· Clement Greenberg, "Louis and Noland," Art International 4 (May 25,
1g6o): 28.
5· Quoted by Gerald Nordland in the catalog to the exhibition The WashingH
ton Color Painters at the Washington, D.C., Gallery of Modern Art (New York,
1965), p. 12.
6. One might say that the relation between Pollock and Louis goes too deep
for the notions of influence and style. Familiarity with Louis's work does not
merely color one's experience ofPollock's art; it comes close to determining it.
Louis's paintings do more than underline or point to aspects of Pollock's canvases
which otherwise one might not have noticed; there is an important sense
in which Louis's paintings create the aspects in question-in which they give significance
to aspects of Pollock's art that otherwise could not be experienced as
significant, or as having that particular significance. At the same time, the fact
that Pollock's paintings, not those of some other painter, are the ones which
Louis's paintings invest with meaning in this way testifies to the fecundating
power ofPollock's achievement and makes that investment seem, or be, a revelation
ofwhat was already there. The paintings of Noland and Olitski stand in an
analogous relation to Louis's work, and in general the unprecedented depth of
relationships of this kind is one ofthe characteristic, even defining, features of
modernist painting.
7· The pages that follow condense and rephrase the more detailed account
of Pollock's art in the introduction to Three American Painters (reprinted in this
book).
8. Greenberg's remarks on Olitski's spray paintings in the catalog to the
American pavilion at the 1966Venice Biennale are surprising in this way. "In the
first sprayed paintings," Greenberg writes, "linear drawing is displaced completely
from the inside of the picture to its outside, that is, to its inclosing shape,
the shape of the stretched piece of canvas. Olitski's art begins to call attention
at this point, as no art before it has, to how very much this shape is a matter of
linear drawing and, as such, an integral determinant of the picture's effect
rather than an imposed and external limit" (Clement Greenberg, "Introduction
to Jules Olitski at the Venice Biennale," in Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-
1969, val. 4 of The Collected Essays and C1iticism, ed. John O'Brian [Chicago,
1993L p. 229).
g. This is said apropos of Louis's use of staining in a Postscriptum, dated
November 1966, to Appendix II, "Excerpts from the Writings of Clement
Greenberg," in the catalog to the retrospective exhibition ofLouis'swork, Morris
Louis 1912-1962, shown in Los Angeles, Boston, and St. Louis in 1966-67. In
Greenberg's words, "One ofthe very most important reasons why [Louis] took
to staining paint into raw canvas was that this permitted him to describe a firm
and regular edge without having it become a cutting one as it would on a nonabsorbent
surface: the slight, hardly visible bleed leftby soaking serves to deprive
an edge or contour ofsharpness but not necessarily ofclarity or firmness. Louis
was perhaps the first to exploit this property ofsoaked or stained paint with full
130 l MORRIS LOUIS
consciousness" (p. 84). [Greenberg'sPostscriptum does not appear in O'Brian's
collection of his writings.-M. F., 1996]
1o. Greenberg, "Louis and Noland," p. 28.
1 1. Ibid.
12. In the original text I said erroneously that he did thisjust once, in BreahingHue
(1954), in which, however, bare canvas is discernible near the perimeter
ofmuch of the painting.-M. F., 1996
13. I was mistaken when I wrote this. As Diane Upright explains in her catalogue
raisonne on the painter,
Early in 1958 Louis returned to painting Veils. . . . In comparison to the
1954 Veils, this second Veil series was painted on a much larger rectangle,
with a signiftcant increase in the proportion ofv.ri.dth to height. In order
to support the canvas, Louis attached it to a work stretcher that measured
about 8 by 1 2 feet, a dimension ascertained by measuring between the
staple marks still evident along the edges of many Veil paintings.
At least one work stretcher had a center vertical brace and another
placed about three feet to its right. The traces ofthese bracesshowas dark
yertical striations in fli'ty-seven Veil paintings. . . . Although it was once
thought that the reason for these two vertical lines was that Louis, due to
the small size of his studio, was compelled to fold the canvas during the
painting process, this is not true. Many Veils equal in width to those with
divisions are not divided. More important, on all fifty-seven Veils v.ri.th the
divisions, the two vertical lines are always equidistant from one another
and always located in the same position with regard to the whole image.
Obviously, such regularity was not a product of folding. (Diane Upright,
A1onisLouis: The CompletePaintings:A CatalogueRaisonnt [NewYork, 1985],
p. 54)--JW. F., 1996
14- Pollock said this in "My Painting," published in Possibilities 1 (New York,
winter 1947-48), quoted in Bryan Robertson,jackson Pollock (New York, 1959),
p. 193·
15. Much of the obscurity has been cleared up by Upright in Manis Louis; I
have followed her in dating Louis's return to the veils in january 1958.-M. F.,
1996
1 6. In my original text I wrote: "These pictures . . . may, for all we know,
predate Saraband." But they don't: Upright places Saraband in 1959 and VVhile
and Wherein 1960 (Morris Louis, catalog nos. 188, 287, and 288, respectively) .M.
R, 1996
17. Greenberg said this in conversation.
18. Greenberg, "Modernist Painting," in TheNew Art: A CriticalAnthology, ed.
GregoryBattcock (New York, 1966), p. 73·
19. Greenberg, "Introduction toan Exhibition ofMorris Louis, Kenneth Noland,
and jules Olitski," in Modernism with a Vengeance, p. 152. The exhibition was
held at the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Canada, in Jan.-Feb.
1963.
20. Robert Rosenblum in his briefentry on Louis in the catalog for the exhi-
MoRRIS LoUis j 13 L
bition Toward a New Abstmction, shown at the Jewish Musemn, New York, May
1 g-Sept. .L 5, 1963, wrote: "Without drawn contours, these straight paths ofcolor
sing across the open plane of the canvas. At times, their parallel edges overlap
(a glowing yellow over a burning vermilion), an effect that enriches further the
atmospheric density generated; elsewhere, they run exactly contiguous courses,
like two bullets speeding together through space without colliding. In the upright
verticals, these streaks of color speed toward, but seldom attain, the lower
edge of the canvas, as if we were just catching a path of movement that will
continue; and in those aligned diagonally, we likewise seize the fragment of
a trajectory that implies swift energies beyond the lateral edges of the canvas''
(p. 1 8).
21. Upright, however, suggests that Louis directly poured the earlier, broader
stripes but switched to a more deliberate technique in the later paintings with
narrower stripes, one which enabled him to control the ends ofhis stripes (i.e.,
to eliminate the irregular drips at one end that resulted from pouring) (Mar-
1is Louis, p. 57). She also reports that Louis's widow "recalls finding 'daubers'
in Louis's studio, long sticks with cheesecloth wrapped around one end," and
suggests that these may have been used to "draw" the late stripes (ibid.) .M.
F, 1996
22. See Greenberg's Poscriptum.
23. In a letter to Andre Emmerich dated August 6, 1 962, Louis gave to the
quarter-inch the dimensions to which the eight paintings would be stretched. It
is hard to know how much, if anything, to make of the fact that in that letter
Louis mentioned that three of the paintings would be square but not that in
them the stripes would be run diagonally. This may have been simply because
the squareness of the paintings had immediate relevance to the space of the
gallery while the diagonal orientation of the stripes did not But it raises the
possibility that their squareness may have been the most important thing about
these paintings for Louis-indeed, that he might have arrived at the orientation
of the stripes as a means ofsecuring the shape of the support
24- This was told to me by Bocour in conversation.
25. Quoted in translation by Arthur Symonds in The Symbolist JVlovement in
Literature (New York, 1958). [The passage comes from Mallanne's great essay
"Crise de vers"; for the French original see Stephane Mallarrni:, Oeuvres completes,
ed. Henri Mondor et G.Jean-Aubry (Paris, 1945), p. 366.-M. F, 1996]
26. Cited in Philip Horton, Hart Cmne: TheLifeofanAmericanPoet (New York,
1957), Appendix I, p. 325.
27. Ibid., pp. 326-27.
28.· The physically narrowest ofthe stripe paintings are, I have said, an exception
to this. But the fact that Louis was able to eliminate the risk of their being
seen as a kind of object simply by hanging them sideways indicates that the risk
was not yet the deep one it has since become.
Jules Olitski
It is as if this expressed the essence of form.-I say, however: if you talk about
essence-, you are merely noting a convention. But here one would like to retort:
there is no greater difference than that bet\veen a proposition about the
depth of the essence and one about-a mere convention. But what if I reply:
to the depth that we see in the essence there corresponds the deep need for the
convention.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein1
1
THE PRESENT exhibition ofpaintings byJules Olitski
is far from a full retrospective.'The pictures it comprises were chosen
by him from less than four years' work, and most of them have been
made since the spring of 1965, when he began painting with the
spray gun. His decision to emphasize the spray paintings is not surprising:
although the best of Olitski's previous pictures equal the
finest spray pictures in quality, the latter are unquestionably the more
momentous achievement. At the same time, by representing two
distinct phases of Olit>ki's art prior to his taking up spraying, the
exhibition insists on the importance of seeing the spray paintings in
relation to these. And this, I suggest, means acknowledging both the
Originally published as the introduction to the catalog for the exhibitionjules Olilski:
Paintings 1963-1967 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Apr. 28-june 1 1 ,
1967; the Pasadena Art Museum, Aug. 1-Sept. 10, 1967; and the San Francisco Museum
ofArt, Sept. 26-Nov. 5, 1967.
JuLES OuTSKI I 1 33
sheer unexpectedness of the spray paintings and the depth of their
connection with his previous work. It is as though on the one hand
they are without precedent: in Olitski's oeuvre, while on the other
they bring his previous work to a fruition or culmination that., in retrospect,
seems almost inevitable. They are simultaneously that original
and that rooted in what Olitski has already done.
More than anymodernistpainterbefore him Olitski has been willing-indeed
he seems to have found it necessary-to change the
look of his art frequently and sweepingly. (On one level, it is possible
to see in this an unwillingness to be recognized publicly as a master,
if not an unwillingness to succeed publicly at all.) But it is also true
that, as Clement Greenberg has remarked, none of the phases
through which Olitski's art has gone since the late 1950s remains as
distinct from the rest as each felt at the time.' From the vantage
points provided by successive phases, above all by that of spray paintings,
those aspects of previous phases that at first may have struck
one as idiosyncratic or arbitrary have tended to drop away, or rather
to be absorbed by the paintings in question. And as this has happened,
the continuity between the earlier phases and the spray paintings
has become manifest.
But the spray paintings demand understanding in a wider context
than that ofOlitski's development alone-one provided by the development
of modernist painting generally since the late 1950s. Only
in this context does the momentousness of the spray paintings become
fully intelligible: they are momentous not so much because
they abandon the look ofimmediately antecedent paintings by Olitski
as because they revoke, or refuse to accept, conventions of fundamental
importance to the work of painters otherwise as different
from one another as Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella. And since
what gives those conventions their importance is nothing less than
the entire history of painting since Manet, the spray paintings will
need to be seen in a context as long and as deep as that of modernism
itself.
2
OLITSK!'S SPRAY technique could hardly be simpler.
[See pl. ro.] He lays a length of unprimed and unsized canvas on
the floor and sprays into it acrylic paint of different colors from as
many as three spray guns powered by an electric air compressor. (In
his first spray paintings he began by drawing the canvas through a
134 ! JULES OLITSKI
trough filled with paint, but after a while stopped preparing it in
this way.) By the time he stops working, often with two spray guns
simultaneously, the raw canvas itself is no longer visible, except in
rare cases toward the edges. In some paintings the surface of the
canvas consists of small flecks of different colors which, depending
on the wetness of the surface at the moment they were sprayed on,
are distinct or slightly blurred or almost dissolved into adjacent
flecks, and depending on the size ofthe droplets in a given burst of
spray, fluctuate in size from extremely fine points to larger though
still minute splashes or beads of pigment. In other paintings the
droplets seem to have flowed into one another completely and there
are no flecks at all.
Differences of this kind are experienced as differences of facture
rather than of color. Throughout the spray paintings the actual character
of the picture surface varies enormously while the import of
spraying for color remains roughly the same. Above all, spraying
makes possible the interpenetration of different colors, the intensity
ofeach of which appears to fluctuate continuously, independently of
the intensity of the others. The different colors, one might say, inhabit
not merely the same space but the same points in space. The
originality of the spray paintings in this respect is striking. In "Mter
Abstract Expressionism," Greenberg described Still's and Newman's
color in these terms:
It no longer fills in or specifies an area or even plane, but spea.ks for
itselfby dissolving all definiteness of shape and distance. To this endas
Still was the first to show-it has to be warm color, or cool color
infused -with warmth. It also has to be uniform in hue, with only the
subtlest variations in value if any at all, and spread over an absolutely,
not merely relatively, large area. Size guarantees the purity as well as
the intensity needed to suggest indeterminate space: more blue simply
being bluer than less blue.4
The first two sentences are true ofthe spraypaintings as wei!, but the
last two are not. Olitsk.i exploits fluctuations ofvalue, often ofa quite
dramatic sort. More importan� intensity of color in these paintings
is not proportional to its two-dimensional extension. Instead, it is
a function of the concentration or density of a given color at any
point-what might be called that color's intension. (This is the case
whether or not the painting in question consists of discrete flecks.)
It is as though Olitski has found himselfworking in another dimension
from that of lateral extension. Or as though he has discovered
in spraying another direction for color to take-not out but in.5
JULES 0LITSKI I 1 35
It is, finally, as though by atomizing color Olitski has atomized,
even disintegrated, the picture surface as well. Depending partly on
the colors used and partly on facture, the spray paintings establish to
different degrees an illusion of depth whose power and richness are
withoutprecedent both in Olitski's previouswork and in recent modernist
art. This has to do largely with the difference between spraying
and staining. The latter "identifies" color with its canvas ground,6
whereas in his spray paintings Olitski seems intent on driving color
back into its ground, both literally and illusionistically. But precisely
this makes the actual character of Olitski's picture surface important
in a new way. Greenberg was the first. to recognize the almost paradoxical
character of this state of affairs:
The grainy surface Olitskicreateswith his way ofspraying is a new kind
ofpaint surface. It offers tactile associations hitherto foreign, more or
less, to picture�making; and it does new things with color. Together
with color, it contrives an illusion of depth that somehow extrudes all
suggestions of depth back to the picture's surface; it is as if that sur�
face, in all its literalness, were enlarged to contain a world of color
and light differentiations impossible to flatness but which yet manage
not to violate flatness.7
Surface and depth, literalness and illusion, are, in these paintings,
inextricably mixed.
In some of the early spray paintings Olitski had added streaks of
pastel along, or very near, their perimeters. Then, during the winter
of 1965-66, he began to mask already sprayed canvases except for a
partial "frame" around two or three sides, spray some more, and then
remove the masking. [See pl. 1 1 .] This procedure, which he has used
more or less regularly since its invention, produces both a clear difference
and an unprecedented continuity between the previously
masked and unmasked areas. One experiences the abruptness of the
transition from one area to the other as something like linear drawing,
while at the same time one is gripped and carried by the continuity
ofsprayed color across that transition-a continuity that, in effect,
makes these picturesjust as seamless and integral as the spray paintings
in which no masking had taken place. Throughout both types of
paintings color flows continuously into color, individual colors being
isolated or differentiated from one another only by their specific
identities. Put anotherway, the emphasis in both is on the continuity
ofcolor as such and the uniqueness or autonomy or isolation ofindividual
colors. This is true as well of the recent paintings, most of
whose formats are horizontal rectangles, in which Olitski has worked
136 I juLES OurSKI
both in pastel and with brush and paint up close to the framingedge:
the nearness to the limits of the support of the pastel streaks and
protracted, fraying brushstrokes ofbright color keeps the streaks and
brushstrokes from being seen as disrupting the continuity ofsprayed
colorwithin those limits, while at the same time they are experienced
as specifying particular colors with great intensity. [See pl. 1 2.]
In most of these respects the spray paintings have deep roots in
Olitski's previous work. For example, in a number ofpaintings made
during 1963-64 by rubbing and staining acrylic paint into unsized
and unprimed canvas Olitski modulated from one color to another
without leaving a sharp boundary between them. At first, as in the
exquisite Fatal Plunge Lady (1963; fig. 19) , the modulation occurs
between two colors extremely close to each other in hue, in this instance
between rose brown and orange brown; but in Hot Ticket
( 1964) the broad vertical curtain of color which occupies most of
the canvas inflects dramatically from intense green down through
deep blue to bright red-three colors, incidentally, that occur frequently
in the spraypaintings. In these works color flows into color in
a way that clearly anticipates the continuity of color that is so salient
a feature of the spray paintings. Hot Ticket, especially in the zone of
transition between the blue and red segments of the curtain, anticipates
the interpenetration of different colors as well. There is even a
sense in which the flow of color in these pictures is felt to extend
across, or at least to implicate, portions of the canvas that in fact
are bare-as when, in Fatal Plunge Lady, the colored areas seem to
participate in a single descent of color from the top of the canvas
toward the lower right.
What I have described as an emphasis on the uniqueness, autonomy,
or isolation of individual colors in the spray paintings is manifest
also in Olitski's previous work. Olitski has always been concerned
with what in the introduction to ThreeAmericanPainters (reprinted in
this book) I called the mutually repulsive rather than attractive relations
among colors; his aim has always been to distinguish individual
colors rather to than bring them together. Paintings like FatalPlunge
Lady, Hot Ticket, and Flaubert Red virtually compel one to experience
the individual colors they comprise far more intensely than if each
color were confronted in actual isolation from the others. One is
forced, that is, to bear down on each color with unaccustomed intensity,
as though each color competes for presentness with every other.
Moreover, bearing down on each color means bearing down on each
bit of it, as though it were subtly and continuously changing from
jULI�S 0LITSKI \ 137
point to point, from present moment to present moment. What sustains
one's attention is both the spread of color across a particular
area and the particularity of color at every point.
Because of this, the intensity of a given color in Olitski's 1963-64
paintings is not proportional to its extension. Nothing is initially
more surprising, even disturbing, about these paintings than the extreme
disparity in size between the areas occupied by different colors,8
yet the colors themselves are not experienced as differing in
intensity. Or rather, what is at stake is not so much the relative intensity
of different colors as their ability to sustain the kind of attention
I have tried to describe-as though what one means by the intensity
of a color in these paintings is precisely its ability to sustain being
borne down on by the beholder.
Finally, the 1963-64 paintings in this exhibition represent two distinct
stages in what seems to be an ongoing struggle between color
and drawing. In earlier paintings-for example, those exhibited at
the Poindexter Gallery in the spring of 1963-the tension between
the two is relatively extreme: on the one hand, the colored areas are
experienced as clearly, even sharply, shaped or contoured; on the
other, the color tends to dissolve its own limits, or at any rate to direct
attention away from them ' Drawing and color mainly work autonomously,
even against one another. By 1963, however, Olitski begins
to minimize the drawnness of the limit' of the colored areas. For
example, in FatalPlunge Lady those areas are experienced as having
just this moment assumed their final configurations after having
flooded down from the top of the painting toward the lower right.
This frees color from the compulsion, labored under the year before,
to oppose and in effect to nullify drawing. In these paintings color
is dominant from the start, and as a result can be much subtler,
much lower keyed, much more concerned with internal inflection.
In paintings done in 1964-for example, Hot Ticket, Flaubert Red,
and Flaming On-the minimizing of drawing is carried still further;
it reaches an extreme in the first spray paintings, in which, as
Greenberg has pointed out, "linear drawing is displaced from the
inside of the picture to its outside, that is, to its inclosing shape, the
shape of the stretched piece of canvas." (He adds: "Olitski's art begins
to call attention at this point, as no art before it has, to how very
much this shape is a matter oflinear drawing and, as such, an integral
determinant ofthe picture's effect rather than an imposed and external
limit.") 10 In this sense the spray paintings can be seen as realizing
to the limit of possibility what Greenberg has characterized as
l38 I jULES OLITSKI
"Olitski's urge to escape from incisive drawing."11 But it is consistent
with Greenberg's observations to see those paintings as realizing, in
a wholly unexpected way, a passion to draw as well. That is, Olitski's
development during the past five years expresses not so much an
urge to escape or even to minimize drawing as a desire to find a place
for it in his art. In this connection it is significant that, almost at once,
Olitski reintroduced various kinds of drawing inside the picture (a
fact that Greenberg has discussed) . The crucial point is that for Olitski,
color and drawing are antagonists: every stage in his development
during the past five years, including the spray paintings, has
constituted a specific settlement of their conflicting claims.
3
THE WIDER context in which Olitski's spray paintings
are to be viewed is constituted by the discovery around 1960 by Kenneth
Noland and Frank Stella of a new mode of pictorial structure,
grounded 1;,, and lucidly evincing, a more acute awareness of the
shape and size of the picture support than had been the basis of any
previous painting. The shape of the picture support has played an
important role throughout modernism. Cubism in particular, by adjusting
the elements within a painting to a rough congruence with
the framing edge, showed an awareness of the shape of the support
which, although less exacerbated than that evinced in Noland's and
Stella's paintings, was nevertheless considerable. In fact there is an
important sense in which the structural mode of their paintings can
be said to reaffirm Cubism's implicit but decisive interpretation of
the half-century of painting between Manet's seminal pictures of the
early 1 86os and the late works of Cezanne in terms of a growing
consciousness of the literal character of the picture support and a
draining ofconviction in traditional illusionism. Cubism's interpretation
of that painting consisted chiefly in its increasingly perspicuous
acknowledgment of the flatness of the support. But flatness is a tactile
characteristic, and the denial of tactility manifested in the most
advanced painting prior to that ofNoland and Stella-notably in the
work ofjackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Morris Louis-meant
that flatness was no longer something an ambitious painter had to,
or even could, establish positively. But neither could it be violated,
however ambiguously, by illusionistic incursions into a fictive tactile
space. Rather, Newman's and Louis's paintings-as well as, from our
present vantage, Pollock's allover drip paintings of '947-50-estab-
JULES 0LITSKI I 1 39
!ish what I have elsewhere described as a depth or space accessible
to eyesight alone. This constitutes a new illusion, one in which the
integrity of the picture surface remains intact at the same time as its
flatness is dissolved or anyway neutralized. More than any other factor,
the emergence of this purely visual or optical mode of illusionism
crystallized the new and more acute awareness of the shape of the
support, including its exact proportions and dimensions, that becomes
the basis of the structure of Noland's and Stella's paintings.12
Roughly, Noland and Stella became painters ofmajor importance
when they began to relate the elements within their paintings to the
shape of the support in such a way that the structure of their paintings
could be said to acknowledge that shape more lucidly and explicitly
than had ever been the case." For Noland this meant centering
concentric rings and radiating armatures ofcolor in square canvases,
while in Stella's stripe paintings-for example, the aluminum and
copper series of pictures on shaped supports executed in rg6o and
rg6 1 , respectively-2 \1,-inch-wide stripes begin at the framing edge
and repeat themselves inside the painting until the entire canvas is
filled. In subsequent paintings, consisting of stacked chevrons, Noland
found that running the lower edge of the bottom chevron into
the upper corners of the canvas enabled him to dispense with lateral
symmetry as well as with the square format; more recently he has
worked with diamond-shaped canvases in which several bands of
color ofequal width are aligned with one or the other pair of parallel
sides, and with very long horizontal rectangles in which parallel
bands of color run their entire lengths. Because Noland, unlike
Stella, has never been interested in structure in its own right hut
rather has always been chiefly concerned with color, his development
is more revealing. Specifically, the fact that Noland's ambition to
make major art out ofcolor has compelled him to discover structures
on which that ambition can rely-structures in which the shape of
the support is acknowledged lucidly and explicitly enough to compel
conviction-reveals the depth of the need for such structures in a
way that Stella's exclusively structural preoccupations do not. (It was
not until 1964, with the appearance of his first paintings containing
asymmetrical chevrons, that that revelation was complete, not until
then that the structural significance of his previous work, as well as
its affinities with what Stella had done, became evident.)
If Olitski's spray paintings are seen, as I believe they ask to he,
in the light of this development, one thing is clear: they cannot be
described in terms ofthe conception ofpictorial structure that I have
140 I JULES 0LITSKI
claimed has been central to the work of Noland and Stella. They are,
in fact, profoundly opposed to that conception, though the grounds
of that opposition are coloristic as much as structural. By the time
Olitski made the first of his spray paintings he seems to have come
to regard the division of the canvas into clearly delimited areas of
color-without which the structures of Noland's and Stella's paintings
would be inconceivable-as incompatible with his own aspirations
as a colorist. This is not to say that in Noland's paintings color
plays a role of secondary importance. On the contrary, the urge toward
color is central; the problem at any moment is how color must
be organized within the picture shape-as well as what that picture
shape must be-in order that his paintings compel conviction. Structure
is at the service of color; color, one might say, is the instrument
of nothing-nothing beyond feeling itself.
But whereas the structure of a given painting by Noland can be
represented schematically, and in that sense at least can be detached
or at least distinguished from the color, Olitski's spray paintings, by
refusing clearly delimited areas of color, rule out from the start the
very possibility of such a distinction.
In the previous section of this essay I tried to show that the spray
paintings are rooted in Olitski's previous work. This means that it
was his desire to realize his deepest pictorial aspirations as completely
as possible, rather than antipathy to Noland's and Stella's work, that
brought him to a position of fundamental opposition to the structural
mode of their paintings. But this desire was both informed and
inflamed by his growing awareness not only of the importance of the
shape of the support to the structure of their paintings, but of the
significance of that aspect of their work for modernist painting generally.
And this, it seems to me, amounted to the recognition that his
previous paintings did not realize his aspirations as fully or perspicuously
as he now saw to be possible.
In paintings like Fatal Flung• Lady, Hot Ticket, Flaubert Red, and
f7arning On structure is subsumed by color in that the first can be
grasped only in the experience of the second. And in general the
desire to make paintings whose structures appear to have been determined
by, to consist in, nothing but the interaction of individual colors
and the overall flow of color as such seems to have been a powerful
force in Olitski's art during the years 1963-64. At the same time,
however, the fact that those paintings contain discrete shapes and
clearly delimited areas ofcolor-in short, drawing-makes them vulnerable,
or answerable, to the demand that they acknowledge the
JULES OLITSKI I 141
shape of the support. In this sense they do not oppose the structural
mode ofNoland's and Stella's paintings so much as they are opposed
by it. The result is that each of the paintings in question is compelled
to overcome, by the sheer intensity of its color, what one cannot help
but perceive as its failure or refusal to acknowledge the shape of the
support-a perception, it should be noted, that takes an essentially
diagrammatic view of the areas and shapes they contain. That the
finest of those paintings succeed triumphantly does not erase the demand,
or make their structures as significant for modernist painting
generally as those of Noland's and Stella's paintings. What I want to
suggest is this: Olitski's growing awareness of the inescapability of
the demand (corresponding to the depth of the revealed need) to
acknowledge the shape of the support incited him to try to make
paintings that would defeat that demand completely-paintings in
which it could find no handhold, in which there would be nothing
that could be diagrammed, in which colorwould assume the full burden
of pictorial structure. At that moment, if I am correct, realizing
his deepest pictorial aspirations and opposing the structural mode
of Noland's and Stella's paintings became for Olitski one and the
same enterprise. And this suggests that while it is true that the spray
paintings bring his previous work to an astonishing fruition, Olitski
might never have come to make them-he might never have gone
that far-if it had not been for Noland's and Stella's discovery of a
mode of pictorial structure that ran counter to those aspirations and
yet answered so profound a need that it could not be ignored.
4
NOTHING, MOREOVER, lays bare the depth of that
need more dramatically than the fact that the spray paintings depend
for their success upon an awareness of the shape and size of the support
equal to that which Noland and Stella were the first to embody
in their paintings. There are, of course, important differences between
the ways in which this awareness is evinced in their pictures
and in Olitski's spray paintings. For example, it would not make
sense to say that the spray paintings acknowledge the shape of the
support. (They don't fail or refuse to acknowledge it either; a demand
for acknowledgment is empty in the face of them.) But it can
be claimed, I think, that in the strongest early spray paintings the
entire contents of a given picture relate as an integral entity to the
limits ofthe support experienced as a whole, as a single shape. One's
1 42 I jULES 0LITSKI
conviction in front of such paintings is that the framing edge has
been arrived at by the colors themselves: as though the paintings in
question only happen to end up rectangular and of a certain size.
Furthermore, when two paintings very similar as regards facture and
color (perhaps having been cut from the same length ofsprayed canvas)
but different in size and shape strike one as unequal in quality,
it is always because in the less successful picture Olitski has, so to
speak, failed to possess the framing edge as completely and convincingly
as he has possessed the picture surface. (In such instances the
sprayed canvas feels to me like background in traditional painting.)
No paintings, Noland's and Stella's included, have ever been put under
greater pressure by considerations of shape or, more accurately,
have ever put those considerations under greater pressure. Greenberg,
writing in the Biennale catalog, remarked: 'The degree to
which the success of Olitski's paintings depends on proportion of
height to width in their inclosing shapes is, I feel, unprecedented.
Because they attract too little notice as shapes, and therefore tend to
get taken too much for granted, he has had more and more to avoid
picture formats that are square or approach squareness. He has also
had to avoid picture formats that are long and narrow, simply because
these tend to stamp themselves out as shapes less emphatically
than formats that are tall and narrow do."11 This can be verified in
one's experience. The narrow verticals are the strongest of Olitski's
early spray paintings, largely because of the perspicuousness with
which they stamp themselves out as shapes. (The question of whythe
narrow vertical paintings tend to make themselves felt as shapes with
such force is one of the most interesting raised by recent modernist
painting.)1' I have argued elsewhere that their perspicuousness as
shape-the fact that their shapes are experienced as pictorial, not
merely literal-is what secures their identity as painting.16 Either the
support stamps itself out as shape or the painting is experienced as
nothing more than a kind of object. (The demand that the paintings
in question hold as shape plays a role in Olitski's spray paintings
equivalent to the demand to acknowledge the shape of the support
in Noland's and Stella's work. It is, one might say, the demand that
has to be faced when color assumes the full burden of structure.)
This inescapably puts the shape of the support under enormous pressure,
and it is questionable whether any pictorial convention, not to
say one apparently as central to the entire enterprise of modernist
painting as the shape of the support, will stand up under pressure of
that kind for long.
jULk�S 0LITSKI I 1 43
In a number of paintings executed in early 1966-PrincePatutsky's
Command (pl. 1 1 ) and Thigh Smokeamong them-the pressure is suddenly
and unexpectedly off. This is also true of more recent paintings-for
example, C+]+B, Maximum, Patutsky in Paradise, and
Heightened [also EndRun, pl. 1 2 ] -in which for the first time Olitski
has attained mastery over the horizontal rectangle as well as, in the
superb Sleep !wbber; the square (or near square) . To claim that in all
these paintings the pressure is off is to say more than that their quality
does not depend on their efficacy as shape, though that is in fact
the case. It is also to say that the question of whether or not they
stamp themselves out as shape does not really arise. One doesn't
sense that the paintingsjust mentioned succeed despite not making
themselves felt as shapes. Rather, the issue ofwhether or not they do
so has been eluded or staved off, ifonlyfor the moment, by the paintings
themselves. This I believe is what has enabled Olitski to extend
his authority-that ofa major painter at the height ofhis powers-to
include the horizontal and square formats which had, until recently,
proved intractable.
The eluding or staving off of the issue of pictorial versus literal
shape is accomplished largely by the sprayed bands (the partial internal
"frame") or long brushstrokes of color that run along two or
three sides of a given painting. The limits of the support are no
longer simply and nakedlyjuxtaposed to the rest of the painting, as
in the early spray pictures. Instead, the bands or brushstrokes are
experienced as belonging simultaneously to both, hence as mediating
between the two-with the result that any qualms that arise about
a given picture no longer concern its shape bnt tend to focus on the
bands or brushstrokes instead. At the same time, the recent paintings
mark a new stage in Olitski's exploration of the framing edge-specifically,
the discovery of the immediate vicinity of that edge as a terrain
of extraordinary freedom and possibility. It is as though as long
as he remains close to the limits of the support Olitski can do whatever
he wants: repossess the square, use the horizontal rectangle without
alluding to the horizon, even resurrect Abstract Expressionist
brushwork. What is almost incredible is that in paintings like C+J+B,
Maximum, and Heightened, such brushwork is made to serve the ends
ofcolor. (In the most recent paintings this chiefly means close values
of livid, sour hues-principally yellows, greens, pinks, oranges, and
an almost phosphorescent violet.) The freedom Olitski seems to enjoy
in the immediate vicinity of the edge has its corresponding constraints,
above all that of not being able to place his bands and brush-
144 I jULES 0LITSKI
strokes anywhere else. Even at the edge, of course, notjust anything
goes. But the best of the recent paintings, although in one sense imageless,
provide an image ofan achieved freedom that is nothing less
than exalting.
5
THE PAST twelve years have seen the emergence of
three painters-Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitskiwho
rank with the supreme masters of color in modern art. Each
broke through to his proper work when he discovered in color something
that he had been looking for all along and had been able to
find nowhere else: a way to make paintings whose quality could stand
comparison with the art of the museums.
The precise content of that discovery, what exactly it can be said
to have consisted in, differs radically in the three cases. This is to
claim much more than that each painter's feeling for color, or even
his use of it, is different from the others'. When each of these painters
found in color a way to make paintings in which he could believe,
he found in it his own artistic identity as well. Similarly, while there
is a clear sense in which all three may be said to use color-roughly,
the sense in which they all use paint-there is another, less obvious
sense in which they do not use color so much as exploit its resources
or realize its possibilities for the making of bigh art.
That color in our time has been found to possess such resources
and to contain such possibilities has made it, perhaps more explicitly
than ever before, a mediumof painting." But the particular resources
and possibilities whose exploitation and realization have established
color as a medium of painting for Louis, Noland, and Olitski are
different in each case-indeed they are internal to the uniqueness
of their respective achievements. The question with which I close is
this: What is it that Olitski has found in color that establishes it for
him as a medium of painting?-that makes color something within
which he can work?
He has found in color a way, perhaps the only way now open, to a
primordial involvement with the sensuous nature of paint itself. His
aspirations as a colorist have been determined, even dictated, by this
involvement. In Olitski's paintings color is paint-not because in
painting all color is produced by paint in the first place (in this sense
all lines or shapes are produced by paint in the first place) , but because
Olitski's color is the instrument of an overriding passion for
the physical, one might say the defining, properties of paint. The
juLES OuTSKI I 145
continuing conflict in his work between color and drawing is at bottom
a conflict between paint and drawing; and this in turn (within
the inescapable demand that drawn shapes acknowledge the shape
of the support) is a conflict between paint and the support. It is this
struggle between a material substance and a material entity-the one
volatile, formless, spreading, penetrating, varied, and fluctuating,
the other passive, definite, delimited, ineluctable, unitary, and constant-that
lies at the heart ofOlitski's development, and whose resolution,
on shifting terms, lies at the heart of Olitski's painting. It is a
conflict in which the ultimate condition for the existence of painting
in the world (that there be paint) is held against the ultimate condition
for the existence of the world itself (that there be objects). Philosophy
asked: What is an object of art? Now painting asks: Why
should a color be ofan object at all, why can't color escape objects
altogether? But it equally asks: Why should objects "have" a color (or
set of colors) at all, why can't objects escape color altogether?
NOTES
1 . Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of iviathematics, trans.
G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1956), p. 23e (pt. 1 , par. 74).
2. In this essay I make use ofsome ofmy own previous writing about Olitski,
mainly the articles 'Jules Olitski's New Paintings" (Artjarum 4 [Nov. 1965]: g6-
40) and "Olitski and Shape" (Artforum 5 [Jan. 1 967] : 20-2 1 ) .
3 · Clement Greenberg, "Introduction to Jules Olitski at the Venice Biennale,"
in Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, vol. 4 of The CollectedEssays and
Criticism, vol. 4, ed.John O'Brian (Chicago, 1993), pp. 228-30.
+ Clement Greenberg, "Mter Abstract Expressionism," Art International 6
(Oct. 25, 1962): 29.
5· In fact, the spray paintings make the concept of a color's "extension" or
"quantity" problematic as never before. For example, whereas from a distance
the color blue may appear to be confined to a small portion of a given tanvas,
on closer looking it may turn out that most ofthe surface contains tiny flecks of
blue paint. The "extension" ofthe color blue might then be taken to mean either
its apparent restriction to and continuity across a small area of the canvas
(viewed at a distance) , or its actual but discontinuous dispersal across most of
the canvas (viewed at close range). Neither interpretation, however, equals what
the concept ofthe "extension'' ofa color means in the work ofStill or Newman,
and in the end we are I think forced to regard it as inapplicable to Olitski's art
6. See Clement Greenberg, "Louis and Noland," Artlnternational4 (May 25,
rg6o): 26-29.
7. Greenberg, "Introduction tojules Olitski at the Venice Biennale," p. 230.
8. It mightbe more accurate to say thatwhatis disturbing is the conspicuous�
ness of this disparity-the way in which Olitski seems to be making a point ofit.
In contrast, in Noland's concentric-ring paintings it never occurs to one to re-
l46 jULI�S 0LITSKI
mark the fact that an outer ring contains a lot more color than a ring <?f compa�
rable thickness near the center.
g. For a discussion of the differences between Olitski's 1962 and 1963 paint�
ings see my "New York Letter: Olitski, Jenkins, Thiebaud, "1\vombly" (reprinted
in this book).
1o. Greenberg, "Introduction toJules Olit�ki at the Venice Biennale,"p. 229.
1 1 . Ibid., p. 229.
1 2. It's worth emphasizing that Noland and Stella did not simply decide to
base the structure Of their paintings on the shape and size of the support. On
the contrary, the sense of something having been decided for him vibrates in
Noland's remark that, after making accomplished butfinally derivative paintings
for several years, he broke through to what he had been after all along when he
"discovered the center" of the canvas. (In practice this resulted in his coming to
locate the central point of concentric or radiating elements at the exact center
of a square canvas.) He does not speak of having decided to do this, though
there may be sense in saying that he must have done so: perhaps the sense there
is in saying that the center was there before it was discovered. VI/hat Noland
found when he discovered the center of the canvaswas nothing less than how to
make paintings in whose quality and significance he could believe, and this was
not something he can be said to have had a choice about We are speaking here
of modernist painting as a special kind of cognitive enterprise, one whose success,
in fact whose existence, depends on the discovery of conventions capable
of eliciting conviction-or at least of dissolving certain kinds of doubts. (What
at any moment those conventions are is in large measure a function ofwhat they
have been.) It is above all the nakedness of that dependence-the immediacy
as well as the depth of the need for such discovery-that distinguishes modernist
painting from the traditional painting of the past For more on the kind
of cognitive enterprise I believe modernist painting to be, see my "Shape as
Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons" in this volume. CL also Stanley Cavell,
"The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy," especially the section
called "Decision," in A1ust We 1\1ean 'What We Say? A Book ofEssays (New York,
1g6g), PP· 52-56.
1 3. The concept of acknowledgment is meant to displace the notion of "de�
ductive structure," which I have used in the past to describe the structural mode
ofNoland's and Stella's paintings and which now seems to me inadequate. One
trouble with that notion was that it could be taken to imply that any structure in
which elements are aligned with the framing edge is as "deductive" (more or
less) as any other. "'Whereas by emphasizing the need to acknowledge the shape
of the support I mean to call attention to the fact that what, in a given instance,
will count as acknowledgment remains to be discovered, to be made out. (For
example, I would want to claim that Reinhardt's paintings, while repeating or
echoing or copying the shape of the support, do not acknowledge it)
14- Greenberg, "Introduction to Jules Olitski at the Venice Biennale," pp.
2 29-30. [See Fried, 'Jules Olitski's New Paintings," where in addition to making
some of the points repeated here I claim that structural considerations of the
sort discussed in that essay "must lie behind Olitski's extraordinary success in
juu�s OUTSKI q7
a number of paintings (e.g., Hidden Combination [pl. 10]) ·whose dimensionsroughly,
between six and eight feet high by no more than two feet wide-have
never until now been made to yield work of comparable quality" (p. 40).M.
F., 1996]
15. This seems to have to do with the naturally restrictive character of the
narrow vertical format, as opposed to the naturally expansive character of the
horizontal rectangle. Not that in the narrow vertical paintings the limits of
the support are felt to contain the contents of the painting; rather, they are
themselves experienced as contained by those contents, as being of a piece with
them. One of those paintings turned on its side becomes not merely a less successful
but phenomenologically a different painting. Even the colors seem to
change! (This was remarked by Greenberg in conversation.) And in general the
importance in the spray paintings ofaxiality or directionality can hardly be overestimated.
It is as though what is appealed to is not our ability in locating objects
(or failing to) but in orienting ourselves (or failing to).
16. See my "Shape as Form."
17. See Fried, "Shape as Form" and 'The Achievement of Morris Louis." In
the first of these, shape is called a medium of painting and in the second the
staining into canvas ofsuccessive waves ofpaint. For more on the notion of a medium
ofart understood in these senses, see Stanley Cavell, "A Matter ofMeaning
It," in A1ust WeMean VVhat We Say?, pp. 220-2 1 ; and idem, The World Viewed: Reflections
on the Ontology ofFilm (Cambridge and London, 1979) [the latter reference
added in 1gg6].
Art and Objecthood
Edwards's journals frequently explored and tested a meditation he seldom allowed
to reach print; if all the world were annihilated, he wrote . . and a new
world were freshly created, though itwere to exist in every particular in the same
manner as this world, it would not be the same. TherefOre, because there is
continuity, which is time, "it is certain with me that the world exists anew every
moment; that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment
renewed." The abiding assurance is that "we every moment see the same proof
of a God as we should have seen ifwe had seen Him create the world at first."
-Perry Miller,jonathanEdwards1
1
THE ENTERPRISE knownvariouslyasMinimalArt,ABC
Art, Primary Structures, and Specific Objects is largely ideological.
(See figs. 59-64-) It seeks to declare and occupy a position-one
that can be formulated in words and in fact has been so formulated
by some of its leading practitioners. If this distinguishes it from modernist
painting and sculpture on the one hand, it also marks an important
difference between Minimal Art-or, as I prefer to call it,
literalist art-and Pop or Op Art on the otber. From its inception,
literalist art has amounted to something more than an episode in the
history of taste. It belongs rather to the history-almost the natural
Originally published in Artforum 5 (June 1967): 1 2-23. Republished on several occasions,
most importantly in Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New
York, tg68), pp. 1 16-47·
ART AND 0BJECTHOOD I 1 49
history-of sensibility, and it is not an isolated episode but the expression
of a general and pervasive condition. Its seriousness is
vouched for by the fact that it is in relation both to modernist painting
and modernist sculpture that literalist art defines or locates the
position it aspires to occupy. (This, I suggest, is what makes what it
declares something that deserves to be called a position.) Specifically,
literalist art conceives of itself as neither one nor the other; on
the contrary, it is motivated by specific reservations or worse about
both, and it aspires, perhaps not exactly, or not immediately, to displace
them, but in any case to establish itself as an independent art
on a footing with either.
The literalist case against painting rests mainly on two counts: the
relational character of almost all painting and the ubiquitousness,
indeed the virtual inescapability, of pictorial illusion. In Donald
Judd's view,
'When you start relating parts, in the first place, you're assuming you
have a vague whole-the rectangle of the canvas-and definite parts,
which is all screwed up, because you should have a definite whole and
maybe no parts, or very few.2
The more the shape of the support is emphasized, as in recent modernist
painting, the tighter the situation becomes:
The elements inside the rectangle are broad and simple and correspond
closely to the rectangle. The shapes and surface are only those
that can occur plausibly 'Within and on a rectangular plane. The parts
are few and so subordinate to unity as not to be parts in an ordinary
sense. A painting is nearly an entity, one thing, and not the indefinable
sum of a group of entities and references. The one thing overpowers
the earlier painting. It also establishes the rectangle as a definite form;
it is no longer a fairly neutral limit. A form can be used only in so
many ways. The rectangular plane is given a life span. The simplicity
required to emphasize the rectangle limits the arrangements possible
within it.
Painting is here seen as an art on the verge of exhaustion, one in
which the range of acceptable solutions to a basic problem-how to
organize the surface of the picture-is severely restricted. The use
of shaped rather than rectangular supports can, from the literalist
point of view, merely prolong the agony. The obvious response is to
give up working on a single plane in favor ofthree dimensions. That,
moreover, automatically
1 50 I ART AND 0BjECTHOOD
gets rid ofthe problem of illusionism and ofliteral space, space in and
around marks and colors-which is riddance ofone of the salient and
most objectionable relics of European art. The several limits ofpainting
are no longer present. A work can be as powerful as it can be
thoug·ht to be. Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific
than paint on a flat surface.
The literalist attitude toward sculpture is more ambiguous. Judd,
for example, seems to think ofwhat he calls Specific Objects as something
other than sculpture, while Robert Morris conceives of his own
unmistakably literalist work as resuming the lapsed tradition of Constructivist
sculpture established by Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksandr Rodchenko,
Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, and Georges Vantongerloo.
But this and other disagreements are less important than the views
Judd and Morris hold in common. Above all they are opposed to
sculpture that, like most painting, is "made part by part, by addition,
composed" and in which "specific elements . . . separate from the
whole, thus setting· up relationships within the work." (They would
include the work of David Smith and Anthony Caro under this description.)
It is worth remarking that the "part-by-part" and "relational"
character of most sculpture is associated by Judd with what
he calls anthropomorphism: "A beam thrusts; a piece of iron follows
a gesture; tog·ether they form a naturalistic and anthropomorphic
image. The space corresponds." Against such "multipart, inflected"
sculptureJudd and Morris assert the values ofwholeness, singleness,
and indivisibility-of a work's being, as nearly as possible, "one
thing," a single "Specific Object." Morris devotes considerable attention
to "the use of strong gestalt or of unitary-type forms to avoid
divisiveness"; whileJudd is chiefly interested in the kind ofwholeness
that can be achieved through the repetition of identical units. The
order at work in his pieces, as he once remarked of that in- Frank
Stella's stripe paintings, "is simply order, like that of continuity, one
thing after another.
'
" For bothJudd and Morris, however, the critical
factor is shape. Morris's "unitary forms" are polyhedrons that resist
being grasped other than as a single shape: the gestalt simply is the
"constant, known shape." And shape itself is, in his system, "the most
important sculptural value." Similarly, speaking of his own work,
Judd has remarked that
the big problem is that anything that is not absolutely plain begins to
have parts in someway.The thing is to be able to work and do different
ART AND OBJECTHOOD ! 15 t
things and yet not break up the wholeness that a piece has. To me the
piece with the brass and the five verticals is above all that shape.
The shape is the object: at any rate, what secures the wholeness of
the object is the singleness of the shape. It is, I believe, that emphasis
on shape that accounts for the impression, which numerous critics
have mentioned, thatjudd's and Morris's pieces are hollow,
2
SHAPE HAS also been central to the most important
painting of the past several years. In several recent essays I have tried
to show how, in the work ofKenneth Noland,jules Olitski, and Stella,
a conflict has gradually emerged between ·shape as a fundamental
property ofobjects and shape as a medium of painting." Roughly, the
success cir failure ofa given painting has come to depend on its ability
to hold or stamp itself out or compel conviction as shape-that, or
somehow to stave off or elude the question ofwhether or not it does
so. Olitski's early spray paintings are the purest example of paintings
that either hold or fail to hold as shapes, while in his more recent
pictures, as well as in the best of Noland's and Stella's recent work,
the demand that a given picture hold as shape is staved off or eluded
in various ways. What is at stake in this conflict is whether the paintings
or objects in question are experienced as paintings or as objects,
and what decides their identity as paintingis their confronting of the
demand that they hold as shapes. Otherwise they are experienced as
nothing more than objects. This can be summed up by saying that
modernist painting has come to find it imperative that it defeat or
suspend its own objecthood, and that the crucial factor in this undertaking
is shape, but shape that must belong to painting-it must be
pict()rial, not, or not merely, literal. Whereas literalist art stakes everything
on shape as a given property of objects, if not indeed as a kind
of object in its own right. It aspires not to defeat or suspend its own
objecthood, but on the contrary to discover and project objecthood
as such.
In his essay "Recentness of Sculpture" Clement Greenberg discusses
the effect ofpresence, which, from the start, has been associated
with literalist work.4 This comes up in connection with the work of
Anne Truitt, an artist Greenberg believes anticipated the literalists
(he calls them Minimalists) :
152 I ART AND 0BJECTH00D
Truitt's art did flirt with the look of nonwart, alld her 1963 show was
the first in which I noticed how this look could confer an effect of
presence. That presence as achieved through size waS aesthetically extraneous,
I already knew. That presence as achieved through the look of
non-art was likewise aesthetically extraneous I did not yet know. Truitt's
sculpture had this kind of presence but did not hide behind it.
That sculpture could hide behind it-just as painting did-! found
out only after repeated acquaintance \vith Minimal works of art:
Judd's, Morris's, Andre's, Steiner's, some but not all of Smithson's,
some but not aU of LeWitt's. Minimal art can also hide behind presence
as size: I think of Bladen (though I am not sure whether he is a
certified Minimalist) as well as ofsome of the artistsjust mentioned.''
Presence can be conferred by size or by the look of nonart. Furthermore,
what nonart means today, and has meant for several years, is
fairly specific. In "Mter Abstract Expressionism" Greenberg wrote
that "a stretched or tacked-up canvas already exists as a picturethough
not necessarily as a successful one."6 For that reason, as he
remarks in "Recentness of Sculpture," the "look of non-art was no
longer available to painting." Instead, "the borderline between art
and non-art had to be sought in the three-dimensional, where sculpture
was, and where everything material that was not art also was."7
Greenberg goes on to say:
The look of machinery is shunned now because it does not go far
enoug·h towards the look of non-art, which is presumably an "inert"
look that offers the eye a minimum of"interesting" incident-unlike
the machine look, which is arty by comparison (and when I think of
Tinguely I would agree with this). Still, no matter how simple the object
may be, there remain the relations and interrelations of surface,
contour, and spatial interval. Minimal works are readable as art, as
almost anything is today-including a door, a table, or a blank sheet
ofpaper. . . . Yet it would seem thata kind ofartnearer the condition
of non-art could not be envisaged or ideated at this moment.8
The meaning in this context of "the condition of non-art" is what I
have been calling objecthood. It is as though objecthood alone can,
in the present circumstances, secure something's identity, if not as
nonart, at least as neither painting nor sculpture; or as though a work
of art-more accurately, a work ofmodernist painting or sculpturewere
in some essential respect not an object.
There is, in any case, a sharp contrast between the literalist espousal
of objecthood-almost, it seems, as an art in its own right-
ART AND OBJECTHOOD I 1 53
and modernist painting's self-imposed imperative that it defeat or
suspend its own objecthood through the medium of shape. In fact,
from the perspective of recent modernist painting, the literalist position
evinces a sensibility not simply alien but antithetical to its own:
as though, from that perspective, the demands of art and the conditions
of objecthood were in direct conflict.
Here the question arises: What is it about objecthood as pn�jected
and hypostatized by the literalists that makes it, if only from the perspective
of recent modernist painting, antithetical to art?
3
THE ANSWER I want to propose is this: the literalist
espousal of objecthood amounts to nothing other than a plea for a
new genre of theater, and theater is now the negation of art.
Literalist sensibility is theatrical because, to begin with, it is concerned
with the actual circumstances in which the beholder encounters
literalist work. Morris makes this explicit. Whereas in previous
art "what is to be had from the work is located strictly within [it] ,"
the experience ofliteralist art is of an object in a situation-one that,
virtually by definition, includes the beholder:
The better new work takes relationships out of the work and makes
them a function of space, light, and the viewer's field of vision. The
object is but one of the terms in the newer aesthetic. It is in some way
more reflexive because one's awareness ofoneselfexisting in the same
space as the work is stronger than in previous work, with its many inter�
nal relationships. One is more aware than before that he h,imself is
establishing relationships as he apprehends the object from various
positions and under varying conditions of light and spatial context.
Morris believes that this awareness is heightened by "the strength of
the constant, known shape, the gestalt," against which the appearance
of the piece from different points of view is constantly being
compared. It is intensified also by the large scale of much literalist
work:
The awareness of scale is a function of the comparison made between
that constant, one's body size, and the object. Space between the subject
and the object is implied in such a comparison.
The larger the object, the more we are forced to keep our distance
from it:
1 54 I ART AND OBJECTHOOD
It is this necessary, greater distance of the o�ject in space from our
bodies, in order that it be seen at all, that structures the nonpersonal
or public mode [which Morris advocates]. However, it isjust this distance
between object and subject that creates a more extended situation,
because physical participation becomes necessary.
The theatricality of Morris's notion of the "nonpersonal or public
mode" seems obvious: the largeness of the piece, in conjunction with
its nonrelational, unitary character, distances the beholder-notjust
physically but psychically. It is, one might say, precisely this distancing
that makes the beholder a subject and the piece in question . . . an
object. But it does not follow that the larger the piece, the more securely
its "public" character is established; on the contrary, "beyond
a certain size the object can overwhelm and the gigantic scale becomes
the loaded term." Morris wants to achieve presence through
objecthood, which requires a certain largeness of scale, rather than
through size alone. But he is also aware that the distinction is anything
but hard and fast:
FOr the space of the room itself is a structuring factor both in its cubic
shape and in terms of the kind of compression different sized and
proportioned rooms can effect upon the object-subject terms. That
the space of the room becomes of such importance does not mean
that an environmental situation is being established. The total space
is hopefully altered in certain desired ways by the presence of the object.
It is not controlled in the sense ofbeing ordered by an aggregate
of objects or by some shaping of the space surrounding the viewer.
The object, not the beholder, must remain the center or focus of
the situation, but the situation itself belongs to the beholder-it is his
situation. Or as Morris has remarked, "I wish to emphasize that
things are in a space with oneself, rather than . . . [that] one is in a
space surrounded by things." Again, there is no clear or hard distinction
between the two states of affairs: one is, after all, always surrounded
by things. But the things that are literalist works of art must
somehow confrontthe beholder-they must, one might almost say, be
placed notjust in his space but in his way. None of this, Morris main­
tains,
indicates a lack of interest in the object itself. But the concerns now
are for more control of . . . the entire situation. Control is necessary
ifthevariables ofobject, light, space, body, are to function. The object
has not become less important. It has merely become less self­
important.
Aln AND OBJECTHOOD j 1 55
It is, I think, worth remarking that "the entire situation" means exactly
that: allof it-including, it seems, the beholder's body. There is
nothing within his field of vision-nothing that he takes note of in
any way-that declares its irrelevance to the situation, and therefore
to the experience, in question. On the contrary, for something to
be perceived at all is for it to be perceived as part of that situation.
Everything counts-not as part of the object, but as part of the situation
in which its objecthood is established and on which that objecthood
at least partly depends.
4
FuRTHERMORE, THE presence of literalist art, which
Greenberg was the first to analyze, is basically a theatrical effect or
quality-a kind ofstagepresence. It is a function notjust ofthe obtrusiveness
and, often, even aggressiveness of literalist work, but of the
special complicity that that \Vork extorts from the beholder. Something
is said to have presence when it de111ands that the beholder
take it into account, that he take it seriously-and when the fulfillment
ofthat demand consists simply in being aware of the work and,
so to speak, in acting accordingly. (Certain modes of seriousn_e.ss are
closed to the beholder by the work itself, i.e., those established by
the finest painting and sculpture of the recent past. But, of course,
those are hardly modes of seriousness in which most people feel at
home, or that they even find tolerable.) Here again the experience
of being distanced by the work in question seems crucial: the beholder
knows himself to stand in an indeterminate, open-endedand
unexacting-relation as subject to the impassive object on the
wall or floor. In fact, being distanced by such objects is not, I suggest,
entirely unlike being distanced, or crowded, by the silent presence
of another p!ffson; the experience of coming upon literalist objects
unexpectedly-for example, in somewhat darkened rooms-can be
strongly, if momentarily, disquieting in just this way.
There are three main reasons why this is so. First, the size of much
literalist work, as Morris's remarks imply, compares fairly closely with
that of the human body. In this context Tony Smith's replies to questions
about his six-foot cube, Die (rg62; fig. 63), are highly sug­
gestive:
Q: Why didn't you make it larger so that it would loom over the observer?
·
156 I ART AND OnJECTHooo
A: I was not making a monument.
Q: Then why didn't you make itsmaller so that the observer could see
over the top?
A: I was not making an object.S
One way of describing what Smith was making might be something
like a surrogate person-that is, a kind of statue. (This reading finds
support in the caption to a photograph ofanother of Smith's pieces,
The Black Box (1963-65; fig. 64), published in the December 1967
issue ofArtforum, in which Samuel Wagstaff, Jr., presumably with the
artist's sanction, observed, "One can see the two-by-fours under the
piece, which keep it from appearing like architecture or a monument,
and set it off as sculpture." The two-by-fours are, in eflect, a
rudimentary pedestal, and thereby reinforce the statuelike quality of
the piece.) Second, the entities or beings encountered in everyday
experience in terms that most closely approach the literalist ideals
of the nonrelational, the unitary, and the holistic are otherpersons.
Similarly, the literalist predilection for symmetry, and in general for
a kind of order that "is simply order . . . one thing after another," is
rooted not, asJuddseems to believe, in new philosophical and scientific
principles, whatever he takes these to be, but in r:a;;;p. And
third, the apparent hollowness of most literalist work-the quality
of having an inside-is almost blatantly <Jnthropomorphic. It is, as
numerous commentators have remarked approvingly, as though the
work in question has an inner, even secret, life-an effect that is perhaps
made most explicit in Morris's Untitwd (1965; fig. 5o) a large
ringlike form in two halves, with fluorescent light glowing from
within at the narrow gap between the two. In the same spirit Tony
Smith has said, "''m interested in the inscrutability and mysteriousness
of the thing."10 He has also been quoted as saying:
More and more I've become interested in pneumatic structures. In
these, all of the material is in tension. But it is the character of the
form that appeals to me. The biomorphic forms that result from the
construction have a dreamlike quality for me, at least like what is said
to be a fairly common type ofAmerican dreamY
Smith's interest in pneumatic structures may seem surprising, but
it is consistent both with his own work and with literalist sensibility
generally. Pneumatic structures can be described as hollow with a
vengeance-the fact that they are not "obdurate, solid masses" (Morris)
being insisted on instead of taken for granted. And it reveals
ART AND OBJF.CTHOOD I 157
something, I think, about what hollowness means in literalist art that
the forms that result are "biomorphic."
5
I AM suggesting, then, that a kind oflatent or hidden
naturalism, indeed anthropomorphism, lies at the core of literalist
theory and practice. The concept of presence all but says as much,
though rarely so nakedly as in Tony Smith's statement, "I didn't think
of them [i.e., the sculptures he 'always' made] as sculptures but as
presences of a sort." The latency or hiddenness of the anthropomorphism
has been such that the literalists themselves, as we have seen,
have felt free to characterize the modernist art they oppose, for example,
the sculpture of David Smith and Anthony Caro, as anthropomorphic-a
characterization whose teeth, imaginary to begin with,
have just been pulled. By the same token, however, what is wrong
with literalist work is not that it is anthropomorphic but that the
meaning and, equally, the hiddenness of its anthropomorphism are
incurably theatrical. (Not all literalist art hides or masks its anthropomorphism;
the work of lesser figures like Michael Steiner wears anthropomorphism
on its sleeve.) The crucial distinction thatI amproposing
is between work that isfundamentally theatrical and work that is not. It
is theatricality that, whatever the differences between them, links artists
like Ronald Bladen and Robert Grosvenor," both of whom have
allowed "gigantic scale [to become] the loaded term" (Morris) , with
other, more restrained figures like Judd, Morris, Carl Andre, John
McCracken, Sol LeWitt and-despite the size ofsome ofhis piecesTony
SmithY And it is in the interest, though not explicitly in the
name, of theater that literalist ideology rejects both modernist painting
and, at least in the hands of its most distinguished recent practitioners,
modernist sculpture.
In this connection Tony Smith's description of a car ride taken
at night on the New Jersey Turnpike before it was finished makes
compelling reading;
When I was teaching at Cooper Union in the first year or two of the
fifties, someone told me how I could get onto the unfinished New
JerseyTurnpike. I took three students and drove from somewhere in
the Meadows to New Brunswick. It was a dark night and there were no
lights or shoulder markers, lines, railings, or anything at all except the
dark pavement moving through the landscape of the flats, rimmed by
hills in the distance, but punctuated by stacks, towers, fumes, and col�
1 58 ! ART AND OBJECTHOOD
ored lights. Thisdrivewas a revealingexperience. The road and much
of the landscape was artificial, and yet it couldn't be called a work of
art. On the other hand, it did something- fOr me that art had never
done. At first I didn't know what it was, but its effect was to liberate
me from many of the views I had had about art. It seemed that there
had been a reality there that had not had any expression in art.
The experience on the road was something mapped out but not
socially recognized. I thought to myself, it oughtto be clear that's the
end of art. Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. There is no
way you can frame it, youjusthave to experience it. Later I discovered
some abandoned airstrips in Europe-abandoned works, Surrealist
landscapes, something that had nothing to do -with any function, created
worlds without tradition. Artificial landscape witJ!Q�t �ll�tu�al
pr:ecede!l_t beganJ_o___�_awn ?�:_!!!e. There is a drill ground in Nllfe
.
m-
berg
large
enough to acc
-Offimodate two million men. The entire field
is enclosed with high embankments and towers. The concrete approach
is three sixteen-inch steps, one above the other, stretching fOr
a mile or so.
What seems to have been revealed to Smith tbat night was the pictorial
nature of painting-even, one might say, the conventional nature
of art. And that Smith seems to have understood not as laying
bare the essence of art, but as announcing its end. In comparison
with the unmarked, unlit, all but unstructured turnpike-more precisely,
with the turnpike as experienced from within the car, traveling
on it-art appears to have struck Smith as almost absurdly small ("All
art today is an art of postage stamps," he has said), circumscribed,
conventional. There was, he seems to have felt, no way to "frame" his
experience on the road, no way to make sense of it in terms of art,
to make art of it, at least as art then was. Rather, "you just have to
experience it"-as it happens, as it merely is. (The experience alone
is what matters.) There is no suggestion that this is problematic in
any way. The expedence is clearly regarded by Smith as wholly accessible
to everyone, not just in principle but in fact, and the question
of whether or not one has really had it does not arise. That this appeals
to Smith can be seen from his praise of Le Corbusier as "more
available" than Michelangelo: 'The direct and primitive experience
of the High Court Building at Chandigarh is like the Pueblos of the
Southwest under a fantastic overhanging cliff. It's something everyone
can understand." It is, I think, hardly necessary to add that the
availability ofmodernist art is not of that kind, and that the rightness
or relevance of one's conviction about specific modernist works, a
ART AND OBJE.CTHOOD I 1 59
conviction that begins and ends in one's experience of the work itself,
is always open to question.
But what was Smith's experience on the turnpike? Or to put the
same question another way, if the turnpike, airstrips, and drill
ground are not works of art, what are they?-What, indeed, if not
empty, or "abandoned," situations?And what was Smith's experience
if not the experience of what I have been calling theater? It is as
though the turnpike, airstrips, and drill ground reveal the theatrical
character of literalist art, only without the object, that is, without the
art itself-as though the object is needed only within a room!' (or,
perhaps, in any circumstances less extreme than these). In each of
the above cases the object is, so to speak, replaced hy something: for
example, on the turnpike by the constant onrush of the road, the
simultaneous recession of new reaches of dark pavement illumined
by the onrushing headlights, the sense ofthe turnpike itselfas something
enormous, abandoned, derelict, existing for Smith alone and
for those in the car with him. . . . This last point is important. On the
one hand, the turnpike, airstrips, and drill ground belong to no one;
on the other, the situation established by Smith's presence is in each
case felt by him to be his. Moreover, in each case being able to go on
and on indefinitely is ofthe essence. What replaces the object-what
does the same job ofdistancing or isolating the beholder, of making
him a subject, that the object did in the closed room-is above all
the endlessness, or objectlessness, of the approach or onrush or perspective.
It is the explicitness, that is to say, the sheer persistence with
which the experience presents itself as directed at him from outside
(on the turnpike from outside the car) that simultaneouslfmakes
him a subject-makes him subject-and establishes the experience
itself as something like that of an object, or rather, of objecthood.
Nowonder Morris's speculations about how to put literalist work outdoors
remain strangely inconclusive:
Why not put the work outdoors and further change the terms? A real
need exists to allow this next step to become practical. Architecturally
designed sculpture courts are not the answer nor is the placement of
work outside cubic architectural forms. Ideally, it is a space, without
architecture as background and reference, that would give different
terms to work with.
Unless the pieces are set down in a wholly natural context, and Morris
does not seem to be advocating this, some sort ofartificial but not
quite architectural setting must be constructed. What Smith's re-
1 60 I ART AND OBJECTHOOD
marks seem to suggest is that the more effective-meaning effective
as theater-a setting is made, the more superfluous the works themselves
become.
6
SMITH's ACCOUNT of his experience on the turnpike
bears wimess to theater's profound hostility to the arts and discloses,
precisely in the absence of the object and in what takes its place, what
might be called the the>Jtricality of objecthood. By the same token,
however, the imperative that modernist painting defeat or suspend
its objecthood is at bottom the imperative that it defeat M suspend theater.
And that means that there is a war going on between theater and
modernist painting, between the theatrical and the picJ:()rial-a war
that, despite the literalists' explicit rejection of modernist painting
and sculpture, is not basically a matter of program and ideology but
of experience, conviction, sensibility. (For example, it was a particu- .
lar experience that engendered Smith's conviction that paintingthat
the arts as such-were.finished.)
The starkness and apparent irreconcilability of this conflict are
something new. I remarked earlier that objecthood has become an
issue for modernist painting only within the past several years. This,
however, is not to say that before the present situation came into
being, paintings, or sculptures for that matter, simply were objects. It
would, I think, be closer to the truth to say that they simplywere not.'5
The risk, even the possibility, of seeing works of art as nothing more
than objects did not exist. That such a possibility beg-an to present
itself around rg6o was largely the result of developments within
modernist painting. Roughly, the more nearly assimilable to objects
certain advanced painting had come to seem, the more the entire
history of painting since Manet··could be understood-delusively, I
believe-as consisting in the progressive (though ultimately inadequate)
revelation of its essential objecthood," and the more urgent
became the need for modernist painting to make explicit its conventional-specifically,
its pictorial-essence by defeating or suspending
its own objecthood through the meqium of shape. The view ofmodernist
painting as tending toward objecthood is implicit in Judd's remark,
"The new [i.e., literalist] work obviously resembles sculpture
more than it does painting, but is nearer to painting"; and it is in
this view that literalist sensibility in general is grounded. Literalist
sensibility is, therefore, a response to the same developments that
ART AND Ol3JECTH00D I 161
have largely compelled modernist painting to undo its objecthoodmore
precisely, the same developments seen differently, that is, in theatrical
terms, by a sensibility already theatrical, already (to say the
worst) corrupted or perverted by theater. Similarly, what has compelled
modernist painting to defeat or suspend its own objecthood
is notjust developments internal to itself, but the same general, enveloping,
infectious theatricality that corrupted literalist sensibility in
the first place and in the grip of which the developments in question-and
modernist painting in general-are seen as nothing more
than an rmcompelling and presenceless kind of theater. It was the
need to break the fingers of that grip that made objecthood an issue
for modernist painting.
Objecthood has also hecome an issue for modernist sculpture.
This is true despite the fact that sculpture, being three-dimensional,
resembles both ordinary objects and literalist work in a way that
painting does not. Almost ten years ago Clement Greenberg summed
up what he saw as the emergence of a new sculptural "style," whose
master is undoubtedlyDavid Smith, in the following terms:
To render substance entirely optical, and form, whether pictorial,
sculptural, or architectural, as an integral part ofambient space-this
brings anti-illusionism full circle. Instead of the illusion of things, we
are now offered the illusion ofmodalities: namely, that matter is incorporeal,
weightless, and exists only optically like a mirage.17
Since rg6o this development has been carried to a succession of climaxes
hy the English sculptor Anthony Caro, whose work is far more
specifically resistant to being seen in terms of objecthood than that
of David Smith. (See figs. 32-55, pis. 13, 14.) A characteristic sculpture
by Caro consists, I want to say, in the mutual and nakedjuxtaposition
of the I-beams, girders, cylinders, lengths of piping, sheet metal,
and grill that it comprises rather than in the compound object that
they compose. The mutual inflection of one element by another,
rather than the identity of each, is what is crucial-though ofcourse
altering the identity of any element would be at least as drastic as
altering its placement. (The identity of each element matters in
somewhat the same way as the fact that it is an arm, or this arm, that
makes a particular gesture, or as the fact that it is this word or this
note and not another that occurs in a particular place in a sentence
or melody.) The individual elements bestow significance on one another
precisely by virtue of their juxtaposition: it is in this sense,
a sense inextricably involved with the concept of meaning, that
162 l ART AND OBJECTHOOD
everything in Caro's art that is worth looking at is in its syntax.
Caro's concentration upon syntax amounts, in Greenberg's view, to
"an emphasis on abstractness, on radical unlikeness to nature." And
Greenberg goes on to remark, "No other sculptor has gone as far
from the structural logic of ordinary ponderable things."18 It is worth
emphasizing, however, that this is a function of more than the lowness,
openness, part-by-partness, absence of enclosing profiles and
centers of interest, unperspicuousness, and so on, of Caro's sculptures.
Rather, they defeat, or allay, objecthood by imitating, not gestures
exactly, but the efficacy ofgesture; like certain music and poetry,
they are possessed by the knowledge of the human body and how, in
innumerable ways and moods, it makes meaning. It is as though
Caro's sculptures essentialize meaningfulness as such-as though the
possibility of meaning what we say and do alone makes his sculpture
possible. All this, it is hardly necessary to add, makes Caro's art a
fountainhe'ad of antiliteralist and antitheatrical sensibility.
There is another, more general respect in which objecthood has
become an issue for the most ambitious recent modernist sculpture,
and that is in regard to color. This is a large and difficult subject,
which I cannot hope to do more than touch on here. Briefly, however,
color has become problematic for modernist sculpture, not because
one senses that it has been applied, but because the color of a
given sculpture, whether applied or in the natural state of the material,
is identical with its surface; and inasmuch as all objects have surface,
awareness of the sculpture's surface implies its objecthoodthereby
threatening to qualify or mitigate the undermining of objecthood
achieved by opticality and, in Caro's pieces, by their syntax
as well. It is in this connection, I believe, that a recent sculpture by
Jules Olitski, Bunga 45 (1 967; fig. 2 1) , ought to be seen. Bunga 45
consists ofbetween fifteen and twenty metal tubes, ten feet long and
of various diameters, placed upright, riveted together, and then
sprayed with paint of different colors; the dominant hue is yellow to
yellow orange, but the top and "rear" of the piece are suffused with
a deep rose, and close looking reveals flecks and even thin trickles
of green and red as well. A rather wide red band has been painted
around the top ofthe piece, while a much thinner band in two differentblues
(one at the "front" and another at the "rear") circumscribes
the very bottom. Obviously, Bunga 45 relates intimately to Olitski's
spray paintings, especially those of the past year or so, in which he
has worked with paint and brush at or near the limits ofthe support.
At the same time, it amounts to something far more than an attempt
I
ART AND OBJII.CTHOOD I 163
simply to make or "translate" his paintings into sculptures, namely,
an attempt to establish surface-the surface, so to speak, of j;ainting-as
a medium of sculpture. The use of tubes, each of which one
sees, incredibly, asflat-that is, flat but rolled-makes Bunga 4fs surface
more like that ofa painting than like that ofan object: like painting,
and unlike both ordinary objects and other sculpture, Bunga 45
is allsurface. And of course what declares or establishes that surface
is color, Olitski's sprayed color.
7
AT THIS point I want to make a claim that I cannot
hope to prove or substantiate but that I believe nevertheless to be
true: theater and theatricality are at war today, not simplywith modernist
painting (or modernist painting and sculpture) , but with art
as such-and to the extent that the different arts can be described
as modernist, with modernist sen�ibility as such. This claim can be
broken down into three propositions or theses:
1. The success, even the survival, ofthe arts has come increasingly to depend
on their ability to defeat theater: This is perhaps nowhere more evident
than within theater itself, where the need to defeat what I have
been calling theater has chiefly made itself felt as the need to establish
a drastically different relation to its audience. (The relevant texts
are, of course, Brecht and Artaud.) 19 For theater has an audienceit
exists for one-in a way the other arts do not; in fact, this more
than anything else is what modernist sensibility finds intolerable in
theater generally. Here it should be remarked that literalist art too
pbss
.esses an audience, though a somewhat special one: that the beholder
is confronted by literalist work within a situation that he experiences
as his means that there is an important sense in which the
work in question exists for him alone, even if he is not actually alone
with the work at the time. It may seem paradoxical to claim both that
literalist sensibility aspires to an ideal of "something everyone can
understand" (Smith) and that literalist art addresses itself to the beholder
alone, but the paradox is only apparent. Someone has merely
to enter the room in which a literalist work has been placed to become
that beholder, that audience of one-almost as though the
work in question has been waiting for him. And inasmuch as literalist
work depends on the beholder, is in,<:o.mplete without him, it has
been waiting for him. And once he is in the room the work refuses,
obstinately, to let him alone-which is to say, it refuses to stop con-
164 \ ART AND OBjECTHOOD
fronting l}im, distancing him, isolating him. (Such isolation is not
solitude any more than such confrontation is communion.)
It is the overcoming of theater that modernist sensibility finds
most exalting and that it experiences as the hallmark of high art in
our time. There is, however, one art that, by its very nature, escapes
theater entirely-the movies.20 This helps explain why movies in general,
including frankly appalling ones, are acceptable to modernist
sensibility whereas all but the most successful painting, sculpture,
music, and poetry is not. Because cinema escapes theater-automatically,
as it were-it provides a welcome and absorbing refuge to sensibilities
at war with theater and theatricality. At the same time, the
automatic, guaranteed character ofthe refuge-more accurately, the
fact that what is provided is a refuge from theater and not a triumph
over it, absorption not conviction-means that the cinema, even at
its n1ost experimental, is not a modernist art.
2. Art degenerates as it approaches the condition of theater. Theater is
the common demoninator that binds together a large and seemingly
disparate variety of activities, and that distinguishes those activities
from the radically different enterprises of the modernist arts. Here
as elsewhere the question ofvalue or level is central. For example, a
failure to register the enormous difference in quality between, say,
the music of Elliott Carter and that of John Cage or between the
paintings ofLouis and those ofRobert Rauschenberg means that the
real distinctions-between music and theater in the first instance
and between painting and theater in the second-are displaced by
the illusion that the barriers between the arts are in the process of
crumbling (Cage and Rauschenberg being seen, correctly, as similar)
and that the arts themselves are at last sliding towards some kind of
final, implosive, highly desirable synthesis. Whereas in fact the individual
arts have never been more explicitly concerned with the conventions
that constitute their respective essences.
3· The concepts ofquality andvalue-and to the extent that these are
central to art, the concept of art itself-are meaningful, or wholly
meaningful, only within the individual arts. What lies between the arts
is theater. It is, I think, significant that in their various statements the
literalists have largely avoided the issue ofvalue or quality at the same
time as they have shown considerable uncertainty as to whether or
not what they are making is art. To describe their enterprise as an
attempt to establish a new art does not remove the uncertainty; at
most it points to its source. Judd himself has as much as acknowledged
the problematic character of the literalist enterprise by his
ART AND OBJECTHOOD I 1 65
claim, "Awork needs only to be interesting." ForJudd, as for literalist
sensibilitygenerally, all that matters is whether or not a given work is
able to elicit and sustain (his) interest. Whereas within the modernist
arts nothing short of conviction-specifically, the conviction that a
particular painting or sculpture or poem or piece of music can or
cannot support comparison with past work within that art whose
quality is not in doubt-matters at all. (Literalist work is often condemned-when
it is condemned-for being boring. A tougher
charge would be that it is merely interesting.)
The interest of a given work resides, in Judd's view, both in its
character as a whole and in the sheer specificity of the materials of
which it is made:
Most of the work involves new materials, either recent inventions or
things not used before in art. . . . Materials vary greatly and are simply
materials-formica, aluminum, cold-rolled steel, plexiglass, red and
common brass, and so fOrth. They are specific. Ifthey are used directly,
they are more specific. Also, they are usually aggressive. There is an
objectivity to the obdurate identity of a material.
Like the shape of the object, the materials do not represent, signify,
or allude to anything; they are what they are and nothing more. And
what they are is not, strictly speaking, something that is grasped
or intuited or recognized or even seen once and for alL Rather, the
"obdurate identity" of a specific material, like the wholeness of the
shape, is simply stated or given or established at the very outset, if
not before the outset; accordingly, the experience of both is one of
endlessness, or inexhaustibility, ofbeing able to go on and on letting,
for example, the material itself confront one in all its literalness, its
"objectivity," its absence of anything beyond itself. In a similar vein
Morris has written:
Characteristic of a gestalt is that once it is established all the information
about it, qua gestalt, is exhausted. (One does not, for example,
seek the gestalt ofa gestalt.) . . . One is thenboth free ofthe shape and
bound to it. Free or released because ofthe exhaustion ofinformation
about it, as shape, and bound to it because it remains constant and in­
divisible.
The same note is struck by Tony Smith in a statement the first sentence
of which I quoted earlier:
I'm interested in the inscrutability and mysteriousness of the thing.
Something obvious on the fact of it (like a washing machine or a
166 I ART AND OBJECTHOOD
pump) is of no further interest. A Bennington earthenware jar, for
instance, has subtlety of color, largeness of form, a general suggestion
of substance, generosity, is calm and reassuring-qualities that take it
beyond pure utility. It continues to nourish us time and time again.
We can't see it in a second, we continue to read it. There is something
absurd in the fact that you can go back to a cube in the same way.
Like Judd's Specific Objects and Morris's gestalts or unitary forms,
Smith's cube is always of further interest; one never feels that one
has come to the end ofit; it is inexhaustible. It is inexhaustible, however,
not because of any fullness-that is the inexhaustibility of artbut
because there is nothing there to exhaust. It is endless the way a
road might be, if it were circular, for example.
Endlessness, being able to go on and on, even havirrg to go on and
on, is central both to the concept of interest and to that of objecthood.
In fact, it seems to be the experience that most deeply excites
literalist sensibility, and that literalist artists seek to objectify in
their work-for example, by the repetition ofidentical units (judd's
"one thing after another") , which carries the implication that the
units in question could be multiplied ad infinitum.21 Smith's account
of his experience on the unfinished turnpike records that excitement
all but explicitly. Similarly, Morris's claim that in the best new
work the beholder is made aware that "he himself is establishing relationships
as he apprehends the object from various positions and
under varying conditions of light and spatial context" amounts to
the claim that the beholder is made aware of the endlessness and
inexhaustibility if not of the ol:(ject itself at any rate of his experience
of it. This awareness is further exacerbated by what might be called
the inclusiveness ofhis situation, that is, by the fact, remarked earlier,
that everything he observes counts as part ofthatsituation and hence
is felt to bear in some way that remains undefined on his experience
of the object.
Here finally I want to emphasize something that may already have
become clear: the experience in question persists in time, and the presentment
of endlessness that, I have been claiming, is central to literalist
art and theory is essentially a presentment of endless or indefinite
duration. Once again Smith's account of his night drive is
relevant, as well as his remark, "We can't see it [thejar and, by implication,
the cube] in a second, we continue to read it." Morris too
has stated explicitly, 'The experience of the work necessarily exists
in time"-though it would make no difference if he had not. The
literalist preoccupation with time-more precisely, with the duration
ART AND OBJECTHOOD I 167
ofthe o:piffience-is, I suggest, paradigmatically theatrical, as though
theater confronts the beholder, and thereby isolates him, with the
endlessness notjust ofobjecthood but of tirne; or as though the sense
which, at bottom, theater addresses is a sense of temporality, of time
both passing and to come, s{rnultaneously approaching and receding, as
if apprehended in an infinite perspective. . . .22 That preoccupation
marks a profound difference between literalist work and modernist
painting and sculpture. It is as though one's experience of the latter
has no duration-not because one in fact experiences a picture
by Noland or Olitski or a sculpture by David Smith or Caro in no
time at all, but because at every moment the work itselfis wholly manifest.
(This is true of sculpture despite the obvious fact that, being threedimensional,
it can be seen from an infinite number of points of
view. One's experience ofa Caro is not incomplete, and one's conviction
as to its quality is not suspended, simply because one has seen it
only from where one is standing. Moreover, in the grip of his best
work one's view of the sculpture is, so to speak, eclipsed by the sculpture
itself-which it is plainly meaningless to speak of as only partly
present.) It is this continuous and entire presen!ness, amounting, as it
were, to the perpetual creation of itself, that one experiences as a
kind of instantan¢ousness, as though if only one were infinitely more
acute, a single infinitely brief instant would be long enough to see
everything, to experience the work in all its depth and fullness, to be
forever convinced by it. (Here it is worth noting that the concept
of interest implies temporality in the form of continuing attention
directed at the object whereas the concept of conviction does not.)
I want to claim that it is by virtue of their presentness and instantaneousness
that modernist painting and sculpture defeat theater. In
fact, I am tempted far beyond my knowledge to suggest that, faced
with the need to defeat theater, it is above all to the condition of
painting and sculpture-the condition, that is, of existing in, indeed
of evoking or constituting, a continuous and perpetual present-that
the other contemporary modernist arts, mo�t notably poetry and music,
aspire.23
THIS ESSAY will be read as an attack on certain artists
(and critics) and as a defense of others. And of course it is true that
the desire to distinguish between what is to me the authentic art of
our time and other work which, whatever the dedication, passion,
and intelligence of its creators, seems to me to share certain charac-
168 I ART AND OBJECTHOOD
teristics associated here with the concepts of1iteralism and theater
has largely motivated what I have written. In these last sentences,
however, I want to call attention to the utter pervasiveness-the virtual
universality-of the sensibility or mode ofbeing that I have characterized
as corrupted or perverted by theater. We are all literalists
most or all of our lives. Presentness is grace.
NOTES
1 . Perry Miller,jonathan Edwards (1949; rpt., New York, 1959), pp. 329-30.
2. This was said byJudd in an interview with Bruce Glaser, edited by Lucy R.
Lippard and published as "Questions to Stella and Judd" in Art News in 1966
and reprinted in MinimalArt, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York, 1g68) , pp. 1 48-
64- The remarks attributed in the present essay to Judd and Morris have been
taken from that interview; from DonaldJudd's essay "Specific Objects," Arts Yemo.
book, no. 8 (rg65), pp. 74-82; and from Robert Morris's essays, "Notes on Sculpture"
and "Notes on Sculpture, Part 2," published in Ariforum in Feb. and Oct.
1966, respectively, and reprinted in Batt<,:ock, ed., MinimalArt, pp. 222-35. I
have also taken one remark by Morris from the catalog to the exhibition Eight
Sculptars: The AmbiguousImageat the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Oct.-Dec.
1g66. I should add that in laying out what seems to me the position judd and
Morris hold in common I have ignored various differences between them and
have used certain remarks in contexts for which they may not have been intended.
Moreover, I haven't always indicated which of them actually said or
wrote a particular phrase; the alternative would have been to litter the text
with footnotes.
3· See Michael Fried, "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons";
idem, 'jules Olitski"; and idem, "Ronald Davis: Surface and Illusion." (All these
essays are reprinted in this volume.)
4· Clement Greenberg, "Recentness of Sculpture," in the catalog to the Los
Angeles County Museum ofArt's 1967 exhibition American Sculpture ofthe Sixties
(see Greenberg, Modernism with a Vengeance I957-I969, vol. 4 of The Collected
Essays and Criticism, ed.John O'Brian [Chicago, 1993], pp. 250-56). The verb
"project" as I havejust used it is taken from Greenberg's statement, ''The ostensible
aim of the Minimalists is to 'project' objects and ensembles of objects that
are just nudgeable into aft" (Modernism with a Vengeance, p. 253).
5· Greenberg, Modernism with a Vtmgeance, pp. 255-56.
6. Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," Art International 6 (Oct. 25,
1962): go. The passage from which this has been taken reads as follows:
Under the testing of modernism more and more of the conventions of
the art ofpainting have shown themselves to be dispensable, unessential.
By now it has been established, itwould seem, that the irreducible essence
ofpictorial art consists in but two constitutive conventions or norms: flatness
and the delimitation of flatness; and that the observance of merely
these two norms is enough to create an object which can be experienced
ART AND OBJECTHOOD I l6g
as a picture: thus a stretched or t.:lcked�up canvas already exists as a picture-though
not necessarily as a succes�ful one,
In its broad outline this is undoubtedly correct. There are, however, certain qualifications
that can be made,
To begin \vith, it is not quite enough to say that a bare canvas tacked to a wall
is not "necessarily" a successful picture; it would, I think, be more accurate [what
I originally wrote was "less of an exaggeration"-M,E, 1996] to say that it is not
conceivably one, It may be countered thatfuture circumstances might be such as
to makeit a successful painting, but I would argue that, for that to happen, the
enterprise of painting would have to change so drastically that nothing more
than the name would remain. (It would require a far greater change than that
which painting has undergone from Manet to Noland, Olitski, and Stella!) Moreover,
seeing something as a painting in the sense that one sees the tacked-up
canvas as a painting, and being convinced that a particular work can stand comparison
with the painting ofthe pastwhose quality is not in doubt, are altogether
different experiences: it is, I want to say, as though unless something compels
conviction as to its quality it is no more than trivially or nominally a painting.
This suggests that flatness and the delimitation of flatness ought not to be
thought of as the "irreducible essence of pictorial art," but rather as something
like the minimal conditionsfcrrsomething's beingseen as apainting; and that the crucial
question is not what those minimal and, so to speak, timeless conditions
are, but ratherwhat, at a given moment, is capable of compelling conviction, of
succeeding as painting. This is not to say that painting has no essence; it is to
claim that that essence-i.e., that which compels conviction-is largely determined
by, and therefore changes continually in response to, the vital work ofthe
recent past The essence of painting is not something irreducible. Rather, the
task of the modernist painter is to discover those conventions that, at a given
moment, alone are capable of establishing his work's identity as painting.
Greenberg approaches this position when he adds, "As it seems to me, Newman,
Rothko, and Still have Swung the self-criticism of modernist painting in a
new direction simply by continuing it in its old one. The question now asked
through their art is no longer whatconstitutesart, or the art ofpainting, as such,
but what irreducibly constitutes good art as such. Or rather, what is the ultimate
source ofvalue or quality in art?" But I would argue that what modernism has
meant is that the two questions-VVhat constitutes the art ofpainting? And what
constitutes good painting?-are no longer separable; the first disappears, or increasingly
tends to disappear, into the second. (I am, &f course, taking issue here
with the version of modernism put forward in the introduction to ThreeAmerican
Painters [reprinted in this book].)
For more on the nature of essence and convention in the modernist arts see
my essays on Stella and Olitski cited in n. 3 above, as well as Stanley Cavell,
"Music Discomposed," and "Rejoinders" to critics of that essay, to be published
as part ofa symposium by the University ofPittsburgh Press in a volume entitled
Art, MindandReligion. [For those essays see Cavell, "Music Discomposed" and "A
Matter of Meaning It," in Must We Mean VVhat WeSay?A Book ofE5sa)'S (New York,
1g6g) , pp. 180-237·-M. F., 1996]
170 I ART AND OBJI<:CTHOOD
7· Greenberg, Modernism with a Vengeance, p. 252.
8. Ibid., pp. 253-54.
g. Quoted by Morris as the epigraph to his "Notes on Sculpture, Part 2."
1o. Except for the question-and-answer exchange quoted by Morris, all statements
by Tony Smith have been taken from Samuel Wagstaff, Jr., "Talking to
Tony Smith," Ariforum 5 (Dec. 1966): 14-19, and reprinted (with certain omissions)
in Battcock, ed., MinimalA1·t, pp. 381-86.
1 L This appears in the Wagstaffinterview in Ariforum (p. 1 7) but not in the
republication ofthat interview in lvlinima1Art.-M.F., 1966
1 2. In the catalog to last spring's Primary Structures exhibition at the Jewish
Museum, Bladen wrote, "How do you make the inside the outside?" and Grosvenor,
"I don't want my work to be thought ofas 'large sculpture,' they are ideas
that operate in the space between floor and ceiling." The relevance of these
statements to what I have adduced as evidence for the theatricality of literalist
theory and practice seems obvious (catalog for the exhibition Primary Structures:
Younger American and B1iti5h Sculptors, shown at the Jewish Museum, New York,
Apr. 27-June 1 2, 1966, no page numbers) .
13. It is tjleatricality, too, that links all these artists to other figures as disparate
as Kaprow, Cornell, Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, Flavin, Smithson, Kienholz,
Segal, Samaras, Christo, Kusama . . . the list could go on indefinitely.
14- The concept ofa room is, mostly clandestinely, important to literalist art
and theory. In fact, it can often be substituted for the word "space" in the latter:
something is said to be in my space ifit is in the same room \vith me (and if it is
placed so that I can hardly fail to notice it).
15. In a discussion ofthis claim with Stanley Cavell it emerged that he once
remarked in a seminar that fOr Kant in the Critique ofjudgment a work of art is
not an object.-M. F, 1966
16. One way of describing this view might be to say that it draws something
like a false inference from the fact that the increasingly explicit acknowledgement
ofthe literal character of the support has been central to the development
of modernist painting: namely, that literalness as such is an artistic value of supreme
importance. In "Shape as Form" I argued that this inference is blind to
certain vital considerations, and that literalness-more precisely, the literalness
ofthe support-is a value only within modernistpainting, and then only because
it has been made one by the history of that enterprise.
17. Clement Greenberg, ''The New Sculpture," in Art and Culture: CriticalEssays
(Boston, 1961), p. 144-
18. The statement that "everything in Caro's art that is work looking atexcept
the color-is in its syntax" appears in my introduction to Caro's 1963
exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (reprinted in this book as "Anthony
Caro") . It is quoted with approval by Greenberg, who then goes on to make the
statements quoted above, in "Anthony Caro," Arts Yearbook, no. 8 ( 1965), reprinted
as "Contemporary Sculpture: Anthony Caro," in Modernism with a Vengeance,
pp. ::ws-o8.) Caro's first step in that direction, the elimination of the
pedestal, seems in retrospect to have been motivated not by the desire to present
his work without artificial aids so much as by the need to undermine its ob-
ART :\ND 0BjECTH001) 1 1 7 1
jecthood. His work has revealed the extent to which merely putting something
on a pedestal confirms it in its objecthood, though merely removing the pedestal
does not in itself undermine objecthood, as literalist work demonstrates.
19. The need to achieve a new relation to the spectator, which Brecht felt
and which he discussed time and again in his writings on theater, was not simply
the result of his Marxism. On the contrary, his discovery of Marx seems to have
been in part the discovery of what that relation might be like, what it might
mean: "VVhen I read Marx's Capital I understood my plays. Naturally I want to
see this book widely circulated. It wasn't of course that I found I had unconsciously
written a whole pile of Marxist plays; but this man Marx was the only
spectator for my plays I'd ever come across" (Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on ?heater, eel.
and trans.John Willett [New York, 1964], pp. 23-24) .
20. Exactly how the movies escape theater is a difficult question, and there
is no doubt but that a phenomenology of the cinema that concentrated on the
similarities and differences between it and stage drama-e.g., that in the movies
the actors are not physically present, the film itself is projected away from us,
and the screen is not experienced as a kind of object existing in a specific physical
relation to us-would be rewarding.
21. That is, the actual number of such units in a given piece is felt to be
arbitrary, and the piece itself-despite the literalist preoccupation with holistic
forms-is seen as a fragment of, or cut into, something infintely larger. This is
one of the most important differences between literalist work and modernist
painting, which has made itself responsiblefOr its physical limits as never before.
Noland's and Olitski's paintings are two obvious, and different, cases in point. It
is in this connection, too, that the importance of the painted bands around the
bottonl and the top of Olitski's sculpture Bunga becomes clear.
_22. ·}The connection between spatial recession and some such experience of
ter�j)�Q)·ality-almost as if the first were a kind of natural metaphor for the second-is
present in much Surrealist painting (e.g., De Chirico, Dali, Tanguy, Magritte).
Moreoever, temporality-manifested, for example, as expectation,
dread, anxiety, presentiment, memory, nostalgia, stasis-is often the explicit subject
of their paintings. There is, in fact, a deep affinity bet\veen literalist and
Surrealis_t s_ensibility (at any rate, as the latter makes itself felt in the Work of the
above painters) that ought to be noted. Both employ imagery that is at once
holistic and, in a sense, fragmentary, incomplete; both resort to a similar anthropomorphizing
of objects or conglomerations of objects (in Surrealism the use
of dolls and manikins,,makes that explicit); both are capable of achieving remark�
able effects of "pres�Pce"; and both tend to deploy and isolate objects and persons
in "situations"-the dosed room and the abandoned artificial landscape
are as important to Surrealism as to literalism. (Tony Smith, it will be recalled,
described the airstrips, etc., as "Surrealist landscapes.") This affinity can be
summed up by saying that Surrealist sensibility, as manifested in the work of
certain artists, and literalist sensibility are both theatrical. I do not 'Wish, however,
to be understood as saying that because they are theatrical, all Surrealist works
that share the above characteristics fail as art; a conspicuous example of major
work that can be described as theatrical is Giacometti's Surrealist sculpture. On
172 I ART AND OBJECTHOOD
the other hand, it is perhaps not without significance that Smith's supreme example
of a Surrealist landscape was the parade ground at Nuremberg.
23. What this means in each art will naturally be different. For example, music's
situation is especially difficult in that music shares \vith theate� the convention,
if I may call it that, of duration-a convention that, I am suggesting, has
itself become increasingly theatricaL Besides, the physical circumstances of a
concert closely resemble those of a theatrical performance. It may have been
the desire for something like presentness that, at least to some extent, led Brecht
to advocate a nonillusionistic theater, in which for example the stage lighting
would be visible to the audience, in which the actorswould not identifywith the
characters they play but ratherwould show them forth, and in which temporality
itselfwould be presented in a new way:
Just as the actor no longer has to persuade the audience that it is the
author's character and not himselfthat is standing on the stage, so also he
need not pretend that the events taking place on the stage have never
been rehearsed, and are now happening for the first and only time. Schiller's
distinction is no longervalid: that the rhapsodist has to treat his material
as wholly in the past: the mime his, as wholy here and now. It should
be apparent all through his performance that "even at the start and in
the middle he knows how it ends" and he must "thus maintain a calm
independence throughout." He narrates the story ofhis character by vivid
portrayal, always knowing more than it does and treating "now" and "here"
not as a pretence made possible by the rules ofthe game but as something
to be distinguished from yesterday and some other place, so as to make
visible the knotting together of the events. (Brecht on Theater, p. 194)
Butjust as the exposed lighting Brecht advocates has become merely another
kind of theatrical convention (one, moreoever, that often plays an important
role in the presentation of literalist work, as the installation view ofJudd's sixcube
piece in the Dwan Gallery shows), it is not clear whether the handling of
time Brecht calls for is tantamount to authentic presentness, or merely to another
kind of "presence"-to the presentment of time itself as though it were
some sort of literalist object. In poetry the need for presentness manifests itself
in the lyric poem; this is a subject that requires its own treatment.
For discussions of theater relevant to this essay see Stanley Cavell's essays
"Ending the Waiting Game" (on Beckett's End�Garne) and 'The Avoidance of
Love: A Reading of King Lear," in Must We i\1ean 'What We Say? pp. 1 1 5-62 and
267-353·
New Work by Anthony Caro
ANTHONY CARo's recent show at the Andre Emmerich
Gallery concentrated on four sculptures (two more were in the
back room) , each of which was superb and no two of which were
alike.
Hrmzon ( 1 g66; fig. 38) exploits contrasts of scale, chiefly among
the four vertical cylinders, more explicitly than any other piece by
Caro that I know. The aptness of the hollow cylinder for this kind of
exploration is striking, and constitutes one of the numerous incidental
discoveries ofwhich his oeuvre, like Kenneth Noland's, is full.
There is also a contrast betwe!'n the cylinders and the unusually cursive
(for Caro) linear elements that connect them-a contrast that
makes for an extraordinarily intense experience as of abstract detail.
(See for example the near di�junction between the two linear elementsjust
to the left of the middle cylinders.) The hollowness ofthe
cylinders is important as well: one sees their rims as circles-that is,
as linear, cursive-not as discs.
In Red Splash ( 1 966; fig. 39) four vertical cylinders support two
rectangular pieces ofrather coarse steel mesh which cross diagonally.
On top of their crossing a flat steel rectangle lies parallel to the front
and back of the sculpture. Everything about Red Splash is elusive, refractory,
arbitrary; nothing is perspicuous, nothing makes obvious
sense, structural or otherwise. The pieces of mesh do not rest on the
tops of the cylinders but barely touch them several inches down; the
planes of the mesh are not parallel to each other, to the ground, or
to anything else; the view we are offered is from underneath, and
Originally published in Artjarurn 5 Feb. 1967): 46-47.
173
1 74 I NEW WORK BY ANTHONY CARO
perhaps for that reason seems to be from the rear as well; the steel
rectangle seems simply, even baldly, put where it is; and so on. Caro's
growing willingness to explore arbitrariness has its roots, I believe, in
his experience of the work of David Smitb. But whereas arbitrariness
in Smith's work always makes itself felt as something personal, as expressing
an aspect of his nature, one senses that to Caro it is a basically
alien if not actually repugnant resource which, nevertheless, he
is determined to explore. This perhaps explains the depth or radicalness
of arbitrariness in RedSplash: the sculpture does not refuse to
answer certain demands of sense and perspicuousness so much as
establish a situation in which the demands themselves are rendered
nugatory.
In Carriage ( 1966; fig. 40) the use ofmesh enables Caro simultaneously
to delimit-almost to enclose or box in-a tract of space and
to assert its continuity with the rest of the sculpture's immediate environment.
How one ought to describe the mesh itself is a nice problem:
for example, although there is an obvious sense in which one
can see through it, there is another, perhaps less obvious (or obviously
important) sense in which one cannot. It is not transparent,
but opaque; one looks both at and past it-as opposed to the way
one looks through a pane of glass. By partly superimposing at an
angle two meshes of different degrees of openness, Caro establishes
a plane ofvariation, not oftransparency exactly, but ofvisual density.
It is as though the mesh is seen as cross-hatching-as literal but disembodied
shading or value. In this respect Carriage is intimately related
toJules Olitski's spray paintings, in which fluctuations ofvalue
are divorced from their traditional tactile associations. More generally,
an adequate discussion of Caro's use of mesh would relate it to
the opticality both of his own work since 1959 and of the most important
painting since Jackson Pollock, whose Number 29 ( 1 950) , a
painting on glass, deploys mesh in the interests of accessibility solely
to eyesight achieved by his allover paintings as early as the .winter
of 1946-47.
Span ( 1 966; fig. 41) consists of eight seemingly rather disparate,
individualized parts-including a heavy grid-connected to one another
with what one experiences as disconcerting freedom. Here as
in RedSplashthe parts feeljuxtaposed rather than connected, though
the relations among contiguous parts are nowhere near as unperspicuous
as in that piece. It is as though nothing in Span is attached to
anything else-as though anything could be moved or disarranged.
For all its size and weight, the piece as a whole represents the achieve-
NI�W WORK BY ANTHONY CARO I 1 75
ment, not of a perilous or delicate balance, but of a rather opposite
state of openness, fragility, vulnerability. . , , No two elements are parallel,
or for that matter at right angles, to one another in the ground
plan. This too is unusual in Care's work, and is at first disorienting;
with familiarity, however, Span discloses a coherence based on the
acceptance (though not really the stating) of horizontal and vertical
axes, the establishment of different levels (the ground being only the
lowest of several), and the individual character of each almost disjunct
part. Span exemplifies Care's occasional tendency to arrive, inadvertently,
even reluctantly, at something like an image-! keep
seeing the hollow rectangle at the upper left as a painting or mirror,
and in general I am struck by the somewhere Surrealist flavor of the
work as a whole-without detriment to the abstractness, or strength
as abstract idea, of the sculptures in question. Whatever images one
finds in Care's work come last, not first; when the piece is done they
simply are there. But they do not help organize the piece, even when
one is most aware of them. Sculptures like Span and Horizon are held
together not by the images they may be seen to constitute, but, I
want to say, by the meanings they make. It is as though Care's art
essentializes meaningfulness as such-as though the possibility of
meaning what we say and do alone makes his sculpture possible.
Ronald Davis: Surface and Illusion
RoN DAVIS is a young California artist whose new
paintings, recently shown at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York,
are among the most significant produced anywhere during the past
fewyears, and place him, along with Frank Stella and Darby Bannard,
at the forefront ofhis generation. In at least two respects Davis's work
is characteristically Californian: it makes impressive use of new materials-plastic
backed with fiberglass-and it exploits an untrammeled
illusionism. But these previously had yielded nothing more
than extraordinarily attractive objects, such as Larry Bell's coated
glass boxes, or ravishing, ostensibly pictorial effects, as in Robert Irwin's
recent work. (In the first instance illusion is rendered literal,
while in the second it dissolves literalness entirely.) Whereas Davis's
new work achieves an unequivocal identity as painting. That this is
so is a matter of conviction. One recognizesDavis's new work as painting:
in my case, with amazement-and, at first, distrust, even resentment-that
what I was experiencing as paintings were, after all, made
of plastic. Not that Davis's paintings are what they are in spite of being
made ofplastic or presenting a compelling illusion ofsolid object
in strong perspective. On the contrary, it is precisely Davis's refusal
to settle for anything but ambitious painting that, one feels, has compelled
him to use both new materials and two-point perspective.
What incites amazement is that that ambition could be realized in
this way-that, for example, after a lapse of a century, rigorous perspective
could again become a medium of painting.
Davis's paintings are, I suggest, the most extreme response so far
Originally published in Artforum 5 (Apr. 1967): 37-4 1 .
RoNALD DAvis: Smu'ACE AND ILLUSION I 177
to the situation described in my essay "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's
Irregular Polygons" (reprinted in this book) . Roughly, Davis has used
perspectival illusion-the illusion that the painting as a whole is a
solid object seen in two-point perspective from above-to relieve the
pressure under which, within that situation, the shape of the support
(or literal shape) has come to find itself. The limits of Davis's new
paintings present themselves as the edges of a three-dimensional entity
rather than of a flat surface, and in fact it is virtually impossible
to grasp the literal shape ofpaintings like SixNinthsBlue (fig. 56) and
SixNinthsRed (both rg66) just by looking at them. (One is forced, so
to speak, to trace their limits and then see what one has.) As a result,
the question ofwhether or not the literal shapes ofDavis's new paintings
hold, or stamp themselves out, or compel conviction-a burning
question within the situation referred to-simply does not arise.
More precisely, it does not arise as long as the illusion of threedimensionality
remains compelling: if in a given painting, for whatever
reason, the illusion is felt to be injeopardy, that painting's ability
to hold as shape is rendered questionable as well. (Something of the
kind may happen in Two Ninths Grey [ r g66; fig. 57] , in which the
projected "object" is not, to my mind, sufficiently comprehensible.
What, for example, is the precise relation of the two grey blocks to
the larger red slab on which they seem to sit? In general Davis cannot
afford much ambiguity or indeterminacy, both ofwhich compromise
his paintings' illusory objecthood.) 1
A great deal, then, depends upon the power of the illusion; and it
was, I believe, in order to achieve that power that Davis gave up working
in paint on canvas and began to explore the possibility ofmaking
his new paintings in plastic. In any case, the fact that in his new paintings
color is not applied to the surface in any way, but instead seems
physically to lie somewhere behind it, makes the illusion of objecthood
infinitely more compelling than would otherwise be the case.
In this respect Davis's new paintings represent not only an inspired
resuscitation of traditional illusionism but also a deep break with it:
instead of paint on the surface of the canvas creating the illusion of
objects in space, in Davis's paintings whatever makes the illusion is
not, it seems, situated on or at the surface at all. (The illusion of
objecthood is intensified still more by the way in which the colored
plastic-in which Davis has also mixed mirror flake, aluminum powder,
bronze powder, and pearl essence-not merely represents but
imitates the materiality of solid things.) Conversely, the surface of
these paintings is experienced in unique isolation from the illusion.
178 I RoNALD DAvrs: SuRFACE AND ILLUSION
It has been prized loose from the rest of the painting-as though
what hangs on the wall is the surface alone. In Davis's new paintings
a detached surface coexists with a detached illusion. (In this respect
his paintings are the opposite of Olitski's, in which there is "an illusion
of depth that somehow extrudes all suggestions of depth back
to the picture's surface.")' Indeed, the detached surface coincides
with the detached illusion, which is why the question of whether or
not the shape of that surface holds or stamps itself out does not arise.
Davis deliberately-and, I think, profoundly-heightens one's sense
ofthe mutual independence ofsurface and illusion by rather sharply
beveling the edges of his paintings from behind. This means that
even when the beholder is not standing directly in front of a given
painting, no support of any kind can be seen. The surface is felt to
be exactly that, a surface, and nothing more. It is not, one might say,
the surface of anything-except of course a painting.
Moreover, Davis's surface is something new in painting: not because
it is shiny and reflects light-that was also true ofthe varnished
surfaces of the Old Masters-but because what one experiences as
surface in these paintings is that reflectance and nothing more. The
precise degree ofreflectance is important. If the painting is too shiny
the surface is emphasized at the expense of the illusion, and this in
turn undermines the independence of both. At the same time, Davis's
paintings make transparency important as never before: not because
their surfaces are experienced as transparent-one does not,
I want to say, look through so much as past them-but because the
layers of colored plastic behind their surfaces vary in opacity. The
relation between the surface and the rest of a transparent object is
different from that between the surface and the rest of an opaque
one: in the former case it is as though the beholder can see all of the
object, notjust the portion that his eyesight touches. In Davis's new
work, this difference becomes important to painting for the first
time, by making possible, or greatly strengthening, the relation between
surface and illusion I have tried to describe.
Finally, I want at least to mention the character of the illusionism
in these paintings. Despite its dependence on the rigorous application
of two-point perspective, it too is new in painting. Roughly, the
illusion is of something one takes to be a square slab (some portions
of which have been removed) , turned so that one of its corners
points in the general direction of the beholder, and seen from above.
What seems to me of special interest is this: the illusion is such that
one simply assumes that the projected slab is horizontal, as though
RONALD DAVIS: SURFACE AND IttUSION I 179
lying on the ground; but this means that looking down at it could be
managed only from a position considerably above both the slab itself
and the imaginary ground plane it seems to define. Moreover, the
beholder is not only suspended above the slab; he is simultaneously
tilted toward it-otherwise he would not be in a position to look
down at the slab at all. In Davis's new paintings the illusion of
objecthood does not excavate the wall so much as it dissolves the
ground under one's feet, as though experiencing the surface and the
illusion independently of one another were the result of standing
in radically different physical relations to them. Davis's illusionism
addresses itselfnotjust to eyesight but to a sense that might be called
one of directionality. There have been strong intimations of such a
development in recent painting, notably that of Noland and Olitski;
in fact, I recently claimed of Olitski's spray paintings that what is
appealed to is not our ability in locating objects (or failing to) but in
orienting ourselves (or failing to) .3 This seems to me dramatically
true of Davis's new paintings as well.
The possibilities Davis has been able to realize in his first plastic
paintings still seem to me scarcely imaginable. The possibilities those
paintings open up belong to the future of painting.
NOTES
1 . At the moment I wrote this article, I had evidently not yet arrived at the
argument of "Art and Objecthoocl" (reprinted in this book); had I done so, I
probably would have found a way to characterize Davis's paintings other than in
terms of an illusion of "objecthood," a loaded notion in the essay I was soon to
begin.-M. F., 1996
2. Clement Greenberg, "Introduction to Jules Olitski at the Venice Bien�
nale," in Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4 of The CollectedEssays and
Criticism, ed. John O'Brian (Chicago, 1993), p. 230.
3· In 'jules Olitski" (reprinted in this book) .
Two Sculptures by Anthony Caro
Deep Body Blue (1967; fig. 42) , the smaller of the two
pieces in Anthony Caro's recent show at the Kasmin Gallery, is open
as widespread arms and then as a door is open. The two contrasting
elements that run along the ground, a length of tubing and a flat
sheet standing on its long edge, gather the beholder into a far more
compelling embrace than could be achieved by literally embracing
him-the way, for example, one is embraced by Bernini's colonnades
in front of St. Peter's-while the two uprights are experienced
as a kind of abstract door on the other side of which two similarly
contrasting elements converge, touch, and go their ways. Like several
recent sculptures by Caro, Deep Body Blue explores possibilities for
sculpture in various concepts and experiences that one would think
belonged today only to architecture: for example, those of being led
up to something, ofentering it, perhaps by going through something
else, of being inside, of looking out from within. , , , Not that Caro's
work is architectural in look or essence. But it shares with architecture
a preoccupation with the fact, or with the implications of the
fact, that humans have bodies and live in a physical world. This preoccupation
finds a natural, and inescapably literal, home in architecture.
The same preoccupation no longer finds a naturalhome in
painting and sculpture: it is the nearly impossible task of artists like
Caro to put it there, and this can only be done by rendering it antiliteral
or (what I mean by) abstract. The heart of Caro's genius is that
he is able to make radically abstract sculptures out of concepts and
experiences which seem-which but for his making are and would
Originally published in Artjorum 6 (Feb. 1968): 24-25.
1 80
Tvm ScuLPTURES BY ANTHONY CARO I 181
remain-inescapably literal and therefore irremediably theatrical;
and hy so doing he redeems the time if anyone does. Not only is the
radical abstractness of art not a denial of our bodies and the world;
it is the only way in which they can be saved for high art in our time,
in which they can be made present to us other than as theater.
In the course of his enterprise Caro makes discoveries as sudden
and imperative as any in modern philosophy. For example, it is essential
to our experiencing the two uprights in Deef! Body Blue as a kind
of door that they stand in the same plane. It doesn't matter that they
are no more than four feet high, that tbey lack any sort of lintel, that
we are not tempted nor even able to pass between them: the fact that
they stand several feet apart in the same plane is enough to make us
experience them as an abstract door (and a large, or wide, one at
that) . By the same token, if they are moved even slightly out of alignment
their "doorness" disintegrates and the sculpture as a whole begins
to fall apart, to become arbitrary and therefore meaningless as
art. This aspect of Caro's achievement may be described in different
ways. One can say that he discovered what constitutes an abstract
door, or that he discovered the conventions-corresponding to deep
needs-which make something a door. Caro did not consciously set
out to discover anything of the kind. On the contrary, it is because
Deep Body Blue began in a preoccupation with particular modes of
being in the world that its very success as sculpture came to depend
on the making of the above discovery in, or by, the piece itself. It is
as though with Caro sculpture has become committed to a new kind
of cognitive enterprise: not because its generating impulse has become
philosophical, but because the newly explicit need to defeat
theater in all its manifestations has meant that the ambition to make
sculpture out of a primordial involvement with modes of being in
the world can now be realized only if antiliteral-that is, radically
abstract-terms for that involvement can be found. (At the risk of
seeming to overload the point, I will add that the cognitive enterprise
in question is related, in different ways, both to European phenomenology
and to the later philosophy ofWittgenstein. It isn't only modernist
art that has found it necessary to defeat theater.)
The larger sculpture, Prairie (1967; fig. 43, pl. 14) , consists offour
long poles of aluminum tubing suspended parallel to one another
about eleven inches above a sheet of corrugated metal-more exactly,
a flat sheet with four channel-like depressions in it-which runs
north-south to the poles' east-west and is itself suspended about
twenty-one inches above the ground. Ifwe approach Prairie from ei-
182 1 1\vo SCULPTURES BY ANTHONY CARO
ther end of that sheet, the physical means by which these suspensions
are accomplished are not apparent; but as we move around the sculpture
it becomes clear that the sheet is held up by two sharply bent
pieces of metal plate, one on each side, which spring out and down
from the underside of the sheet until they touch the ground, whereupon
they angle upward and outward until they reach the height of
the poles, which they support also. Two of the poles are supported
at only one point, about twenty inches from the end; a third is supported
about twenty inches from both ends, that is, by both of the
bent, upward-spring·ing metal plates; while a fourth is not supported
by these at all but is held up by a large upright rectangle of metal
which stands somewhat apart from the rest of the sculpture and in
fact is not physically connected to it in any way. But grasping exactly
how Prairieworks as a feat ofengineering does not in the least undermine
or even compete with one's initial impression that the metal
poles and corrugated sheet are suspended, as if in the absence of
gravity, at different levels above the ground. Indeed, the ground itself
is seen not as that upon which everything else stands and from which
everything else rises, but rather as the last, or lowest, of the three
levels which, as abstract conception, Prairie comprises. (In this sense
Prairie defines the ground not as that which ultimately supports everything
else, but as that which does not itself require support. It
makes this fact about the ground both phenomenologically surprising
and sculpturally significant.)
The result is an extraordinary marriage of illusion and structural
obviousness. Once we have walked even partly around Prairie tbere
is nothing we do not know about how it supports itself, and yet that
knowledge is somehow eclipsed by our actual experience of tbe piece
as sculpture. It is as though in Prairie, as often in Caro'swork, illusion
is not achieved at the expense ofphysicality so much as it exists simultaneously
with it in such a way that, in the grip of the piece, we do
not see past the first to the second. This is mostly due to the nature of
the relationships among the various elements that compose Prairie,
relationships which make a different kind of sense to the mind and
to the eye. For example, that three of the long metal poles are held
up at only one end is understood to mean that the full weight of each
pole is borne by a single support far from its center; but the poles
are seen as being in a state of balance as they are, as if they weighed
nothing and could be placed anywhere without support. This impression
is reinforced by the fact that the two poles supported at one
end by a bent, upward-springing metal plate are held up by different
Two ScuLPTURES BY ANTHONY CARO I 183
plates and atopposite ends. Similarly, the one pole supported atboth
ends is held up by the far corner of the nearer plate and by the near
corner of the farther one; and this deliberate staggering, while perfectly
understood by the mind, disconcerts the eye enough to make
it see that pole as if it were not truly supported at all. That all four
poles are parallel to and equidistant from one another, and that
three of them are the same length, are other factors which obstruct
the eye from giving weight to the specific means by which each is
supported. (It should also be said that the fact that the four poles are
an almost imperceptibly lighter shade of sandy yellow than the rest
of the sculpture gives them an added suggestion oflift.) In these and
other ways Caro on the one hand has frankly avowed the physicality
ofhis sculpture and on the other has rendered that physicalityunperspicuous
to a degree that even after repeated viewings is barely credible.
This is not in itself a new development in his work; it has been
a steady feature of his art since his conversion to radical abstraction
around 1959. But it reaches in Prairie an extreme that may also be a
kind of culmination. More emphatically than any previous sculpture
by Caro, Prairie compels us to believe what we see rather than what
we know, to accept the witness of the senses against the constructions
of the mind.
Finally, Caro has never before sought openness through abstract
extension as explicitly as here. For the first time the openness Caro
achieves is above all a lateral openness-with the result that we are
made to feel that lateralness as such is open in a way that verticality
or obliqueness or head-on recession are not. This is a point of deep
affinity between Prairie and the superb paintings in Kenneth Noland's
last show at the Emmerich Gallery, in which the lateral extension
of the canvas and its colors accomplished, among other things,
an unexpected liberation from the constrictions ofthe picture shape.
In both Prairieand Noland's recent paintings the decisive experience
is one of instantaneous extension, roughly from somewhere in the
middle of the poles or canvas out towards both ends. In each the
exact dimensions of what is extended laterally are of crucial importance:
if either the poles or the canvas were too long or short, the
result would be a flaccid or blocky objecthood. (Objecthood of one
kind or another is the aim of literalist work, which does not begin
or end so much as it merely stops, and in which an indefinite-by
implication, infinite-progression takes place as if in time.) Caro
seems to have faced the further risk that Prairie might be too open,
atanyrate that the eye might be compelled away from the piece itself
184 I Two ScuLPTURES BY AtHHONY CARO
into the space around it, in which case it would strike one less as
open than as merely insufficient. That this does not occur is partly
owing to Caro's use of the solid rectangle of metal which supports
the fourth pole: placed largely beyond the previous limits of the
sculpture, it actually extends the sculpture at the same time as it
helps contain is energies by giving the eye something flat, vertical,
and opaque to come up against. The lack of physical connection between
the rectangle-and-pole and the rest of the piece has been made
as unperspicuous as the precise character of the connections among
the other elements: this is largely why Prairie is by far the most successful
sculpture in two or more parts that I have ever seen.
I believe that Prairie is a masterpiece, one of the great works of
modern artand a touchstone for future sculpture, and thatDeepBody
Blue, while Jess ambitious, is nevertheless beyond the reach of any
other living sculptor. In the radicalness of their ambition both have
more in common with certain poetry and music, and certain recent
painting, than with the work of any previous sculptor. And yet this
very radicalness enables them to achieve a body and a world of meaning
and expression that belong essentially to sculpture.
Figure 32. Anthony
Caro, J.V!idday, tg6o.
Painted steel, 7' i%"
x 37%" x 1 2
' 1:Yt.
The Museum of
Modern Art, New
York. Mr. <ll1d Mrs.
Arthur VViesenberger
Fund. Courtesy
Annely.Juda Fine
Arts. Photo: Kim Lim.
Figur(� 33· Anthony
Caro, .1."\iidday, tg6o.
Painted steel, 7' 7%"
X 3iYs" X 1 2
'
1Y.i".
The Museum of
Modern Art, New
York. Mr. and Mrs.
Arthltr Wiesenberger
Fund. Councsy
Annely.Juda Fine
Art<;. Photo: Kim Lim.
Figure 34· Anthony Caro, SculptureSeven, 1 96 1 . Steel painted green, bltl(\ and brown,
70 x 2 L 1 i.4 x 4 1 Y2 inches. Private collection, London. Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine A.rts.
Phc>lo: Roben Newman.
Figure 35· Anthony Caro, Titan, 1964. Steel painted blue, 4 1 Y2 x 1 44 x 1 1'1 inches. Art
Galler;,• of Ontario, Toronto. Courtesy Annelyjuda Fine Arts. Photo: Art Galle!)' of
Ontario, Toronto. Gift from the Volunteer Committee Fund, 1983.
Figure 36. Anthony Caro, Bennington, 1964. Steel painted black, 40 x 1 66 x 133!1:! inches.
Private collection, U.S.A. CourtesyAnnely]ucla Fine Arts.
figure ?.7· Anthony Caro, Yellow Swing, 1965. Painted steel, 74 x 73Y2 x 1 60 inches. The
Tate G<lllery London. Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo: Tate Gallery, London/Art
Resource, New York.
Figure 38. AnLhony Caro,
Horizon, 1966. Steel painted
brown, 6glf2 x l65 x 33
inches. Brandeis University,
Waltham, Mass. Courtesy
AnnelyJuda Fine Arts.
Photo: john Goldblatt.
Figure 39· Anthony Caro, Red Splash, 1 966. Steel painted red, 45Y2 x 6g x 4 1 inches.
Collection ofMr. and Mrs. David Mirvish, Toronto. CourtesyAnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo:
John Webb.
Figure 40. Anthony Caro, Carriage, 1966. Steel painted blue green, 77 x So x 13 inches.
Collection of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nashet; Dallas. CourtesyAnnelyJuda Fine Arts.
Photo: John Goldblatt.
Figure 41. Anthony Caro, Span, 1 966. Sted painted burgundy, 77Y2 x 184 x 1 32 inches.
Private collection, Harpswell. Courtesy Anneiyjuda Fine Arts. Photo:John Goldblatt.
Figure 42. Anthony Caro, Deep Body Blue, 1966. Steel painted dark blue, 481h x 1 0 1 x 1 24
inches. Privat<: collection, :Harpswell. Courtesy Annelyjucla Fine Arts. Photo:john
Goldblatt.
Figure 43· Anthony Caro, Prairie, 1967. Steel painted matte yellow, 38 x 229 x 126 inches.
Collection ofLois and Georges de MenU, on extended loan to the National GaUery ofArt,
Washington, D.C. Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo: John Goldblatt.
Figure 44· Anthony Caro, Tt�j'oil, 1968. Steel painted matte yellow, 83 x 100 x 65 inches.
DaYid :vlirvish G«llery, Toronto. Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo:John Goldblatt.
Figure 45· Anthony Caro,
()mngnie, 1 g6g. Steel
painted Venetian red, 88Y2
x (LtYl x g t inches.
Collection of Kenneth
Noland, North Bennington,
Mass. Cottrlesy Anncly
.Juda Fine r\..rts. Photo:
Guy Martin.
Figure 46. Anthony Caro,
De<1J North, 1969-70.
Steel, cadmium steel, and
aluminum painted green,
g6 x :l28 x 1 1 4 inches.
Collection of Kennelh
�oland, 1'\orth Bennington,
Mass. Counesy Annely
.Juda Fine Arts. Ph<)to:
John Goldblall.
Figure 47· Anthony Caro, Sun Feast, 1 g6g-7o. Steel painted yellow, 7 1 � x 164 x 86 inches.
Priw1te collection, Harpswell. CourtesyAnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo:John Goldblatt..
Figure 48. Anthony Caro, WendingBach, t g6g-7o. Painted steel, 190.5 x 320 x 154·9 em.
Cleveland Museum ofArt Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo: © 1997 Contemporary
Collection of the Cleveland Museum ofArt, 1970.29.
Figure 49· Anthony Curo, Table Piece \fll!, 1 966. Polished steel, 27 x 1 3 x 20 inches.
Private collection, London. Courtesy AnneiyJuda Fine Ans. Photo: Guy Martin.
Figure 50. Anthony Caro, Table PieceXXII, tg66. Steel sprayedjcwelescent green,
1 o x 3 1 Y2 x 27 inches. Private collection, London. Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine Arts.
Photo: Guy Martin.
Figure 5 1 . Anthony Caro, TablePiece XUX, 1g68. Steel painted green, 2oY� x 32 x 25
inches. Private collection. CourtesyAnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo:john Webb.
Figure 52. Anthony Caro,
TablePieceLIX, 1968. Steel
painted silver gray, 1 1 Y2 x
17 x 1 9 inches. Private
collection, London. Courtesy
AnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo:
Guy Martin.
Figure 53· Anthony Caro, Table HeceLXIV(The Clock), tg68. Steel painted yellow, 30 x 5 1
x 3 2 inches. Private collection, Paris. Courtesy Annelyjud<l. Fine Arts. Photo: Guy Martin.
Figure 54Anthony
Caro,
TablePiece XCVII,
1 g6g-7o. Steel
painted brown,
25 X 53 X 44
inches. Private
collection,
London. Courtesy
AnnelyJuda Fine
Arts. Photo:John
Goldhlatt.
Figure 55· Anthony Caro, TablePiece CLXXXII, 1974. Steel rusted and varnished, 14 x 14 x
74 inches. Private collection, U.S.A. CourtesyAnnely.Juda Fine Arts. Phor.o:John Goldblatt.
Figure 56. Ron Davis, Six Ninths Blue, tg66. Plastic, fiberglass, and wood, 72 x 1 3 1 inches.
Private collection. Courtesy of the artist.
Figure 57· Ron Davis, Two Ninths Grey, lg66. Plastic, fiberglass, and wood, 72 x 1 3 1
inches. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist.
Figure 58. Michael Bolus, Untitled, 1971. Painted aluminum, g6 x 136 x ? inches.
Whereabouts unknown. Courtesy ofthe artist.
Figure 59· Donald Judd, Untitled, 1966. Galvanized iron, six units, each unit
40 x 40 x 40 inches with w�inch intervals. Private collection. © 1997 Estate of
DonaldJudd I Licensed by VAGA, NewYork, N.Y.
Figure 6o. Robert Morris, Untilled (RingwithLight), 1 g6s-66. Painted wood and fiberglass
and fluorescent light, t\Vo units, each 24 inches high, 14 inches deep; overall diameter
97 inches. Dallas Museum ofArt. General Acquisitions Fund and a matching grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts. © 1997 Robert Morris 1 Artists Rights Society
(AR$), New York.
Figure 6 t . Carl Andre,
Le-uer; 1966. Installation
from Primal)' Stmdures,
Apr. 27-]unc 1 2 , 1966,
Jewish Museum, NewYork.
© 1997 Carl Andre I
Licensed by VAGA, New
York, NY Photo:jewish
Museum/Arl Resource,
NewYork.
Figure 62. Carl Andre, 1:\Vo floor pieces. Front: 144 Magnesium Squat-e, 1 g6g. Magnesium,
144 unit squares, % x 1 2 x 12 inches each; % x 144 x 144 inches overall. Back: 144 Lead
Square, 1969. Lead, 144 unit squares, % x 1 2 x l 2 inches each; 144 inches overall.
Installation at Dwan Gallery, New York. © 1997 Carl Andre I Licensed by VAGA, New
York, N.Y. Photo: John Weber Gallery; courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.
Figure 63. Tony Smith,
Die, t962. Steel painted
black, 72 x 72 x 72 inches.
Private collection. © 1997
Estate ofTony Smith I
Licensed by VAGA, New
York, N.Y. Photo: Geoffrey
Clements, New York,
© 1992; courtesy Paula
Cooper Gallery, NewYork.
Figure 64. Tony Smith,
TheBlack Box, 1 963-65.
Steel painted black, 22YI x
33 x 25 inches. © 1997
Estate ofTony Smith I
Licensed by VAGA, New
York, N.Y. Photo: Eric
Politzer; courtesy Estate
ofTony Smith.
Figure 65. Vasily
Kandinsky, P(Zintingwith
WhiteForm, 1913. Oil on
canvas, 4iYs x 55 inches.
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, NewYork.
Photo: David Heald
© The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation,
NewYork, FN 37.240.
Figure 66. Vasily Kandinsky, Composition 8, 1923. Oil on canvas, 55!!,; x 79Ys
inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David Heald © The Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation, NewYork, FN 37.262.
Figure 67. John Chamberlain, MissLucyPink, 1962. Painted steel, 47 x 42 x 39 inches.
Private collection. © 1997 John Chamberlain I Artists Rights Society (AR.�), NewYork.
Photo: Courtesy the Pace Gallery, New York.
Figure 68. JasperJohns, Diver, 1962. Oil on canvas with objects, go x 170 inches;
five panels. Collection ofNorman and Irma Braman. © 1997Jasperjohns I Licensed by
VAGA, NewYork, N.Y. Photo: Rudolph Burckhardt; courtesy Leo Castelli Gallery.
Figure 6g. Hans Hofinann, Memoria in Aeternum, 1962. Oil on canvas, 84 x 72!-i inches.
The Museum of Modern Art, NewYork. Estate of Hans Hofmann. Photo: © 1997 The
Museum of Modern Art, NewYork.
Figure 70. Ellsworth Kelly, Blue-f/n-Blue, 1963. Aluminum reliefpainted blue, So x 6o x
7Yz inches. LosAngles County Museum ofArt. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Los Angeles
County Museum ofArt. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Weismain in honor ofRichard
E. Sherwood, Esq.
Figure 7 1 . Jacques-Louis David, The Oath ofthe H&mtii, 1785. Oil on canvas, 130 x
1 Gi/.1 inches. Musee du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Reunion des Musees nationaux.
Figure 72. Jacques-Louis David, TheIntervention oftheSabine Women, 1799. Oil on canvas,
150% x 205� inches. MusCe du Louvre, P<lris. Photo: Reunion des' Musees nationaux.
Recent Work by Kenneth Noland
FoR ABOUT two years now Kenneth Noland has been
making paintings which consist of a number of horizontal bands of
color, usually of different thicknesses, suspended above one another-almost
always with intervals of raw canvas between themwithin
rectangular formats whose height-to-width ratios are rarely
less than one to two and are sometimes as much as one to twelve
or even more. A selection from among the first such paintings was
shown at the Emmerich Gallery in November 1 967, while five superb
canvases recently on view at the Lawrence Rubin Gallery exemplify
some of the directions which Noland's work has taken during the
past year and a half.
The most remarkable of the Rubin Gallery paintings is probably
the largest, Via Token ( 1 g6g; fig. 1 7) . A broad expanse of light ocher
fills the entire canvas except for two nine-inch-high tracts at the top
and hottom, each ofwhich is occupied by three equal bands of (reading
away from the ocher middle) purple, pink, and red. (It goes without
saying that all color notations given here are approximations.)
What in particular is remarkable is that we are made to see the ocher
expanse itself as a further, seventh band-one which like the others
is twenty feet long but which unlike them is almost seven feet high.
By "band" I meah not a type of shape so much as another kind of
entity altogether, one which is both naturally unenclosed and essentially
directional in ways that a shape, any shape, simply is not. There
is ofcourse a plain sense in which the ocher expanse in Via Tokenjust
is a certain shape, a particular horizontal rectangle. But my point is
Originally published in Artjorum 7 (Summer 1g6g): 36-37.
186 I RECENT WoRK BY KENN_ETH NoLAND
that we are made to see that solid rectangle of color as something
else: a radically abstract entity whose essence consists. not in its
boundedness, and not in the portion of the painting's surface which
it covers, but in its unimpeded lateral extension across the plane of
that surface. The sense in which the relatively narrow bands of color
in this and other paintings are not (or not essentially) shapes is, I
think, apparent, at least in front of the paintings themselves: it is as
though they essentialize lateral extension as such, as though they are
nothing but that lateralness, that extension. The special triumph of
Via Token is that we are made to see an expanse of color which taken
alone could hardly be more inert or wall-like in exactly those terms.
Via Token is not the only recent painting by Noland in which a
relatively very broad central band occupies almost the entire canvas.
Streak ( 1g68) , also in the Rubin Gallery show, is another instance of
this, though the actual proportions of that picture make the salmon
reddish middle seem more naturally bandlike from the start. Both
paintings exemplify a new level ofengagement with the great "deco.
rative" painting of the past and perhaps with that of Matisse himself:
as if in pictures like these the qualities of unbrokenness, uniform
intensity, and sheer breadth of color that one finds within shapes and
areas in Matisse's art are recreated by, or as, lateral extension alone.
And because they are recreated-made radically abstract-in this
way, the paintings that result are profoundly anti-"decorative" in
effect
Noland's bands of color would not be what they are-they would
not have the properties here attributed to them-if they were not
made of color. And by virtue of those properties, which is to say by
essentializing lateral extension as I have claimed they do, Noland's
bands make color present to us in a new way. One might say that they
make color present to us, not just as lateral and extended, but as a
new abstract modality of lateralness and extension: a modality which
we are almost-but not literally-able to describe in terms of differences
in direction or relative velocity or strength of flow among the
bands of color that compose a given picture. At any rate, differences
of color, like differences of breadth, among the bands make themselves
felt in something like those terms. And that is felt in turn as
reinforcing the differentness or separateness or apartness of one
color from another-ifnot as establishing difference ofcolor on new
and so to speak more physical grounds-with the result that each
color in a given picture assumes what I think of as unprecedented
autonomy relative to all the others. In the first ofhis horizontal band
REcENT 'NoRK BY KENNETH NoLAND I 187
pictures, such as those shown in rg67, Noland often emphasized
the fact of that autonomy by using large numbers of distinct and, it
seemed, disparate colors in a single canvas. One was continually
struck, first, by the sheer multiplicity of the colors in a given picture-a
multiplicity which might have been no greater numerically
than that of a Morris Louis stripe painting but which because of the
felt autonomy of all the colors was far more perspicuous-and second,
by what can perhaps be called the abstract arbitrariness of the
individual colors, by which I mean the felt depth of that autonomy.1
(It is tempting to compare this aspect of Noland's art with the kind
of freedom from certain paradigms of rightness, absolute economy,
and internal necessity which Jackson Pollock achieved through and
for line in his allover drip paintings of 1947-50.) The above may
be summed up by the claim that in these paintings the singularity of
colors-a singularity as absolute, in Noland's hands, as that of persons-was
insisted upon, made self-evident, as never before.
All this carried special risks, above all the risk that the colors in a
given picture might make themselves felt as too disparate, autonomous,
arbitrary-as disruptive, almost explosive-and the picture as
a whole be virtually torn apart by the concurrence within its limits of
irreconcilable energies and events. The most emphatically anarchic
of Noland's early horizontal band pictures opened themselves to the
danger of being seen less as paintings than as spectacular, if in an
obvious sense pictorial, phenomena.
Noland may or may not have consciously recognized this danger,
if in fact I am right that it was one. But his paintings of the past
eighteen months-those I have seen-escape it completely. In pictures
like Via Tokenand Streakthis is owing both to the use ofrelatively
few colors and to the broadening of the middle band, which together
quiet or "slow down" the painting as a whole. (These steps carry their
own risks-that the picture may become inert, "decorative," "minimal,"
an equivocal object instead of a convincing painting. And between
the literalness of an object and that of a phenomenon, which
may be thought of as a special sort of object, there is nothing to
choose. In my remarks on Via Token it is aspects of the overcoming
of objecthood I have tried to describe.) In other recent paintings,
among them the Rubin Gallery's Via Love Leap, Via Flow, and Via
Shadow (allrg6g), Noland has employed a wide range of hues in an
extremely narrow range of values very near white, thereby securing
certain kinds of pictorial coherence-or avoiding certain kinds of
incoherence-through the traditional resource of close valuing,
188 I RECENT WORK BY KENNETH NOLAND
while establishing thatcoherence or avoidance ofincoherence where
(with the exception of a few paintings by Monet) it had never before
been located. The result is something like a new world of color: as
though the separateness or apartness that characterizes the relations
among individual colors in the early horizontal band paintings now
also characterizes Noland's use of "white" color generally.
NOTES
1. On the notions of the autonomy and multiplicity ofcolors, see respectively
the section on Jules Olitski in the introduction to Thne American Painters (reprinted
in this book as ''Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland,Jules Olitski,
Frank Stella") and the discussion of Louis's stripes in "Morris Louis" (reprinted
in this book).-M. F, r996
Caro's Abstractness
Orangerie (rg6g-7o; fig. 45) , one of the most ravishing
sculptures Anthony Caro has ever made, is also one of the
most nearly pictorial. Unlike most ofhis pieces it. appears to comprise
a number of discrete and rather highly characterized shapes, whose
mutual juxtaposition, while not actually establishing a single plane
or a succession of planes, seems nevertheless to imply the kind of
planarity we associate with painting. (It's right that Matisse has
been mentioned in connection with Caro's recent work. The affinity
between Orangerie and the work of Morris Louis-for example, the
Aleph paintings ofrg6o-might also he noted.) And yet how unpictorial
Orangerie finally is. The chief rounded shapes delineate themselves
above all by twisting in space. Its seeming planarity is in the
end decisively subverted by the angling and arcing-the rapid,
curved-versus-straight cursiveness in depth-both of individual elements
and of the ground plan as a whole. Most important, Orangerie
must be seen in relation to Caro's table sculptures, which he has been
making more or less steadily since the summer ofrg66 (figs. 49-55),
and as a step beyond the superb Trefoil (rg68; fig. 44), in which he
first physically included the plane of the table in a sculpture that
stands on the ground.
Briefly, the ambition behind the table sculptures was to make
small works that could not be seen merely as reduced versions of
larger ones-sculptures whose smallnesswas to be secured abstractly,
made part of their essence, instead of remaining simply a literal,
quantitative fact about them. That ambition led Caro, first, to incorOriginally
published in Artjarum g (Sept. 1970): 32-3+
189
190 I CARO's ABSTRACTNESS
porate handles ofvarious kinds in most of his early table sculptures,
in an attempt to key the scale of each piece to that of graspable,
manipulable objects (partial precedents for this include Picasso's
Glass ofAbsinthe and a few sculptures by Giacometti); and second, to
run or set at least one element in every piece below the level of the
tabletop on which the sculpture was to be placed, thereby precluding
its transposition, in fact or in imagination, to the ground. It at once
turned out that by tabling, or precluding grounding, the sculptures
in this way Caro was able to establish their smallness in terms that
proved virtually independent of actual size. That is, the distinction
between tabling and grounding, because determined (or acknowledged)
by the sculptures themselves instead ofmerely imposed upon
them by their eventual placement, made itself felt as equivalent to a
qualitative rather than a quantitative difference in scale. (Not only has
the abstract smallness of Caro's table sculptures proved compatible
with surprising largeness ofactual size; it soon became apparent that
a certain minimum size was required for their tabling to be experienced
in those terms.) In these and other respects Caro's table sculptures
mark the emergence of a sense of scale for which there is no
precedent in earlier sculpture and no clear parallel in our experience
of the world. The incorporation in Trefoil ofa table, or tabletop,
may be seen as merging largeness and smallness as both had come
to be defined in and by Caro's art. And in Orangerie Caro has extended
and refined the implications of such a merging of abstract
scales by raising the already thin and narrow tabular plane almost to
eye level and by angling a second plane into it from the front, which
together largely attenuate its ostensible normativeness. The result is
altogether more delicate and less obviously tablelike (more shelflike?)
than in Trefoil. But once again it is to the tabular plane even
more than to the ground that the other elements chiefly relate.
The exploitation of different levels, basic to Caro's abstract sculptures
from the first, is also crucial to the other indisputably major
work on view at the Emmerich Gallery lastMay, DeepNorth ( 1g6g-7o;
fig. 46). In that sculpture a rectangular piece of heavy grid is suspended
parallel to the ground at a height of about eight feet in a way
that allows, but does not compel, the beholder to position himself
beneath it. This may appear to break with what has been one of the
fundamental norms of Caro's art: the refusal to allow the beholder
to enter a given work, to step or stand inside it. That refusal has been
striking both because of the general openness of Caro's sculptures
and because of the manifest preoccupation of certain pieces (I do
C;,.Ro's ABsTRACTNEss I 191
not say of Caro himself) with experiences such as entering, going
through, being enclosed, looking out from within, and so on, which
one might have thought would virtually have entailed a kind of environmentalism.
Moreover, the obduracy of Caro's sculptures on this
score has been only one aspect, albeit an important one, of their
antiliteral, antisituational character; and that has been an index at
once of their radical abstractness and of their deep antagonism to
the theatrical in all its current forms and manifestations. So that by
allowing us actually stand beneath a portion ofitself, Deep North may
appear to call into question, perhaps even to renounce, what has
been until now the essence of Caro's art.
But the facts of experience do not bear this out. Even when we
place ourselves directly below the massive grid, we do not feel that
we have entered or are inside the sculpture. Partly this has to do with
the nature of something overhead: ifwe were compelled to step over
or across some sort of boundary, however low or slight, the sensation
of entering would, I think, become inescapable-though once again
the exact basis of this in our experience of the world remains obscure.
Partly too it is a function of the way in which every element in
the piece seems to twist, turn, face, point, or open away from every
other. And partly it stems from the fact that Deep North's vital center,
from which the sculpture as a whole is felt to originate, is located far
from the grid and its supports, at the ground level juncture of the
three other principal elements, and that our view from beneath the
grid both ofthatjuncture and ofthe relations among those elements
(in particular the inspired rhymes among them), ifnot actually privileged,
is at any rate profoundly satisfYing. We are of course aware of
not seeing all of the sculpture-specifically, of not seeing the grid
itself-when standing beneath the latter. But this is experienced as
nothing more than a special instance of the limitations inherent in
any point ofview. In this respectDeepNorthbelongswith After Summer
( 1 969) , which partly because of its great size conspicuously resists
being seen in its entirety from any single position. None of this is to
deny that an apprehension of the grid as overhead, as a kind of roof
or ceiling under which we can stand, dominates our experience of
the sculpture as a whole. What must be insisted upon is that this is
true whether or notwe choose to statiou ourselves beneath the grid:
it is a function not ofany literal or architectural relationship between
structure and beholder, but of the internal relations (or syntax) of
the sculpture alone, relations which, however, are deeply grounded
in the nature and potentialities of the human body.
!i
192 I CARO's ABSTRACTNESS
The large yellow Sun Feast (rg6g-7o; fig. 47) may be more complex
and at bottom more difficult of access than either Orangerie or
DeepNorth. There are, in any case, at least three types of order at work
in it. First, that of Caro's table sculptures and their subsumption in
pieces like Trefoil and Otangerie. The long horizontal plank that runs
almost the full length of the sculpture serves as the "table" on top of
which various elements are placed and off of which these and other
elements depend or spring or otherwise make their way. Second, the
play of elements along and against a dominant axis or track, also
identified with the long horizontal plank. This organizing principle
appeared in Caro's work as early as the great Midday, a piece that
has much in common with Sun Ji'east. And third, a kind of sensuous,
disheveled, almost certainly "feminine" though not quite figural
sprawl, as if the sculpture were displaying itself for its own delectation.
The combination of intellectual rigor and intense sensuality
again recalls Matisse. But it is also wholly characteristic ofCaro's Blakean
imagination. If SunFeasthas a fault, and it may not, it is perhaps
too much reliance on the curvilinear, which tips the balance toward
an almost rococo elegance and in effect disguises the sculpture's underlying
difficulty-the difficulty, for example, of the coexistence of
several modes of order, no one of which is entirely satisfYing, or of
the contrast between the thickness of most of the piece and the unnerving
thinness of the twisting, plowsharelike elements disposed
along the horizontal plank.
WendingBack (rg6g-7o; fig. 48) is the smallest and in obvious respects
the least ambitious of the sculptures discussed here. But it
could not be better and ought to be recognized for what it is, a small
masterpiece. No less inert, more energized, in abstract terms more
kinetic sculpture can be imagined. It is as though Caro constructed
WendingBack directly out ofbriefbut articulate segments of trajectories,
vectors, torques. Everything sweeps, scoops, slices, and is sliced.
Even the triangular shape of the largest element seems the result of
three shearing arcs whose full dimensions we can only guess. And in
general Wending Back implies magnitudes of energy and extension
that far exceed its physical limits. Perhaps because of this, the stabilizing,
grounding normativeness of the narrow rectangular element
that stands on edge is vital to its success. The dark gray color,
too, resists the dematerialization implicit in Wending Back's kinetic
syntax, and by so doing further collects the sculpture as a whole
while making the abstract nature of its energies all the more self­
evident.
Problems of Polychromy:
New Sculptures by Michael Bolus
Two OF the three recent sculptures by Michael Bolus
on view at London's Waddington Gallery engage with problems of
color and in particular of polychromy, the use of more than one
color in a single piece. The issue of polychromy for modern abstract
sculpture might have been raised by the work of David Smith but
wasn't, probably because both choice and application of color remained
throughout his career the least resolved and therefore the
least generally significant features of his art. Polychromy as a general
concern became felt during the 1g6os, mainly in response to Caro's
early steel pieces, which demonstrated as never before the potential,
as well as something of the difficulty, of color as a resource for sculpture.
Within the past several years Olitski's adaptation of the sprayed
color of his paintings to sculptural ends has produced works ofgreat
strength and originality. In England, where Caro's influence has
been enormous, problems ofpolychromy have tasked two ofthe best
sculptors oftheir generation, Bolus and Tim Scott. (Of course, other
sculptors of various nationalities have used two or more colors in a
single piece. But only Bolus and Scott, along with Olitski, seem to me
to have carried color other than where Caro took it in SculptureSeven
and Month ofMay.)
Specifically, Bolus's polychrome sculptures, such as the two untitled
pieces at Waddington's (both 1 97 1 ), exploit, and in the process
make perspicuous for the first time, what appears to be a deep,
as it were natural affinity between applied color and planarity-between
single colors and single planes (fig. 58). It is as if, under condiOriginally
published in Artfwumg Qune 1971): 38-39.
193
I'
1:
194 I PROBLEMS OF POLYCHROMY: NEw ScULPTURES BY MICHAEL BoLus
tions of sculptural abstraction, a single plane emerges as the strongest,
most direct, most convincing bearer or vehicle ofa single applied
color; or as ifa single applied color turns out to declare a plane more
strongly, directly, and convincinglythan it is able to declare anything
else. (As if indeed applied colors can't be said to "declare" other
things so much as merely help distinguish them from yet other things
or kinds of things.) The affinity between applied color and planarity
has its source in the phenomenologically absolute relationship,
which in "Shape as Form" I have claimed is central to problems of
color in sculpture, between applied color and surface as such-a flat
plane being in effect the sheerest, most straightforward, altogether
most powerful statement of surface that lies to hand. Both Olitski
and Scott engage with, and in different ways strive to overcome, the
limitations for polychrome sculpture implicit in this situation: Olitski
by seeking to free applied color from planaritythrough spraying, that
is, by projecting the nonplanar surfaces of his sculptures as convincing
vehicles of an everywhere modulating continuum of pulverized
color; and Scott, whose entire undertaking expresses a primary
involvement with materiality, by freeing color from surface, or at any
rate from appliedness, through the use of materials-sheets of colored
Perspex in which color literally inheres. (Nothing like this sort
of concern with issues of surface can be found in the work of either
Smith or Caro.) Bolus on the other hand accepts those limitations
from the start. Hence the severely restricted, it may even seem antisculptural,
vocabulary ofform with which in his colored pieces he is
prepared to work. And hence also the apparent conventionality of
his use of color in comparison with Olitski's or Scott's. For Bolus, the
making of polychrome sculptures simply means the juxtaposing of
planes, or rather of plane surfaces, each of which is identified with
the applied color it bears. But the depth of that identification in his
work-the conviction it is made to compel-is something new.
Our conviction stems in the first place from the internal consistency
of the limitations themselves, which at a glance come across as
anything but accidental, mechanical, or merely conventional. And it
is further, more importantly compelled byspecific acknowledgments
notjust ofthe appliedness ofthe individual colors but ofthe relationship
between applied color and plane surface that I have tried to
characterize. For example, Bolus's decision to place different colors
on opposite faces of the same planar element-contrasted with, and
given emphasis by, the use of the same color on parallel faces of different
elements-promotes the recognition that the planar elements
PROBLEMS OF PoLYCHROMY: NEw ScuLPTURES nv MICHAEL BoLUs I 195
are far less important in their own right, as physical entities of a particular
type, than as carriers of surface and color. Similarly, his decision
to leave a thin margin ofraw aluminum down the middle of the
edges of each planar element underscores the discontinuity between
opposite faces of that element and between the applied colors they
bear. Even more striking-ly, the cutting of narrow slots into those elements
along their angled bends at once signals the importance in
this context of an abrupt change of plane and stresses, by throwing
into relief, the continuity of color and surface across that change.
The character of the spray-painted surfaces, which somehow inflect
an almost machinelike uniformity with what can only be described
as a warm, personal, above all deliberate modality of feeling, contributes
to our sense of the radical identification of plane surface and
applied color. And in general an impeccable craftsmanship seems
throughout to have been at the service of an intense will to achieve
the strongest possible expression of that identification. In any case,
the disparity between the pieces in question as they are and as they
would be in the absence of color is fundamental. Our experience of
each-in particular the larger, more ambitious, finally more successful
ofthe two-is essentially an experience ofcolored surfaces and of
their subtly calculated interaction as seen from different or changing
points of view. This amounts, I suggest, to a profoundly sculptural
conception of applied color, one that goes a long way toward compensating
for the restrictedness of Bolus's vocabulary of physical
form. The weakest aspect of both sculptures is however not that restrictedness
but something else, a conventionality of structure-of
the way in which the planar elements are stood or poised-which
almost painfully belies the ultimate originality of their color. Moreover,
the contrast in the larger of the two pieces between the painted
elements thejuxtaposition ofwhose surfaces is the point of the work
and the unpainted ones whose function is chiefly supportive conveys
a sense of IIfakeshift that is not offset by the frankness of the distinction.
These are not quite minor troubles and neither sculpture is
more than a partial success.
The third sculpture on view (1 97 1 ) consists of a long, gently curving
lattice made out of semitubular elements riveted together back
to back (concave sides facing outward) , intersected at different
heights and from opposite sides by two long thin tubes or polesthe
entire work painted a uniform aluminum and so circumventing
the problems of color discussed above. The basic idea seems to be
that of a fence or barrier, more than twenty feet long and five and a
196 [ PROBLEMS OF PoLYCHROMY: NEw ScuLPTURES BY MICHAEL BoLus
half feet high, which on the one hand divides in two any space in
which it is placed and on the other contrives a heightened access to
all of itself, and by implication to the spatial realms it differentiates,
from either side. Our experience is one of separation or spatial division
and at the same time of an abstract transparence, not just to
eyesight but to feeling, that is a function of far more than the interstices
in the lattice. The distinction of Bolus's sensibility is evident
throughout the piece-for example, in the quietplay ofoppositions
(between straight and curved, front and back, left and right, riveting
and interlacing, etc.) and in the use ofgaps in the lattice as cadences
at both ends. What remains in doubt, I feel, is whether the sculpture
as a whole is physical enough to secure a convincing sculptural identity
or whether it is finally too unassertive and attenuated to establish
itself other than as a kind of shimmering mirage.
Larry Poons's New Paintings
IN MY essay "Art and Objecthood," published in this
magazine more than four years ago, I argued that the present success
and future survival of the modernist arts have come to depend on
their ability to overcome the theatrical; and that in the case of painting
this means the ability of individual works to suspend or defeat
their own objecthood-to establish their identity as paintings in opposition
to, as distinct from, their nature as objects. Throughout the
early and mid-rg6os the struggle against objecthood was fought out
chiefly through the medium of shape. But starting in the late rg6os
and guided principally by the work ofJules Olitski, there has been a
shift of pressure away from issues of shape toward issues of picture
surface. I view that shift as a further stage of the same struggle. For
some time now it has seemed that probably the fundamental difference
between paintings and objects is that a painting is so to speak
all surface, nothingbut surface, whereas no ordinary object, however
thin or flat, can be described in those terms.1 And I see some of the
most ambitious pictorial art of the past several years as having found
itselfcompelled to declare its identity as painting largely through an
implicit appeal to that difference, by continual acknowledgment not
merely that paintings have surfaces, or that those surfaces are flat,
resistant to touch, and face the beholder, but that paintings consist
in or are limited to their surfaces in ways that distinguish them, as it
were absolutely, from other kinds ofobjects in the world. That is how
I understand what has seemed to me the compulsion of certain recent
painting of major ambition to affirm that the entire surface,
Originally published in Artforurn 10 (Mar. 1972): 50-52.
197
198 I LARRY PooNs's NEw PAINTINGS
which is to say every bit ofit, is spread out before the beholder-that
every grain or particle or atom of surface competesforpresentness with
every other. The emphasis on surface in these paintings is not so
much on its expansion as on its concentration; not so much on its
extension as on its intension. Perhaps more accurately, it is an emphasis
on the second of each pair of terms as a vehicle of the first: as
if the convincingness of the "outward" spread of surface across the
picture as a whole depended ultimately on the convincingness ofits
"inward" spread across the same expanse.'
The progTessive abandonment during the past several years of the
flat, fairly thin, and texturally uniform (or "atextural") color of the
best painting of the first half of the 1 g6os in favor of a new involvement
with tactility, in particular with the tactile properties of paint,
must be seen in this light. So for that matter must the almost complete
exhaustion during the same period of the bare canvas ground,
the canvas 'Without sizing or paint, as a resource for ambitious painting.
By that I mean not just that the strongest painters have come
increasingly to eliminate bare canvas from their pictures, but also
that whenever sizable areas of it have been allowed to remain they
have tended more and more to bring the level of the picture down.
In fact it has sometimes seemed that the authority of the canvas was
giving out, becoming depleted, right before our eyes. (Like all judgments
of the viability of artistic media, this is at bottom a question of
conviction, not phenomenology.) Neither the spread of color alone
nor the spread of bare canvas plus color is now able to provide the
spread of surface that I have tried to characterize, and tactility has
become important as a means to that end. On the other hand, tactility
alone, or tactility that overwhelms color, produces merely a kind
of colored reliefwhose surface is experienced as sculptural or literal
rather than as essentially pictorial. Something like that seemed to
happen in the so-called elephant-skin pictures Larry Poons exhibited
at the Lawrence Rubin Gallery more than a year ago. But the paintings
he has been making since, six of which were recently on view
at the same gallery, show a renewed emphasis on color without any
diminution of tactility-and the gain in quality has been enormous.
In ShiveringNight, F'irstwild, and E'Special (all 1 97 1 ), the last and by
far the best of the elephant-skin pictures, large quantities ofAquatec
lumped and thickened with gel have been allowed to build up physically
above the canvas in successive layers, making a strongly tactile
skin or crust whose thickness and layeredness the eye continually
probes. But while the paint substance tends for the most part to-
LARRY .PooNs's NEw PAINTINGS I 199
ward separateness, stratification, and the suggestion of temporal
sequence, the paint color tends on the contrary toward unity, immediacy,
simultaneity. The result is a contest between the heightened,
or deepened, tactility of the picture surface and the warm, mostly
intense color that seems everywhere to lie beneath that surface and
to erupt through it into visibility. And the result ofthat is an unprecedented,
because multiplex, declaration of surface: as if the different
layers, brought forward by color and comprising the total material
contents of the painting, themselves compete for presentness across
its entire expanse. To takejust one example: in Firstwild, a really fine
painting, our experience of the principal orange area and of the numerous
small lumps and pieces of sky blue pigment that seem to adhere
to it like remnants of a stripped upper layer is primarily of a
single lurid greenish orange flush, a simultaneous eruption of complementaries
that in effect wholly subsumes the manifest physicality
of that portion of the work. (Actually, the bits of blue pigment poke
up through the orange from below; theybelong to a lower, prior level
despite their tactile prominence. Contradictions of this sort, often
involving Poons's characteristic ellipsoid shapes, play an important
though mostly subliminal role throughout these paintings.)
In three other paintings on show, the first of a new "drip" series
made by throwing buckets ofAquatec and gel against lengths ofcanvas
stapled to the wall, the paint buildup is less and there is almost
no sense of layering. There is, however, a general tension between
the strong, and again strongly tactile, up/down orientation of the
throws and drips and what seems in contrast the natural expansiveness
of the color, a tension that makes possible both the large size
and the lateral extension of the superb RailroadHorse ( 1 97 1 ; pl. 1 5) .
At the same time, the extreme viscosity of the paint enables Poons
to intermix individual colors with extraordinary closeness without
actually blending them. (In Ly [197 1 ; pl. 16], perhaps the strongest
painting in the show, this takes place within individual drips.) The
effect is of a wide range of colors straining almost physically to
merge-in that sense to spread "inward"-and being held apart by
the physicality of the pigment, which seems to spread if not in a different
direction at least at a different rate. Finally, the strands and
skeins of clear and colored gel that figure prominently in Ly make
themselves felt in terms of pure viscosity or resistance to being
spread, and thereby slow or impede still further-make still more
intensive-the spread ofsurface. Nothing could be more misleading
than to see Poons's drip paintings in terms of a return to Abstract
200 I LARRY PooNs' s NEw PAINTINGs
Expressionism. The presiding influence is, inevitably, Olitski. The
throws of paint have an ungestural directness of attack comparable
to that ofspraying and altogether beyond the reach of the elephantskin
pictures, which in comparison feel worked, almost worked up.
And no recent paintings, not even Olitski's, have been less dependent
for their success on gradations of value. Gradations of warm
and cool, or simply of warmth, seem to take their place. (None of
these remarks fully applies to the last of the drip pictures, SeeRobin,
the one relatively unsuccessful work in tbe show.)
To sum up: in both the elephant-skin and the drip pictures color
and tactility contend with one another for possession of the picture
surface. The ultimate triumph belongs to color-this is true even in
E' Special, whose surface has been glossed over with several coats of
acrylic varnish-and is further evidence ofits continuing primacy in
modernist painting. But the fact of contention suggests that the primacy
of color is no longer allowed to go uncontested. This is another
point ofcontact between Poons's recent work and Olitski's paintings
of the past few years, in which the use of acrylic gel has resulted in a
milky, almost skinlike surface that denies the immediacy though not
ultimately the intensity ofcolor in the interests ofpresentness. I don't
mean to imply that Poons's paintings are at all derivative; they aren't.
The point is rather that they demand to be compared with Olitski's,
and moreover that they are able to sustain the comparison. Five of
Poons's pictures at the Rubin Gallerywere first-rate, and the show as
a whole seemed to me the strongest by him I have ever seen. It was
also compelling proof, if more were needed, that modernist painting
and sculpture at their highest level continue to provide touchstones
of conviction for the arts in general.
NOTES
1. See, for example, part 4 of "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons,"
and part 4 of "Art and Objecthood'' (both reprinted in this book). This
difference not only was laid bare but was virtually brought into being by the
development of modernist painting. It was not something that previous critics
and historians simply failed to notice; rather, it was not fully there to be noticed
until a relatively short time ago. As for the shift of pressure away from issues of
shape, it is still imperative that the literal shape of a painting declare itself to be
precisely that, the shape of a painting and not merely of an object. But the fact
that that imperative is now chiefly met by croppingsignals an easing, or at least a
simplification, of the kind of problem shape seemed to present as recently as
four or five years ago. There may even be a sense in which the opposite of crop-
LARRY PooNs's NEw PAINTINGs 201
ping, the use ofpredetermined formats (whether rectangular or "shaped"), has
begun to feel disturbing, as if that in itself were enough to tip the balance toward
objecthood.
2. Louis's veils, Olitski's spray paintings, and Noland's recent vertical pictures
with crisscross stripes and bands on washed-looking or "smoky" grounds
belong to this development. I first used the notions ofcompeting fOr presentness
and intension contrasted with extension in connection with Olitski's paintings
of the early and mid-1g6os; see 'Jules Olitski's New Paintings," Artjorum 4 (Nov.
1965): 36-40 (omitted from this book); and 'Jules Olitski" (reprinted in this
book).
Anthony Caro's Table Sculptures, 1966-77
A GREAT deal has been said and written about Anthony
<;:aro's decision, in his first abstract sculptures of 1 959-60, to
do away with bases or pedestals of any kind in favor of placing the
sculptures directly on the ground. The implication in much of the
discussion has been that taking that step amounted to a decisive advance
in its own right, and it has even been suggested that Caro's
achievement in those early pieces consisted largely in the liberation
of sculpture from the base. By the same token, it might be argued
that the significance of the table pieces Caro has been making since
1 966 is that in them he has restored to sculpture the base he had
earlier eliminated. Both formulations, however, seem to me misguided.
As regards the former, it should be noted to begin with that
Caro was not the first to place a sculpture on the ground; Alberto
Giacometti had done as much with his Woman with Her Throat Cut
(1 932) , and there are other at least partial precedents besides.1 More
important, it hardly matters who was the first to present sculpture in
this way ifpresentation alone is at issue. Ifall Caro did was take sculptures
which might otherwise have stood on bases and place them on
the ground, the decision to do so would have been artistically trivial.
But in fact Caro's early abstract pieces involved a fundamental transformation
of sculptural form as compared with the work of his older
contemporary, David Smith. And it was precisely the depth of that
transformation that all but compelled Caro to do away with the base.
This is the introduction to a catalog for the u·aveling exhibition Anthony Caro: Table
Sc-ulptures rg66-1977, organized by the British Council, 1977.
202
A,'\'TBONY CARo's TABLE ScULPTURES, 1 966-77 I 203
From this perspective we may define Caro's originality with respect
to the question of the base by saying that he was the first to make
sculptures which demanded to be placed on the ground, whose specific
character would inevitably have been traduced if they were not
so placed. But this in turn is not to say that Caro liberated sculpture
from anything, in the sense of casting off or rendering inoperative
once and for all a convention that had been revealed as inessential.
A' for the notion that Caro's table pieces restore the base to sculpture,
it too misses the crucial point, which concerns the issue ofscale.
Briefly, as Caro's art evolved in the course of the first half of the
rg6os, it became apparent that almost all his most successful sculptures
were large, or at least above a certain size. There are several
reasons for this. In the first place, the overriding emphasis in his
work throughout those years on a mode ofsculptural composition in
which discrete elements that in themselves could hardly have been
more anonymous, even characterless (e.g., !-beams, flats, lengths of
tubing, lengths of angle iron), acquired formal and expressive significance
solely by virtue oftheir mutualjuxtaposition-an approach
I have called "syntactic" and Clement Greenberg has remarked is
tantamount to an emphasis "on abstractness, on radical unlikeness
to nature"2-promoted the dispersal or separation rather than the
close gathering of elements, which in turn worked against smallness
ofscale. Furthermore, Caro's strong desire throughout the period to
make the plane of the ground play an active role in his sculptures
reinforced that tendency by calling for the considerable extension of
elements along one or more horizontal axes. (Both factors are present
in a sculpture like Titan [ 1 964; fig. 35] , in which two rectilinear
elements, an !-beam segment and a swastika-like configuration, have
been placed canted against opposite sides and toward the far ends of
a low-lying L-shaped wall of thin steel. The drama ofthe piece resides
largely in the interplay of the first two elements across that double
separation as well as in the enlivening of the ground plane brought
about by the syntax of the sculpture as a whole.) [See also the masterly
Bennington ( 1 964; fig. 36).-M. F., 1996] Finally, there is an intimate
connection between the size of Caro's floor sculptures and
that of the viewer. In his study of Caro published on the occasion of
the retrospective exhibition of 1 975 at the Museum ofModern Art
in New York, William Rubin draws a distinction between representational
sculpture and Caro's work as regards scale. Representational
sculptures, Rubin writes,
204 I ANTHONY CARo's TAnLI� ScuLPTURES, 1966-77
establish an autonomous scale. 'Whether a figure is tvvo feet or ten feet
tall the eye accepts it as an illusion of human form and scales all its
parts accordingly. In Caro's work, scale is not just a matter of internal
aesthetic relations, but is fixed by the height of the human being and
relates to his size in a literal way. Unlike most figurative and abstract
sculpture, which is capable of enlargement and reduction-and has
often been so treated-Caro's works are fixed in rapport to the height
of the eye and the viewer's perception of the floor. Enlarged so that
their centers of gravity would be at or above rather than belmv eye
level, they would cease to be the same pieces. Indeed, they would
largely cease to be visually comprehensible.3
Rubin's chief point is that Caro's sculptures could not be enlarged
without disastrous consequences. But as he acknowledges in passing,
they are equally resistant to the possibility of reduction.
It's hard to say just when Caro himself became fully conscious of
this state of affairs, or, more important, began to feel that it imposed
limitations he was no longer prepared to tolerate. But by the summer
of 1966 he had begun actively to seek a way to make small sculptures,
which virtually from the start he understood to mean sculptures that
would tend to be placed on a table or other raised surface rather
than on the ground. The basic problem he had to solve may be
phrased quite simply: How was he to go about making sculptures
whose modest dimensions would strike the viewer as intrinsic to their
form-as an essential aspect of their identity rather than as merely a
contingent, quantitative fact about them? Put another way, by what
means was he to make small sculptures that could not be seen either
as models for or as reduced versions of larger ones? In an obvious
sense the task he faced involved overcoming the implicit logic of his
art, which as I have said tended to compel a certain largeness of size.
But in another, fundamental sense his task involved remaining faithful
to that logic, according to which a sculpture's scale-indeed all its
features, including its mode of presentation-needed to be secured
abstractly, made part of its essence, in order to convince the viewer
of their necessity (or, at the very least, of their "rightness," their lack
of arbitrariness).
Writing in 1 970 I observed that Caro took two distinct steps to
meet this imperative.' First, he incorporated handles of various sorts
in a number of his early table sculptures in an attempt to key the
"feel" of each piece to that of graspable and manipulable objects.
The crucial precedent for that device, present to Caro's mind at tbe
time, was Picasso's Glass ofAbsinthe ( 1 914) , a small painted bronze
Al\'THONY CARo's 1Anu: ScULPTURES, 1966-77 I :w5
sculpture which incorporates a real silver sugar strainer in a manner
that suggests to the viewer the possibility of taking hold of the latter
as one might under ordinary circumstances. Second and more important,
Caro ran at least one element in every piece below the level
of the tabletop on which it was to be placed (figs. 49-55). This had
the effect of precluding the transposition of the sculpture, in fact or
imagination, to the ground (as I wrote in "Caro's Abstractness")-of
making the placement of the sculpture on the tabletop a matter of
formal necessity. And it at once turned out that hy tabling or precluding
grounding the sculptures in this way Caro was able at a stroke to
establish their smallness in terms that were not a function of actual
size. That is, the distinction between tabling and grounding, determined
as it was by the sculptures themselves, made itself felt as equivalent
to a qualitative as opposed to quantitative, or abstract as opposed
to literal, difference in scale. (Not only did the abstract smallness
of Caro's table sculptures subsequently prove compatible with
surprising largeness of actual size, as in several pieces in the present
exhibition; it soon became apparent that a certain minimum size, on
the order of feet rather than of inches, was required for their tabling
to be experienced in these terms.) In these respects Caro's table
sculptures mark the emergence of a sense of scale for which there is
no precedent in earlier sculpture. And although it seems clear that
our conviction on this score relates intimately to the fact that in everyday
life smallish objects such as we would be inclined to grasp and
handle tend to be found on tables-within easy reach-rather than
on the ground, it is also true that we encounter nothing quite like
the abstract smallness of Caro's table sculptures in our ordinary experience
of the world. From this point of view, an ontological one, it
is as though Caro's abstract sculptures, large and small, grounded
and tabled, inhabit another world from the literal, contingent one
in which we live, a world which so to speak everywhere parallels our
own but whose apartness is perceived as all the more exhilarating on
that account.'
Since the summer of 1966 Caro has made more than three hundred
table sculptures. Very early it became clear to him that going
off the table was enough in it,elf to secure the abstract smallness
he sought, and that it was therefore unnecessary to continue using
handles as well. Accordingly, only two of the pieces in this exhibition,
VIII (1966; fig. 49) and XXII (1967; fig. 50), include handles among
their constituent parts. Even they, however, are oriented to the table
edge in the way I have described, and one of the most valuable op-
206 I ANTHONY CARo's TABLE ScuLPTURES, 1966-77
portunities afforded by the present exhibition is that of seeing how
a major artist has exploited a single formal idea to produce works of
extraordinary range and variety. It should also be noted that within
the past few years Caro's command of what might be called table
scale has allowed him to make a number of pieces which remain
wholly above the plane of the tabletop but whose abstract smallness
is not in doubt. CCXL (1975) is an instance of such a piece, one
which can be placed either on the table or on the ground without
detriment to its convincingness as art. In a brief introductory essay it
is of course impossible to describe even cursorily each of the eighteen
sculptures on view. But a few general remarks citing some of
those works as examples may prove useful.
First, making small sculptures has allowed Caro to shift the balance
of the attention that may legitimately be brought to bear on his
art. Specifically, it has made possible, even encouraged, a close scrutiny
of surfaces and a concentration on details that would have been
inappropriate as a response to his larger pieces. Standing before
CXVI (1973), for example, our attention lingers on the deliberately
rough and intermittent welds that bind together its parts, on the
slightly uneven or freehand character of many of its edges, and on
the rusted and burnished surfaces of the steel itself. The same characteristics
in larger works of the same moment are experienced in
somewhat different terms-more rapidly or summarily, with something
less like delectation, and only incidentally in comparison with
considerations of overall form. Another table sculpture, LIX (1968;
fig. 52), has the character of a close-up, almost of an enlargement,
by virtue of its isolation of elements-above all a bit of diamondshaped
grid-which we are not accustomed to looking at so closely
or to giving this sort of perceptual weight. An identical bit of grid in
a larger sculpture would tend to be lost; and where in certain floor
sculptures of the mid-196os-for example, Carriage (1966; fig. 40)
and The Window (1966-67)-broader expanses of grid have been
employed, their effect is altogether different from that of the grid
element in LIX.
Second, a number of the table pieces give full play to Caro's special
genius for juxtaposing-simply bringing together-a few ordinary
elements in ways that no one before him could have imagined,
thereby making sculptures of breathtaking originality. Perhaps the
most striking example in the exhibition is one of the earliest pieces
on view, XXII (fig. 50), which comprises no more than three elements:
a section of curved, broad-diameter pipe; a longer section of
A,�THONY CARo's TABLE Scur..PTURES, 1966-77 I 207
straight, narrow-diameter pipe; and a handle. As in the case of Titan,
the syntax of the piece asserts the separation of elements, in this case
the two sections of pipe, which we are made to feel are not so much
connected to as disjoined from one another by the handle that runs
between them. One consequence of this impression is that far from
feeling tempted to grasp the handle, we sense that we are being invited
to grasp a gap or hiatus, formally speaking, and draw back. In
other words, the literal function of a handle, to enable us to get a
better grip on a physical object, is in XXII eclipsed by this handle's
abstract function of enforcing a separation, and we are led to take
hold of the sculpture imaginatively instead of corporeally, as an artistic
entity and not as a material object. In fact, most of Caro's sculptures
with handles work in something like these terms. The viewer is
simultaneously invited to make use of the handle (or handles: cf.
VIII, an early masterpiece) and deflected from doing so, in accordance
with the primacy of abstractness as against literalness or objecthood
that has been basic to Caro's art from the outset.6
Third, there is a sense in which the table pieces allow Caro to give
free reign to a pictorialism which has never been entirely foreign to
his art-and what is more, to do so in a way that claims that pictorialism
for sculpture at every turn. This is evident, for example, in LXIV
(TheClock) (1968; fig. 53), in which the ultimately self-enclosing play
of curved versus straight, rounded versus flat, and long versus short
is seen-almost framed-against a "background" (the tabletop and
the side of the table) which itself undergoes a most unpictorial
ninety-degree change of direction at the table edge. A frame of sorts
is actually included in XCVII (1969-70; fig. 54), and of course its
delimiting power is dramatically contravened by the broad tongues
of steel that refuse to be confined by its borders. There is also to my
mind an analogy between the slowed perception of detail and surface
elicited by pieces like CXVI and the close, prolonged attention that
we customarily bring to bear on the surfaces of paintings. But perhaps
the most pictorial sculptures of all in the present exhibition are
those such as CXLII (1973) and CLXXXli(1974; fig. 55) which make
use of end pieces of rolled steel, whose irregularly curving, seemingly
"natural" silhouettes inevitably evoke suggestions of much larger natural
forms. Our experience of these pieces therefore involves a sense
of illusionistic scale such as we associate with easel painting; but the
pieces themselves have been firmly anchored in the realm of sculpture,
not least by the elements in both that descend below the level
of the tabletop.
208 I ANTHONY CARo's TABLE ScuLPTURES, 1966-77
Finally, on a somewhat different note, there is a suggestive parallel
between Caro's table pieces and one of the traditional genres of
painting as practiced by perhaps its greatest master. I am thinking of
the frequency with which Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin in his still
lifes drops or suspends at least one element in his compositionsoften
a cloth napkin or a bunch of grapes-below the edge of the
table or the stone shelf along the top of which are arranged the domestic
objects, fruit, dead game, and so on, that make up the ostensible
subject matter of his paintings. There is no question here of
Chardin's influence on Caro. My point is rather that, viewed in the
light of Caro's table sculptures, Chardin's tendency to use the table
edge in much the same way that Caro went on to do emerges not
simply as a strategy for insuring compositional richness and variety
but as a means of underscoring a sense of scale specific to the genre.
This is also true of Chardin's depiction of utensils with handles directed
toward the beholder and in that sense inviting his grasp, a
device that by the 1730s and 1740s had a long history. May we then
say, anachronistically, that our experience of Caro's table pieces enables
us to discern " sculptural dimension in Chardin's still lifes? In
any case, the comparison between the two bodies of work with respect
to sheer artistry is not out of place.7
NOTES
1. See William Rubin, Anthony Caro (New York, 1975), pp. 32-34.
2. Clement Greenberg, "Contemporary Sculpture: Anthony Caro," in Modernism
with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4 of The Collected E;-ssays and Criticism, ed.
John O'Brian (Chicago, 1993), p. 206.
3· Rubin, Anthony Caro, p. 75· But see n. 5 below.
4· See "Caro's Abstractness" (reprinted in this volume).
5· In this connection let me note that although I agree with the general point
Rubin makes in the passage quoted earlier, I am troubled by the language of his
claim that in Caro's work "scale . . . is fixed by the height of the human being
and relates to his size in a literal way.'' I have similar objections to his statement
immediately preceding the quoted passage that Caro's sculptures "occupy a
purely literal space" whereas "in representational sculpture-and indeed much
abstract vertical sculpture-the space established by the base and inhabited by
the figure is immediately perceived by the viewer as otherthan his own" (Anthon)'
Caro, p. 75). Rubin's use of the notion of literalness in these contexts seems to
me misconceived. Certainly the scale ofCaro's floor sculptures relates intimately
to that of the human body. But that relationship, I want to say, is built into the
sculptures; it has been made a matter of internal relations, ones which them�
selves are grounded in the nature and potentialities of the human body. As for
ANTHONY CARO' S TABLE SCULPTURES, 1 966-77 209
the claim that Caro's sculptures occupy a purely literal space, I would counter
by saying that the viewer never feels that his relation to a Caro sculpture is literal
in the sense of situational in character: it is never essentially a function of the
specific and inclusive conditions of their encounter. Much so-called Minimalist
art has been based on the deliberate exploitation of those conditions, and it is
such art that deserves to be characterized as literalist (see "Shape as Form" and
"Art and Objecthood," both reprinted in this book) .
6. Caro's use of handles to "distance" the viewer-more accurately, to compel
an abstract, not a literal reading of the piece-is only one instance of many
such in his art. For example, he has always refused to allow the viewer to enter
his sculptures, to step or stand inside them, even when, as in The Window, a piece
may be said to be "about" the experience of being enclosed. To take just one
other example, I remember seeing in Caro's studio a cluster of diamond-shaped
plates of stainless steel that had been welded together to fOrm a single compound
unit not unlike a giant brooch. They were dearly the basis for a sculpture;
butjust as clearly they were far too inert and literal as they lay, and it was hard
to imagine by what means the difficulties they presented could be overcome.
Eventually Caro added nvo long, narrow rods (with square cross sections) that
crossed one another to form a flattened X benveen the viewer and the plates.
The product of this and a few related operations is CoolDeck ( 1970-71 ) , a singularly
beautiful work.
7· The last two sentences have been recast for the present book.-M. R,
1996
P A R T T W O :
Three American Painters: Kenneth
Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella
. . . vous n'etes que le premier dans la dCcrCpitude de votre art.
-Baudelaire to Manet,18651
1
FoR TWENTY years or more almost all the best new
painting and sculpture has been done in America, notably the
work of artists such as Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile
Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Morris
Louis, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman,Jackson Pollock, Mark
Rothko, David Smith, and Clyfford Still-apart from those in the
present exhibition-to name only some of the best. It could be argued,
in fact, that the flowering of painting and, to a much lesser
degree, of sculpture that has taken place in this country since the
end of World War II is comparable to that which occurred in American
poetry in the two decades after 1912, as regards both the quality
of the work produced and what might be called its intrinsic difficulty.
The new poetry, however, found the criticism it deserved relatively
soon, in. the work of men like R. P. Blackmur,John Crowe Ransom,
Allen Tate, and others, while the critical essays of T. S. Eliot and Ezra
Pound, although not dealing with the new poetry itself, expounded
This is the catalog essay for the exhibition ThreeAmerican Painters: Kenneth Noland,jules
Olitski, Frank Stella at the FoggArt Museum, Cambridge, Mass., Apr. 2 1-May 30, 1965. The
same text served as the introduction to an exhibition of the same title but with different
paintings at the Pasadena Art Museum,july 6-Aug. 3, l965, pp. 3-48. Part 1 of the introduction
was originally published as "Modernist Painting and Formal Criticism," American
Scholar.33 (Autumn 1964): 642-48.
2 1 4 I THREE i\.,\1ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKI, STELLA
many of its fundamental assumptions. It is one of the most important
facts about the contemporary situation in the visual arts that the
fundamental character of the new art has not been adequately understood.
This is not altogether surprising. Unlike poets, painters
and sculptors rarely practice criticism; and perhaps partly as a consequence
of this, the job of writing about art has tended to pass by
default to men and women who are in no way qualified for their
profession. Moreover, the visual skills necessary to come to grips with
the new painting and sculpture are perhaps even more rare than the
verbal skills demanded by the new poetry. But if the inadequacy of
almost all contemporary art criticism is not surprising, it is undeniably
ironic, because the visual arts-painting especially-have never
been more explicitly self-critical than during the past twenty years.
The first section of this essay attempts an exposition of what, to
my mind, are some of the most important characteristics of the
new art. At the same time it tries to show why formal criticism, such
as that practiced by Roger Fry or, more to the point, by Clement
Greenberg, is better able to throw light upon the new art than any
other approach.' To do this, the development over the past hundred
years of what Greenberg calls Modernist painting must be considered,
because the work of the artists mentioned above represents, in
an important sense, the extension in this country of a kind of painting
that began in France with the work of Edouard Manet.3 Sculpture
is, to a certain extent, another story, and for reasons of space and
simplicity will not be considered here.
Roughly speaking, the history of painting from Manet through
Synthetic Cubism and Henri Matisse may be characterized in terms
of the gradual withdrawal of painting from the task of representing
reality-or of reality from the power of painting to represent it4in
favor of an increasing preoccupation with problems intrinsic to
painting itself. One may deplore the fact that critics such as Fry and
Greenberg concentrate their attention upon the formal characteristics
of the works they discuss, but the painters whose work they most
esteem on formal grounds-for example, Manet, the Impressionists,
Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Matisse,
Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky,Joan Mir6-are
among the finest painters of the past hundred years. This is not to
imply that only the formal aspect of their paintings is worthy of interest.
On the contrary, because recognizable objects, persons, and
places are often not entirely expunged from their work, criticism
which deals with the ostensible subject of a given painting can be
THREE A\1ERICAN PAINTERs: NoLAND, OuTSKI, S·rELLA I 2 1 5
highly informative; and in general, criticism concerned with aspects
of the situation in which it was made other than its formal context
can add significantly to our understanding of the artist's achievement.
But criticism of this kind has shown itself largely unable to
make convincing discriminations of value among the works of a particular
artist, and in this century it often happens that those paintings
that are most full of explicit human content can be faulted on formal
grounds-Picasso's Guernica is perhaps the most conspicuous example-in
comparison with others virtually devoid of such content.
(It must be granted that this says something about the limitations of
formal criticism as well as about its strengths. Though precisely what
it is taken to say will depend on one's feelings about Guernica, etc.)
It is worth adding that there is nothing binding in the value judgments
of formal criticism. All judgments of value begin and end in
experience, or ought to, and if someone does not feel that Manet's
Dijeunersurl'herbe, Matisse's Piano Lesson, or Pollock's AutumnRhythm
are superb paintings, no critical arguments can take the place of feeling
it. On the other hand, one's experiences of works of art are always
informed by what one has come to understand about them, and it is
the job of the formal critic both to objectify his intuitions with all
the intellectual rigor at his command and to be on his guard against
enlisting a formalist rhetoric in defense of merely private enthu­
siasrns.
It is also imperative that the formal critic bear in mind at all times
that the objectivity he aspires toward can be no more than relative.
But his detractors would do well to bear in mind themselves that his
aspirations toward objectivity are given force and relevance by the
tendency of the most important current in painting since Manet to
concern itself increasingly and with growing self-awareness with formal
problems and issues. When Hilton Kramer, in perhaps the most
intelligent and serious review of Greenberg's Art and Culture that has
appeared, complains,
In Mr. Greenberg's criticism, the impersonal process of history appears
in the guise of an inner artistic logic, which has its own immutable
laws of development and to which works of art must conform if
they are not to end up on the historical ash heap. This inner artistic
logic is purely a matter of the relations that obtain among abstract
forms arranged in a decorative pattern.5
it is not entirely clear whether he is objecting more to a style of argument
or to the modernist painting that Greenberg admires. In any
216 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSIU, STELLA
case, his characterizations of both seem mistaken at several crucial
points.
Nowhere in Art and Culture does its author appear to have forgotten
that history, works of art, and essays in art criticism are all made
by men who live at a particular moment in history and whose perceptions
and values are, therefore, no more than relative. There is, in a
sense, "an inner artistic logic" in Greenberg's view of the history of
modernist painting in France and America, but it is a "logic" that has
come about as the result of decisions made by individual artists to
engage with formal problems thrown up by the art of the recent
past-decisions and formal problems that Greenberg has done more
than any other critic to elucidate. Moreover, the element of internal
"logic" in the development of modernist painting can be perceived
only in retrospect. It is hard to think of a single passage in Art and
Culture that so much as hints at the existence of "immutable laws"
that govern its unfolding. If a critic thought such laws existed, he
would surely use them to predict what the modernist art of the future
is going to look like. But there are no predictions in Greenberg's
book, only repeated attempts to objectify his experience of painting
and sculpture in terms that derive from those media alone.
Elsewhere in his review Kramer maintains that Greenberg has employed
"a principle of historical development drawn from Marx" to
defend "a point of view which is completely hostage to the New York
School."6 My own impression is rather that, starting from his experience
of the works of Pollock, de Kooning, Newman, and others,
Greenberg has come increasingly to perceive their relation to the
modernist painting that preceded them. But there is an insight in
Kramer's reference to Marx which deserves some discussion.
Ever since the publication in r888 of Heinrich Wolff!in's first
book, Renaissance and Baroque, many critics of style have tended to
rely on a fundamentally Hegelian conception of art history, in which
styles are described as succeeding one another in accord with an internal
dynamic or dialectic, rather than in response to social, economic,
and political developments in society at Iarge 7 One of the
stock objections, in fact, to exclusively stylistic or formal criticism of
the art of the past-for example, of the High Renaissance-is that
it fails to deal with the influence of nonartistic factors upon the art
of the time and as a result is unable either to elucidate the full meaning
of individual works or to put forward a convincing account of
stylistic change. Such an objection, however, derives the real but limited
validity it possesses from the fact that painting and sculpture dur-
THREE A;-...n:RICAN PAINTl�Rs: NoLAND, OuTsKr, STELLA j 2 1 7
ing the Renaissance were deeply involved, as regards patronage and
iconography, with both church and state. But by the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, the relation of art-as well as of church
and state-to society appears to have undergone a radical change.
And although the change in question cannot be understood apart
from a consideration of economic and other nonartistic factors, by
far the most important single characteristic of the new modus vivendi
between the arts and bourgeois society gradually arrived at during
the first decades of the present century has been the tendency of
ambitious art to become more and more concerned with problems
and issues intrinsic to itself.8
All this has, of course, been recounted before. But what has not
been sufficiently recognized is that in the face of these developments
the same objections that are effective when directed against exclusively
formal criticism of High Renaissance painting lose almost all
their force and relevance. In comparison with what may be said in
precise detail about the relations between High Renaissance art and
the society in which it arose, only the most general statements-such
as this one-may be made about the relation between modernist
painting and modern society. In a sense, modernist art in this century
finished what society in the nineteenth began: the alienation of
the artist from the general preoccupations of the culture in which
he is embedded, and the prizing loose of art itself from the concerns,
aims, and ideals of that culture. With the achievements of Cubism in
the first and second decades of this century, if not before, painting
and sculpture became free to pursue concerns intrinsic to themselves.
This meant that it was now possible to conceive of stylistic
change in terms of the decisions of individual artists to engage with
particular formal problems thrown up by the art of the recent past,
and in fact the fundamentally Hegelian conception of art history at
work in the writings of Wolfflin and Greenberg, whatever its limitations
when applied to the art of the more distant past, seems particularly
well suited to the actual development of modernism in the visual
arts, painting especially-'
I am arguing, th!'n, that something like a dialectic of modernism
has in effect been at work in the visual arts for roughly a century
now; and by dialectic I mean what is essential in Hegel's conception
of historical progression, as well as that of the young Marx, as expounded
in this century by the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukacs
in his great work History and Class Consciousness10 and by Maurice
Merleau-Ponty in numerous books and essays.n More than anything
2 1 8 I THREE .AMERICAN PAINTERS: Not,AND, OursKI, Srl!:LLA
else, the dialectic in the thought of these men is an ideal of action as
radical criticism of itself founded upon as objective an understanding
of one's present situation as one is able to achieve. There is nothing
teleological about such an ideal: it does not aim toward a predetermined
end, unless its complete incarnation in action can be called
such an end. But this would amount to nothing less than the establishment
of a perpetual revolution-perpetual because bent on unceasing
radical criticism of itself. It is no wonder such an ideal has
not been realized in the realm of politics, but it seems to me that the
development of modernist painting over the past. century has led to
a situation that may be described in these terms. That is, while the
development of modernist painting has not been directed toward
any particular style of painting, at any moment-including the present
one-the work of a relatively few painters appears more advanced,
more radical in its criticism of the modernist art of the recent
past, than any other contemporary work. The chief function of the
dialectic of modernism in the visual arts has been to provide a principle
by which painting can change, transform, and renew itself; and
by which it is enabled to perpetuate virtually intact, and sometimes
even enriched, through each epoch of self-renewal, those of its traditional
values that do not pertain directly to representation. Thus
modernist painting preserves what it can of its history, not as an act
of piety toward the past but as a source of value in the present and
future.
For this reason, if for no other, it is ironic that modernist painting
is often described as nihilistic and its practitioners characterized as
irresponsible charlatans. In point of fact, the strains under which
they work are enormous, and it is not surprising that, in one way or
another, many of the finest modernist painters have cracked up under
them. This tendency toward breakdown has been intensified in
the past twenty years by the quickening that has taken place in the
rate of self-transformation within modernism itself-a quickening
that, in turn, has been the result of an increase in formal and historical
self-awareness on the part of modernist painters. The work of
such painters as Kenneth Noland,Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella not
only arises largely out of their personal interpretations of the particular
situations in which advanced painting found itself at crucial moments
in their respective developments; their work also aspires to be
judged, in retrospect, to have been necessary to the finest modernist
painting of the future. "History, according to Hegel, is the maturation
of a future in the present, not the sacrifice of the present to an
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKI, STELLA I 2 1 9
unknown future, and the rule of action according to him is not to
be effective at any price, but above all to be fecund," Merleau-Ponty
has written." In this sense the ultimate criterion of the legitimacy of
a putative advance in modernist painting is its fecundity. But if one
seeks to test this criterion against the art of the recent past, one must
bear in mind that the finest contemporary painting testifies to the
fecundity not only of the art of Barnett Newman around 1 950 but to
that of de Kooning as well, and that this is so because of, not in spite
of, the fact that Newman's art amounts to the most radical criticism
of de Kooning's one can imagine.
One consequence of all this is that modernist painting has gone a
long way toward effacing the traditional distinction between problems
in morals and problems in art formulated by Stuart Hampshire
in his essay "Logic and Appreciation" as follows: "A work of art is
gratuitous. It is not essentially the answer to a question or the solution
to a presented problem." Whereas "action in response to any moral
problem is not gratuitous; it is imposed; that there should be some
response is absolutely necessary. One cannot pass by a situation; one
must pass through it in one way or another.""
Hampshire's distinction holds good, I think, for all painting except
the kind I have been trying to define. Once a painter who accepts
the basic premises of modernism becomes aware of a particular
problem thrown up by the art of the recent past, his action is no
longer gratuitous but imposed. He may be mistaken in his assessment
of the situation. But as long as he believes such a problem exists and
is important, he is confronted by a situation he cannot pass by, but
must, in some way or other, pass through, and the result of that
forced passage will be his art. This means that while modernist painting
has increasingly divorced itself from the concerns of the society
in which it precariously flourishes, the actual dialectic by which it is
made has taken on more and more of the denseness, structure, and
complexity of moral experience-that is, of life itself, but life lived
as few are inclined to live it: in a state of continuous intellectual and
moral alertness.
The formal critic of modernist painting, then, is also a moral
critic: not because all art is at bottom a criticism of life, but because
modernist painting is at least a criticism of itself. And because this is
so, criticism that shares the basic premises of modernist painting
finds itself compelled to play a role in its development closely akin
to, and potentially only somewhat less important than, that of new
paintings themselves. Not only will such a critic expound the signifi-
220 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
cance of new painting that strikes him as being genuinely exploratory,
and distinguish between this and work that does not attempt
to challenge or to go beyond the achievements of prior modernists,
but in discussing the work of painters he admires he will have occasion
to point out what seem to him flaws in putative solutions to particular
formal problems; and, more rarely, he may even presume to
call the attention of modernist painters to formal issues that, in his
opinion, demand to be grappled with. Finally, just as a modernist
painter may be mistaken in his assessment of a particular situation,
or having grasped the situation may fail to cope with it successfully,
the formal critic who shares the basic premises ofmodernist painting
runs the risk of being wrong. In fact it is inconceivable that he will
notbe wrong a fair amount ofthe time. But being wrong is preferable
to being irrelevant; and the recognition that everyone involved with
contemporary art must work without certainty can only be beneficial
in its effects. For example, it points up the difficulty of trying to decide
whose opinions on the subject among the many put forward
deserve to be taken seriously-a decision about as hard to make as
valuejudgments in front of specific paintings.
This may seem an intolerably arrogant conception of the critic's
job of work, and perhaps it is. But it has the virtue of forcing the
critic who takes it up to run the same risks as the artist whose work
he criticizes. In view of this last point it is not surprising that so few
critics have chosen to assume its burdens.
2
IN RECENT years it has become increasingly clear that
the great flowering ofAmerican painting that took place during the
1 940s and 1 950s was very far from being stylistically uniform. It is,
however, important to bear in mind that most of our still severely
limited ability to make meaningful stylistic discriminations within this
flowering derives from our knowledge of the development of modernist
painting during the past ten or twelve years: since the early
work of Helen Frankenthaler perhaps, or the first stain paintings
executed by Morris Louis in 1 954· In fact, it would be more accurate
to say that we are able to make meaningful stylistic discriminations
among the oeuvres of the painters generally included under the
blanket misnomer Abstract Expressionism only where subsequent
modernist painting has directed our attention to various difterences
among them. Our familiarity with the work ofLouis, Noland, Olitski,
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0UTSKI, STELLA l 2 2 l
and Stella has made it imperative that we try to characterize significant
differences among that of Pollock, de Kooning, and Newman,
while the fact that subsequent painting has not founded itself on a
stylistic distinction between, say, de Kooning and Kline has meant
that we are unlikely to feel that such a distinction is of major importance.
In this sense the development of modernist painting determines,
to a degree that we must be on our guard never to underestimate,
our stylistic analyses of the art of the recent past; and we must
be careful not to take our analyses of the latter, however self-evident
they may seem, as possessing more than a relative objectivity without
precedent in its precariousness.
This situation is part of the complex burden of modernism in the
visual arts, both for the painters themselves and for their critics and
historians. It is not merely that, in Meyer Schapiro's words, "the development
of new viewpoints and problems in [contemporary art]
directs the attention of students to unnoticed features of older
styles."14 Such a formulation presupposes prior agreement as to the
basic character of the older style, and it is precisely this agreement
which is lacking in the case of the so-called Abstract Expressionists.
The relation of Louis, Noland, Olitski, and Stella to the painting of
the recent past is not simply one of directing our attention to unnoticed
features of it, but of enabling us to make those basic formal
discriminations that underlie the concept of style in the first place.15
Probably the most important such discriminations concern the respective
achievements ofJackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
Broadly speaking, modernist painting since Morris Louis has been
antagonistic to de Kooning's work and to the kind of painting produced
by followers ofhis, often men and women ofconsiderable ability,
all through the 1 950s. At the same time recent modernist painting
has revealed profound affinities with Pollock's work, especially
his allover drip paintings executed between 1 947 and 1 950, and a
number of pictures made in 1951 by staining thinned black paint
into unsized canvas. This is the case despite what Pollock and de
Koonirig have in common on the level oftechnique; for example, the
descriptive epithet Painterly Abstraction, which Clement Greenberg
proposes ought to replace Abstract Expressionism, concerns itself
chiefly with technique and so includes them both.16 But the differences
between Pollock and de Kooning lie deeper than the similarities
between their respective ways of handling paint, as Greenberg
himselfwas the first to make clear. In the remainder of this section I
intend to summarize very briefly (and perhaps, for that reason, un-
2 2 2 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKI, STELLA
fairly) what seems to me the core of de Kooning's achievement; I
shall then consider in detail aspects of Pollock's work between 1 947
and 195 1 ; finally I shall look briefly at the respective enterprises of
Louis and Newman, in the hope of providing the beginnings of a
meaningful context-of paintings as well as of ideas-in which the
pictures in the present exhibition may be seen.
De Kooning's great achievement was to combine a handling of
paint that looked back to Rubens and the Venetians and a passion
for modeling that owed much to the plastic tradition stemming from
Michelangelo with the complex spatial syntax of Late Cubism, based
on the ambiguous location of planes for the most part parallel to the
picture surface. The basic pictorial structure of de Kooning's paintings
is built up out ofcontrasts ofvalue among different planes, often
consisting of no more than a single broad, charged, gestural brushstroke.
This structure of value contrasts both articulates the surface
of the canvas and implies thejuxtaposition offragmented but powerfully
contoured forms in a dense, tortured, unmistakably shallow
· space. The force ofde Kooning's best work is generated by the struggle
between full-blown painterliness, heroic modeling, and abortive
contour drawing on the one hand and the restricted, Cubistically ambiguous
space in which these are constrained on the other. It ought
not to be regarded as a denigration of de Kooning's achievement
that the different elements brought together in his art derive selfevidently
from the great plastic and painterly traditions of Western
painting since the High Renaissance, and that only their amalgamation
with Late Cubist syntax is essentially new. But in light of this,
and in light also of the widespread exploitation and debasement of .
de Kooning's technique by countless followers during the 1 950s, it
is not surprising that the most ambitious modernist painting of the
past decade has opposed the stylistic premises implicit in his work,
and that in so doing it has turned elsewhere, most of all to Pollock
and Newman, for its inspiration.
The almost complete failure of contemporary art criticism to
come to grips with Pollock's accomplishment is therefore all the
more striking. This failure has been due to several factors. First and
least important, the tendency of art writers such as Harold Rosenberg
and Thomas Hess to regard Pollock as a kind ofnatural existentialist
has served to obscure the simple truth that Pollock was, on the
contrary, a painter whose work is always inhabited by a subtle,
questing formal intelligence of the highest order, and whose concern
in his art was not with any fashionable metaphysics of despair but
THREE AMlmrcAN PAINTERs: NoLAND, OuTsKr, STELLA I 223
with making the best paintings ofwhich he was capable -" Second, in
the face ofPollock's allover drip paintings of 1 947-so-the finest of
which are, I believe, his masterpieces-the vocabulary of the most
distinguished formal criticism ofthe past decades, deriving as it does
chiefly from the study of Cubism and Late Cubist painting in Europe
and America, begins to reach the furthest limits of its usefulness. Despite
Pollock's intense involvement with Late Cubism through 1946,
the formal issues at stake in his most successful paintings of the next
four years cannot be characterized in Cubist terms;" and in general
there is no more fundamental task confronting the formal critic today
than the evolution and refinement ofa post-Cubist critical vocabulary
adequate to the job of defining the formal preoccupations of
modernist painting since Pollock. What makes this task especially difficult
is the fact that the formal issues with which Pollock and subsequent
modernists such as Louis, Noland, Olitski, and (perhaps to a
lesser degree) Stella have chosen to engage are ofa phenomenological
subtlety, complexity, and richness without equal since Manet. The
following discussion of Pollock's work will concentrate on a nexus of
formal issues which, in my opinion, are central both to Pollock's art
after 1 947 and to some of the most salient characteristics of subsequent
modernist painting. These issues concern the ability of line,
in modernist painting of major ambition, to be read as bounding a
shape or figure, whether abstract or representational. The discussion
will begin with an attempt to describe the general nature ofPollock's
work between 1 947 and 1 950 and will move on to consider several
specific paintings which illustrate the virtually self-contradictory
character of Pollock's formal ambitions at this time.
The Museum of Modern Art's Number I, 1948 (1948; fig. r), typical
of Pollock's best work during these years, was made by spilling
and dripping skeins of paint onto a length of unsized canvas
stretched on the floor which the artist worked on from all sides. The
skeins of paint appear on the canvas as a continuous, allover line
which loops and snarls time and again upon itself until almost the
entire surface ofthe canvas is covered by it. It is a kind ofspace-filling
curve of immense complexity, responsive to the slightest impulse of
the painter and responsive as well, one almost feels, to one's own act
of looking. There are other elements in the painting besides Pollock's
line: for example, there are hovering spots of bright color,
which provide momentary points of focus for one's attention, and
in this and other paintings made during these years there are even
handprints put there by the painter in the course of his work. But all
224 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
these are woven together, chiefly by Pollock's line, to create an opulent
and, in spite of their diversity, homogeneous visual fabric which
both invites the act of seeing on the part of the spectator and yet
gives the eye nowhere to rest once and for all. That is, Pollock's allover
drip paintings refuse to bring one's attention to a focus anywhere.
This is important. Because it was only in tbe context of a style
entirely homogeneous, allover in nature, and resistant to ultimate
focus that the different elements in the painting-most important,
line and color-could be made, for the first time in Western painting,
to function as wholly autonomous pictorial elements.
At the same time, such a style could be achieved only if line itself
could somehow be prized loose from the task offiguration. Thus, an
examination ofNumber I, I948, or ofany ofPollock's finest paintings
oftheseyears, reveals that his allover line does not give rise to positive
and negative areas: we are not made to feel that one part of the canvas
demands to be read as figure, whether abstract or representational,
against another part of the canvas read as ground. There is
no inside or outside to Pollock's line or to the space through which
it moves. And this is tantamount to claiming that line, in Pollock's
allover drip paintings of 1 947-50, has been freed at last from thejob
of describing contours and bounding shapes. It has been purged of
its figurative character. Line, in these paintings, is entirely transparent
both to the nonillusionistic space it inhabits but does not structure
and to the pulses of something like pure, disembodied energy
that seem to move without resistance through them. Pollock's line
bounds and delimits nothing-except, in a sense, eyesight. We tend
not to look beyond it, and the raw canvas is wholly surrogate to the
paint itself. We tend to read the raw canvas as if it were not there. In
these works Pollock has managed to free line not only from its function
of representing objects in the world, but also from its task of
describing or bounding shapes or figures, whether abstract or representational,
on the surface ofthe canvas. In a painting such as Number
I, 1948 there is only a pictorial field so homogeneous, overall, and
devoid both of recognizable objects and ofabstract shapes that I want
to call it optical, to distinguish it from the structured, essentially tactile
pictorial field of previous modernist painting from Cubism to de
Kooning and even Hans Hofmann. Pollock's field is optical because
it addresses itself to eyesight alone. The materiality of his pigment is
rendered sheerly visual, and the result is a new kind of space-if it
still makes sense to call it space-in which conditions of seeing·pre-
THRI\E Ai\1ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKI, STELLA I 225
vail rather than one in which objects exist, flat shapes arejuxtaposed,
or physical events transpire.
To sum up: in Pollock's masterpieces of 1 947-50, line is used in
such a way as to defy being read in terms of figuration. I hope it is
clear that the opposition "figurative" versus "nonfigurative," in the
sense of the present argument, stands for a more fundamental issue
than the opposition between the terms "representational" and "nonrepresentational."
It is possible for a painting or drawing to be both
nonrepresentational-what is usually termed "abstract"-and figurative
at the same time. In fact until Pollock that was the most that
so-called abstract painting had ever been. This is true, for instance,
of de Kooning, as well as of all those Abstract Expressionists whose
work relies on Late Cubist principles of internal coherence. It is true
also of Kandinsky, both early and late. Fot example, in Kandinsky's
Painting with White Form (1913; fig. 65) , a heroic attempt has been
made to allow line to work as freely as color. But one senses throughout
the canvas how the line has been abstracted from various natural
objects, and to the degree that one feels this, the line either possesses
a residual but irreducible quality as of contour, so that one reads it
as having an inside and an outside-as the last trace of a natural
object that has been dissolved away by the forces at work in the pictorial
field-or else it possesses the quality ofan object in its own right:
not merely as line, but as a kind of thing, like a branch or bolt of
lightning, seen in a more or less illusionistic space. In his later
work-Composition 8 ( 1923; fig. 66) is a case in point19-Kandinsky
tried to overcome his dependence upon natural objects by restricting
himself to geometrical shapes that could be made with compass and
ruler, and he chose to emphasize or heighten the quality which his
line possessed from the start, of being another kind of thing in the
world. In paintings such as this, Kandinsky's line seems like segments
ofwire, either bent or straight, which are somehow poised in a space
that is no less illusionistic than in the earlier paintings. Both canvases
by Kandinsky could be called nonrepresentational, but both are
clearly figurative, ifwe compare them with Pollock's allover paintings
of 1 947-50.
Pollock, however, seems not to have been content with the nonfigurative
style of painting he had achieved, and after 1 950 returned
to figuration, at first in a series of immensely fecund black-and-white
stain paintings which I will discuss later in connection with Morris
Louis, and afterwards in works which tended to revert to something
226 I THREE AlWERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
close to traditional drawing. These latter paintings probably mark
Pollock's decline as a major artist. But it is important to observe that
Pollock's involvement with figuration did not cease entirely between
1 947 and 1 950.
For example, the painting White Cockatoo ( 1 948; fig. 2) was made
by dripping black paint in a series of slow-moving loops and angular
turns which come nowhere near covering the brown canvas; but instead
of trying to create the kind of homogeneous visual fabric of
paintings like Number I, 1948, Pollock chose to fill in some of the
areas accidentally circumscribed when his black line intersected itself,
with gouts of red, yellow, green, blue, and white oil paint, either
knifed onto the canvas or squeezed in short bursts directly from the
tube. It is significant that Pollock was careful not to fill in only the
most conspicuous of these areas. Some of the most positive contours
are leftalmost completely devoid ofpainted fill-in, whereas areas that
seem to lie between more positive contours have been filled in. The
result is that the painting leaves one with the strong impression that
the black line, instead of retaining the nonfigurative character it
possesses in the optical paintings made at the same time, works to
describe shapes and evoke forms seen as if against a colored background.
By filling in certain areas isolated by his black line as it
looped and angled back upon itself, Pollock restored to the latter
some measure of line's traditional role in bounding and describing
shapes and figures. And the fact that in White Cockatoo he filled in
both predominantly convex and concave (or positive and negative)
areas does not work to counteract the figurative character ofthe line.
Rather, it creates a rough equivalent to a Synthetic Cubist ambiguity
of figure versus ground, but without the rigor and strict consequentiality
of Synthetic Cubism itself. White Cockatoo, then, represents an
awkward compromise among three stylistic modes: first, Synthetic or
Late Cubism; second, what might be called naive abstractillusionism
or naive abstract figuration, in which an abstract shape or figure is
seen against a background situated an indeterminate distance behind
it; and third, the allover, optical, nonfigurative abstraction of
Pollock's best contemporary work. White Cockatoo is not a successful
painting. But it is an important one, because it suggests that as early
as 1 948, when Pollock was realizing masterpiece after masterpiece in
his optical style, he could not keep from chafing at the high price he
had to pay for this achievement: the price of denying figuration, of
refusing to allow his line to describe shapes, whether abstract or representational.
It is significant, however, that White Cockatoo does not
THRk:E At\:tERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELI..A I 227
try to repudiate the techniques ofpaintings such as Nurnber r, I948.
Instead it suggests thatPollock had begun to cast about for some way
to do what seems, on the face of it, impossible: to achieve figuration
within the stylistic context of his allover, optical style.
There are other paintings, such as The Wooden Horse ( 1 948; fig. 3)
and Surnrnertirne (1 948), which reinforce this interpretation. In all of
these Pollock seems to have been preoccupied with the problem of
how to achieve figuration within the context of a style that entailed
the denial of figuration, or to put it another way, with the problem
of how to restore to line some measure of its traditional figurative
capability, within the context of a style that entailed the renunciation
of that capability. Only if we grasp, as vividly and even as painfully as
we can, the contradiction implicit in what seems to have been Pollock's
formal ambition in these works-to combine figuration with
his allover, optical style-will we be able to gauge the full measure of
his achievement in two other paintings of these years.
The first of these is Cut-Out (ca. 1 948-50; fig. 4). Either before he
came to paint it or, more probably, in the course of painting it, Pollock
arrived, almost certainly through intuition rather than through
rational analysis, at the realization that the only formally coherent
way to combine his allover, optical style with figuration was somehow
to make the painting itselfproclaim the contradiction implicit in that
ambition. This sounds more paradoxical than in fact it is. It has been
observed how Pollock's allover style entailed the negation of figuration,
and how figuration in turn entailed the negation of that style.
In Cut-Out these negations become the fundamental means by which
the painting is made. That is, in Cut-Out Pollock achieved figuration
by negating part of the painted field-by taking something away
from it-rather than by adding something as in VVhite Cockatoo, The
Wooden H��rse, and Surnrnertirne. Here Pollock actually cut away the
figure or shape, which happens to be roughly humanoid in outline,
from a piece of canvas on which an allover painted field had previously
been dripped, and then backed that piece with canvas
board.20 The result is that the figure is not seen as an object in the
world, or shape on a flat surface-in fact it is not seen as the presence
of anything-but rather as the absence, over a particular area,
of the visual field. This enhances, I think, the force ofthe word "optical"
with which I have tried to characterize Pollock's allover style.
Fig·uration is achieved in terms of eyesight alone, and not in terms
that imply even the possibility of verification by touch. The figure is
something we don't see-it is, literally, where we don't see-rather
228 ! THREE fu\1ERICAN PAINTims: NoLAND, OuTSKI, STELLA
than something, a shape or object in the world, we do see. More than
anything, it is like a kind ofblind spot, or defect in our visual apparatus;
it is like part of our retina that is destroyed or for some reason is
not registering the visual field over a certain area. This impression is
strengthened if we ask ourselves where, in this painting, the cutout
area seems to lie in relation to the painted field. For me, at any rate,
it does not lie behind the field, despite the fact that where the field
is cut away we see the mostly blank canvas board behind it; and it
does not seem to lie on the surface or in some tense, closejuxtaposition
with it, as in the shallow space of Synthetic Cubism. In the end,
the relation between the field and the figure is simply not spatial at
all: it is purely and wholly optical, so that the figure created by removing
part of the painted field and backing it with canvas board seems
to lie somewhere within our own eyes, as strange as this may sound.21
In Cut-Out Pollock succeeds, by means of the most radical surgery
imaginable, in achieving fignration within the stylistic context of
an opticality almost as unremitting as that which characterizes paintings
such as Number 1, 1948. But there are two important respects in
which Cut-Out remains inconsistent with Pollock's allover, optical
style. The first is its tendency to focus our attention on the figure
created where Pollock cut away the painted canvas. This figure is emphasized
as no single visual incident or cluster of incidents is ever
emphasized in those allover pictures in which the painted fields are
left intact. And the second has to do with the proportion of the total
canvas occupied by the cutout figure. In Cut-Out it is large enough to
deprive the visual field of the sense of expansiveness, of sheer visual
density, that we find in a painting such as Number 1, 1948. Both these
qualifications disappear in the face of the last painting I want to consider
in detail, Out ofthe Web (1 949; pl. 1 ) .
Again in Out of the Web Pollock achieved figuration by removing
part of a painted field, which in this case had been dripped onto the
surface of a piece ofbrown Masonite. This time, however, the figures
that result do not occupy the center of the field; they are not placed
so as to dominate it and to focus the spectator's attention upon themselves.
Instead, they seem to swim across the field and even to lose
themselves against it. In Out of the Web, as in Cut-Out, figuration is
perceived as the absence, over a particular area, ofthe visual field. It
is, again, like a kind of hlind spot within our eyes. But unlike the
figure in Cut-Out the sequence offigures in Out ofthe Web is almost as
hard to see, to bring one's attention to bear on, as a sequenc'e of
actual hlind spots would be. They seem on the verge of dancing off
TriRE�: AMERICAN PAINTERs: NotAND, OuTsKr, STr�:XLA I 229
the visual field or of dissolving into it and into each other as we try
to look at them.
Out ofthe Web is one of the finest paintings Pollock ever made. In
it, for the first and only time, he succeeded completely in restoring
to line its traditional capability to bound and describe figures within
the context of his allover, optical style-a style I have argued was
largely founded on the liberation of line from the task of figuration.
It is, however, not surprising, if one is at all familiar with Pollock's
career, that he did not repeat his remarkable solution throughout a
whole series of works; among the important American painters who
have emerged since 1 940 Pollock stands almost alone in his refusal
to repeat himself. And having solved the problem of how to combine
figurative line-the line of traditional drawing-with opticality in
Cut-Out and Out ofthe Web, Pollock abandoned the solution: because
it could not be improved upon, or developed in any essential respect,
and because to repeat the solution would have been to debase it to
the status of a mere device. In this sense Pollock's solution was both
definitive and self-defeating, and from 1 95 1 on his work shows the
strong tendency already mentioned to revert to traditional drawing
at the expense of opticality. But in a series of remarkable paintings
made by staining thinned-down black paint into unsized canvas in
1 95 1 , Pollock seems to have been on the verge of an entirely new
and different kind of painting, combining figuration with opticality
in a new pictorial synthesis of virtually limitless potential, and it is
part of the sadness of his last years that he appears not to have
grasped the significance of what are perhaps the most fecund paintings
he ever made.
The man who, more than any other, explored and developed the
new synthesis of figuration and opticality sketched out in Pollock's
stain paintings of 195 1 wasMorris Louis. Roughly, the essence ofthat
synthesis resides in the fact that thinned pigment soaked and stained
into unsized canvas can be made to assume configurations which appear
not to be bounded by anything like a drawn outline (see fig. 6) .
The perimeter or outer limit ofsuch a stain image may be precise or
blurred or haloed with a slight bleed of thinner, as the painter desires,
but it conveys the strong impression of not having been circumscribed
by a cursive, draftsmanlike gesture. It resists being read as
drawn. This is important because as soon as the periphery, or part of
the periphery, of one of Louis's stain images strikes us as drawn-as
soon as we are made to feel that the painter's wrist, and not the relatively
impersonal process of staining itself, determined the configu-
230 I THREE fu\:!ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, ST�:LLA
ration-the image tends to come detached from its ground and to
be perceived in tactile terms. That is, it tends to be seen as possessing
a contour that invites one's touch, and to be perceived spatially according
to what was referred to earlier as naive abstract illusionism.
At the same time, the stain technique identifies the painted image
with its woven canvas ground, almost as if the image were thrown
onto the latter from a slide projector. The actual weave of the canvas
shows through everywhere. Discussing Pollock's allover, optical
paintings of 1 947-50 such as Number r, 1948, I observed that one
tends to read the raw canvas in these works as if itwere not there. In
the best of the stain paintings of 1951 as well as in virtually all of
Louis's work after 1 954 this is not the case; instead, the stain image
and its raw canvas ground are indissoluble one from the other. In
fact, the stain image may be regarded as nothing more than the
gronnd itself under different conditions of seeing, and vice versa.
Like Pollock's allover canvases of 1 947-50, Louis's stain paintings
are optical in that they address themselves to eyesight alone. But the
basis oftheir opticality is a visual homogeneityeven more radical and
integral than one finds in the best allover Pollocks.
It is, I think, worth remarking that the modernist synthesis offiguration
and opticality achieved in Louis's best work amounts to the
transcendence of the traditional dualism between line and coloran
ambition that has haunted painting since Eugene Delacroix. In
Louis's hands, the stain technique results in paintings that are both
optical and figurative, at the expense of traditional drawing. Line, or
at leastthe line of traditional drawing, not only is no longer essential
to figuration; it must be avoided at all costs if the visual context of
opticality is to be preserved. But the disappearance in the modernist ·
synthesis of traditional drawing means that color itself-liquid pigment
actually stained into the raw canvas to make the image-becomes
the fundamental instrument of figuration, to a degree never
remotely approached by the great colorists of the past. Louis's use of
staining not only synthesizes figuration and opticality; it also, equally
importantly, identifies figuration with color. Color, then, plays a role
of unprecedented importance in Louis's work precisely because it,
and not line, is the means by which figuration is achieved. But the
initial significance of the stain technique was to synthesize figuration
and opticality, not to provide a more intense experience of colorthough
this came about almost at once, in Louis's stain paintings as
well as in those of Noland and Olitski; and it is impossible to grasp
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OUTSKI, STELLA I Q 3 l
the full significance ofstaining without reference to the formal issues
at stake in Pollock's work between 1 947 and 1 950.
Finally, it has been observed that the stain technique entails relatively
depersonalized execution.22 Because the liquid pigment is for
the most part either poured onto the horizontal canvas, rubbed into
it with sponges, or rolled on with commercial rollers, the technical
virtuosity and bravura touch associated with painterliness from the
Venetians to de Kooning is renounced from the start. It has also been
recognized that this aspect ofstaining relates to a reaction that began
within Abstract Expressionism itself, in the work of men like Still and
Newman, against both the hard-won conventions of painterliness
thatwere beginning to emerge during the late 1 940s and the conventions
of response that were emerging with them.'" But it has not been
sufficiently remarked that staining, as in the work of Louis and Olitski,
can achieve the illusion of painterly effects and even of different
textures within a context ofunremitting opticality. Put another way,
the radical opticality of their best work enables them to achieve an
illusion of painterliness or of textural variation far exceeding the degree
to which painters like Still and Newman could (or can) allow
themselves the real thing.
Newman's paintings, executed by conventional means, are particularly
interesting in this connection, being even more antipainterly
in technique and stripped down in format than Still's. For example,
Cathedra ( 195 1 ; fig. 7)-a painting characteristic of Newman's best
work-is large, about twice as wide as it is high, and consists of a
deep blue field divided by two thin vertical bands of different widths,
one white and the other bright blue. The field itself has a bare minimum
of internal variation-variation of saturation rather than of
value; painterly effects are avoided within it, though not within the
bands, as much as possible. Now painterliness and value contrast are
conventional means by which painting since the Renaissance has embodied
the experience of tactility and the relation of objects to one
another in tactile space. So that by founding his art on the virtually
complete avoidance of them, Newman serves notice of his determination
not to address the sense of touch if he can help it. Clement
Greenberg has written that "the ultimate effect sought is one of an
almost literal openness thatembraces and absorbs color in the act of
being created by it."24 Moreover, the colored field "has . . . to be uniform
in hue, with only the subtlest variations of value if any at all,
and spread over an absolutely, not merely relatively, large area. Size
232 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LJTSKI, STELLA
guarantees the purity as well as the intensity needed to suggest indeterminate
space: more blue simply being bluer than less blue."25
This "indeterminate space," or "color-space," as Greenberg calls it
elsewhere in the same article, addresses itself to eyesight alone; and
Newman's best paintings, like Louis's, may for this reason be considered
optical. But unlike Louis's, Newman's paintings eschew figuration,
and concentrate instead on rendering spatiality itself sheerly
optical. This is a hard notion to grasp, and its difficulty at first seems
to increase in the light ofone's actual experience ofNewman's work.
For example, as we gaze at the blue field in Cathedra we feel it begin
to give way, to yield-palpably, as it were-to the probings of the eye;
we have the sensation of entering a medium with a certain specific
density, a medium that offers an almost measurable degree of resistance
to eyesight itself; in short, we are driven to characterize our
visual experience by means of tactile metaphors. But if this is the
case, what sense can it make to speak of spatiality itself having been
rendered sheerly optical in Newman's most successful paintings?
The difficulty of conceiving of a space to which eyesight gives access
but which somehow denies even the possibility ofliteral, physical
penetration of it by the beholder increases when one reflects that
individual senses such as sight and touch do not open onto separate
spaces, hermetically isolated from one another, but that, on the contrary,
they open onto the same space. If that were not the case, the
things with which eyesight brings us into contact would exist only for
the sense ofvision and not for any of the others. But if that were so,
they would lack the fullness of being, the complex, ponderable reality
which objects in the world self-evidently possess as we encounter
them in experience. What, then, can it mean to speak of a space
addressed to eyesight alone?26
The answer to both these questions is perhaps surprisingly simple.
Newman's best paintings address themselves to eyesight alone in that
they comprise an illusionofspatiality itself rendered sheerly opticalthat
is, of space experienced in sheerly visual terms-much as the
paintings of the Old Masters comprise the illusion of space rendered
in a largely tactile pictorial vocabulary. Newman's paintings are objects
in the world, accessible to touch as well as to sight. But the illusion
they seek to create is of a space accessible to and addressed to
eyesight alone, ofan experience ofspatiality that is purely and exclusively
visual. But if opticality is the illusion aimed at, and sometimes
achieved with remarkable force, tactility remains an unavoidableand,
if handled with caution, extremely useful-metaphor for char-
THREE �VrERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OUTSKI, STELLA I 233
acterizing the illusive opticality of space in Newman's best work. Because
the space of ordinary experience is a composite of the spaces
opened onto by the different senses-much as two fields of vision
are combined into one in binocular vision-our verbal vocabulary
for dealing with spatiality in general is loaded with tactile connotations,
which cannot be got rid of by linguistic fiat, but which must
not be allowed to determine one's experience of the paintings in
question. In a painting such as Cathedra the eye explores the colored
field not by entering a traditional illusionistic space full of conventional
clues to the tactility ofobjects or their relations to one another
in tactile space, but by perceiving nuances, fluctuations, and properties
of color alone, which together create the different but closely
related illusion of a space addressed exclusively to eyesight-an illusion
which tactile metaphors may help to describe.
Finally, the thin vertical "zips" in Newman's paintings have several
functions which ought to be considered before moving on to Noland,
Olitski, and Stella." First, they play at least a double role with
regard to color alone: by helping to define the color of the painted
field seen as a whole, and by inflecting those areas of it in their immediate
neighborhoods with subtle overtones arising out of the simultaneous
contrast, both of hue and value, between themselves and the
field. Second, their often unabashed painterliness serves to make the
field itself appear even less painterly by comparison than in fact it is.
Moreover, it implies that the "zips" may be grasped in tactile terms,
as if they mark the farthest limit within the painting of tactile space.
But the spatial relation of the "zips" to the colored field is anything
but precisely definable, and the beholder is faced with a complex
situation in which his responsiveness to tactility and tactile space has
been aroused but not allowed to come to a definite conclusion, as
the illusive optical space that seems to lie beyond the vertical bands
also, in some way or other, effectively subsumes them. Third, the
"zips" provide a crucial element of pictorial structure, by means of
what I want to term their "deductive" relation to the framing edge.
That is, the bands amount to echoes within the painting of the two
side framing edges; they relate primarily to those edges, and in so
doing make explicit acknowledgment of the shape of the canvas.
They demand to be seen as deriving from the framing edge-as having
been "deduced" from it-though their exact placement within
the colored field has been determined by the painter, with regard to
coloristic effect rather than to relations that could be termed geometrical.
Newman's pioneering exploration of "deductive" pictorial
234 1 THREE �\1ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
structure represents an important new development in the evolution
of one of the chief preoccupations of modernist painting from Manet
through Synthetic Cubism and Matisse: namely, the increasingly
explicit recognition of the physical characteristics of the picture support.
In general, this has tended to mean the assertion of flatnessessentially
a tactile characteristic-though the shape of the picture
support has also been taken into account, for example, by the Cubist
practice of truing and fairing forms to a rough congruence with
it. But as the phenomenological center of modernist painting has
shifted from tactility in the direction ofan increasing appeal to vision
alone, the flatness of the picture support-though never contradicted
by an illusion of tactile depth-has tended to be dissolved in
the illusion of optical space I have tried to characterize; while the
shape and even the precise dimensions of the picture support, because
such tactile connotations as they possess do not compete with
opticality, have come to play a role of great importance in the determination
of modernist pictorial structure since Newman.
It would be hard at this point to decide whether Newman's best
paintings of around 1 950 have proved more fecund in the demonstration
they provide of how an embracing illusion of optical space
may be achieved by means of broad expanses of color, or in the emphasis
they place on a new kind of pictorial structure based on the
shape and size, rather than on the flatness, of the picture support.
In any case, Newman standsalongside Pollock as one ofthe two most
seminal figures of Abstract Expressionism, without whom much of
the finest modernist painting of the past ten or twelve years would
have been inconceivable, while from 1 954 until .his death in 1 962
Morris Louis created large numbers of stain paintings equal to their
best work in sensuous beauty and depth offeeling. These three men,
more than any others of their generation, have provided their modernist
successors with a pictorial legacy of immense, though difficult,
richness-a legacywhose influence may be felt throughout the present
exhibition.
3
IT IS hard to know exactly how to begin discussing
the work of Kenneth Noland. (See figs. 1 3-15, pls. 7-9.) There can
be little doubt, for example, that Olitski's paintings demand to be
seen and discussed first of all in terms ofcolor, and Stella's in terms
of structure, but in Noland's paintings neither color nor structure
THREE AMERICAN PAil\'TERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA I 235
seems to come first, to subsume or generate the other. This does not
necessarily mean that Noland's paintings are harder to look at than
theirs, and it implies nothing about the relative value of the three
painters' achievements-although it does say something about the
kind of problem Noland presents to the formal critic. At any rate, I
want to begin with the observation that the structural aspect of Noland's
paintings, especially since the first chevrons of 1 962, may be
discussed with a kind of precision and logical rigor that his use of
color resists. This is, ofcourse, partly explicable by the generalization
that color tends to be much harder than structure to characterize
precisely. But the danger in this explanation is that it might easily
lead one to overlook the particular source of the difference between
the kinds of statement that can be made about structure and color
in Noland's work: namely, the fact that structure, rather than color,
bears the brunt of Noland's modernist ambitions. That is, despite
the importance of color in his work-which led Greenberg, in his
fundamental essay on Louis and Noland, to describe him as a "color
painter"28-it is chiefly through transformations of pictorial structure
based on an act of perpetual radical criticism both of his own
art and what he takes to be the art of his time most relevant to his
own situation that Noland's commitment to rnodernism expresses
itself most powerfully.
This means that the development of pictorial structure in Noland's
work is far from arbitrary, and that the structure of a given
painting embodies something far more urgent than a desire to
achieve striking design. In fact, as regards both individual paintings
and the development of his work as a whole, structure represents
the crux of Noland's response to the crisis of meaning that brought
rnodernism into existence in the first place-a crisis which, in its
present form, undergoes continual change as painters take up what
seem to them the most important formal problems posed by the finest
modernist painting ofthe recent past, and in grappling with them
raise others or open up a range of formal possibilities which may be
rigorously explored. Noland has seen that crisis change in the course
of the past seven years largely as a result of paintings made by him
during this time. But whereas many modernist painters before him
had found the experience unnerving, and responded to it by ceasing
to develop, Noland has been emboldened by it to exert renewed and
even stepped-up criticism against his own best prior achievements.
Perhaps more than any painter in the history of modernist painting,
Noland has been both driven and vitalized by the awareness that the
236 I THREE fu"\1ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
essence ofmodernism resides in its refusal to regard a particular forrnal
"solution/' no matter how successful or inspired, as definitive, in
the sense of allowing the painter to repeat it with minor variations
indefinitely. This is tantamount to the realization that if the dialectic
of modernism were to come to a halt anywhere once and for all, it
would thereby betray itself; that the act of radical self-criticism on
which it is founded and by which it perpetuates itself can have no
end. Noland demands of his work that it constantly challenge not
some abstract notion of general taste-it is hard to imagine that
someone unfamiliar with modernist painting since the war would
feel that his chevrons are more advanced or harder to take than his
concentric circles, or vice versa-but his own sensibility and the sensibilities
of those others who have been most deeply educated, influenced,
and moved by his own prior work; and he makes this demand
ofhis art and ofhis public not because he or they are infatuated with
formal problems for their own sake, but because it is one of the
prime, if tacit, convictions of modernist painting-a conviction matured
out of painful experience, individual and collective-that only
an art of constant formal self-criticism can bear or embody or communicate
more than trivial meaning.
It is important to realize, however, that to argue that the development
of pictorial structure in Noland's work is not arbitrary but
based on a perpetual act of radical self-criticism does not imply that
the self-criticism necessarily precedes a given painting, or that the
painting is nothing more than the illustration of a particular formal
idea. The self�criticism may in fact precede the painting-that is to
say, the painter may sketch or otherwise determine a particular painting
or series ofpaintings, and be able to put into words roughly what
formal issues the projected work will deal with-but it very well may
not. The precise constitution ofthe act ofmaking the paintings, even
if such could be determined, is not what matters. What matters is
that the paintings themselves manifest a high degree of formal self�
awareness, and this may come about as the result of decisions the
painter himself insists on calling intuitive. (Noland in conversation
has spoken of the need for the artist today to have "smart instincts.")
Moreover, there is nothing certain or final about the particular formal
development thatNoland's paintings, or any other paintings for
that matter, appear to follow. At another time, from another point of
view, to eyes educated in a differentworld by different painting, radically
different formal issues-or, conceivahly, none at all-might appear
to be at stake in his work. So that even if it were known precisely
THRI·�t: A."\1ERICAN PAINTERS: NoLA;'>{D, OuTSKI, ST�LLA j 237
whatNoland himself felt were the most important formal issues engaged
with in his work, this would amount to nothing more than an
extremely interesting historical fact, to be kept in mind and used, if
necessary, as a kind of counterweight to how the paintings actually
look.
How Noland's paintings actually look will be the subject of the
remainder of this section. More exactly, I want to put forward an
account ofwhat seems to me the development of pictorial structure
in Noland's work since the late 1950s, in an attempt to make clear
in what sense he is a formal innovator ofgreat resourcefulness as well
as in the hope that by giving an account of that development I will
in effect be pointing at an aspect of his work roughly analogous to
that ofsyntax in a verbal language: an aspect, that is, which has to do
with how the colored elements inNoland's paintings arejuxtaposed
to one another with the result that they make sense, and which, if
grasped, may increase the likelihood that the spectator will come to
experience them as the powerful emotional statements I believe they
are. The analogyat work here, between modernist painting and a verbal
language, is drastically inexact and deeply problematic. But it is
also potentially highlyinstructive, even (or perhaps especially) where
it breaks down, and I hope to see it pursued further elsewhere."
Noland's first wholly individual paintings date from 1958-59.
They are executed in a stain technique deriving ultimately from Pollock's
black stain paintings of 1951 by way of Helen Frankenthaler;
but an even more important source-not so much of pictorial ideas
as of reinforcement for his own growing convictions-seems to have
been the then largely unappreciated work of another Washington
painter, Morris Louis.Noland had known and admired Louis for several
years, and in fact had brought him toNew York in 1953 to meet
Clement Greenberg. On that visit both painters saw and were deeply
impressed by a painting ofFrankenthaler's, Mountains andSea (1952;
fig. 8), and on their return to Washington they determined to explore
possible alternatives to the Abstract Expressionist mode of
painting then dominant inNew York.30 For Louis, already in his forties,
the experience seems to have been decisive. By 1954 he had
succeeded in adapting Frankenthaler's stain technique-which in
her hands has always retained a strong element of traditional drawing-to
his oven unique vision, founded in part on the eschewal of
drawing, and had begun making paintings of astonishing beauty by
staining acrylic paint into (for the most part) unsized canvas. This
became Noland's technique as well, and in general it seems to have
238 I THREE A"\1ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKl, STELLA
been the case that Louis's achievement gave important impetus to
Noland's own breakthrough in the late 1950s. But it cannot be stated
too emphatically that the exchange of impetus and inspiration that
went on between the two men up until Louis's death in 1962 at the
height of his powers appears to have been mutual.
Noland's paintings of the late 1950s differed from Louis's in at
least two fundamental respects apart from color. First, Noland
tended to leave much more ofthe raw canvas untouched by the stain
image than Louis, who preferred at that point to spread thin layers
of pigment across most of the picture field; second, Noland favored
a precisely centered image-either armature-like or, more usually,
1.
.
·.·
of concentric rings�that avoided making contact with the framing
edge, while Louis worked chiefly with vertically oriented, veil-like images
that often ran off the canvas along at least one of the framing
edges (generally the bottom) . The first of those differences meant
!that from the start of his career as a modernist painterNoland was
�even more radical than Louis in his rejection of the packed, tactile
�space of de Kooning's kind of Abstract Expressionism. Aspiring at
, fonce toward a virtually elliptical economy of means and effect, No-
1.·.land made the raw canvas in his paintings function as an essential
part of the overall image-something that does not quite occur in
Louis' work until the splendid unfurleds of 1960, which may have
come about partly in response toNoland's prior achievements in that
vein. In other words, the stain technique not only helped to ensure
the opticality ofNoland's paint image, by identifYing the thinned pigment
with its woven canvas ground, as in Louis' work; it also allowed
him to make the raw canvas itselfwork as optical space with unprecedented
intensity. In a sense, the raw canvas in Noland's concentricring
paintings of the 1950s and early 196os fulfills much the same
function as the colored fields inNewman's large pictures of around
1950; more generally, Noland in those paintings seems to have managed
to charge the entire surface of the canvas with a kind of perceptual
intensity which until that time only painters whose images
occupy most or all of the picture field-Pollock, Still, Newman,
Louis-had been able to achieve.
The significance of the second difference betweenNoland's and
Louis's paintings through about 1960-the fact thatNoland's stain
images are centered in square canvases and avoid making contact
with the framing edge, while Louis's vertical images appear fairly casual
about such contact-is perhaps not immediately apparent. It
may seem at first that Louis, because ofhis willingness to run images
Plate 1. Jackson Pollock, Out ofthe Web: Number 7, 1949, 1949. Oil and enamel on
Masonite, cutout, 48 x g6 inches. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.© 1997 The Pollock�Krasner
Foundation I Artists RightsSociety (ARS), NewYork. Photo: Smatsgalerie, Stuttgart.
Plate 2. Morris Louis, 1Crranean, 1958. Acrylic resin on canvas, 90 x 146 inches.
Collection ofKenneth Noland, North Bennington, Mass. Estate ofthe artist.
Plate 3· Morris Louis, Saraband, 1959. Acrylic resin on canvas, 101Ys x 149 inches.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NewYork. Estate ofthe artist. Photo: by David Heald
©The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, NewYork, FN 1685.
Plate 4· Morris Louis, Alj)/taPi, 1g6o. Acrylic resin on canvas, 102Y2 x 177 inches.
The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, NewYork. Estate ofthe artist. Photo: The Metropolitan
Museum ofArt, NewYork, Arthur .Hoppock Hearn Fund.
Plate 5· Morris
Louis, Number 2-76,
l 962. Acrylic resin
on canvas, 84!1:! x
27% inches. David
Mirvish Gallery,
Toronto. Estate of
the artist. Photo:
David Mirvish
Gallery, Toronto.
Plate 6. Morri� Louis, Hot Half, 1962. Acrylic resin on canvas, 63 x 63 inches.
E.state ofthe artist.
Plate 7· Kenneth Noland, '!1wt, L9!)8-s9· Acrylic resin on canvas, 81% x 81.Y1 iB<;:hcs.
Co!!euion of Me and Mrs. David Min··ish, Toronto.© 1997 Kenneth Noland I Licensed by
VAGA, NewYork, N.Y
Plate 8. Kenneth Noland, GoldenDay, 1964. Acrylic resin on canvas, 72 x 72 inches.
Private collection.© 1997 Kenneth Noland I Licensed byVAGA, New York, NY
Plate g. Kenneth Noland, lJlh Stage, 1964. Acrylic resin on canvas, 93!12 x 8oY2 inches.
Virgini<.l l'duseum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis.© 1997
Kenneth :\:ol<nld I Licensed by VAGA, !\ewYork, N.Y. Photo: RonJennings,© 1997
Virginia :'viusC\IHl of Fine Arts.
Plate ICJ. jules Oiitski,
Hidden Combin(ltion,
xg65. Water-miscible
acrylic on canvas,
85 x 21 inches. Private
collection.© l997
jules Olitski I Licensed
byVAGA, New York, N.Y.
Plate 11. jules Olitski,
Prince Patutshy's
Command, 1966.
VVater-miscible acrylic
on canvas, 70\lz x 164\lz
inches. Private collection.©
1997Jules
Olitski I Licensed by
VAGA, New York, N.Y.
Plate 12. Jules Olitski, End Run, 1967. Water�misdble acrylic on canvas, 8l x 48 inches.
Collection ofthe artist.© l997Jules Olitski I Lkensed byVAGA, New York, N.Y.
Plate 13. Anthony C1ro, lvfiddoy, 1960. Painted steel, 7' iY.t x 3i%" x 12' 1 %".
The iviuseum of l'vlodern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur \Viesenbcrger Fund.
Courtesy AnnelyJuda Fine Arts. Photo: Shigeo Amal.
Plate 14. Anthony Caro, Prairie, 1967. Steel painted matte yellow, 38 x 229 x 126 inches.
Collection of Lois and Georges de Menil, on extended loan to the National Gallery ofArt,
Washington, D.C. Courtesy Annely Juda Fine Arts. Photo: john Goldblatt.
Plate 15. Larry Poons, Railroad Horse, 1971. Acrylic resin on canvas, 94\c! x 303 inches.
Museum of Fme Arts, Boston. Charles H. Hayden Fund.© 1997 Larry Poons I Licensed
by VACA, New York, N.Y. Photo: Museum ofFine Arts, Boston.
Plate 16. Larry Poons, L)� ! 971. Acrylic resin on canvas, 95 x 66l!z inches.
Private collection.© 1997 Larry Poons I Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Photo:
Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York.
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKI, STELLA I 239
off the canvas, was more concerned than Noland to derive or "deduce"
pictorial structure from the literalcharacter ofthe picture support.
But I think this would he mistaken. Until rg6o, when he made
the unfurleds, Louis's attitude towards the framing edge seems to
have been much the same as Pollock's and nowhere near as advanced
as Newman's: that is, he appears to have made an image and then
framed it so as to leave, if possible, a roughly symmetrical border of
raw canvas around three sides ofit. The shape and size of the picture
support were not factors that influenced the character of the paint
image, apart from giving it its generally vertical orientation.Noland,
on the other hand, broke through to his mature style only when, in
his words, he "discovered the center" of the canvas31-when he at
lastcarne tolocate the central point ofconcentric or radiating motifs
at the precise center ofthe canvas-thereby relating his stain images
deductively to the shape, though not yet to the specific dimensions,
ofthe picture support. In the light ofthat "discovery"Noland's avoidance
of the framing edge in those early paintings may be seen to
signify not indifference to deductive structure, but acute awareness
that, given his own drive toward a deductive mode ofpictorial organization-a
drive that was, and still is, at bottom expressive in intent,
having to do with the search for a set of formal constraints in which
Noland himself could believe and under which his feelings could
find release-making contact with the framing edge would inevitably
have raised more problems than he was prepared to cope with at that
point. (Or perhaps it was fhat fhe developing logic of his feelings did
not yet impel him to make contact with the framing edge, whatever
the problems.) This interpretation is reinforced byNoland's progressive
elimination during those years of whatever was not absolutely
essential to the lucid deductive structure towards which he seems
to have aspired. Thus his eschewal of the last vestiges of traditional
drawing and painterliness, such as the wavering armature motifs
themselves and the ragged surges of color which sometimes appear
as ifcast forth by the rotation ofthe outermost concentric ring in his
early pictures; and thus also his increasingly explicit reliance on radical
symmetry-often achieved by a few narrow concentric rings of
pale color, spaced rather widely apart, whose center is also the center
of the square canvas-for the determination of pictorial structure.
ButNoland has always been as much concerned with freedom as
with formal constraint, and has constantly scrutinized his own work
for formal limitations that no longer correspond to his coloristic ambitions
or seem to him true to his feelings. At the same time, he has
!, ,
II
240 \ THREJ.': AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
constantly sought to evolve new formal solutions to the same basic
problem of deductive structure, chiefly in order to achieve relations
among colors ofa kind precluded by the constraints implicit in previous
solutions, but also in response to contemporary developments in
modernist painting other than his own. And having explored with
considerable ingenuity and great breadth of effect the concentricring
format described above, Noland seems to have come to feel that
the rings could be replaced by ellipsoid motifs, their long axis parallel
to the top and bottom of the picture support, as long as their
location at the exact center of the square canvas was maintained.
Shortly thereafter Noland appears to have decided that the ellipsoid
motif could be moved somewhat above or below the center of the
canvas without loosening the picture's structural coherence-the
elongation of the motifalong its own horizontal axis balancing, as it
were, its spatial displacement along the central vertical axis of the
painting, as well as making explicit the tension, resulting from Noland's
aspirations toward deductive structure, between the shape of
the motif and its placement in the picture field.
This double departure from radical symmetry and concentricity
had the important result of allowing Noland to juxtapose motif
against colored field much more effectively than within a concentricring
format. Such ajudgment is necessarily subjective and may not
agree with others' experience of the works in question. But, to my .
eye, whereas the concentric rings function as both color and structure,
the stained field (when it appears in those paintings) plays at
most a coloristic role. Far from reinforcing the structural logic by
which the rings appear to have been generated in the first place, the
colored field threatens to subvertthis logic by merely and equivocally
filling in the space between the outermost ring and the circumference
of the canvas. In the paintings built around ellipsoid motifs,
however, the colored field plays an active, structural role by helping
the motif remain poised either at or above the center of the canvas
and by seeming to bring to bear on it intense coloristic pressure that
might account for its deformation. In such paintings Noland succeeded
for the first time in bringing the main motif and the colored
field into atrulyactive, mutually reciprocal relation in regardto both
color and structure-with the consequence that it is sometimes hard,
ifnot actually impossible, to determine where in an individual painting
coloristic effects leave offand structure begins. In itself, the integral
relation among all the elements in those paintings as regards
both color and structure represents an enormous achievement; and
THREE A'1ERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OuTSKI, STELLA I 241
the pictures in question include some of the strongest in Noland's
oeuvre. But the fact remains that the structurally extremely important
role played in them by color throws into question the primacy
of deductive structure, which depends on nothing besides the
literal character of the picture support.
Hence the particular significance of the first chevron paintings of
1962, in which for the first time Noland abandoned a centered or
just above- or below-center motiffor an attempt to organize the entire
surface of the canvas into zones of color related to the shape of
the picture support and to one another by an explicitly deductive
structural logic. It is perhaps legitimate to conjecture that Noland
may have been encouraged in this by the diagonal inclination of the
banked rivulets of color at the sides of Louis's "unfurled" paintings
of the previous year, as well as by the strong focus thrown upon the
framing edge as a prime object of modernist concern by the stripe
paintings of Frank Stella, who since 1958 had been exploring with
great rigor a range of formal problems associated with the literal
character of the picture support. But it is important to bear in mind
that Noland had been concerned from the start to relate his stain
images deductively to the shape, if not to the specific dimensions, of
the picture support, by means of exact centering and then of lateral
symmetry; and the chevron paintings may be seen as an entirely consistent,
but nonetheless daring, exploration of problems raised and
possibilities suggested by his own previous work. In fact, despite the
seemingly radical difference in structure between the first chevrons
and the earlier paintings based on concentric-ring and ellipsoid motifs,
the relation of image to framing edge is essentially the same in
them all: namely, one ofsymmetry. So that in the first chevron paintings
the chevron motifs are made to relate to the framing edge
chiefly by being aligned with avertical axis running through the center
ofthe painting, as in the ellipsoid motifpictures described above.
And probably the largest single difference between the chevron
paintings and Noland's previous work is that the most important
point within the painting is no longer the precise center of the canvas,
or a point somewhat above or below it, but the midpoint of the
bottom framing edge. It is to this point that Noland moors the bottom
tip of one of his chevrons, and it is from this chevron that the
others appear to have been generated.
To my eye, the strongest of the first chevron paintings are those
in which the boundary between two of the chevrons runs into the
top two corners of the canvas; while in others, in which the upper
242 I THREE Alv1:ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKl, STELLA
corners are not intersected by a chevron boundary, the relation between
the chevrons and the picture support comes to seem perhaps
not quite rigorous enough-as ifsymmetry alone were not sufficient
to provide the explicit structural logic which the paintings themselves,
viewed in the context of Noland's development, seem to demand.
Whether or not Noland himself felt that the cornered chevrons
were more successful than the rest, he appears to have moved
quickly to the conclusion that the two upper corners of the canvas
were, for his purposes, far more important structurally than the midpoint
of the bottom framing edge-for the simple but compelling
reason thatwhereas the latterrelates the chevrons to the picture support
only by dint of symmetry-that is, at one remove-the corners
are nothing short of firsthand, immediate, physical features of the
picture supportitself. In anycase, this or something very like it seems
to me the formal meaning of Noland's decision to hang or suspend
the chevrons from the upper corners of the canvas, instead of anchoring
them to the midpoint of the bottom framing edge. It is
worth adding that, although the decision may appear almost trivial,
in actual significance it is one of the most profound in Noland's
entire development. To begin with, it allowed him to prize the bottommost
chevron loose from the bottom framing edge, because
there was no longer any structural reason to pin it there. This meant
that a considerable expanse ofraw canvas could now be left between
the wedge ofchevrons and the bottom ofthe picture, with the result
that Noland was able to combine the remarkable openness, optical
space, and perceptual intensity of his concentric-ring paintings with
a much more explicitly deductive relation of image to framing edge
than he had ever before achieved. Moreover, the new relation between
the two enabled Noland to dispense, at last, with lateral symmetry,
in the realization that as long as the chevrons were suspended
from the upper corners, the points of the chevrons could be moved
literally anywhere within the picture-not only up from the bottom
but offthe central vertical axis as well. Finally, the points ofthe chevrons
could be made to fall on an axis which is no longer perpendicular
to the bottom framing edge, thereby introducing an even more
radical element ofdynamic asymmetry into his work.
I hope it is clear in what sense all this amounted to a formal advance
of the first importance within modernist painting, to an exemplary
act of radical criticism of his own best prior work, and to the
attainment by Noland of a wholly new dimension of formal and expressive
freedom for his art. What is much harder to understand is
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OuTSKI, STELLA I 243
that within a relatively (though characteristically) short time Noland's
hard-won freedom seems to have begun to pall on him, which
is perhaps roughly equivalent to saying that he began to doubt
whether this particular formal solution could continue to bear or
embody or communicate the kind and degree of emotion that all
painting, modernist or otherwise, must bear or embody or communicate
if he was to care about it. More specifically, his dissatisfaction
with the asymmetrical chevron format may have made itselffelt as a
desire to bring about relations among colors which that particular
format seemed to him to preclude. It is, however, important to be
clear about one point. Noland's refusal to remain content within the
asymmetrical chevron format, or any other, does not in itselfindicate
that he came to believe the solution in question was imperfect or no
more than partial. On the contrary, it seems much more likely that
his continual dissatisfaction is rooted in the fact that, within modernist
painting, a particular format may amount to a wholly adequate,
lucid, and repeatable solution to a particular formal problem. Thus,
Noland's subsequent criticism of his asymmetrical chevrons has not
been directed at supposed weaknesses in that format, but against its
strengths. And the greatest danger facing a modernist painter such
as Noland is not that he may rest content with a partial or imperfect
solution to a formal problem, but that his solution of it may be both
so total and so perfect that he will not know how to go on. This is,
I think, one of the most significant differences between modernist
painting and the painting of the premodernist past; the sense in
which even Raphael's Sistine Madonna may be said to provide the solution
to a problem is vague and metaphorical in comparison with
the force that attaches to the same words when applied to Noland's
asymmetrical chevrons. And this difference has to do with what are
recognized as problems in the first place. In any case, it is as if modernist
painting is for Noland a language whose rules of syntax must
constantly be transformed by its users-who are also its makers-in
orderfor it to remain capable ofmaking significant sense; as ifotherwise
it becomes what its detractors often blindly and unjustly accuse
it of being, mere decoration. And after having executed no more
than a few large-scale asymmetrical chevron paintings, Noland gave
up the solution and began to make the remarkable diamond-shaped
paintings, three of which may be seen in the present exhibition.
I want to break off my discussion of Noland's work at this point,
not in the beliefthat I have dealt adequately with it, but in the hope
that perhaps enough of a formal context has been sketched for the
244 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OuTSKI, STELLA
spectator to be able to come to grips on his own with the recent, and
to my mind superb, diamond-shaped paintings just mentionedpaintings
which provide a radical critique of the asymmetrical chevrons
discussed above at the same time that they manifestly emerge
from them. I am of course aware that my decision not to try to cope
with Noland's color means that the account I have given ofhis development
is seriously incomplete. On the other hand, there is the obvious
danger that, presented with work as coloristically exciting as Noland's,
the spectator might fail to give the structure of his paintings
the close scrutiny it deserves. What I have tried to do in this section
is to follow Noland's development in regard to modernist pictorial
structure alone, in the conviction that ifa rigorous conceptual grasp
ofthe transformations it has undergone could somehow be incorporated
as avital factor into the act ofperception itself, one would be a
longwaytoward experiencing Noland's paintings in all their passion,
eloquence, and fragile power.
4
NOLAND IS a tense, critical, almost hurting presence
in his work.Jules Olitski comes across as ebullient, openhanded, inclined
to be more concerned with the expression of an overmastering
feeling than with the chastening of that expression in the name
of formal rigor. (See figs. 18-20.) Where Noland's use of the stain
medium is puritan in its self-discipline, Olitski's love for the stuff of
painting often manifests itself as a kind of handling that approaches
self-indulgence. Where Noland's work tends to keep the same basic
appearance over a period oftime, howeverprofoundly its formal and
expressive content may have changed during that period, Olitski's
paintings tend to alter their appearance from series to series if not
from painting to painting. But the governing sensibility remains the
same throughout, and the different vocabularies are means to the
single end of affording that sensibility the pleasure of seeing its own
expansive embodiment in works of great sensuous beauty. Noland
cuts, often into his own prior achievements; Olitski pushes hard but
does not actually cut on several fronts at once. Those fronts are not
concerned with formal problems so much as with what might be
called issues ofsensibility. That is, Olitski is chiefly intent on proving
how much of his own sensibility can be made valid in terms of modernist
painting. Both Noland and Olitski are modernist painters. But
whereas Noland appears to be driven by the conviction that only an
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LJTSKI, STELLA I 245
art of constant formal self-criticism, and hence of constant formal
advance, is capable of embodying the kind of expressive content he
cares most about, Olitski seems rather to be concerned with finding
out how much ofwhat he does on the strength ofwhat he feels can
come out looking acceptable, not to say ravishing, to eyes which, like
his own, have been educated largely by the best modernist painting
of the past twenty years. This suggests that Olitski is involved with
taste in away that Noland, among others, is not: and by taste I mean
both "advanced" taste, the expectations ofthose who admire and support
modernist painting, and also-something which from the point
of view of "advanced" taste would be regarded as "bad" taste-the
exploitation ofeffects that, for better or worse, are no longer permissible.
More exactly, Olitski continually defies the expectations ofthe
most "advanced" segment ofthe publicjust as those expectations are
on the verge of hardening into something as clear-cut, limited, and
arbitrary as taste; and he does this by forcing one to recognize that
entire ranges ofeffects not provided for by one's expectations are in
fact valid in terms of a more generously felt and imaginatively inspired
conception of modernism than one's own. Olitski's involvement
is with taste conceived of as a potentially creative force, not as
the arbiter offashion. And nothing prompts the accusation of tastelessness
faster than taste used creatively.
Olitski's involvementwith taste has to do, both as cause and effect,
with the preeminent role played in his paintings by color. It is, I
think, no exaggeration to say that he is already one ofthe finest and
most resourceful colorists of the century; and in view of the identification
offiguration with color made possible by the stain technique,
it is not surprising to find that his paintings arejust as radically inventive
in regard to structure as they are in regard to color-though the
distinction between the two in his work is never clear-cut, and the use
of the term "structure" in connection with his paintings will require
further elucidation.
In general Olitski's aims in a given picture appear to be directed
toward bringing about a particular situation, recognized when
achieved, involving colors; indeed, what one may provisionally call
the structure of the finished painting is one aspect only of a more
comprehensive, essentially coloristic whole. This is why Olitski's
paintingsnever rely on the deductive mode ofpictorial organization
I have tried to characterize in the work ofNewman and Noland and
which I will return to in discussing Stella. Although Olitski's finest
paintings manifest a high degree of awareness of the framing edge,
246 I THREE A!viERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OuTslu, STELLA
this awareness functions as nothing more (and nothing less) than
the most important noncoloristic factor taken into account in the
making of a comprehensive color situation, whose character it cannot
determine but can at most influence-sometimes by provoking
informed defiance of the framing edge itself.
The particular color situations vary from picture to picture and
are the result of intuitive decisions made by the painter in the act of
painting. But two basic ambitious appear to lie behind most of the
color situations in Olitski's paintings since 1963, and perhaps in his
earlierwork as well. First, he seems to want to confront us with individual
colors more intensely than we have ever been confronted by
them before-to make us encounter, say, a blue lozenge in one of
his paintings as if it were a kind of color sample in comparison with
which our previous experiences of blue will seem to have been no
more than pale anticipations. Or to put it another way, the kind of
apprehension ofindividual colors elicited time and again by Olitski's
paintings is not unlike the shock of recognition we might feel suddenly
meeting in the flesh someone previously seen only in news
photographs or in the movies. Neither ofthese similes exactlyfits the
case. But they have in common the notion of confronting the beholder
with something more real-in that sense more intense-than
his previous experience had given him; and together they suggest
the possibility that Olitski's paintings may relate to those of the past
in an unexpected way. Despite the fact that Olitski's paintings are
nonrepresentational, the actual experience ofindividual colors elicited
by his recent work seems to me similar in kind to my response
to those paintings of the past that appear most intent on representing
reality as objectively as possible. By this I mean to suggest not
that there is a special sense in which Olitski's paintings are, after all,
representational, but rather that one's intense perception ofindividual
colors in them may be related to one's experience of the depiction
of reality in Jan Van Eyck's paintings, for example, orJan Ver­
meer's.
The second ambition at work in Olitski's canvases seems to be to
prove that any colors-literally, any colors-can be combined to produce
major art. Toward this end he often employs combinations of
colors which at first sight appear vulgar, overpretty, or garishly sentimental;
and when a painting of his fails, it most often does so by
failing to overcome the banality of its constituents. But it is far more
usual for Olitski to succeed in constructing color situations of great
originality, subtlety, and force, thereby both discovering and exploit-
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA I 247
ing expressive resources which would not otherwise have been suspected
to exist.
These two ambitions-to make the beholder see individual colors
more intensely than ever before, and to prove thatliterallyany colors
can be combined successfully-are not unrelated to one another.
Any colors whatever can he combined if the beholder can he made
to see them one at a time, sequentially, in time, and not all at once
as in an instantaneously perceived format or design. And seeing the
individual colors sequentially may compel the beholder into a more
intense confrontation with each of them in turn than could be
achieved either by relating the same colors to one another in a design
that, as it were, had no temporal dimension, or by isolating each
of the individual color elements on its own otherwise empty canvas.
It would be fruitless to speculate as to whether the coloristic ambitions
in question are realizable only if duration is made to play a
crucial role in the experiencing of the work of art; what matters is
that most ofOlitski's paintings executed since 1963 that I have seen
virtually demand to be experienced in what may perhaps be called
visual time. Again, the nearest equivalent among the paintings ofthe
past to this aspect of Olitski's work is provided by Van Eyck and the
Northern Renaissance painters in general. Putting aside for a moment
their obvious differences, what the paintings ofVan Eyck and
Olitski have in common is a mode ofpictorial organization that does
not present the beholder with an instantaneously apprehensible
unity. Andjust as the miscellaneous objects represented in a painting
like Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding Portrait participate in an experiential
unity different in kind from the instantaneous compositions of
the Italian Renaissance, so the colors in individual paintings by Olitski
hang together, hut not in a chromatic and compositional ensemble
that can be instantaneously perceived and enjoyed.
Unlike the Arnolfini WeddingPortrait, however, Olitski's paintings
are often characterized by a directional flow or impulse from one
portion of the canvas to another and in this respect may be compared
to music, the time art par excellence. But the analogy is inexact.
For example, although it takes time to experience any painting by
Olitski in the present exhibition, precisely how long it takes is no
more measurable than the precise depth to which one's gaze penetrates
a particular illusion ofoptical space in paintings by Newman,
Noland, or Olitski himself. Moreover, while music cannot be experienced
instantaneously-a musical performance must take timeOlitski's
paintings can be seen instantaneously, though not, I would
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248 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0UTSKI, STELLA
argue, seen correctly, notreally seen. There is nothing one can point
to in proof of the contention that a given painting demands to he
experienced sequentially or directionally, though one will almost certainly
point or gesture in an attempt to trace the action of the color
forces at work in it. In the end, however, here as elsewhere, the critic
can do nothing more than appeal to the spectator's experience of
the painting in question, after having suggested both what to look
for and how to look for it. Where Olitski's work is unique, and presents
unique frustrations to the critic, is in the ratio of "how" to
"what" descriptions which the paintings themselves seem to demand.
It is as ifhis paintings make themselves under one's gaze; or again,
as if the beholder makes the paintings by perceiving them; or perhaps
most precisely, as if the act ofperception itselfmakes the paintings
by entering, as it were empathically, into the alien, impersonal,
yet incomprehensibly moving life of the colors within them. More
than in the case ofany painting I can think of, Olitksi's recent work
identifies the act of seeing with the making of the painting. But this
identification is not between the act of seeing and the making ofthe
painting as it actually occurred. We do not know and are not made
to feel how Olitski applied the paint to the canvas, and there are
no tactile or kinesthetic clues by which we are invited to participate
vicariously in the act of painting itself. Rather, the identification
aimed at by Olitski's recent work is between perception and the
purelyvisual character of the thing perceived. And the purely visual
character ofthe thing perceived-namely, the kind ofcolor situation
that, since 1963, has constituted a representative Olitski-is such
that it cannot be experienced all at once, but requires the participation
of the spectator in the act of seeing over a certain period of
time. Finally, because the structure ofOlitski's recent paintings is one
aspect of such a color situation, it too, can be seen only in time; in
fact, it tends to be the last aspect ofa given painting to emerge when
the latter is seen as I believe it should be. Even then it will defy characterization
in noncoloristic and nondurational terms.
Like Pollock, Newman, Louis, and Noland, Olitski addresses himself
to eyesight alone, but color is for him a more essential instrument
of opticality than for any of the others, with the exception of
Newman-and there are vast differences between Newman's use of
color and his own. Like Louis and Noland, Olitski makes magnificent
use ofstaining. But whereas they achieve opticality above all by their
control ofthe stain medium and onlysecondarily byrelations among
colors, the opticality ofOlitski's work is grounded chiefly in his han-
THREE &\1ERICAN PAJNTURS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA ! 249
dling of color; the staining only helps. Moreover, the fact that in his
paintings opticality is brought about chiefly by color means that Olitski
is able to relax the discipline by which Louis and Noland, in different
but related ways, hold the stain medium in check. The opticality
of a given painting by Louis, at least prior to the unfurleds of 1g6o,
depends on whether or not the limits ofthe stain image resist being
read as drawn; and this depends in turn on whether or not the character
of the stain image as a whole appears to have been determined
by the physical forces at work in the process of staining. There is,
however, no question but that the geometrically precise color elements
in Noland's paintings have been determined by the painter
and to this extentmaybe regarded as drawn. But their determination
is always felt to have been made in accordance with the relatively
impersonal considerations ofdeductive structure, with the result that
the limits of the stain image in Noland's work, as in Louis's, bear the
stamp of necessity: they appear to have been compelled or dictated,
rather than to have been described by a cursive, freehand gesture.
The stain image appears to have come into existence as a whole, and
to have assumed its ultimate configuration in response to impersonal
forces-in Louis's work the forces of capillary action, in Noland's
the demands of deductive structure. And since deductive structure
concerns the relation ofthe image to the framing edge, the configurations
assumed by the stain images in Noland's paintings tend to be
regular shapes of one kind or another: circles, ellipses, chevrons,
right angles. Finally, while the opticality of Louis's work up to the
unfurleds depends largely upon the resistance of the stain image to
being read in tactile terms, Noland's exploitation ofblank canvas has
consistently enabled him to create an illusion of optical space positive
and compelling enough to subsume the bare minimum ofdrawing
one finds in his work.
In contrast to Louis and Noland, Olitski has always shown strong
reluctance to suppress traditional drawing. Paintings made as recently
as 1962 often consist of colored shapes whose contours seem
to have been drawn with the wrist, organized around a core of color
or blank canvas. In many of these pictures two or even three such
contours are played offagainst one another at close quarters, leaving
thin, pinched, undulating ribbons ofrawcanvas between them. Considered
apart from color, as in a black-and-white photograph, the
paintings in question bear unmistakable tactile connotations; and it
is by way ofbeing a tour deforce that the actual works manage, much
of the time, to drown these connotations in the sheer vibrance with
250 I THREE Ar-.1:ERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OuTSKI, STELLA
which the colors within them interact. But the compulsion under
which color labors in these paintings-to oppose and, in effect, to
dissolve the drawn contours in the beholder's instantaneous perception
of the work-often leads to a choice of extremely high-keyed,
even aggressive combinations ofcolors. While this may not have militated
against the success ofindividual pictures, it does seem to have
limited the range of coloristic effects Olitski was able to achieve.
Starting around 1963, Olitski began softening the contours ofhis
colored shapes, thereby allowing his color to become much lower
keyed, much subtler, much more concerned with internal inflection
and nuance than ever before. It is this liberation of color from the
task of opposing drawing that seems to have enabled Olitski to
achieve a mode of pictorial organization that requires the cooperation
of the spectator over a period of time. Having achieved that
mode ofpictorial organization, however, Olitski seems to have found
that a surprising amount ofcontour drawing could be retained without
having to key his colors high to oppose it: when the paintings are
seen in what I have called visual time, the individual color elements
appear to assume their contours, more or less gradually, before one's
eyes, in response to the forces at work in the total color situation to
which the elements belong. In the end, the shapes ofindividual color
elements in Olitski's paintings do not appear to have come about in
response to the forces of capillary action in the stain process (as in
Louis's work), or to the demands of deductive structure (as in Noland's)
. Instead, each painting is an attempt to achieve a unique and
highly precarious equilibrium of shapes and colors, related to that
achieved in traditional painting by the resolution oftactile forces and
the juxtaposition of tactile shapes in an instantaneously perceived
compositional whole. But the forces at work in Olitski's paintings are
color forces and can be perceived only in visual time, and the paintings
themselves are addressed to eyesight alone. So that while Louis
was forced to eschew traditional drawing completely throughout
most of his career as an artist of the first rank, and while Noland's
paintings contain no more than the bare minimum of drawing their
deductive structures demand, Olitski is able to enjoy as much drawing
as his handling ofcolor and his noninstantaneous mode ofpictorial
organization allow. In fact, although he seems to have broken
through to the latter at least partly as a result of relinquishing tbe
hard-bitten contour drawing that marks his paintings up through
1962, Olitski has managed since then to get back more than he gave
up in the first place. In recent paintings he has even been able to
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LJTSKI, STELLA I 251
work with drawn line in its own right, by deploying colored line in
situations that emphasize its coloristic function rather than its linear
character.
Finally, it is worth reiterating that both Noland and Olitski are primarily
painters of feeling, and that what I take to be their preeminence
among their contemporaries chiefly resides not in the formal
intelligence of their work, which is of the very highest order, but in
thedepth and sweep offeelingwhich this intelligence makes possible
(though feeling and intelligence play dissimilar roles in their respective
oeuvres) . Instead ofcalling the usefulness ofthe conceptofmodernism
into question, this should indicate that it is notso constricting
in its demands as might at first appear. And it suggests that only a
painter who, like Noland or Olitski, manages to come to grips with
the contemporarysituation ofmodernist painting stands a chance of
achievingsignificant individuality, to saynothing ofmaking paintings
of the same essential quality as those ofthe Old Masters.
5
FRANK STELLA is the youngest ofthe three modernist
painters represented in the current exhibition, and it is perhaps no
mere coincidence that his paintings are more exclusively formal in
their concerns than either Noland's or Olitski's. (See figs. 22-26.)
Like Newman and Noland, Stella is concerned with deriving or deducing
pictorial structure from the literal character of the picture
support; but his work differs from theirs in its exaltation ofdeductive
structure as sufficient in itself to provide the substance, and notjust
the scaffolding or syntax, ofmajor art. As early as 1958-sg, partly in
reaction against Abstract Expressionist painting such as that ofKline
and de Kooning-both ofwhom he strongly admired-and partly in
directresponse to theworkofBarnett Newman, Stella began to make
paintings in which parallel stripes of black paint, each roughly 2'/,
inches wide, echo and reecho the rectangular shape of the picture
support until the entire canvas is filled. Those first black paintings,
shown as part of the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition of Sixteen
Americans in 1960, amounted to the most extreme statement yet
made advocating the importance of the literal character of the picture
support for the determination of pictorial structure-despite
the fact that, for the most part, the relation of the different stripe
patterns to the framing edge is one ofvariation and inversion rather
than of strict reiteration. In subsequent series of paintings executed
252 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
inaluminum,copper,andpurplemetallicpaint32-in >g6o, 1961,and
1963, respectively-Stella's grasp of deductive structure grew more
and more tough minded, until the paintings came to be generated
in toto, as it were, by the different shapes of the framing edge, and
variation occurred only within the series as a whole rather than
within a particular shape ofcanvas. (There is, however, an important
sense in which Stella's ambition to make paintings whose stripe patterns
appear to be generated by the different shapes of the picture
support exerted a strong influence upon the character of the shapes
themselves. That is, although the shapes appear to generate the
stripe patterns, the prior decision to achieve deductive structure by
means ofthat particular relation between the stripes and the framing
edge played an important role in determining the character of the
shapes.) But despite their lucidity-the paintings in question are,
after all, nothing but structure-and despite the presence of the
same solution to the problem of deductive structure in all of Stella's
work to date, I think it is fair to say that art criticism, even when
approving, has shown itself unable to comprehend his paintings in
formal terms, as well as unaware of the significance-and probably
the existence-of deductive structure itself.
The extreme dependence upon the literal character ofthe picture
support that constitutes deductive structure represents the culmination
of a tendency visible in the work ofManet if not earlier-a tendency
which first manifested itself as an emphasis upon the flatness
of the picture surface but which, in Cubism, made itself felt as well
in the truing and fairing ofthe various pictorial elements to a rough
congruence with the framing edge. In this respect Stella's work may
be regarded as a logical developmentfrom Cubist truing and fairing,
in a contemporary context of modernist pictorial concerns that, in
effect, precludes the tactile spatial ambiguities through which Cubism
asserted the flatness of the picture surface. The danger of such
a formulation, however-quite apart from the force that threatens
to attach to the word "logical"-is that it might lead one to minimize
the difference between pictorial structure in Stella's work and the
surface structure of Cubist painting. And this in turn would be to
detract unjustly from Stella's originality as well as, what is perhaps
more serious, to fail to give sufficient consideration to one of the
most significant and least discussed characteristics ofCubist pictures.
The characteristic I am referring to is the tenden<:y for pictorial
elements in both Analytic and Synthetic Cubist paintings to pull away
from the edges of the canvas, especially from the corners, and to
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, OLITSKI, STELLA I 253
gravitate toward its center. The densest area, and structurally speaking
the strongest, in a Cubist painting is almost always the neighborhood
of it' center; the painting often simply fades out, becomes
insubstantial, toward its circumference. That the individual pictorial
elements are trued and faired means that they have been adjusted
or modified to comply, roughly, with the shape ofthe framing edgebut
only at a safe remove from it. Where there are few elements to
adjust or modify, as near the framing edge, both structure and substance
become problematic. And when Synthetic Cubist paintings do
not literally fade out toward their circumferences, they tend to fall
back on a rendering of space that can only be termed traditional.
Perhaps the most important difference between the Cubists and
Stellacan be summed up as follows. The Cubistsappear to have built
their paintings out toward the edge, and the nearer to it they came
the less consistent with their treatment of the main motif their
handling seems to have become. Whereas in Stella's paintings structure
is generated from the framing edge in toward the center of the
canvas-with the result that ifany portion of his pictures tends to be
problematic it is the center, rather than, as in Cubist works, the pe­
rimeter.
The problematic relation offorms in Cubist paintings to the framing
edge seems to have been recognized and made explicit in the
superb paintings and drawings executed by Piet Mondrian in Paris
during the critical years 1912-14- What is perhaps most remarkable
about Mondrian's work of those years is not the rapidity with which
he assimilated those aspects ofCubism thatconcern the organization
of the picture surface, but the acute critical analysis to which he
seems to have subjected them almost from the first. For example, in
his paintings of this period Mondrian's awareness that the pictorial
elements in Cubist pictures tended to pull away from the framing
edge, and especially from the corners, led him to exaggerate the tendency
with apparent deliberateness by painting out the corners of
the canvas and disposing his forms only within the rough ovoid that
remained. (Picasso and Braque also worked with ovoid formats during
these years; but either their canvases tended to be literally ovoid
in shape, or else the corners were not painted out explicitly within
the painting, as in Mondrian'swork, so much as theywere maskedout
by means of either a real or an implied framing mat. That is, Picasso
and Braque seem to have conceived of the ovoid as merely another
usable format, while Mondrian appears to have seized on it as a
means of making explicit the tendency of forms in a rectangular
254 ! THREE ArvJERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
painting to draw away from the circumference.) He also came to
grips with the structural limitations of truing and fairing, by decisively
giving up representation in favor of an abstract vocabulary
largely consisting of horizontal and vertical segments of line, which
reiterated much more succinctly and explicitly the dominant axes of
the framing edge.
By the end of the second decade of the century Mondrian began
to grapple with the problem of making the corners of the canvas
(and in general that portion of it nearest the framing edge) function
on a par with the rest, by siting rectangles of bright color-red, yellow,
blue-along the circumference and often in corners while leaving
the middle of the picture relatively "empty" in comparison. But
those paintings, which remain Mondrian's most famous and characteristic
works, encounter a difficulty which the painter himselfmay
or may not have been aware of: the colored rectangles are bounded
on as manysides as lie within the picture byblack lines which provide
the most important structural element in it, while no such black lines
run between the colored rectangles and the framing edge. This is
understandable, in that otherwise the canvas would be framed by
thin black lines whose pictorial status would be highly equivocal. But
their absence between the colored rectangles and the framing edge
implies the continuation of the former beyond the canvas-as if the
picture represented a rectangular cut into a continuous field, instead
ofbeing a rectangular surface covered with paint.
The pointofdiscussing Cubism and Mondrian in relation to Stella
is not to provide him with a needed pedigree, but to sketch a small
'
but crucial portion ofthe formal context in which, to my mind, Stella's
paintings ought to be seen, in the hope ofelucidating not merely
the relation of his work to that of prior modernists, but the extent
to which his paintings represent a significant advance on theirs in
regard to pictorial structure. For example, what I have called the
deductive structure ofStella's paintings is both less equivocal and less
arbitrary than Mondrian's framing edge siting ofcolored rectangles:
less equivocal in that the stripes in Stella's aluminum, copper, and
magenta metallic paint series, and in some of his early black paintings
as well, appear to emanate from the framing edge in toward the
center ofthe canvas, while Mondrian's color rectangles compromise
the integrity of the edge by seeming to continue beyond it; and less
arbitrary in that the location of a given stripe in Stella's paintings
appears to have been dictated by the deductive structure of the
whole, while the different elements in Mondrian's pictures seem to
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA ! 255
have been placed in one relation or another to the framing edge by
the painter himself. This is not an argument to the effect that Stella's
paintings are superior to Mondrian's. It does suggest, however, that
they are more consistent solutions to a particular formal problemroughly,
how to make paintings in which both the pictorial structure
and the individual pictorial elements make explicit acknowledgment
of the literal character of the picture support-but it does not touch
at all upon what pictorial qualities Stella mayhave had to sacrifice in
order to achieve superior consistency.
More important, though, than whatever traditional pictorial qualities
the spectatormayfeel Stella has sacrificed are the pictorial values
he has consistently asserted-sometimes in the teeth, so to speak, of
the apparent logic of his own development. For example, his progression
from black to aluminum to copper metallic paint in his
first three series of paintings, in conjunction with his use of shaped
canvases in the latter two series, can be fitted neatly into a version
of modernism that regards the most advanced painting of the past
hundred years as having led to the realization that paintings are
nothing more than a particular subclass of things, invested by tradition
with certain conventional characteristics (such as their tendency
to consist of canvas stretched across a wooden support, itself rectangular
in most instances) whose arbitrariness, once recognized, argues
for their elimination. According to this view, the assertion of the literal
character ofthe picture support manifested with growing explicitness
in modernist paintingfrom Manet to Stella represents nothing
more nor less than the gradual apprehension of the basic "truth"
that paintings are in no essential respect different from other classes
ofobjects in the world; only misguided respect for a moribund pictorial
tradition obscures that "truth" from the public at large and prevents
more artists-if that term makes sense in this context-than
have already done so from acting upon it.
Perhaps I ought to make clear that the position I havejust adumbrated
is repugnant to me, but I am not now interested in trying to
refute it. Instead, I want to point out two things. First, that it makes
adequate sense as an interpretation of the formal development of
modernist painting-and that even if it did not, this would matter
less than the actual quality of work produced by its adherents. I do
not mean to suggest that ideas play a negligible role in the making
ofart: Stella's paintings themselves provide evidence to the contrary.
But I am arguing that only one's actual experience of works of art
ought to be regarded as bearing directly on the question of which
256 I THREE AM:ERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OursKI, STELLA
conventions are still viable and which may be discarded as having
outlived their capacity to make us accept them, in the face of our
awareness of their precariousness, circularity, and arbitrariness, as essential
and even natural. And second, that Stella's work effectively
refutes the antipictorial interpretation ofmodernism stated above. It
is important to observe that something more than logical refutation
and intellectual conviction is operative here. Stella's belief in the
continuedviabilityofcertain pictorial conventions would be no more
than touching if it were not objectified in paintings whose density
of vital presence testifies that these conventions are not in fact exhausted.
At the same time, the vital presence ofStella's paintings cannot
be understood solely in terms of their physical and formal characteristics.
It could be merely anachronistic or irrelevant that Stella's
paintings remain flat, that their seemingly mechanical execution is
entailed by his desire to achieve rigorous deductive structure, that
the shaped formats that have been a recurring feature of his paintings
since 1960 have served to make the latter's deductive structure
all the more explicit, and that deductive structure itselfis meaningful
only in a context of problems and considerations intrinsic to the
making of paintings and not to the manufacture of any other kind
of thing. "A man isjudged neither by his intention nor by his act,"
Merleau-Ponty has written, "but by whether or not he has been able
to infuse his deeds with values."33 The values in Stella's case are pictorial
values; they are to be found, or found wanting, only in one's
firsthand experience ofthe paintings in question.
It is on the basis of my own experience of Stella's paintings that
his use of metallic paint, rather than seeming to signify "thingness"
or materiality pure and simple, seems instead to be his wayofachieving
something like the opticality brought about by staining and color
in the work ofLouis, Noland, and Olitski. More precisely, the gentle
play of finely granulated reflected light off the metallic stripes has
the effect of dissolving one's awareness of the picture surface as a
tactile entity in a more purely visual mode of apprehension. The
painting is felt to be no less flatfor this: both the deductive structure
of the whole and the absence of value contrast among the stripes
(except in the multicolored pictures of 1962 and their monochrome
equivalents) strongly imply the flatness of the picture surface. But
flatness is implied rather than experienced in tactile terms; and the
metallic paint, despite its implications of materiality, in fact renders
Stella's paintings curiously disembodied.
The multicolored paintings of 1962, executed with house paint
THREID AM:ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA I 257
rather than with metallic pigment, represent a reaction against the
increasing rigor of his own work as well as a response to recent
achievements byLouis and Noland in the realm of-color_ For the first
time Stella deliberately built up illusionistic structures in depthrather
like the inside of a camera bellows-by means of precise gradations
ofvalue among the colored stripes: structures in radical opposition
to the flatness of the picture surface implied by the regularity
of the stripe patterns. Also, the repetition of the same color at
regular but not equal intervals has the effect of making the stripes
work as pulses of color emanating from the center of the canvas out
toward the periphery, thereby opposing the centripetal pressure of
deductive structure. In a painting like Cipango (1 962; fig- 24) in the
present exhibition, for example, value contrast, with its connotations
of tactile depth, has been set working against the flatness of surface
implied by the stripe pattern, and the centrifugal impulse of the
colored stripes has been made to counter their generation from
the framing edge in toward the center of the canvas_ Despite its
seemingly uncomplicated, even disingenuous appearance, Cipango
provides both an explicit critique of the basic formal premises and
aspirations behind Stella's previous work and a triumphant demonstration
of the capacity of these premises and aspirations to sustain,
or rather to subsume, such a critique_
That Stella found the demonstration reassuring is suggested by
the fact that his next series ofpaintings, executed in metallic purple
paint on shaped canvases with open centers (see fig_ 26), comprises
the most radical and internally consistent assertions of deductive
structure he has made to date. In subsequent series, however, Stella
.has chosen to relinquish the complete self-containment of the purple
paintings, in what seems to be an attempt to focus attention on
the arbitrary character of some of the decisions that can be made
within a deductive format: for example, the decision as to which
edges ofa shaped canvas generate the stripes and which merely and
obliquely cut across them_
Finally, it is worth remarking on the importance for modernist
painters of thinking and working in terms of series of paintings-an
institution that arose during Impressionism in concomitance with
the exploration throughout a number of pictures of a single motif,
but which has come increasingly to have the function of providing a
context of mutual elucidation for the individual paintings constituting
a given series- The mutual elucidation is both formal and expressive.
On the one hand, seeing a number of paintings all of which
258 I THREE Alvt:ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA
represent essentiatly the same approach to the same formal issue
makes understanding the issue much easier than it would otherwise
be; on the other, the differences among the paintings within a given
series serve to bring out the particular expressive intonation ofeach.
For Noland, individual series tend to mark significant alterations of
pictorial structure; in the linguistic analogy touched on earlier they
signifY related transformations of syntax in the interest of saying
something new (or perhaps in the interest of saying something at
all). In Olitski's work, the series is a more amorphous grouping than
for either Noland or Stella, mostly because his close involvementwith
"inadmissible" color combinations, and 'With taste in general, means
that the formal self-definition encouraged by the series is less urgent
for him than for the others. Several paintings executed by Olitski at
approximately the same time wit! often be related to one another by
a shared pictorial vocabulary, shared colors, and even shared feeling
rather than by a common preoccupation with the same formal problem.
In this respect as in others Olitski and Stella represent polar
alternatives within contemporary modernist painting. Stella's individual
series amount to variations on the same basic solution to the
problem of deductive structure. That is, throughout his career the
solution has remained essentially the same but the pictorial factors
with which it has been called upon to cope have been altered from
series to series, in an attempt to demonstrate-to Stella himself as
well as to the beholder-both the perfectibility and the flexibility of
the solution in question.
The series, then, has become one of modernist painting's chief
defenses against the risk ofmisinterpretation-a risk that has grown
enormously during the past twenty years in direct proportion to the
success of modernism itself. And by success I am referring not to
financial success, but to what is probably the most important single
aspect ofmodernist painting's impact on the general sensibility. This
aspect has been characterized by Clement Greenberg as follows:
Under the testing of modernism more and more of the conventions
of the art of painting have shown themselves to be dispensable, unes�
sential. By now it has been established, it would seem, that the irreducible
essence of pictorial art consists in but two constitutive conventions
or norms: flatness and the delimitation offlatness; and that the observance
of merely these two norms is enough to create an object which
can be experienced as a picture: thus a stretched or tacked-up canvas
already exist as a picture-though not necessarily a successful one.34
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA I 259
One consequence of this has been the expansion ofthe possibilities
of the pictorial; in Greenberg's words, "much more than before
lends itself now to being experienced pictorially or in meaningful
relation to the pictorial: all sorts of large and small items that used
to belong entirely to the realm ofthe arbitrary and the visually meaningless."35
Moreover, the situation has been complicated still further
by the calling into question, first by Dada and within the past decade
by Neo-Dada figures such as John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Rohert
Rauschenberg, of the already somewhat dubious concept of a "work
of art." In fhis connection it is important to bear in mind that, at
bottom, Dada in any ofits manifestations and modernist painting are
antithetical to one another. Where the former aspires to obliterate
all distinctions between works of art and other kinds of objects or
occurrences in fhe world, fhe latter has sought to isolate, assert, and
work wifh what is essential to the art of painting at a given moment.
It would, however, be mistaken to fhink ofDada-the most precious
of movements-as opposed to art. Rafher, Dada stands opposed to
the notion of value or quality in art, and in that sense represents
a reaction against the unprecedented demands modernist painting
makes of its practitioners. (It is, I think, significant that Marcel Duchamp
was a failed modernist-more exactly, a failed Cubist-before
he turned his hand to the amusing inventions for which he is
best known.) But there is a superficial similarity between modernist
painting and Dada in one important respect:just as modernist painting
has enabled one to see a blank canvas, a sequence of random
spatters, or a length of colored fabric as a picture, Dada and NcoDada
have equipped one to treat virtually any object as a work of
art-though it is far from clear exactly what this means. Thus, there
is an apparent expansion of the realm of the artistic corresponding-ironically,
as it were-to the expansion of the realm of the pictorial
achieved by modernist painting.
As we have seen in Stella's case, the expanded realm of the artistic
may come into conflict with that of the pictorial; and when this occurs
the former must give way. But even apart from fhat particular
complication, the expansion of fhe realm of the pictorial is at best a
mixed blessing for the modernist painter: at the same time that the
spectator may have gained the ability to see a length of fabric as a
potential painting, he mayalso have acquired the tendency to regard
a modernist painting of the highest quality as nothing more than a
length of colored fabric. Because all sorts of large and small items
26o I THREE AM:ERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OursKI, STELLA
that used to belong entirely to the realm of the arbitrary and the
visually meaningless may now be experienced pictorially or in meaningful
relation to the pictorial, the risk is greatly increased that firstrate
modernist paintings will appear arbitrary and visually meaningless.
It is in this sense above all that modernist painting presents
unique difficulties to the beholder. Despite its rejection both ofrepresentation
and traditional tactile illusionism, and, paradoxically, because
ofits concern with problems intrinsic to itself, modernistpainting
today is perhaps more desperately involved with aspects of it•
visual environment than painting has ever been. It is as though there
isn't the room any more that would be needed for modernist painting
to be pure, to immure itself, even relatively, from its environment.
"What replaces the object [in abstract painting] is not the subject,
but the allusive logic of the perceived world"36-in a world as
copiously full and visually sophisticated as our own, Merleau-Ponty's
insight is true with a special vengeance. But it is important to recognize
that the aspirations ofmodernist painters such as Noland, Olitski,
and Stella are not toward purity, but toward quality and eloquence.
These inevitably resist both prescription and paraphrase,
and can be found only in one's experience of the best paintings of
one's time, or of any other.
NOTES
1 . Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, 2 vols. (Paris, 1973), 2:497.
2. See Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: CriticalEssays (Boston, 196 1) , a
selection of his essays on the painting and sculpture of the past hundred years.
3· Although Manet is probably the first painter whom one would term modenlist
[throughout this book I spell the word with a small m-M.F., 1966], some
of the problems and crises to which his paintings constitute a decisive and unexpected
response are present in the work ofjacques-Louis David, Theodore Gericault,Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres, Eugene Delacroix, and Gustave Courbet.
Any account of the genesis of modernism would have to deal with these men.
+ This is more thanjust a figure Ofspeech: it is a capsule description ofwhat
may be seen to take place in Manet's paintings. Manet's ambitions are fundamentally
realistic. He starts out aspiring to the objective transcription of reality,
of a world to which one wholly belongs, such as he finds in the work of Diego
Velasquez and Frans Hals. But where Velasquez and Hals took for granted their
relation to the worlds they belonged to and observed and painted, Manet is
sharply conscious that his own relation to reality is far more problematic. And
to paint his world \\lith the same fullness of response, the same passion for truth,
that he finds in the work ofVehisquez and Hals, means that he is forced to paint
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LJTSKI, STk:LLA 261
not merely his world but his problematic relation to it: his own awareness of
himself as in and yet not ofthe world. In this sense Manet is the first postMKantian
painter: the first painter whose awareness of himself raises problems of extreme
difficulty that cannot be ignored, the first painter fOr whom consciousness itself
is the great subject of his art.
Almost from the first-surely as early as the Dijeunersurl'herbe-Manet seems
to have striven hard to make that awareness function as an essential part of his
paintings, an essential aspect of their content. This accounts for the situational
character of Manet's paintings of the 1 86os: the painting itself is conceived as a
kind of tableau vivant (in this respect Manet relates back to David), but a tableau
vivant constructed so as to dramatize not a particular event so much as the beholder's
alienation from that event. Moreover, in paintings like the Dijeunerand
Olympia, for example, the inhibiting, estranging quality of selfMawareness is literM
ally depicted within the painting: in the Dijeuner by the unintelligible gesture of
the man on the right and the bird frozen in flight at the top of the painting; in
Olympiaabove all by the hostile, almost schematic cat; and in both by the distancM
ing calm stare ofVictorine Meurent.
But Manet's desire to make the estranging quality of self-awareness an essenM
tial part of the content ofhis work-a desire which, as we have seen, is at bottom
realistic-has an important consequence: namely, that self-awareness in this parM
ticular situation necessarily entails the awareness that what one is looking at is,
after all, merely a painting. And that awareness too must be made an essential
part of the work itself. That is, there must be no question but that the painter
intended it to be felt, and if necessary the spectator must be compelled to feel
it. Otherwise the self-awareness (and the alienation) Manet is after would remain
incomplete and equivocal.
For this reason Manet emphasizes certain characteristics which have nothing
to do with verisimilitude but which assert that the painting in question is .exactly
that: a painting. For example, Manet emphasizes the flatness of the picture surM
face by eschewing modeling and (as in the Dijeuner) refusing to depict depth
convincingly, calls attention to the limits of the canvas by truncating extended
forms by the framing edge, and underscores the rectangularshape of the picture
support by aligning with it, more or less conspicuously, various elements within
the painting. (The notions of emphasis and assertion are important here. David
and Ingres rely on "rectilinear" composition far more than Manet, and some of
Ingres' forms have as little modeling as Manet's. But David and Ingres are not
concerned to emphasize the rectangularity or the flatness of the canvas, but
rather make use of these to insure the stability of their compositions and the
rightness of their drawing.)
No wonder Manet's art has always been open to contradictory interpretaM
tions: the contradictions reside in the conflict betw'een his ambitions and his
actual situation. (What one takes to be the salient features of his situation is
open to argument; an uncharacteristically subtle Marxist could, I think, make a
good case for focusing on the economic and political situation in France after
1848. In this note, however, I have stressed Manet's·recognition ofconsciousness
as a problem for art, as well as the estranging quality of his own consciousness of
262 I THREE AM:ERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKl, STELLA
himself.) Manet's art represents the lastattempt in Western painting to achieve a
full equivalent to the great realistic painting of the past, an attempt which led,
in quick inexorable steps, to the founding ofmodernism through the emphasis
on pictorial qualities and problems in their own right. This is why Manet was so
easily thrown off stride by the advent of Impressionism around 1 870, because
his pictorial and formal innovations of the preceding decade had not been made
for their own sakes, but in the service ofa phenomenology that had already been
worked out in philosophy, and had been objectified in some poetry (e.g., William
Blake) , but which had not yet made itself felt in the visual arts. It was only
at the end of his life that Manet at last succeeded in using what he had learned
from Impressionism to objectifY his own much more profound phenomenology,
in the Bar aux Folies-Bergere. I intend to deal with all this elsewhere as soon
as possible. [Needless to say, this account of Manet's art now seems to me
both simplistic and bizarre: I'm thinking of the insistence on Manet's "postKantianism,"
the remarks about the estranging quality of self-awareness (hardly
a Kantian trope) , the concept of "merely a painting" (as opposed to what?) , the
distinction I draw between Manet's emphasis on flatness and rectilinearityversus
David's and Ingres's use of these, the parallel with Blake. For my current views,
see Michael Fried, Manet's Modernism, or; The Face ofPainting in the r86os (Chicago,
1996) .-M. F, I996]
5· Hilton Kramer, "A Critic on the Side of History: Notes of Clement
Greenberg," Arts Magazine 37 (Oct. 1961): 62.
6. Ibid.
7· See Arnold Hauser, ThePhilosophy ofArtHistory (New York, 1959), pp. 1 1 7-
276, for a discussion ofW6lfflin's methodolof.,ry.
8. This is dangerously oversimplified. I am convinced that something of the
sort did in fact occur, and that it makes sense to speak of painting itself having
become increasingly self-aware, both formally and historically, during the past
century or more. But a lot ofcareful work would be required to give this notion
the substance it requires. Moreover, the notion that there are problems "intrinsic"
to the art of painting is, so far as I can see, the most important question
begged in this essay. It has to do with the concept of a "medium," and is one of
the points philosophy and art criticism might discuss most fruitfully, ifa dialogue
between them could be established. Similarly, an examination of the "grammar"
(in the sense Ludwig Wittgenstein gives to this word in the PhilosophicalInvestigations)
of a family ofconcepts essential to this essay-problem, solution, advance,
logic, validity-would be more than welcome.
g. There are, however, major differences between W6lfflin's and Greenberg's
basic assumptions. For example, W6lfflin believed the progression ofstyles (e.g.,
from plastic-linear to painterly) to be irreversible, to happen always in thatorder.
This gives his writings a predictive, law-seeking aspect which is absent from
Greenberg's.
10. Georg Lukacs, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (Berlin, 1923). I have
read the French translation, Hi5toire et conscience de classe (Paris, 1g6o).
1 1 . Perhaps the most important among these is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les
Aventures deladialectique (Paris, 1955). English translation, Adventures oftheDialec�
tic (Evanston, Ill., 1973).
THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA I 263
12. Maurice Merleau�Ponty, "Le langage indirect et les voix du silence," in
Signes (Paris, 1960), p.90. [A translation, Signs, was published in Evanston, IlL,
in 1964, but my references are to the French edition and the translations are
my own.-M. F., 1996}
13. Stuart Hampshire, "Logic and Appreciation," in Aesthetics and Language,
ed. William Elton (Oxford, 1954), pp. 162-63.
14. Meyer Schapiro, "Style," in Aesthetics Today, ed. Morris Philipson (New
York, 1961), pp. 84-85.
15. It is, however, far from clearwhether or not such basic formal distinctions
finally amount to something equivalent to the traditional concept of style. Here
is Schapiro's formulation of the latter:
Style is, above all, a system offorms with a quality and a meaningful expression
through which the personality of the artist and the broad outlook of
a group are visible. It is also a vehicle of expression within the group,
communicating and fixing certain values or religious, social, and moral
life through the emotional suggestiveness of forms. It is, besides, a common
ground against which innovations and the individuality of particular
works may be measured. ("Style," p. 81)
Schapiro's definition seems to imply a much greater degree of stability of forms
and form relationships than modernist painting, especially during the past two
decades, has tended to exhibit. In light of modernist painting's drive to trans�
form and renew itself through radical criticism of its own achievements, this is
hardly surprising. But it means that the notions ofinnovation and individuality
have themselves become problematic. The question raised by a putative advance
in modernist painting is not the degree ofits variationfrom a relatively unchang�
ing common ground, but the much more difficult question of its legitimacy or
validity. This is not an argument to the effect that the term "style" ought to be
avoided in discussions of modernist painting. But is does suggest that the rela�
tion of the traditional concept ofstyle to modernist painting-both to its devel�
opment considered as a whole and to individual moments in that development-is
far from simple, and that the task of defining that relation will not
be easy.
16. See Clement Greenberg, "Post Painterly Abstraction," Art InternationalS
(summer 1964): 63-65. This was first published as the C?.talog introduction to
an exhibition of the same name assembled by Greenberg and shovm at the Los
Angeles County Museum, Apr.-June 1964.
17. See Clement Greenberg, "HowArtWriting Earns Its Bad Name," Encounter
19 (Dec. 1962): 67-71 .
1 8 . For example, in his essay, "'American-Type' Painting," Greenberg re�
marks on what seems to him the close visual relationship between Pollock's all�
over paintings and Analytical Cubism. "I do not think it exaggerated to say that
Pollock's 1946-50 manner really took up Analytical Cubism from the point at
which Picasso and Braque had left it when, in their collages of 1912 and 1913,
they drew back from the utter abstractness for which Analytical Cubism seemed
headed" (Art and Culture, p. 2 18.) One is always ill at ease disagreeing with
264 I THREE AMERICAN PAINTERS: NoLAND, OuTSKI, STELLA
Greenberg on visual grounds; however, I cannot help but see Pollock's allover
paintings of these years in radically different terms.
19. At this point in the original text, I referred to another Kandinsky, YellowRed-Blue
(1925) .-M. F., r996
20. Obviously I was guessing when I wrote this. The catalogue raisonne gives
the medium as "oil on cut-out paper mounted on canvas" (Francis Valentine
O'Connor and Eugene Victor Thaw,jackson Pollock:A CatalogueRaisonneofPaintings,
Drawing, and Other Works, 4 vols. (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1978),
4: 104.-M. F., I996
2 1 . In TheBlueBook Wittgenstein writes, 'We don't say that the man who tells
us he feels the visual image nvo inches behind the bridge of his nose is telling a
lie or talking nonsense. But we say that we don't understand the meaning of
such a phrase. It combines well-known words but combines then in a way we
don't yet understand. The grammar of this phrase has yet to be explained to us"
(LudwigWittgenstein, TheBlueandBrownBooks [Oxford, 1960] p. 10; quoted by
Stanley Cavell in "The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy," in Must
We Mean What We Say? A Book ofEssays (New York, 1g6g) , p. 54· Does this hold
for my statement that "the figure created by removing part of the painted field
. . . seems to lie somewhere within our own eyes"? Or can the description of Cut.
Out given in the text, together with the discussion of formal issues at stake in
Pollock's work during the period 1947-50, count as an explanation of its
"grammar"?
22. See Greenberg, "Post Painterly Abstraction," p. 64-
23. Ibid., p. 63.
24. Clement Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," Art International
6 (Oct. 25, 1962): 29.
25. Ibid.
26. These remarks lean heavily on Merleau-Ponty's Phenominologiede laperception
(Paris, 1945), in pai-ticular the chapter "Le Sentir." An English translation,
Phenomenology ofPerception, was published in London in 1962.
27. In the original essay I used the term "bands" instead of "zips," Newman's
term for the thin vertical elements in his paintings.-M. E, 1996
28. Clement Greenberg, "Louis and Noland," Art International 4 (May 25,
rg6o): 26-2g.
29. Pursuing it further would mean trying to come to grips with some of
the implications for esthetics in Wittgenstein's later writings, in particular the
PhilosophicalInvestigations. See in this connection Stanley Cavell, "Aesthetic Problems
of Modern Philosophy," originally in Philosophy in America, a volume of essays
edited by Max Black (Ithaca, N.Y, 1965), and more conveniently in Must
We Mean What We Say? pp. 73-g6.
30. Greenberg, "Louis and Noland," p. 28. See also Lawrence Alloway,
"Notes on Morris Louis," in the catalog for the exhibition Morris Louis, 1912-
1962: MemorialExhibition: Paintingsfrom 1954-1960 at the Solomon R Guggenheim
Museum, New York, 1963, no page numbers.
3 1 . This was said in conversation.
32. Originally I described the purple paintings as magenta, but was rightly
THREE �\iERICAN PAINTERS: NOLAND, 0LITSKI, STELLA I 265
criticized for it by William S. Rubin in Frank Stella (New York, 1 975), p. 154 n.
82. Oddly, I thought that Stella himself called them that; but as Rubin states
that the color purple ''was consciously chosen [by Stella] from the range of six
primaries and secondaries, the methodically limited color scheme Stella used
through that date," I must have been mistaken.-M. F., 1996
33· Merleau-Ponty, "Le langage indirect et les voix du silence," p. go.
34· Greenberg, "Mter Abstract Expressionism," p. 30.
35· Ibid.
36. Merleau-Ponty, "Le langage indirect et les voix du silence," p. 7 1 .
P A R T T H R E E :
Anthony Caro
THE PURPOSE of this introduction is to put forward a
way of looking at Anthony Caro's sculptures that I hope will prove
useful to those meeting his work for the first time. (See figs. 32-34,
pl. 13.) Let me begin as directly as I can, with the following analogy:
I want to suggest that our situation, or predicament, in the face of
the present exhibition is roughly analogous to that of a small child,
at most on the verge ofspeech, in the company of adults conversing
among themselves. It is often clear enough, in such circumstances,
that the child grasps something ofwhat is going on around it-much
as we ourselves may be moved by Caro's sculptures. Here the question
arises, to what does the child respond, if it is still ignorant of the
meaning ofindividual words? And the answer must be, to the abstract
configurations in time made by the spoken words as they arejoined
to one another, and to the gestures, both of voice and body, that
accompany, or better still, inhabit them. To the child the language
he hears spoken around him is both abstract and gestural: here is the
crux and the high-water mark of our analogy. Whatever eloquence,
whatever capacity to move or excite him, or merely to command his
attention, the language may possess resides solely in its character as
configuration. But at this point our analogy starts to break down.
There are two important and obvious differences between our situation
and the child's. The first is that we, the spectators, command
a language and are at home in its conventions. The second is that
This is the introduction to a catalog accompanying the exhibition Anthony Caro: Sculpture
1960-I963, held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in September and October
1963; the catalog is unpaginated. The essay was also published in Art International ?
(Sept. 25, 1963): 68-72.
26g
270 I ANTHONY CARO
Caro's sculptures are not compound signs in a conventional language,
put together from individually meaningful elements according
to known rules of grammar. They are, as has been implied, abstract
and gestural. But their abstractness does not derive from awant
of linguistic resource on our part. Rather, it is probably tbe most important
objective fact about the works themselves, and has its roots
in the artist's awareness of and way of looking at what has happened
to sculpture since Auguste Rodin. I shall return to this later on.
As for the gestures bodied fortb in Caro's sculptures, it is impossible
to saywhether they precede language and its related social institutions
or whether they crown them. In one sense (the sense of our
analogy) their trajectories have their place of origin in a realm of
experience tbat is both primitive and prelingual; but there is anqther,
no less important sense in which they presuppose all the conventions
we have, ail the civilization ofwhich we are the increasingly
uneasy masters. This is true in regard to those of language itself: it
was tbe labor ofthe late French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
to show how the institution of language arises out of primitive gesture;
and it is the special excruciation of tbe American critic R. P.
Blackmur to demonstrate, in masterpieces of sympathetic analysis,
how language that has been wrought to its uttermost in great poetry
may reach the condition ofconsummate gesture.
It is, further, important to recognize that gestures such as those
bodied forth in Caro's art cry out for something more than the appreciation
of their merely formal properties, or, rather, that the cry
is in us for something more and thatworks ofartsuch as Caro's sculptures
answer, or at least cry back to it. Stuart Hampshire has written,
"We have less and less need of poetry, fiction, and the visual arts for
the exploration of social realities, as we have more and more need
of them for questioning the advertised claims of those realities upon
us, forindirectly revealing disavowed forms ofexperience that are in
conflictwith social roles."1 An artwhich presupposes all tbe conventions
we have may not only crown, but may-however indirectlychallenge
or undermine thevalidity ofthose conventions. In the face
of the increasing specialization ofinterests, standardization ofbehavior,
and banalization of emotion imposed on us by modern civilization,
Hampshire argues, it is nothing less than "a condition of sanity
that the unsocialized levels of the mind should be given some ordered,
concrete embodiment, and thereby made accessible to intelligence
and enjoyment."
I suspect that this task came to be laid on art only fairly recently,
Al'ITHONY CARO I 271
but this is beside the point. What matters is that there have been
artists working both in representational and abstract styleswho have,
with varying degrees ofself-awareness, taken it up. It is in this respect
that Caro has more in common with certain representational artists
of the past-for example, Rodin-than he has with some of the finest
abstract painters working now in the United States, whose paintings
are more concerned with the solution of formal problems than
with the making of expressive gestures. Rainer Maria Rilke's vast admiration
for Rodin was largely founded on his recognition of the
sculptor's power to make gestures that broke not only with the conventions
of his art but with deeper, and more deeply imprisoning,
conventions of thought and feeling. Hence Rilke's characterization
of one ofRodin's sculptures, perhaps the striding Saintjohn, as "that
walking figure, which stands like a new word for the action ofwalking
in the vocabulary of [the spectator's] feeling."' And it is in the first
part ofhis Rodin-Book that Rilke writes, in connection with one of the
master's armless figures, "One recalls Duse, how in one ofD'Annunzio's
plays, when left bitterly alone, she attempts to give an armless
embrace, to hold without hands. This scene, in which her body learns
a caress far beyond its natural scope, belongs to the unforgettable
moments ofher acting. It conveyed the impression that arms were a
superfluous adornment, something for the rich and self-indulgent,
something which those in the pursuit of poverty could easily cast
aside. She looked in that moment not like a person lacking something
important; but rather like someone who has given away his cup
so that he may drink from the stream itself, like someone who is naked
and a little helpless in his absolute nakedness."'
In painting and sculpture our notions of what is important and
what may be cast aside have undergone radical change since Rilke
wrote the above words. This has come about through developments
within those arts that may be described in purely formal terms, as in
Clement Greenberg's collection of seminal essays, Art and Culture.
His argument is very roughly that., starting with Edouard Manet,
there has been a strong drive within each art toward the elimination
ofwhat does not strictly belong to it. This is the burden and meaning
ofmodernism in painting and sculpture: "to avoid dependence upon
any order of experience not given in the most essentially construed
nature of its medium. . . . The art'i are to achieve concreteness, 'purity,'
by acting solely in terms of their separate and irreducible
selves."' In painting this has entailed renouncing all illusion of the
third dimension and throwing emphasis instead on the flatness and
I
I
I
272 ! ANTHONY CARO
the shape of the canvas; while in sculpture it has led-byway of Rodin,
Constantin Brancusi, Cubism, and the Constructivist' tradition
sparked offby Picasso and including Jacques Lipchitz, Julio Gonzalez,
the earlier Alberto Giacometti, and David Smith, to name only
the major figures and a long and complex chain of events described
by Greenberg in his essay 'The New Sculpture"-to the kind of abstract,
open idiom one finds in Caro's work:
Space is there to be shaped, divided, enclosed, but not to be filled. The
new sculpture tends to abandon stone, bronze, and clay for industrial
materials like iron, steel, alloys, glass, plastics, celluloid, etc., etc.,
which are worked with the blacksmith's, the welder's and even the carpenter's
tools. Unity of material and color is no longer required, and
applied color is sanctioned. The distinction between carving and modeling
becomes irrelevant: a work or its parts can be cast, wrought, cut
or simply put together; it is not so much sculptured as constructed,
built, assembled, arranged.6
Greenberg maintains that this drive toward "purity" in the visual
arts-called by him the "modernist 'reduction'"-stems ultimately
from the positivist ethos of modern civilization, which, to his mind,
demands the immediate, the concrete, and the irreducible. I am not
at all convinced that this explanation is right or that it goes deep
enough; but again, in the context of the present essay, this hardly
matters. It remains undeniable, I think, that the visual arts have, over
the past century, performed upon themselves the "modernist 'reduction'"
summarized in barest outline above, and that Greenberg's
writings dealing with it are by far the finest and most intelligent we
have.
Caro accepts this "reduction" as a fait accompli-an acceptance
that would be shallow, and unlikely to issue in major art, if it were
not founded upon his sure grasp, at once intuitive and intellectual,
of the internal logic ofthe "reduction." But unlike some ofthe most
important paintings in America today, his sculpture is in no sense a
solution to formal problems posed-with terrific urgency, it should
be understood-by the art of the immediate past. It would be a mistake
to think that one could adequately describe his work in formal
terms, or to believe that because one had noted the formal structure
of his pieces one had fully experienced them. In fact it may happen
that one of Caro's pieces fails to "carry its intentions"-his phrase
in an interview with Lawrence Alloway'-even though it is flawlessly
composed. This happens when the spectator is made to feel that a
ANTHONY CARO I 273
particular element in the sculpture, despite its formal integration
within the whole, somehow obtrudes upon or gets in the way of the
nascent emotion-when that clement seems superfluous to the gesture
which the work itselfseeks to release. In the same interview Caro
is quoted as saying, "I know that when I work on a sculpture out of
doors I have room to stand back and that only encourages me to
worry about the balance and that sort of thing; and that invariably
ruins it. Working indoors in a restricted space and close up all the
time my decisions don't bear on the thing's all-round appearance.
They're not compositional decisions."' Similarly, when Rodin struck
the staff out of the left hand of the original figure later called The
Age of Bronze it was not a compositional decision, but it marked, as
Rilke saw, the firstappearance ofnonconventional expressive gesture
in his work.
Care's sculptures, then, if I am right, are the result of an attempt
to use the materials and techniques arrived at by the "modernist 'reduction)"
as basic elements in the construction of expressive gestures.
Herein lies the major difference between his art and that of
Rodin: for the latter, the language of gesture was the human body;
while in Care's work gesture is evoked, and at his best liberated,
through configurations made by assembling lengths of steel girder,
aluminum piping, sheet steel, and sheet aluminum, and through the
colors these are often painted. There is another difference worth remarking
on as well. In Care's sculptures, unlike Rodin's, the spectator
is not made to feel that the artist has been closely or passionately
involved with his materials. Where Rodin in his bronzes makes one
aware ofwhat must have been the texture ofclay between his powerful
fingers, and in his marbles alerts one to the subtlest nuances of
light and surface which that material could be made to yield, in
Caro's sculptures one's attention is made to bear only upon the gesture
itself. Everything in Care's art that is worth looking at-except
the color-is in its syntax. That this is not the case with regard to the
bronze figures sculpted by him up until his briefAmerican visit in
the autumn of 1959 makes his subsequent achievement all the more
remarkable. It is as ifin his firstabstract sculptures Caro deliberately
rejected as beside the point-or worse, as a potential distractionthe
kind of involvement with materials one finds in his early pieces,
and chose instead to work through, not in, his means, as through a
resistant medium.
As for Care's color, it too does not come easily to him. Nevertheless,
it is the natural concomitant of his aspirations toward openness
274 l ANTHONY CARO
and weightlessness-modalities which are ofno special value in their
own right, butwhich alone make possible the construction ofexpressive
gestures that are not simply "abstracted from" those offigurative
art. Here I want to point Out a relation, which is also a distinction,
between his early figurative works and the later abstract ones: in the
early sculptures an almost Impressionist handling ofsurface tends to
compromise, if not actually to dissolve, the mass of the figure; while
the later works aspire toward a more fundamental mode of opticality-one
which does not emphasize the texture, hence the substance,
of surfaces, but which attempts to divest substance itself of
tactile associations. There is precedent for these ambitions in the
work ofDavid Smith, as well as in Constructivist sculpture in general.
But even more important to Caro, I feel, have been the paintings
of contemporary Americans such as Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still,
Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and, most of all, Morris Louis and
Kenneth Noland. Louis and Noland, for example, obtain sheerly optical
images by staining plastic paint into unsized canvas. This has the
result ofidentifying the bright colorwith its ground, ofweaving paint
and canvas into the same optical fabric. In their work-which incidentally
deserves to be much better known in England-it is the
paint whose substance is destroyed, largely through the agency of
color; while in much ofCaro's sculpture color is used to help render
substance itself-and what could be more substantial than his massive
girders?-mostly optical.
I want to stress again that, considered solely in it' own righ� such
opticality is not necessarily desirable. It becomes a desideratum of
great importance for Caro because it makes possible the construction
of a kind of gesture-founded on achieved weightlessnesswhich
figurative art can no more than gesture toward. But it is crucial
to observe that the opticality of Caro's sculpture is, at bottom, an
illusion. Whereas in painting the "modernist 'reduction'" has thrown
emphasis upon the flatness and shape of the picture surface, it has
left sculpture as three-dimensional as it was before. This additional
dimension of physical existence is vitally important-not because it
allows sculpture to continue to suggest recognizable images, or gives
it a larger realm of merely formal possibilities-but because the
three-dimensionality of sculpture corresponds to the phenomenological
framework in whicl;l we exist, move, perceive, experience,
and communicate with others. The corporeality ofsculpture, even at
its most abstract, and our own corporeality are the same. Modernist
sculpture-but not modernist painting-can create configurations
and liberate gestures which; in their fundamental physicality, are
ANTHONY CA.RO I 275
analogous to those on which all language, all expression are ultimately
founded-and which, in their illusive opticality, may overcome
the customary limitations inflicted upon physical gesture by
gravity.
The potential for expression in such an art is clearly immense. It
is also largely unrealized: within the past decades there have been no
more than two sculptors whose achievements, at their best, seem to
me major-David Smith and Anthony Caro. It is remarkable-but
irrelevant, really, except as an indication of his intelligence and the
force of his passion-that Caro's entire abstract oeuvre is the result
of less than four years' work. The work itself, however, is more remarkable
than its biography. I don't think that an introductory essay
is the proper place to attempt an assessment ofindividual pieces, and
I hope that such an attemptwill not be missed. What I have tried to
do, as I said at the outset, is put forward a way of looking at Caro's
sculptures, because it would be tragic if, though exhibited, theywere
not seen; but the task and the responsibility of seeing belong to the
spectator alone and ought not to be alienated by him or preempted
by others.
Let me close, then, with a few general remarks. Caro's sculptures
are bitten both by their knowledge of the beauty of the human
body-which they cannot demonstrate directly-and by intimations
of those cataclysmic gestures made, in the throes oflove or grief or
self-hate, by the naked spirit. For all their abstraction one can imagine
a gifted dancer dancing Caro's sculptures. Merleau-Ponty, in a
splendid phrase, wrote thatwhat replaces the object in nonrepresentational
art is "the allusive logic of the perceived world."9 In Caro's
most successful sculptures one discovers the allusive syntax of our
own purest and most passionate gestures used to construct gestures
even more pure and anonymous and passionate-and armed, besides,
with what one hopes it still makes sense to speak ofin our time
as the durability of art.
NOTES
1 . Stuart Hampshire, "A Ruinous Conflict," in Modern Writers and OtherEssays
(New York, 1970), p. rg6.
2. Rainer Maria Rilke, ''The Rodin-Book: Second Part (1907)," in Where SilenceReigns:
SelectedProse, trans. G. Craig Houston (New York, 1978), p. 1 35.
3· Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Rodin-Book: First Part ( 1903)," in Where Silence
Rei!Jf'S, p. 104.
4- Clement Greenberg, "The New Sculpture," in Art and Culture: Critical Essays
(Boston, r g6 r ) , p. '39·
276 ANTHONY CARO
5· I would have done better to say "constructionist" in the sense that
Greenberg speaks of "the new construction-sculpture" (ibid., p. 142).-l\1. E,
1996
6. Ibid., p. 142.
7· In Gazette, no. r (rg6r).
8. Ibid.
g. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Le Langage indirect et les voix du silence," in
Signes (Paris, rg6o), p. 71.
Frank Stella
FRANK STELLA'S paintings arise out of an unprecedented
awareness of their perimeters as well as out of the painter's
conviction ofjust how relevant this awareness is to the contemporary
situation in New York. (See figs. 22-25.) The grounds on which his
conviction rests are, ultimately, not beyond question; but one must
recognize that to challenge them necessarily entails challenging an
implicit interpretation of the entire dialectic of modernist painting
from Manet to the present. This iswhat Stella's paintings are "about,"
and unless this is seen there is at least one important sense in which
the paintings have not been seen at all.
Roughly, what Stella has done is to extend the painter's domain
of self-awareness, and hence of decision and control, from the flat
picture surface to the boundary ofthe canvas. This was true even in
the earliest, black paintings, where the different right-angled configurations
of stripes amounted to variations within the relatively
unchanging rectangle of the canvas. In the aluminum and then the
copper paintings that followed Stella's logic grew more and more
tough-minded: the paintings came to be generated in toto, as itwere,
by the different shapes of the framing edges, and variation occurred
only within the series as a whole rather than within a particular
shape.
One result of this development was that the thing-nature of the
paintings came to be emphasized, bringing them close to the orbit
of Constructivism. The progression of paint colors-from black to
From the catalog for the exhibition Toward a New Abstraction at the Jewish Museum,
New York, May Ig-Scpt. 15, rg63.
277
278 I FRANK STELLA
aluminum to copper-in the first three series further reinforced
such an interpretation. It is only in his most recent paintings employing
a full spectrum of bright colors and in their monochrome
equivalents that Stella, perhaps under the impact of recent work by
Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, has chosen to question certain
of the initial premises of his art. For example, the avoidance of any
pictorial organization or handling of paint that might possibly be
read as yielding a Cubist space is a less pressing matter now than it
was five years ago, when the black paintings were first conceived. At
thattime value differences among the stripes within a single painting
were, given Stella's formal ambitions, unthinkable, whereas in his recentwork
Stella has demonstrated (to himselfas well as to the spectator)
that his kind of self-consciousness about the framing edge is in
fact compatible with the use ofbright colors and even ofvalue differen,.ces
in monochrorne.
It is important to remark that this last is in large measure a statement
about what has happened to "advanced" sensibility over the
past five years, as a result of paintings made and shown during that
period. Hence the noninevitability ofour acceptance in the long run
of what may seem at the time of its appearance an "advance" upon
what has gone before, and hence also the nonfinality ofany formulation
in words ofeither a broad stylistic dialectic or a particular formal
problem. In general one may say that an advance in painting is never
forced on us as an advance in science is, relatively speaking. Rather,
the ultimate criterion of the legitimacy of a putative advance is its
fecundity: whether in fact it proves to have been the road to the future.
In Stella's case it is too soon to tell.
New York Letter: Oldenburg, Chamberlain
THE WORK ofClaes Oldenburg, whose hallucinatory,
prosaic environment threatens to overflow the Green Gallery this
month, seems to exist merely or chiefly in order to pose questions of
a conceptual nature. Everything depends on what we make of it, on
the conceptual framework that we, looking ;,�t it, bring to bear. What
makes criticism difficult is that Oldenburg seems to be embarked on
at least three related projects at the same time. The first has to do
with making works of art out of everyday objects, either by fiat or
imitation, in the imperious manner of Marcel Duchamp. This is not
to say that Oldenburg is concerned with the Surrealist opposition of
signs to things signified, of intellectual categories to protean reality,
or, as he puts it, illusion to reality. In fact, Oldenburg's work suffers
next to Duchamp's, say, from the lack ofjust such firm philosophical
purpose: if there is an intellectual principle common to his giant,
stuffed-sailcloth hamburger, stuffed calendar, outsized trousers, plaster
ofParis fried eggs, and plaster cigarettes in a real ashtray, I haven't
found it. And I can't shake the conviction thatwork like Oldenburg's
either has to have such a principle or else be put down as mostly or
wholly arbitrary and subjective.
It is here that Oldenburg's second project comes into play, as if to
compensate for his philosophical slackness and redeem his work
from subjectivity by the sociological or, rather, the archetypal significance
of the objects for imitation, presentation, fetishization, and hyperbole.
They are all common items and so share the trivial passion
of the completely mundane. But what is probably more important,
Originally published in Art lnternational6 (Oct. 25, 1962): 74-76.
279
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280 I NEW YORK LETTER: OLDENBURG, CHAMBERLAIN
they are for the most part distinctively American, which I assume is
meant to rescue them from merely personal subjectivity. This is the
familiar melodrama of one kind ofAmerican artist, whose naive esthetic
founds itself on the conviction that if only he can involve himselfwith
America profoundly enough the objects he will cathect onto
can't fail to have archetypal force and significance. There isn't space
to discuss whether in general such aspirations inevitably doom works
ofart to parochial success at best-though it is hardly surprising that
Paterson goes unread in England. But I will add that nothing of
Oldenburg's forced me to ignore how shaky the thought behind his
pieces was, and, often, how slapdash their execution.
Finally, there is in much American painting by young artists today
clandestine or open rebellion against the living edge ofthat dialectic
that seems to have governed the recent development of their artalmost
a nostalgia for the good old days of drip and drag and Cubist
space. This is evident, I think, in the work ofJasperJohns and Robert
Rauschenberg, and I query whether it isn't to be found everywhere
in Oldenburg's environment as well, which might account for some
oftheslapdashpaintingmentioned above. Moreover, aren'tthe calendars
strikingly like stuffed versions ofJohns's number paintings, and
don't the Popsicles, for example, owe something to Barnett Newman
and Ellsworth Kelly at the same time? But if this is the case, it only
serves to add a third kind ofsentimentality to the two alreadycited.
At Castelli's a casual but impressive group show comes to focus on
John Chamberlain's large sculpture in welded automobile metal,
MissLucyPink (1962; fig. 67) . Within the pastfewyears Chamberlain
has made himself one of the best sculptors working anywhere in the
world and it is only a matter of time before this becomes a commonplace,
ifit isn't one already. In MissLucyPink, a standingfigure whose
dimensions are 45 by 50 by 40 inches, it is fascinating to watch how
Chamberlain articulates a subtle, changing volume thatseems almost
to breathe, the equilibrium between the curve and buckle of his materials
and the space they enclose is so perfect. Then too the sculpture
is pierced undramatically in a few places, and this leads to a
sense of the space within it circulating effortlessly across its surface
also: as if the distinction between inside and outside were not much
more useful than in talking about a Klein bottle. Moreover, for all
the rather Cubistic adjusttnent ofparts to each other, the piece radiates
the kind ofquietness only completely achieved things can afford.
And all this is to say nothing of its color, a subtle and moving play of
commercial roses and pinks whose intensities and connotations are
in complete harmony with the formal character of the work.
New York Letter: Louis, Chamberlain
and Stella, Indiana
IT IS especially shocking when a man dies at the
height of his powers. The current show of eight splendid paintings
by Morris Louis at the Andre Emmerich Gallery, put together by him
shortly before his death on September 7, leaves one with no doubt
that this was the case. Louis was only forty-nine when he died, and
had been working in his characteristic manner ofstaining raw canvas
with transparent veils or belts of color for no more than ten years.
He had not begun to exhaust the possibilities of his means.
In all the paintings currently on show Louis ran his paint in long
parallel belts [or stripes-M. E, 1996] of brilliant color. He often
allowed the belts to overlap slightly, yielding an effect as of bright
silks superimposed, but his control over his medium was such that
he could lay the belts alongside each other so that they touched
along their entire length but nowhere overlapped (as in Hot Half
[ 1962; pl. 6]). In five of the eight paintings the belts hang vertically,
ending in cusp shapes several inches above the lower edge of the
canvas, while in the remaining three they run diagonally and tend
not to show their ends. And in a number of paintings a gap of raw
canvas is left in the pattern ofbelts.
Myfavorite painting among these is the one called Equator (1962),
in which a broad series ofbelts runs from upper left to lower right.
Reading across-that is, from bottom to top-the individual belts
are red, ocher, orange, green, red, red orange, brown, gold, rawcanvas,
yellow, blue black, light green, and green. The order of the colors
reveals Louis's tendency to lay close values ofwarm hues against
Originally published in Art International6 (Nov. 25, 1962): 53-55·
282 I NEwYoRK LETTER; Loms, CHAMBERLAIN AND STELLA, INDIANA
each other, maybe punctuating them by one belt (often green) from
the other half of the spectrum. All the belts run off the canvas at
both sides, and the raw canvas gap-which in the vertical paintings
seems a kind of background (in spite of how closely Louis's technique
identifies color with ground) -is here coerced into acting as
a colored belt. Most important, the diagonal bias gives the painting
as a whole a kind of strength and dynamism which the vertical-belt
paintings choose to forego. The direction ofthe diagonal plays a part
in this: it tends to thrust the beholder's gaze down toward the lower
right, forcing him to fight his way across in order to read the colors
in sequence. Finally, by laying belts of gold and yellow to either side
ofthe canvas gap, the raw canvas is made to work not only as a color
but, quasi-illusionistically, as the brightest highlight on a tubular
form-at least it does so for me. Ofall the paintings on show, Equatm·
seems most to combine the sheer colorism that has always distinguished
Louis's mature work with an almost plastic strength that one
might have thought his means precluded.
It is, I think, this strength, possessed to a slightly Jesser degree by
the two other diagonal paintings, that marks Louis's greatest single
advance over his previouswork-though I had better add that I have
seen only reproductions from his last show. Writing about Louis in
this magazine three years ago, Clement Greenberg observed: 'The
suppression of the difference between painted and unpainted surfaces
causes pictorial space to leak through-or rather, to seem
about to leak through-the framing edges of the picture into the
space beyond them."1 This has, for me, been a source of uneasiness
before Louis's veil paintings and, even more, before the vertical-belt
paintings now at Emmerich's. Even in the diagonally organized canvases
one isn't made to feel that just this and no other relation of
the diagonal to the framing edge is intrinsic to them, but some such
approximate relation between paint and framing edge is more nearly
intrinsic to them than in Louis's previous work. Perhaps this was a
direction he would have chosen to explore had he not died so young.
Maybe before long some enterprising museum will take a respite
from trying to entice the figure back into painting long enough to
stage a full retrospective of Louis's work. Until then one can have
only a dim sense of his stature and of the Joss to American painting
which his death represents.
AT CASTELLI's this month two large pieces of sculpture
byJohn Chamberlain and four paintings by Frank Stella make
N1::w YoRK LETTER: Lours, CHAMBERLAIN AND STELLA, INDIANA I 283
a compelling two-man show. Both the paintings and the sculptures
are in black and white, a restriction which mostly serves to throw
their respective strengths into sharpest focus. Apart from this initial
accord they would seem to have nothing in common-nothing, that
is, except their uncommon excellence. I wrote about Chamberlain's
Miss Lucy Pink (rg62) last month in terms of how it articulated a
volume and of how at the same time the space it enclosed was made
to flow across its changing surface. The pieces now at Castelli's are
after something else. Their effects are ofmass rather than ofvolume,
and they are far more dynamic than the earlier work. Where Miss
Lucy Pink stood in complete repose while suave volumes circulated
within her and across her surfaces, the present sculptures are at once
more massive and in the grip of far more violent forces that keep
the space they enclose pent up in them. In the large white UncleBob
(rg62), for example, an immense torsion threatens to decapitate its
upper section; but this is fought against by the masterful handling of
broad, dented, undulating expanses ofwhite metal in the lower section,
into which the torsion is made to dissipate itself. The effect is
one of triumphant mass attained through the articulation of a surface,
and the sculpture has a kind of essentialized contrapposto that
looks back to Renaissance and Baroque forebears; or rather, it simply
has such forebears and doesn't bother to look back. It is, I think,
quite simply a monumental work, probably the best by Chamberlain
I've seen yet.
The second sculpture, Baityjane (rg62), is perhaps less successful
because of a section of twisted steel sheeting that sweeps back (or
reaches out) like drapery whipped by a seawind. Again, the articulation
of broad surfaces is magnificent, and I don't want to minimize
the piece's impact. But I'm bothered by the raggedness ofthe "drapery,"
which seems to make the kind of concession to contemporary
notions ofwhat sculpture in scrap metal should look like that Baby
Jane makes nowhere else-and by the possibility of reading this section
in a quasi-literal way. But these are qualms about one small section
of one piece. The present exhibition reinforces my conviction
that Chamberlain is one of the two finest sculptors working in
America today [along with David Srnith-M. F., r996] , and that it is
only a matter oftime before this is generally recognized.
The four paintings by Frank Stella take up, deliberately and with
the rigorous conceptual grasp one has come to expect from him, a
number ofelements that he had, until now, chosen to eschew, within
the overall syntax of a style that founded itself partly upon the es-
284 I NEwYoRK LeTTER: Louxs, CHAMBERLAIN AND STr::t.LA, INDIANA
chewal ofjust those elements. The effect is not one of detentethere
is nothing wistful about these paintings-but of the willed exploitation
of certain ideas as if in an attempt to exhaust them for
good at one go. From the start (the first large black paintings in the
Museum of Modern Art's Sixteen Americans exhibition) Stella's work
has contained an implicit rejection both of tonality and of Cubist
space. The development ofhis stripe paintings-from black through
aluminum to copper paint and shaped canvases that determine the
stripe pattern-represented the pursuit of an esthetic that owed
its basic aspiration to Constructivism: to make a painting that looks
like a thing, in which the thing-nature of the gestalt (involving the
pattern, shape of canvas, and handling of paint) is deliberately emphasized.'
But the thinglike gestalt is, in turn, made with paint, and
from the start also the painterly nature of Stella's talent has shown
through, both in the flat brushing of the stripes (where the talent
seeks to efface itself) and even more in the thin areas of raw canvas
between the stripes, where the stripe edges have come to bite into
the canvas more sharply in everyshow. At any rate, the current paintings
take up the previously rejected elements of tonality and Cubist
space and carry them, by dint ofa logic characteristic ofStella's work,
to the verge ofillusionism.
Two of the paintings, Sharpeville (fig. 25) and Cato Manor (both
1962), can be described in terms of expanding squares, sixteen in
all, the last ofwhich is flush with the canvas edges, or else in terms
of stripes making fifteen concentric circuits of a square canvas with
a small square in the center. Each circuit is one of six tones from
white to black, and the progression from one to another is always
gradual-in Sharpeville (reading from edge to center) from white to
black to white to black, and in Cato Manor from hlack to white to
black to white. It is an idea which could have been sentimental if it
were not handled with such rigorous logic, ifthe application ofpaint
were less expert, and ifthe paintings that resulted were less effective.
They hover, flickering, moving the eye constantly from the edge to
the center and back again. Their play of tones is evocative of the full
spectrum ranged in an infinite depth, yet at the same time the stripes
assert their essential nature as flat tracks of paint on raw canvas.
LineUpand Maze (both 1962) are likewise tonal, but in these Stella
works with the maze idea he has used hitherto (so far as I know) only
in small paintings. One "enters" these at the top right and travels
down a vertical white stripe along the right-hand edge, then goes on
reading clockwise along a squared spiral toward the center. The
NEW YORK LETTER: LOUIS, CHAMBERLAIN AND STELLA, INDIANA I 285
stripes darken a tone at each corner until they reach black, at which
point they start again at white. The sole difference between the two
paintings is that the first goes from white to black in nine tones, and
the second in six. In order to go from one tone to another at the
corners, there are two diagonals of raw canvas the width of the thin
areas between the stripes, one ofwhich (running from lower left to
upper right) is broken at the middle because of the spiral nature of
the design. The result is that the paintings can also be read as four
isosceles triangles not quite meeting at a point in the center of the
canvas; they seem continually to overlap one another at different
points, depending on the respective tonalities ofthe triangles at that
particular point: the same triangle seems to lie under and over another
triangle depending on the particular point of contact between
them one looks at-which is the Cubist illusionism mentioned earlier,
carried to a remarkable extreme.
MTER LOOKING at fourteen paintings by Robert Indiana
at the Stable Gallery it is hard to hold back a few general remarks
about the style called "sign painting," insofar as it is exemplified by
his work. First, it seems clear that sign painting is chiefly a pretext
for getting the artist to the point ofactually applying paint to canvas.
That such a pretext should be needed is one indication of crisis in
American painting today. Second, whether it is regarded as having
its source in archetypal American experience or in the experience of
one man, the pretext is not only literary but sentimental. Third, the
paintings that most succeed do so in the same terms and by the same
lights as paintings that are devoid ofsign imagery. But they can never
be as good as a good non-sign-painting because they will always contain
material extrinsic to the problems of painting that has been
brought in partly as a solution to, or way of getting around, those
same problems. And fourth, a rough rule ofthumb for sign painting
would seem to be, the better the sign, the worse the painting.
One reason for this last point is obvious: the better the sign, the
more the painting is· subordinated to the verbal element and the
more that element comes to stand for the painting-as in Eat and
Die (both 1962). Paintings such as these could work only ifthe words
could be bled dry, if they could be deprived of all their force as bearers
ofmeaning; but this is an impossible aspiration, and instead they
wreck the paintings by dominating them. A second reason is less obvious
and has more to do with Indiana's particular strength as a
painter. The better the sign, the greater, in general, the difference
286 I NEw YoRK LETTER: Louis, CHAMBERLAIN AND STELLA, INDIANA
in tonality between the message and its ground (again, as in Eat and
Die, which consist of black and orange red letters respectively on
white grounds); while Indiana's characteristic strength-when he
chooses to exercise it-seems to be the ability to work in broad areas
ofclose-valued, high-keyed color, as in the best paintings in the show,
The Calumet (rg6r) and The Year ofMeteors (rg62). In fact, these large
canvases no longer function as signs at all; the lettering is relatively
unimportant and one has to make a certain effort to read it. A third
large painting, Loftiest Trucks (rg6r) , fails badly because Indiana is at
pains-inexplicably-to separate the areas of color (red, blue, and
green) from each other by the bands ofwhite which contain the lettering.
The Year ofMeteors is the finest single painting in the show, I
think. The number of elements-two circles, two superimposed
squares forty-five degrees out of phase, and two colors (blue and
green)-is reduced to something near an absolute minimum, and
the handling of paint is of high quality throughout. Compared to it
The Calumet seems overcomplicated, full of too many gradations of
red and orange, and besides, is inconsistent in its handling of paint
(in the watery lettering especially). The general impression I get
from Indiana's work is of a debilitating reluctance simply to let
shapes and colorswork in their own right, perhaps based on an intuition
that his aren't interesting enough, most of the time, to sustain
close attention. Moreover, I would argue that the sign-nature of Indiana's
art has tended to obscure the true nature of his gifts even
from him.
NOTES
1 . Clement Greenberg, "Louis and Noland," Art International 4 (May 25,
1g6o): 28.
2. Needless to say, this sentence reflects an imperfect grasp of the esthetics
of Constructivism.-M. F., 1996
New York Letter: Warhol
OF ALL the painters working today in the service (or
thrall) of a popular iconography, Andy Warhol is probably the most
single-minded and tbe most spectacular. His current show at the Stable
Gallery appears to have been done in a combination paint and
silk-screen technique; I'm not sure about this, but it seems as if he
laid down areas of bright color first, then printed the silk-screen pattern
in black over them, and finally painted in certain details. The
technical result is brilliant, and there are passages of fine, sharp
painting as well, though in this latter respect Warhol is inconsistent;
he can handle paint well but it is not his chief; nor perhaps even a
major concern, and he is capable of showing things that are qnite
badlypainted for tbe sake ofthe imagesthey embody. And in fact the
success of individual paintings depends only partly (though possibly
more than Warhol might like) on tbe quality of the paint handling.
It has even more to do with tbe choice of subject matter, with the
particular image selected for reproduction-which lays him open to
the danger of an evanescence he can do nothing about. An art like
Warhol's is necessarily parasitic upon the myths of its time, and indirectly
therefore upon the machinery offame and publicity that markets
those myths; and it is not at all unlikely that the myths that move
us will be unintelligible (or at best starkly dated) to generations that
follow. This is said not to denigrate Warhol's work but to characterize
the risks it runs-and, I admit, to register an advance protest against
the advent of a generation that will not be as moved by Warhol's
beautiful, vulgar, heartbreaking icons of Marilyn Monroe as I am.
Originallypublished in Art International6 (Dec. 20, 1962): 57·
288 I N�:<;wYoRK LETTER: WARHOL
These, I think, are the most successful pieces in the show, far more
successful than, for example, the comparable heads of Troy Donahue-because
the fact remains that Marilyn is one ofthe overriding
myths of our time while Donahue is not, and there is a consequent
element of subjectivity that enters into the choice of the latter and
mars the effect. (Epic poets and pop artists have to work the mythic
material as it is given: their art is necessarily impersonal, and there is
barely any room for personal predilection.) Warhol's large canvas of
Elvis Presley heads falls somewhere between the other two.
Another painting I thought especially successful was the large
matchbook cover reading "Drink Coca-Cola"; though I thought the
even larger canvas with rows of Coke bottles rather cluttered and
fussy and without the clarity of the matchbook, in which Warhol's
handling of paint is at its sharpest and his eye for effective design at
its most telling. At his strongest-! take this to be in the Marilyn
Monroe paintings-Warba! has a painterly competence, a sure instinct
for vulgarity (as in his choice ofcolors), and a feeling forwhat
is truly human and pathetic in one of the exemplary myths of our
time that I for one find moving; but I am not at all sure that even the
best ofWarhol's work can much outlast thejournalism on which it is
forced to depend.
New York Letter: Johns
WITHIN A short space ofyearsJasperjohns has put
together one of the most handsome, intelligent, and amusing oeuvres
in recent painting. One upshot ofits intelligence, though, is the
impossibility ofwriting about a show such as the one now at Castelli's,
comprised of paintings made during the past two years, without trying
to place it in the context of his work as a whole. This in turn
involves one in speculations and even psychologizings of dubious
value, but the alternative is journalism and the work itself demands
something more.
In a recent article in this magazine, "After Abstract Expressionism,"
Clement Greenberg discussed Johns's achievement with the
subtlety and intelligence characteristic of his criticism. After considering
the Californians Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff,
Greenberg wrote:
JasperJohns) however, should not be classed with them, even though,
strictly speaking, he too is a representational artist. His case is another
exemplary one, for he brings de Kooning's influence to a head by
suspending it clearly, as it were, between abstraction and representation.
The motifs of johns's paintings, as William Rubin pointed out in
these pages a few years ago, are always two-dimensional to start with,
being taken from a repertory of man-made signs and images not too
different from the one on which Picasso and Braque drew for the stenciled
and affixed elements of their 1911-1913 Cubism. Unlike the two
Cubist masters, Johns is interested in the literary irony that results
from representingflat and artificial configurations which in actuality can
Originally published in A1·t International? (Feb. 25, 1963): 6o-62.
290 j NEW YORK LETTER: jOHNS
only be reproduced; nonetheless, the abiding interest of his art, as distinguished
from itsjournalistic one, lies largely in the area of the formal
or plastic. Just as the vivid possibility of deep space in photographs of
signs or house-fronts, or in Harnett's and Pete's paintings of pin-up
boards, sets off the inherent flatness of the objects shown, so the painterly
paintedness of ajohns picture sets off, and is set off by, the flatness
of his number, letter, target, flag and map images. . . . The original
flatness of the canvas, with a few outlines sketched on it, is shown as
sufficing to represent adequately all that a picture byJohns really does
represent. The paint surface itseU', with its de Kooningesque play of
lights and darks, is shown, on the other hand, as being completely
superfluous to this end. Everything that usually serves representation
and illusion is left to serve nothing but itself, that is abstraction; while
everything that usually serves the abstract or decorative-flatness,
bare outlines, all-over or symmetrical design-is put to the service of
representation. And the more explicit this contradiction is made, the
more effective in every sense the picture tends to be.1
Now there are a number of questions I would like to raise about
this interpretation. To begin with, inJohns's early paintings (the first
targets, flags, and numbers) the most relevant influences in point of
touch-to my eye, at any rate-appear to be perhaps Jack Tworkov
and almost certainly Philip Guston rather than de Kooning. Right
from the start there is a resolute smallness and fussiness about
Johns's brushwork that declares, within a more general accord ofidiom,
its opposition to de Kooning's, though there is something of a
rapprochement on this score in the later work. This is not to minimize
the importance of de Kooning to Johns's development. But
I want to argue that this derives chiefly from a formal problem inherent
in Abstract Expressionist practice but raised most forcibly in
de Kooning's work: namely, given one's predilection for "painterly"
brushwork, how to organize the surface of the canvas so as not to
yield a Cubist space. The crucial element according to this account
is the character ofthe brushwork, whether the individual strokes run
into and over one another, on however small a scale. It is more or
less irrelevant whether such brushstrokes exhibit value contrasts as
well, though if they do-as Greenberg points out-gradations of
light and dark like those of conventional shading result. The point
here is thatthe character ofthe brushwork alone is sufficientto raise
the formal problem in quite crushing form, and I tend to seeJohns's
early paintings as an attempt to solve this problem by wedding a
Guston-type handling of paint to organizational schemata whose ex-
NEw YoRK LETTER:JoHNS / 291
plicit two-dimensionality is intended to preclude reading the brushwork
in terms of Cubist space.
Moreover, this attemptat a solution is straightforward and without
irony ofany kind. The fact that a large portion oftbe early paintings
are monochromatic and without value contrast supports this interpretation,
since, as Greenberg makes plain, the formal irony that he
finds at the heart ofJohns's work arises from the combining of twodimensional
schemata with a "de Kooningesque play of lights and
darks." But in these paintings-which are, I feel, among the very
finestJohns has done-tbe painter tends either to eschewvalue contrast
almost entirely or to reproduce the original colors of the sign,
as in the red, white, and blueAmeric;:m flagpaintings. And neither of
these approaches gives rise to the contradiction Greenberg discusses.
There is, however, another contradiction (one already hinted at)
inherent inJohns's work from tbe beginning. Itderivesfrom the fact
that the character of his brushwork alone is sufficient to imply a Cubist
space-an implication which the sign character of his organizing
motifs is at pains to deny. An artist withJohns's critical powers could
not but be aware, sooner or later, that his putative solution was no
solution of all, but rather a yoking of incompatibles. And it is from
this moment ofawareness on that he heightens the fundamental contradiction
by reinforcing the plastic implications of his brushwork
with value contrasts, thereby generating tbe contradiction that
Greenberg has acutely characterized. It is from this moment also that
his work begins to exhibit the literary irony from which the early
paintings were largely free, and to mock, not in venom but in loving
sadness, the mannerisms ofAbstract Expressionism.
From being an attempt to solve a formal problem inherent in
Abstract Expressionism, Johns's art becomes an exploiting, heightening,
and showing off of the problem itself Similarly, Italian
Mannerist architects deliberately accentuated the ambiguities and
begged questions inherent in the great achievements of the High
Renaissance; but itwas not until the generation ofGian Lorenzo Bernini
and Francesco Borromini that those ambiguities and begged
questions could be tackled directly. There is an added element of
pathos in Johns's situation, in tbat the historical moment to which
his style belongs is past, and in effect was past by the time he came
on the scene. Already Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still had
pointed the way past the de Kooning problem, which had either
wrecked or hung up a number of painters during the early 1950s.
But it isjust this depth of commitment to a manner ofworking that
292 \ NEW YORK LETTER:jOHNS
seems-by a process suggestive ofHegel's dialectic in its very imperiousness-to
have been superseded, that putsJohns head and shoulders
above merely clever manipulators of received contradictions
such as Jim Dine. And it is this historical factor also that makes
Johns's achievement more significant than that of trompe l'oeil painters
such as William Harnett.
Johns's current show everywhere reveals, by handling of paint and
deliberate irony, the pathos I have just referred to. In three of the
paintings-Diver(fig. 68), Passage, and Outthe Window II (all 1962) there
is a stick or wooden ruler attached at one end by a screw to the
canvas so that it can pivot around. Paint is caked on its undersurface,
and underneath it, on the canvas itself, corresponding exactly to
the arc the stick or ruler would describe, is a broad disk or disk segment
of smeared paint. The whole arrangement is clearly meant as
a mechanical, ironic paradigm of de Kooning's dragging brush and
smeared paint texture. In most of the paintings there is also that
semiliterary playing with the conceptual, meaning-bearing nature of
signs-as opposed to the exploitation of their formal character in
the early work-which looks back rather casually toward Dada, Surrealism,
and the kind of phenomenological awareness that inhabits
Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausie, for example. An instance of this occurs
in the far right-hand panel ofDiver, where the stenciled words "RED,"
"YELLOW," and "BLUE" occur (''YELLOW" in fact runs offthe framing
edge midway through the second "L," introducing an ambiguity
of expectation) in a context meant to exploit their denotative ambiguity,
as follows: the word "BLUE" is lettered in blue; the word ''YEir
LOW" in red over a broad yellow area; and·the word "RED" in blue
alongside a bright slash of red paint. The basic trouble with this sort
ofplayingaround is thatit is old hat. Unless the painter is discovering
new conceptual ambiguities he condemns himself and his work to
the task ofmere exemplification ofan alreadyarticulated, and philosophically
superseded, state of awareness. WhereJohns's earlier exploitation
of the formal character of signs was strikingly original, his
later exploration of their conceptual ambiguities is witty but nothing
more, though even here his concentration on signs that have to do
with the elements of painting is a manifestation of his seriousness,
compared with painters like Dine and Larry Rivers.
·
One of the paintings on show, a large Map (1962-63) of the
United States mostly in grays, is a fine example of the kind of painting
Greenberg describes as characteristic ofJohns's best work. Most
of the others are looser affairs, organized not by a single governing
NEW YORK LETTER:JOiiNS I 293
two-dimensional motif but rather composed in more traditional Abstract
Expressionist terms, which would seem to represent the artist's
determination to work in a consciously retardataire manner, and to
accept both the constricting of ambition and the loss of historical
importance consequent upon such a decision. In light ofall this it is
hardly any wonder thatjohns lavishes a somewhat heavy irony on the
mannerisms of Abstract Expressionism. My own feelings about the
paintings themselves are mixed. On the one hand, there is the pleasure
they give through their beautiful handling of paint and consummate
taste; on the other, there are the, to me, cheapening ironies,
together with the decision (as it were, part of the content of
every painting) to ignore certain probably insoluble formal problems.
This is surely one ofthe handsomest and mostintelligent shows
in New York this season. But the paintings are undercut by an awareness
of their relation to a particular historical state of affairs, and
one's own doubts about the relevance of such an awareness to final
judgments of quality chiefly serves to complicate things still further.
NOTES
1 . Clement Greenberg, "Mter Abstract Expressionism," Art International 6
(Oct. 25, 1962): 26-27.
New York Letter: Hofmann
THE TWO finest shows in New York this month are
those of Jules Olitski at Poindexter and Hans Hofmann at Kootz.
. Olitski's is discussed atlength elsewhere in this issue byBarbaraRose,
and I mention it here chieflybecause, considered together, these two
exhibitions demonstrate the overwhelming impact sheer color can
have on contemporary sensibility. In Olitsk.i's case the intensity and
broad expanse of his colored areas force us to ignore the somewhat
contrived or "arty" character of the spaces between them. The fields
of color themselves are so saturated and so well painted, with only
the most necessary and discreet internal inflections, that it is virtually
impossible to register their limits as contours. Hofinann's intentions,
if I read them right, are characteristically more concerned with the
posing and solving of a particular problem. In many of the canvases
in his current show it is as if the painter set out to determine just
how large a tract of painting rejected by contemporary sensibility as
weak or "corny" might be redeemed, and perhaps even given new
usefulness, by dint ofsheer color.
For example, in the extremely fine Memmia inAeternum ( 1962; fig.
6g), dedicated to Arthur Carles, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock,
Bradley Walker Tomlin, and Franz Kline, the background consists of
a surprisingly warm grayish brown which is comprised of streaks of
more intense colors: yellow, red, and blue in particular. It is, I think,
the kind of passage that a beginner might regard as beautiful but
more sophisticated taste would be repelled by. Upon this Hofmann
Originally published in Art lnternational7 (Apr. 25, 1963): 54·
294
NE\V YoRK LETTER: HOFMANN I 295
has placed two sharply cut rectangles of bright, thick paint: the
smaller one, on the left, is bright yellow; the other, larger but placed
slightly lower on the right, is red brown. Both of these are warm,
autonomous colors, and the drama ofthe painting arises out ofHofmann's
efforts to involve them with one another and with the background.
Between them, flooding down through the center of the
background, is a forceful streak of blue-itself a cold color but in
this context vibrant with energy. To the left of and above the yellow
rectangle are streaks of matching yellow that flare into resonant life
and make thebackground seem an inseparable ambience ofthe rectangle.
Above the yellow rectangle there is also a deep pulse of dark
redwhich, with the blue, curiously becomes the most passionate note
in the painting. At the right above the red brown rectangle is a streak
of yellow that answers the yellows at the left. The end result is that
the background and rectangles are integrated on the strength of
color alone; not only is the "corny" painting of the background redeemed
and made acceptable, the eye is wakened to recognize it as
in fact quite beautiful. In other words, through Hofmann's immense
self-awareness, ofwhich the problem-solving aspect of his art is only
one manifestation, both the painting and the perceiving eye recover
a kind ofnaivete that one might have thoughtwas lostfor good. (The
concern for wholly self-aware naivete relates Hofmann to Paul Klee.
But Hofmann aspires to redeem certain paint qualities as such,
rather than, as in Klee's case, particular modes ofvisualizing, conceptualizing,
and representing.)
Moreover, the coloristic strength ofthe painting enables Hofmann
to indulge in tactile effects that would be the ruin of most other
painters: for example, he cannot resist emphasizing the slab nature
ofthe rectangles by scoring the red brown paintwith small horizontal
incisions that evoke, in the context of the painting's dedication, the
image of a cenotaph. Finally, the background stops short of the top
of·the canvas. This is important both because it asserts Hofinann's
awareness of what I have called the background as a skin of paint
that, although it evokes the feel ofatmosphere and deep space, nevertheless
remains not very far behind the picture plane, and because
it gives the painting necessary space to breathe. The edging at the
top is ragged and fhll of splashes, drips, and casual brushwork: here
too Hofmann's sense of color enables him to get away with expressing
an impatience with contrivance that is itself perhaps a bit contrived.
I might as well add that although discussion of this sort is
necessary, it is ofcourse inadequate to an experience ofthe paintings
296 ! NEw YoRK LETTER: HOFMANN
in question, whose power, delicacy, and subtle intelligence it cannot
begin to suggest.
In large measure Hofmann's self-awareness is an awareness of the
achievements and implications ofCubism and ofmore or Jess Cubist
painting among the firstAmerican AbstractExpressionists. But there
is in Hofmann's best work a loosening of Cubist logic-for the most
part in the name ofcolor-thatis at once exploratory and liberating.
As Clement Greenberg has written, 'The moments of bis best pictures
are precisely those in which his painterly gift, which is both
pre- and post-Cubist, has freest rein and in which Cubism acts, not
to control, but only to inform and imply, as an awareness of style
but not as style itself."1 The force of this remark may be seen at once
if one compares Hofmann's Memoria in Aeternum or Magnum Opus
( 1962) with much of Vasi!y Kandinsky's work of the 1920s and
1930s. Time and again Kandinsky places certain shapes or forms in
an atmosphere, but because those paintings are not informed by an
awareness of Cubism, which is to say by an awareness of the picture
plane as painted surface, they fail to come off. In Hofmann one
senses an analogous desire; only instead of solid forms in an attnosphere
Hofmann wants to place sharply cut colored areas in a colored
ambience which, though often painted in a different manner
from the areas, is yet essential to the full working of the painting.
The differences between the Hofmanns and the Kandinskys are also
the grounds for the superiority of the former: their primacy ofcolor
and their manifest awareness of Cubism.
NOTES
1 . Clement Greenberg, "Hans Hofmann," in Art and Culture: Critical Essays
(Boston, 196 1 ) , p. 192.
New York Letter: Noland, Thiebaud
SoMETIMES ONE wants to pay at least lip service to the
stock procedures and rhetoric of art writing. For example, nothing
could be clearer than that the selection of recent paintings by Kenneth
Noland now on display at the Andre Emmerich Gallery is one
of the finest and most important shows to go up in New York this
year, and I do notwant to leave anyone in doubt as to my feelings on
that score. At the same time, however, I am convinced that the critic
has a more serious and potentially valuablejob of work to do than
simply to praise painters and paintings he admires with all the superlatives
at his command. Rather, he must try to tackle the issues raised
by the works themselves with an intelligence, sensitivity, and seriousness
as nearly as possible equal to the artist's own. This is, in the
case of the fmest art, perhaps an impossible ideal to realize in practice.
But perhaps it isn't, and at any rate is the only ideal worth striving
for.
Putting aside for the moment the matter of color, it seems to me
that the overriding merit ofNoland's new paintings is that they confront
one ofthe most crucial formal problems thrown up by the development
ofadvanced painting over the past decade: that offinding
a self�aware and strictly logical relation between the painted image
and the framing edge. I don't believe that the paintings succeed, finally,
in providing a generalizable solution, or in being themselves
wholly satisfactory solutions, to this problem; but this is not meant as
disparagement of what Noland has achieved. On the contrary, it is
especially impressive that he has come to recognize and chosen to
Originally published in Art lnternational7 (May 25, 1 963): 6g-7o.
297
298 ! NEw YoRK LETTER: NoLAND, THIEBAUD
tackle the problem at all, since itwas one that his manner ofworking
had until now allowed him to bypass. Moreover, I suspect that in his
new paintings Noland has acknowledged its relevance to the contemporary
situation in terms that cannot hereafter be ignored. And this
alone increases the likelihood ofits solution in the near future.
The first awareness ofthe problem, or the creation of it, occurs in
Barnett Newman's great paintings made during the late 1940s and
early 1950s. In 1958 Newman wrote: "I realize thatmy paintings have
no linkwith, nor anybasis in, the art ofWorldWar I with its principles
ofgeometry that tie it into the nineteenth century. To reject cubism
or purism, whether it is Picasso's or Mondrian's, only to end up with
the collage scheme of free-associated forms, whether it is Mir6's or
Malevich's, is to be caught in the same geometric trap. Only an art
free from any kind of the geometry principles ofWorld War I, only
an art ofno geometry, can be a new beginning."' Similarly, Clement
Greenberg has written (in "'American-Type' Painting") that Newman's
straight lines "do not echo those of the frame, but parody it.
Newman's picture becomes all frame in itself. . . . What is destroyed
is the Cubist, and immemorial, notion and feeling of the picture
edge as a confine; with Newman, the picture edge is repeated inside,
and makes the picture, instead of being merely echoed. The limiting
edges ofNewman's larger canvases, we now discover, actjust like the
lines inside them: to divide but not to separate or enclose or bound:
to delimit, but not limit."2
There are two points, one general and the other more specific,
that must be made here. The first is that without disputing Greenberg's
characterization of Newman's art or Newman's own declaration
of intentions, it is nevertheless arguable that from the works
alone it is not immediately clear that Newman's lines repeat the framing
edge rather than give rise to a set of geometrical relationships.
Because of course they do give rise to such relationships: One needs
either Newman's credo, Greenberg's explanation, or something of
the kind to cue one in: as Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks in the Philosophical
Investigations, conversation on esthetic matters often involves
statements of the kind, "Look at it this way."3 And once we do, the
difference between Newman's art and Mondrian's or Malevich's or
Mire's becomes evident. But it would be a mistake to think that Newman's
great canvases bear their formal meanings in an entirely manifest
and self-evident fashion. Rather, as Wittgenstein goes on to make
clear, the concept ofseeing works ofart one wayrather than another
is deeply problematic, and in the case of what he calls "aspects of
NEW YORK LETTER: NOLAND, THIEBAUD I 299
organization" (surely what we are dealing with here) rests on our
ability tovisualize this transformation. 'The substratum of this experience
is the mastery ofa technique."4 Secoud, the fact remains that
in Newman's work there is still an important zone of decision left
that smacks ofgeometrical thinking: where exactly to place the vertical
line or lines. And until this decision itselfis somehow determined
by a relatively manifest internal logic generated by the painter's
awareness of the framing edge, an element of geometry persists,
small but for the time being irreducible.
By and large the problem of the framing edgewas ignored during
the rest of the rgsos as "advanced" painters such as Helen Frankenthaler,
Morris Louis, and Noland himself concerned themselves
chiefly with the exploration ofstain and spill techniques. This led to
canvases that were more breathtakingly "open" than even Jackson
Pollock's or Newman's; and in the work of Louis and Noland, both
of whom chose early on to work in a plastic-base medium, it led to
unprecedentedly intense color as well. Under the impact ofthe new
"openness" and effects of color at their command, it was easy for
Louis and Noland to put the consciousness of the framing edge out
ofmind-though it was always more nearlypresent in Noland's mind
than in Louis's. The latter chose, for the most part, simply to ignore
it; and his last paintings, shown at Emmerich's in the fall of rg62,
revealed a kind ofplacementofthe colored belts (especiallydiagonal
ones) within the framing edge that marked a return to the geometry
deplored by Newman. Noland on the other hand has always, so far
as I know, centered his images. By not allowing the painted image to
intersect with the framing edge the problem was, if not solved, at
least not flouted. Rather, it was got round. It is important to add that
these remarks are not meant to run down Louis's magnificent canvases
but only to suggest that, at a given moment, the same paintings
maybe "advanced" in regard to a particular problem or development
and neutral or even retardataire in regard to others.
There are two other painterswhose work must be discussed in this
connection before dealing with Noland's new paintings. The first is
Ellsworth Kelly, whose position has always been hard to specify. To
my mind, Kelly's work is remarkable for having incarnated and kept
alive a profound sensitivity to the interaction ofprecisely contoured,
brightly colored shapes. Kelly himselfis not concerned with the framing
edge and has always been content to work within it in a manner
thatowes much to Cubism. But I want to argue that the kind ofsensibility
that inhabits his best paintings may be seen as relevant to prob-
300 I NEw YoRK LETTER: NoLAND, THIEBAUD
!ems-including this one-other than those with which he has chosen
to grapple. In fact, the only painter in whose work one finds an
explicitand entirely self-aware confrontation ofthe problem is Frank
Stella. This was true even in his early black paintings, where the different
right-angled configurations of stripes amounted to variations
within the relativelyunchangingrectangle ofthe canvas. In his aluminum
and then his copper paintings that followed, Stella's logic grew
more and more tough minded: the paintings came to be generated
in toto, as it were, by the different shapes of the framing edges, and
variation occurred only within the series as a whole rather than
within a particular shape. The crucial thing to observe is that the
solution embodied in Stella's lucid art partly founds itself upon the
eschewal of color and upon the deliberate emphasizing ofthe painting's
nature as a material object. His own recent paintings in which
the stripes are painted in bright colors make this point rather unmistakably:
the mode ofsurface organization and the relationships that
hold among the colors are antithetical to one another. And this suggests
that Stella's solution, though entirely self-consistent in his copper
paintings, cannot be married with bright color except through
deliberate antithesis.
This brings us at last to Noland's new paintings at Emmerich's. I
wrote at the outset that the problem they seemed to be tackling is
thatoffindinga self-aware and strictly logical relation between image
and framing edge. That isn't all, though. The new paintings set out
to achieve such a relation in combination with the intense color got
by spilling or staining plastic-base paint into raw canvas. That is, in
his current show Noland seems to be trying to bring together the
new color developed over the past decade by Louis,Jules Olitski, and
himselfwith the particular awareness ofthe framing edge that began
with Newman and that one finds most highly articulated in the work
of Stella.
Most of the paintings in the current show consist of two or three
inverted chevrons stained different colors and longitudinally centered.
No raw canvas is left showing between the different chevrons,
all of which intersect the framing edge at their extremities though
not necessarily at their points. Finally, the areas cut off by the chevrons
atthe top centerand in the two lower corners are with one exception
painted in. The colors are subdued, and most of the combinations
are quite beautiful. But in light ofNoland's previous work one's
attention is drawn from the start to the mode of organization itself
and to what it implies. First, Noland has chosen to relinquish, for the
NEw YoRK LETTER: NOLAND, THIEBAUD I 301
time being anyway, the extremely powerful optical effects he could
achieve through floating concentric circles and cat's-eye motifs in
bright colors on raw canvas. Second, the new paintings seem to want
to emphasize their own flatness, to call attention to the fact that they
exist on, or are stained into, a flat surface. This is opposed to the
sense one often had of Noland's centered motifs hovering as if in a
kind of atmosphere. And third, the paintings seem to relate, with
varying degrees of success, to their framing edges.
Not surprisingly, it is this last and most important aspect of the
new paintings that leads to trouble. In YellowHalf(1963; fig. 13), for
example, the upper boundary ofthe bright yellow chevron runs into
the upper corners of the canvas and the point made by it' lower
boundary intersects the framing edge at the bottom center. But there
is still something at least seemingly arbitrary (and in Newman's sense
"geometrical") in the placement of a red purple chevron below the
yellow one, so that its point is truncated by the bottom ofthe canvas.
It would not be more satisfactory if the second chevron were placed
above the first, as occurs in several paintings (including an untitled
one in mustardyellows, tans, and red orange), because it would still
be placed only partly in relation to the framing· edge. (In fact, I'm
not entirely convinced by the way different bounding edges of the
yellow intersect the canvas at its key points.) Even provisionally accepting
the chevrons, however, it is hard if not impossible to see the
upper center and lower corner segments as other than what is left
over after chevrons are placed within a rectangular field. Or if they
are to be regarded as parts of much larger chevrons the question
arises why they have been cut offjust so by the framing edge. These
questions suggest that what one misses in the new paintings is the
sense that a really strict internal logic is at work determining the
placement ofpictorial elements in relation to the framing edge. Such
a logic would not have to be inspired by a greater awareness of the
edge than these paintings show, and in fact it is the presence ofjust
that awareness that makes one demand the stricter logic. I don't
mean to imply that the paintings might have been strengthened by
changes that are within the critic's power to propose. But it is at least
possible that a wholly satisfactory integration of framing edge with
pictorial motif is unattainable with the particular motifand shape of
canvas that Noland in this series has tried to combine.
It is significant, I think, that the most satisfying painting on show,
CadmiumRadiance ( 1963), ignores the problem of the framing edge
almost entirely. In this large canvas seven wedge shapes, with wedges
302 I NEw YoRK LETTER: NOLAND, THIEBAUD
of raw canvas between them, are spread out fanwise fi"om a point
just above the center ofthe bottom framing edge. Apart from being
longitudinally centered the wedges or rays are not organized with
regard to the framing edge: for example, the upper corners of the
canvas fall somewhere inside a pair of orange rays rather than along
their boundaries, and there is a thin wedge ofraw canvas left at the
bottom on both the left and the right. The two outside wedges or
rays areyellow, the next two purple, the nexttwo orange, and the one
remaining is bright red. This mode oforganization is much closer to
Louis or to Noland's own earlier work, with its implication that the
framing edge is only an arbitrary (and somehow unimportant) delimiting
of what is really an infinite field or zone of radiance. The
painting itself is more satisfactory because it is internally consistent
whereas the chevron pictures are not. But the latter are, perhaps,
more important in that theyconfront a problem which mayverywell
prove crucial to modernist painting. It begins to seem as if the new
. vision of color brought about by Louis, Noland, and Olitski is going
to have to be combined with an awareness of the framing edge
through a logic as strict as Stella's but, because of the sheerly optical
qualities of plastic-base paint, less mechanical. Noland's current
show seems to me to represent the most important effort yet made
toward such a synthesis, and it is hardly deprecatory of Noland's
achievement, or ofhis intelligent, sensuous, beautifully painted canvases,
to claim that he has not quite solved everything at one stroke.
Ar THE Allan Stone Gallery Wayne Thiebaud is
showing paintings of slices of cake, pie, sandwiches, whole dinners,
dolls, cold cereal, flowers, cheeses, sardines in cans, shoes, a pinball
machine, and an electric horse. Thiebaud paints in a bright, fatty
manner that uses a deliberately flat, or combed, impasto with considerable
effect. His realistic mode avoids atmosphere at all costs. The
best paintings are those in which a single, standard object becomes
a motif, either in isolation (I'm thinking now of a slice of pie under
glass) or repeated across thewidth ofthe painting (as in SevenApp!Rs
[rg62] ) . Thiebaud's characteristic mode is somewhere between representation
and reproduction. This is why he is at his weakest when
he tackles representation per se, as in his painting of a pinball rnachine
or in the portrait of an electric horse called Ride, Ride, Ride
(rg62).
NoTES
NEw YoRK LETTER: NoLAND, THIEBAUD I 303
1. Barnett Newman, "From TheNewAmericanPainting�" in Selected Writing:5 and
Interviews, ed.John O'Neill (New York, rggo), p. '79·
2. Clement Greenberg, "'American-Type' Painting," in Art and Culture: C?iticalEssays
(Boston, r g6 r ) , pp. 226-27.
3· Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philos(}phicalInvestigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe
(Oxford, 1958), p. 202e.
4· Ibid., p. 208e.
New York Letter: Hofmann, Davis
IT wouLD be hard to praise the Museum of Modern
Art's exhibition of forty paintings by Hans Hofmann too extravagantly.
The paintings, dated mostly from within the past decadethough
a few go back as early as 1940-bave been selected with care
and, equally important, hung with finesse. There is no artist whose
paintings suffer as much as Hofmann's do when they are bung too
close together. Even under the best ofcircumstances-and the present
hanging creates those-the richness ofhis paint, the sheer gaudiness
of his color, and the exuberance of his invention tend after a
while to gorge the eye and lessen its responsiveness. (This is not a
criticism.) Butwhen a number ofhis paintings are presented in close
opposition to one another, as in his last, splendid show at Kootz, for
example, the result is murderous. What William Seitz has done is
something that sounds, on paper, almost impossible: he has found a
way of hanging individual paintings so that they may be studied in
relative isolation from others in their immediate neighborhood, and
yet be compared with other paintings without the spectator having
to change his position. Seitz has done this by composing in terms of
vistas through channels ofspace to other paintings atwalls atvarying
distances from a given position, a solution as unobtrusive as it is satis­
fying.
Tbe paintings themselves reveal Hofmann's prodigious variety as
a painter, based on his overridinggift as a colorist. It is this giftwhich
enables Hofmann to bring off paintings which no other painter I
Originally published in Art lnternational7 (Dec. [), 1963): 66-68.
NEw YoRK LETTER: HoFMANN, DAvis I 305
can think ofcould have saved from foundering in their own copious
impasto or from being wrecked byareas painted in the most willfully
sentimental fashion imaginable. (I tried to analyze Hofmann's fine
Memoria in Aeternumfrom this point ofview in a discussion of his last
show at Kootz published in this space in April 1963 [reprinted in this
book as "NewYork Letter: Hofmann"].) In fact Hofmann's tendency
to court disaster and then try to pull the painting out of the fire gives
his work a collective character that can perhaps be termed didactic.
But there is an immense difference between Hofmann's didacticism
and that of the academic painter. Hofmann's paintings take on their
didactic, or exemplary, value preciselybecause theyare almost always
at bottom spontaneous and exploratory, and both the artists of our
time and we ourselves are in serious need ofparadigms ofspontaneity
that never descend into mere impulsiveness and subjectivity-the
meaningless twitchings of Rosenbergian man. It is as if the didacticism,
the willed attempt to solve a particular problem brought about
in the initial stages of painting a particularwork, and the spontaneity
with which the finished work is shot through are each other's necessary
conditions. This is true partly because the problems with which
Hofmann chooses to engage are never generalizable: they arise
within the act of painting a single canvas, and this means that if and
when Hofmann succeeds in solving them the solutions are not generalizable
beyond that canvas. Hence the perennial tentativeness of
Hofmann'swork-a characteristic which itselfgathers didactic or exemplary
force in light of the arbitrariness with which many painters
within the past decade have fastened on a single motifand worked it
to death. (Though there have been compelling formal reasons behind
the choice by a few painters of certain motifs.) In a time when
some of the most genuinely impressive achievements in paintingthe
work of Barnett Newman, for example-have been based upon
a kind of formal absolutism, Hofmann has helped to keep alive a
more esthetically anarchic set of attitudes toward his art. This is not
to denigrate the achievements ofabsolutists such as Newman: their
work at its most completely realized has an authority and a quality of
inevitability which Hofmann's cannot, and perhaps does not, aspire
to. What is distinctive, and profoundly heartening, about recent
American painting arejust these contrary, but not contradictory, propensities:
on the one hand, toward a spontaneity informed by the
most acute formal self�awareness; and on the other, toward a formal
absolutism founded on a personal analysis ofwhat is taken to be the
situation of "advanced" painting at a given moment. It is between
i
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I:1
II!I
II
III
Iti!
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,,
306 I NEW YORK LETTER: HOFMANN, DAVIS
these mutually fructifying extremes that the valid and important
painting of our time lies.
I WISH I could admire Gene Davis's paintings at the
Poindexter more than I do. Most of them consist of a large canvas
divided into something like forty or fifty vertical stripes roughly two
inches wide. Each stripe is painted a single flat, ungraded color. Davis
tends to start out at the left-hand side of the canvas with a certain
sequence of two or three fairly dull colors-light blue, dark blue,
olive, mauve, and so on-which he repeats, often with internal variation,
as he moves across the canvas-until, somewhere near the righthand
edge, he tries to startle us by breaking the sequence with a few
stripes of bright, contrasting colors. Sometimes we meetjarring colors
earlier on, nearer the left-hand edge, but eitherway the principle
governing the work is the same.
The faults inherent in such a procedure areobvious: to beginwith,
the stripes have no structural function within the painting. This
comes out when one compares Davis's paintings with Frank Stella's,
for example, in which the stripes, generated by the framing edge, are
the structure. In Davis's paintings, however, there is no internal logic
governing the number or width of the stripes; the painting simply
goes on until the artist decides it or he has had enough and breaks
it off. Nor are the stripes elements in a primarily visual whole: it
seems to me that we are encouraged to read them one at a time, or
in small clutches, rather than to take them all in at a single glancethere
are too many for that in any case. What matters to Davis is the
fact of repetition followed by the fact of surprise; the precise nature
ofboth is less important to him, and once we come feel this it is hard
to give our full attention to the particular colors he uses or to the
details of his execution. (This last is probably just as well: in most of
the paintings on exhibition Davis's control of his medium is not as
tight as it should be and in places the painting is slipshod.) Finally,
there is a dependence in these canvases upon other orders ofexperience
than painting, such as reading and music. But tbe dependence
is not a profound or even an interesting one; on the contrary, what
Davis is after is roughly equivalent to the repetition of two or three
notes followed by the (virtually random) banging of a dissonant
chord.
Three other paintings consist of five or six long canvases roughly
a foot or foot and a halfin height hung one on top ofthe other, with
perhaps a few inches between them. In two of these several canvases
NEw YoRK LETTER: HoFMANN, DAvrs I 307
are left blank, while on the painted canvases Davis plays with the notion
ofa visual counterpart to musical counterpoint by means of his
colored stripes. The purely notational, rather than structural or visual,
function of the stripes could not be clearer, and it is hard to
know how to read the blank canvases other than as the equivalent of
completely silent musical voices.
New York Letter: Kelly, Poons
THE CURRENT show of recent work by Ellsworth Kelly
at the Betty Parsons Gallery is the strongest by him I have ever seen.
It is also hard to characterize. To begin with, it has none of the expressive
force and openness to experience of, say, the Guggenheim's
recent exhibition ofpaintings by the late Morris Louis. But it would
be wrong to think that Kelly's paintings somehow arose out of a relative
absence of feeling. Rather, this absence of feeling is something
Kelly has had to work for; or, probably more exactly, it has come
about as the result offundamental changes Kelly has wrought upon
his own art within the past few years. By far the most important of
these seems to me his increasing avoidance of formal arrangements
that can be read in terms offigure versus ground, which is how most
if not all his prior work demanded to be seen. And this has, necessarily
it would seem, entailed the virtual elimination of the biomor�
phic, vaguely evocative images-the "figures" just mentionedwhich
were the source of such emotion as one felt in Kelly's work
until now. Up to the present exhibition Kelly's paintings have demonstrated
his complete mastery of the tensions and ambiguities attainable
between figure and ground, and image and framing edge. But
there was always a sense in which that demonstration seemed, to me,
the entire rationale for the paintings' existence-and this in turn
seemed to imply a thinness in their conception. These were and still
are qualms and reservations which I find it hard to translate into
objective terms, and I am dogged by the possibility that I have simply
failed to see his work as it should be seen. Be this as it may, individual
Originally published in ATt lnternational7 (Dcc.-Jan. 1963-64): 54·
308
NEV·.' YORK LETTER: KELLY, PooNs I 309
pieces in the current show strike me as the strongest things of his I
have ever seen: their force depends much less upon the balancing of
separable, analyzable pictorial tensions than upon the unitaryimpact
the new pieces make upon one.
In the paintings this impact mostly comes about, as I've already
suggested, through our inability to read them simply in terms of figure
versus ground. This is true in large measure even of the big red,
green, and blue painting in which such a reading is still at least vestigially
possible. But in the large, square Red, Yellow, Blue (rg63) it is
no longer tenable. This is a particularly informative example to look
at closely, because our first impression tends to be that the painting
consists of overlapping squares: first, a large blue one the size of the
canvas; then a yellow one, two-thirds its size, fitted into the lower lefthand
corner; and then a red one, half the size of the yellow, also
fitted into the same corner. But on closer examination we come to
see that the different color-areas are in fact painted on separate canvases
that have then been fitted together; so that the red area is the
only square canvas, and the impression that we got at first of overlapping
squares was an illusion. What is striking here is the deliberateness
ofwhat Kelly has done: it is as ifhe has tried to lure us into the
kind of reading his previous work has mostly demanded, in order to
expose in the most unequivocal and dramatic fashion possible the
inapplicability of such a reading to his current desires.
It is interesting, in this context, to observe that Kelly has attained
a more unitary impact for his work not by blurring the distinctions
already present in it but by heightening them, by strengthening the
individual, self-sufficient character of allthe elements involved. Until
now, Kelly's paintings have seemed to take the limiting character
of the framing edge for granted and to make whatever pictorial
arrangements were necessary within it. But in the current show
one has the sense ofindividual elements-pictorial simples-having
been brought together into configurations that may or may not respect
the regularity of the framing edge. And this is related in turn
to what seems to me the most radical characteristic of Kelly's recent
work, the nature of this bringing together: the elements are not
merely overlapped, as the figure in his previous work is set on and
against the flat ground, but juxtaposed: one is meant to feel the independent
existence of them all. The work arises out of theirjuxtaposition,
their proximity in space; and while this proximity may in
some cases be extreme, as in Red, Yellow, Blue, in others it is only relative.
This, for me, is the significance ofKelly'swall sculptures, the best
310 l NEW YORK LETTER: KELLY, PooNS
of which seem to me more successful, more completely realized
and conceptually profound than either the paintings or the standing
sculptures. My favorite piece in the exhibition is the wall sculpture
in which a blue, roughly ellipsoid shape that bulges toward the right
and is cut offat the leftis attached to a rectangle behind and parallel
to it and painted in the same shade of blue. (See Blue-on-Blue [1963;
fig. 70].) The material is sheet aluminum, and the truncation ofthe
ellipsoid coincides with the left-hand "framing edge" of the rectangle.
Here the independent existence of the two elements is further
emphasized by their having been painted the same color, which
makes absurd any attempt to read them as figure with ground, and
the lining up of the truncated edge ofthe ellipsoid with the edge of
thevertical sheet underlines, for me, the arbitrariness ofthe framing
edge itself and ofthe conventions associated with it. This is an enormously
intelligent, deeply inventive exhibition; and it is further characterized
by the literally flawless execution that has always distinguished
Kelly's work.
AT THE Green Gallery the young painter Larry Poons
knows what he wants and how to get it. My own reaction is more
problematic, however. This is Poons's first show, and it is remarkable
for its intelligence, certitude, and command of means. What Poons
has done is carry the kind ofoptical flicker or beat one finds in certain
Nolands with concentric circles to an extreme, through the
placement ofcolored dots in difficult, nonperspicuous patterns on a
colored field (often the complementary of the color of the dots).
Under the gallery's bright lights the dots tend to flicker and jump
and blink and flare until we begin to fear for our retinas if not our
minds. The effect is literally irresistible-and it is this characteristic
which finally seems to me to limit Poons's achievement, maybe severely.
Precisely because these paintings are bound to have the same
effect on all normal persons, they are much closer to those tests for
color blindness in which colored dots form one number under normal
vision and another number if the subject's vision is defective
than they are to the optically intense stain paintings out of which
they come and which they superficially resemble. Poons's work is, in
this sense, literally experimental: it is an attempt to bring about a
specific effect in all visually normal subjects. But its mode ofaddress
is precisely to us as subjects, not spectators. There is in Poons's canvases,
therefore, an element of coercion that runs counter to art, or
NEwYoRK LETTER: KELLY, PooNs I 3 1 1
at any rate to even the barest notion of individual sensibility. These
are, I repeat, intelligent paintings that succeed in accomplishing
what they set out to do, but it would be a pity if Poons were to rest
content with repeating himself. On the strength of this show he appears
to have the gifts, intelligence, and technical resources to do
something finer and less coercive than the paintings in it.
New York Letter: Judd
AT THE Green Gallery, Donald Judd is showing a
number of constructions made, for the most part, out ofwood and
metal. In all the pieces the wood is painted a bright, matte red and
the metal is either left alone or painted blue (though it is possible
the blue parts are plastic) . As one might expect on the strength of
Judd's monthly criticism in Arts Magazine it is an assured, intelligent
show; it also provides a kind of commentary on the criticism and is
doubly interesting on that account. In general I think one can say
thatJudd in his art writing has expressed strong suspicions that easel
painting is more or less defunct and has championed artists whose
paintings are on the verge of becoming objects, such as Frank Stella
and AIJensen. Butwhat has not clearly emerged in the criticism-at
least in my reading of it-is exactly howJudd means to discriminate
between the objects he admires and those he does not. Most of my
confusion on this point has survived my visit to the present show. On
the one hand, there are several qualities it is clear enoughJudd likes:
overall rectilinearity, regularity ofstructural pulse, play between positive
and negative spaces, and structural mirroring of all kinds. But
on the other hand it is not at all clear whyJudd values those qualities;
that is, I find myselfunable to discover a convincing internal rationale
for the particular decisions ofstyle and structureJudd has made.
Suchjudgments as I might make about individual pieces are therefore
halting; but it seems to me that, on the whole, the free-standing
pieces are stronger than the wall pieces, in which I sense that an
Originally published in A,rt lnternational8 (Feb. 15, l964): 26.
3 1 2
NEW YORK LETTER:jUDD I 3 1 3
uneasy compromise has been made with certain norms of painting.
For example, I experience their rectilinearity not as a particular decision
onjudd's part butrather as a retention ofthe most conventional
shape ofpicture support. This isJudd's first one-man show as well as
one of the best on view in New York this month.
New York Letter: De Kooning Drawings
IN THE show of drawings by Willem de Kooning at
the Allan Stone Gallery there are at least two that are nothing less
. than small masterpieces: an untitled drawing from 1949-50 and
another called Boudoirwhich also dates from 1949. The late 1940s
marked, in most respects, the high point of de Kooning's tremendous
achievement-as they did ofJackson Pollock's-and this appears
to have been nowhere more true than in his drawings. It is, I
think, instructive to compare the function of line in a drawing such
as the first ofthose mentioned above with the way line works in such
great Pollocks of the same approximate moment as Number I, 1949
(1949) and LavenderMist (1950). Earlier, in discussing Pollock's mature
style, I argued that the allover line in his most characteristic and
successful paintings of this moment does not delimit or evoke shapes
or structure the space through which it moves, which is to say that it
cannot be read in terms of figuration, however abstract 1 The thousands
of tiny areas into which his line seems to subdivide the canvas
are neither positive nor negative in character: they work neither as
figure nor as ground, and the paintings come to possess an overriding
and profoundly original opticality largely because of this. In
the de Kooning drawing in question line has a radically different
function and character. In contrast to the "transparency" ofPollock's
line, de Kooning's is "opaque": at every point in its trf!jectory it is
tense and vibrant with the effort to delimit shapes and to define
planes. This emphasis upon planes, together with the nature of the
shapes themselves, attests to de Kooning's prior involvement with
Originally published in ArtInternationalS (Apr. 25, 1964): 59·
Nnv YoRK LETTER: DE KooNING DRAWINGS I 3 1 5
Synthetic Cubism. But there is this immense difference between de
Kooning's drawing of 1949 and the masterpieces of Synthetic Cubism,
in which one finds a carefully manipulated ambiguity between
figure and ground: in the de Kooning almost every shape defined by
his lucid, tensile line ispositive in character. There is no ambiguity between
figure and ground because there is no important part of the
sheet that we are made to feel can be read as ground even for a moment.
In this sense, de Kooning's line, like Pollock's, is allover. But
whereas in Pollock our attention is made to bear upon the line itself,
in de Kooning's best drawings of this moment virtually every square
inch of the sheet is charged with the character as of a positive element
of figuration; these in turn somehow intersect and interlock
in a space whose shallow depth owes something to that of Synthetic
Cubism, but in which an absolute lucidity, rather than a controlled
ambiguity, governs the discriminations we are encouraged to make
between individual forms. It seems likely that this mode of defining
and relating forms must have required at least as exquisite a balance
offormal and psychological factors as that which one imagines made
possible Pollock's contemporary achievement, and it is no wonder
that neither man could maintain this balance indefinitely. The wonder
is that they achieved it at all. On the evidence of this exhibition,
atanyrate, de Kooning's drawing seems to have diminished in power
and subtlety in the course of the 1950s, a series of nine studies of
Women dated 1 963 being, sadly, the weakest of all.
NOTES
1 . My discussion of Pollock takes place earlier in this ''New York Letter." I
have omitted it here since it is recapitulated and developed in 'ThreeAmerican
Painters" and summarized in "Morris Louis," both reprinted in this book. I have
also rewritten the original sentence without changing its rneaning.-.M. E, r996
New York Letter: Olitski, Jenkins,
Thiebaud, Twombly
THE BEST current painting is perhaps harder to characterize
than new painting, during the past hundred years, has ever
been. This is the case both because of the radical emphasis placed
upon color and color relationships in what amounts to virtual isolation
from considerations of representation, illusionism, brushwork,
and value contrast-our vocabulary is probably more inadequate to
detailed appreciation of how color works than to any other aspect of
painting-and because the formal terminology evolved to describe
Cubist and post-Cubist painting begins here to reach the farthest
limits ofits usefulness. (For example, in the work of painters such as
Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland,jules O!itski, and Frank Stella, awareness
ofCubism functions at most as a kind ofnegative check to keep
them from giving in to the spatial tensions and modes of notions of
Cubism itself.) Itwould be wrong, however, to think that the difficulty
is merely one ofwords, and that the act oflooking somehow manages
to take care ofitself, so to speak. If it is hard to know how to talk or
write about paintings such as those currently exhibited byJules Olitski
at the Poindexter Gallery, this is a sure indication that it is also
hard to know how to look at them. And it is no real solace for one's
lack ofcertainty on this point to think that one is at least doing better
than those who fail to see that Olitski is one of the finest painters
working today.
Let me begin by trying to compare the best paintings in Olitski's
new show with those shown at Poindexter's a year ago. Last year's
paintings tended to consist of precisely contoured-and, in fact, ofOriginally
published in Art InternationalS (May l964): 40-43.
NEw YoRK LI<:TTER: OLri'SKt, jENI<INS, THIEBAUD, TvvoMBLY I 3 1 7
ten artily drawn-lozenges and curved bands of color organized
around a core, which might consist either of a large stained disk or
an expanse of raw canvas (see fig. r8). The bands invariably intersected
the framing edge, with the implication that they continued as
shapes beyond the edge and that the painting as a whole represented
a rectangular cut into a larger pictorial field. This impression was
counteracted by the sheer intensity of the color, which in the best
paintings tended, in the act ofseeing, to dissolve the contours of the
shapes and so both mitigate their possible artiness and make them
work chiefly as zones of color on the canvas rather than as shapes
running off it. This meant that there was a certain discontinuity in
one's perception of these paintings: the drawing and color worked,
in large measure, autonomously, and to the degree thatthe paintings
succeeded despite the drawing, against one another; and their highkeyed
color also enabled the paintings to survive a kind of structure
that seemed almost self-consciously naive in its reliance on traditional
modes of composition.
In the best new paintings-Fatal Plunge Lady (fig. rg), Beautiful
Bald Woman, and HalfChinese Patutsky (all 1963) -this discontinuity
ofperception is replaced by a triumphant unitywhich, though superficially
less exciting, probably represents a still higher plateau of
achievement than that ofayear ago. This unity is the result ofseveral
related changes:
1. Perhaps most important, the new work avoids the tense, undulating
contours of the colored shapes in last year's paintings. In
the canvases cited above there is in a sense no drawing at alL One
no longer feels Olitski's wrist determining the contours, and there is
none of the consequent artiness, or the emphasis which came to be
placed on the raw canvas-for example, between colored bands-as
shape in its own right. The colored areas seem to assume certain
shapes as if in accordance with impersonal considerations, so that
the disks of color with which Olitski still works are felt not as drawn
or geometrical forms but rather as the most economical way oflocating
a certain quantity of color at a certain point.
2 . Because drawing is eschewed, color is freed from the compulsion
it labored under a year ago: to oppose and, in effect, to dissolve
the drawing if the paintings were to succeed. Now color is dominant
from the start, with the result that it can afford to be much lower
keyed, much subtler, much more concerned with internal inflections
than before. This is the main reason the newpaintingsare less immediately
eye catching than those in lastyear's show.
3 1 8 I NEw YoRK LETTER: OuTSKI,JENKINs, THIEBAUD, TwoMBLY
3· Olitski has turned away from the core format as well as, by and
large, from the use of colored bands that run off the framing edge.
This too means that there is that much less that the color has to work
against. Moreover, in paintings such as Fatal Plunge Lady, Beautiful
Bald Woman, WetHeat Co. (1963),DoozhieOrgy (1963) , and UpsideDown
Nude (1963), Olitski has come up with a mode oforganizing the canvas
that seems to suit his particular gifts beautifully. The general format
of these might be characterized as that of a heavy curtain of
intense color, falling slowly from approximately the upper left portion
ofthe canvas toward the lower right. The ponderable rate offall
is important. These are not paintings that can be seen all at onceas
last year's paintings cried out to be seen-or that rely on the instantaneous
impact they make on the viewer. Rather, the relations
between colors, the placementofcolored shapes in the lowerportion
of the canvas, and the amount ofraw canvas left at the bottom right
(in BeautifulBaldWoman at the bottom left) demand to apprehended
in terms ofan appreciation ofthe visual momentum gathered by the
colored flood as it moves down the canvas; and I found myselfseeing
the paintings slowly, as if they were making themselves by a process
offlooding and staining down from the top ofthe canvas as I looked
at them. Thus, in BeautifulBald Woman the three small disks of orange,
green, and blue in the lower left corner seem to have been
swept there by the downward. flooding ofthe blue purple field which
occupies all of the canvas except for the barest margin along the
bottom left. Seen this way, there is nothing arbitrary or arty in the
placement of the colored disks; in fact, they come to seem as if they
have not been "placed" at all, but again, as if they have ended up
where they are in accordance with impersonal considerations-in
this case, chiefly the visual momentum of the descending curtain of
intense color. Notions oftime and momentum are also important for
the appreciation of perhaps the finest painting in the show, Fatal
Plunge Lady, in which the falling curtain starts out a kind of orange
rose and inflects to orange brown along an axis roughly perpendicular
to the direction ofthe flooding partway down. The change is both
precise and intangible, as there is nothing to mark it but the change
itself. (I think it can be argued that this inflection, along with others
in the present show, realizes at last the coloristic implications of the
vertical accents or "zips"1 in paintings by Barnett Newman done as
early as 1950: they actually are what Newman's accents represent
schematically. Maybe this is too strong. At any rate, the color inflection
in FatalPlungeLady seems to me to relate much more closely to
NEw YORK LETTER: Or.ITSKI, JENKINS, THIEBAUD, TwoMBIX I 3 1 9
Newman's vertical accents than to the internal, and more traditionally
painterly, variations one finds in his colored fields themselves or
in the work of Mark Rothko.)
Not all the paintings in this rough format succeed, however. In
UpsideDownNude the deep red curtain that descends from the upper
left corner comes to seem not merely opaque but solid, as if it were
the surface and profile ofa planet seen from somewhere in spacean
effect which unfortunately is intensified by the fact that the upper
left corner has been brushed or rubbed overwith deep blue as if to
signifYgreatermaterial density. In this painting the shapes and colors
no longer work as strictly visual or optical presences, but instead ask
to be read illusionistically, and the painting suffers as a result. Wet
Heat Co. gets into similar trouble, again mostly at the top ofthe canvas,
where Olitski has left a ragged margin of raw canvas showing
above the orange curtain that falls toward the lower right.' It is not
hard to see why Olitski might have done this: there is, after all, at
least the possibility of a serious problem in running colored shapes
offthe framing edge, and by leaving bare canvas along the top, ()litski
in effect declares the discontinuity of the image with what lies
beyond the edge, at a place where such a declaration would be most
felt. However, italso has the effect ofcompromising the sheerlyvisual
momentum that the descending curtain of color builds up in Fatal
PlungeLady and BeautifulBald Woman. Further, by having its momentum
compromised in this way, the curtain tends to be read from the
start as something that already has a shape instead of as something
thatwill eventually reach or find or assume its final configuration. So
that whereas in FatalPlungeLady and BeautifulBald Woman the ultimate
configurations ofthe descending floods of color seem to be the
result ofa balance or compromise among almost physical forces, the
color curtain in Wet Heat Co. seems by contrast to have been shaped
by hand, like the hull ofa boat-a reading that the concave drawing
of the right-hand contour does nothing to contradict.
Finally, it is worth remarking that Olitski's attitude toward the
question of pictorial structure is highly equivocal, and that the issue
ofstructure remains the most problematic aspect of his art. Nothing
could be further from his intentions, as one grasps them in the paintings,
than the explicit concern for deductive structure related to the
framing edge which Barnett Newman was the first to evince and
which one finds in Frank Stella's work as well as, to my mind, in Kenneth
Noland's recent chevron paintings. But Olitski is not completely
at ease about simply ignoring the framing edge, or treating it in a
I1 320 I NEW YORK LETTER: 0LITSKI,jENKINS, THIEBAUD, TWOMBLY
n1ore or less conventional manner) as ifthe painting were a rectangular
cut into a larger visual field. His lack ofease on this score is hardly
surprising: what is at stake in the work ofNewman, Stella, and recent.
Noland is perhaps the most. radical break to date with the conventions
of easel painting, along with the possibility of replacing those
conventions with new modes of organization and seeing-based
upon an explicit recognition of the framing edge as the most important
single factor in the determination of pictorial structurewhich
will somehow open up into a zone of freedom as large, in its
own way, as that enjoyed by traditional painters during· the past five
centuries. However, it remains true that the problem of the framing
edge is not yet one that inexorably forces itself upon painters of major
ambition, and it is clear that first-rate paintings may still be made
which do not explicitly attempt to come to grips with it. But there is
no guarantee that this state of affairs will continue indefinitely, and
in a number of paintings in his current show there is evidence that
Olitski has tried to take the framing edge into account-but because
his willingness to engage with the problem has remained partial and
intuitive, the paintings have suffered rather than profited as a result.
For example, there is his tendency, mentioned above, to leave strips
or patches ofraw canvas showingabove the curtainlike areas in paintings
such as Wet Heat Co. and Doozhie Orgy, as well as his more radical
adjusting of the pictorial elements within a rectangular margin
ofraw canvas in Demikovsky C',reen. In that painting Olitski also fills in
the lower left-hand cornerwith bright red so as to make a rough triangle
out of it. If the painting is to succeed, it has to be possible to
read that shape as an area on the canvas rather as part of a larger
shape mostlyoffit, but the latter reading is in fact inescapable. There
is also a disruptive equivocation between the way the red brown curtainlike
shape at the top ofthe canvas has been set offfrom the framing
edge by a margin of raw canvas, and the way the raw canvas and
wine red bandsbelow it run to the framing edge and, by implication,
beyond it.
Given his at best partial engagementwith the problem ofthe framing
edge, it was almost inevitable that the strongest paintings in the
current show are those in which Olitski has chosen to circumvent the
problem almost entirely, as Louis mostly did, by placing colored areas
on a field ofrawcanvas-as in HalfChinesePatutsky-or to cover most
ofthe canvas, and as many as three out offour corners, with a curtain
ofone (perhaps inflected) color, and what looks like complete disregard
for the framing edge. But this should not be taken to imply
NEv\' YORK LETTER: OuTsKr,jENKINS, TmEBAUD, TwOMBLY I 3 2 1
that in paintings like FatalPlunge Lady and BeautifulBald Woman the
pictorial structures are clear-cut and easy to characterize. On the
contrary, when one confronts these canvases one becomes aware that
not only is Olitski's overall attitude towards the question of structure
equivocal, but also that the actual structures of these paintings are
profoundly ambiguous and difficult to grasp in terms of the spatial
and structural concepts available to us. For example, if one asks
where the paint image seems to be located in relation to the picture
plane itself, the answer is farfrom clear. On the one hand, the stained
plastic paint becomes identified with the canvas ground, and there
is no tangible brushwork to evoke illusionistic depth, however slight,
by touch or value contrast. On the other hand, the pure, intense
color that resultsfrom such staining evokes a new kind of space that
is neither Cubist nor naively illusionistic in character: it seerns to exist
as an emanation from the stained color itself, and to resist definition
in terms that are not strictly visual or optical. That is, it seems to be
a space-if that term is still useful-in which conditions of seeing
prevail rather than one in which physical events transpire. This is the
space that first made its appearance in.Jackson Pollock's great allover
paintings of the late 1940s and is found also in the stained canvases
of Louis and Noland. Moreover, the question of where exactly the
painted image appears to situate itself in relation to the picture plane
is not an unimportant one: it is onlywhen it lies unequivocally upon
the surface of the canvas, when there is no space at all within the
painting-as in Stella's work-that the question of its relation to the
framing edge becomes inescapable. The structural ambiguity of
Olitski's best new paintings, then, derives in large measure from, or is
made possible by, the nature ofhis pigment. But it is also powerfully
abetted by the formats of the paintings. Descending curtains of intense
hue may flood out to the framing edges of the paintings and,
as mentioned above, to three out of four corners as well. But there
is in this metaphor the implication that the curtain or flood begins
its descent at the top framing edge, and that the other edges are
reached as a result of the visual momentum gathered within the
painting by the color curtain as it falls, rather than by anything transpiring
offthe canvas or by the kind ofpassive, directionless paintingin
of the entire canvas behind certain main motifs as in the work of
Edward Avedisian. Further, in Olitski's new paintings the flood never
quite reaches the lower edge of the canvas. F.ven in Beautiful Bald
Woman, the most extreme instance on view, the flood stopsjust short
of the framing edge, as if in recognition that if that boundary were
322 l NE\VYORK LETTER: 0LITSKI,jENKINS, THIEBAUD, TWOMBLY
gone past the splendid momentum built up by the flood would be
dissipated immediately. In the face ofthis painting and ofFatalPlunge
Lady it should not be necessary to add that the structural ambiguity
I have tried to characterize is one of the most conspicuous strengths
of Olitski's best new paintings, despite, or perhaps because of, the
fact that it seems to be an aspect ofhis work over which he is able to
exert only intermittent mastery. Finally, one is simply grateful for the
paintings that come offand for the enormous sense ofpossihility that
even the relative failures in a show like the present one exude.
PAULJENKINs's present show ofpaintings at the MarthaJackson
Gallery is the weakest by him I have ever seen. Given his
stature-he is clearly a serious painter and, in the past, has sometimes
been a good one-the new paintings declare their emptiness,
prettiness, and lack of passion more blatantly than I would have
thought possible. There is really nothing to commend them. Their
use of color is souped up, metallic, and finally not truly coloristic at
all; it reminds me of nothing so much as of bad color photos, in
which the different tints have lost all relation to one another. The
compositions are invariably arty and contrived, relying as they do
upon hanging skeins of paint from the sides of the canvas to hold
the images in place. When the image is isolated in the middle of a
bright white field the arbitrariness of its presentation becomes even
more apparent. There is also no sense whatever ofscale, ofa particular
image demanding to be a particular size. The paint quality seems
to have the worst qualities ofboth watercolor and color photography.
In a few paintings, such as Phenomena Reverse Spell (1963), Jenkins
seems to be making explicit reference to Louis. Whether or not this
is the case, the juxtaposition underlines the emptiness ofJenkins's
work. However, it is worth remarking thatJenkins's recent paintings
suffer as a result of comparisons which in part at least they demand,
and that at his worst he is a more interesting and challenging artist
than most painters working now.
AT THE Allan Stone Gallery, Wayne Thiebaud is exhibiting
recent paintings in which the human figure gets a much
larger play than ever before in his work. The result is much less good
than when he restricted himself to commodities, such as candied
apples, seen close-up. Partly this is because Thiebaud's treatment of
the human form gets sentimental in places (e.g., the feet of his
women); his draftsmanship is simply not up to thejob. But mostly it
NE\V YORK LETTER: OUTSKI,JENKINS, Tnn:BAUD, TwOMBLY I 323
is because Thiebaud's style-his color, his use ofintense white lighting,
his tendency to isolate forms against a white ground-was perfectly
suited to the description of certain kinds of commodities. He
could manage that with little or no reduction in actual scale within
the compass of a small painting and the result was something close
to an actual slice of cake, if not oflife. His rich, creamy paint texture
is much less suited to evoking flesh or clothing, and the large scale
ofhis figure studiesdestroys the extremely tangible qualities his food
studies possess. Instead, there is a facile illusionism, based on foreshortening,
which in the context of the earlier work comes out looking
tricky and shallow.
REcENT PAINTINGS by Cy Twombly at Castelli's seem
to me disappointing also. They consist of nothing but cosmetically
disingenuous licks and smudges of whites, pinks, and reds, bunched
in meaninglessclustersagainsta gray ground. Afew drips are allowed
to fall towards the bottom of fhe canvas, and the gray ground is divided
here and there by horizontal pencil lines drawn with the help
of a ruler. There are also discreet spatters and random blemishes.
Twombly's work has always had its precious aspect, but now that
seems to have gained the upper hand entirely. These paintings are
arch, satisfied with their own cosmetic prettiness, and about as mannered
as they can get.
NOTES
1. In the original review I refer to these as ''stripes."-J\1. E, 1996
2. Olitski has subsequently restretched the canvas so as to remove that "margin,"
to the painting's advantage.-i\1. E, 1996
New York Letter: Brach,
Chamberlain, Irwin
PAUL BRAcH's paintings at the Cordier-Ekstrom Gallery
consist of dull, cerulean blue fields in which one or more cerulean
blue circles, keyed for the most part just a bit darker than the
fields, have been placed. In some canvases, though, the color of the
circles or disks is exactly the same as that of the surrounding field,
and we are able to distinguish them only because their confines are
drawn in pencil. In others, the value difference between the circle or
circles and the field varies slightly from place to place along their
perimeters, so that at one point it may be slight but discrete while at
another it may vanish altogether. In the catalog to last spring's exhibition
at theJewish Museum, Toward aNewAbstraction, Leo Steinberg
wrote about Brach's paintings: "Theyarevery near invisibility. . . . Ask
how much is renounced: Composition, incident, movement, color,
focus, style, signature, painterliness-all drained in romantic renunciation,
until even the figure-ground differential, the first and last
requirement offiguration, is at the vanishing point. And there, at the
threshold of visibility, your eye toils to see."1 The comparison that
inevitablysuggests itselfis with Ad Reinhardt-but it is a comparison
that Brach's work cannot fully sustain, for the following reasons:
First, there is a richness ofcolor in Reinhardt's work that is lacking
in Brach's. Reinhardt is interested in what happens to different colors
when theyare brought to the same pitch ofextremely dark value.
Brach, on the other hand, works with minute value gradations of the
same basic color: his paintings are fundamentally monochromatic.
This is not necessarily damning, but I think it is partly responsible
Odginal!y published in Art InternationalS (summer 1964): 81-82.
NE\VYORK LETTER: BR.ACH, CHAMBERLAIN, IRWIN I 325
for the impression one gets ofBrach's work being much thinner and
less rich than Reinhardt's. Second, Reinhardt's paintings have always
had something of the character ofsignificant experiments within the
context of artistic modernism; in fact, they were among the first
paintings since Claude Monet's canvases in extremely light values to
assert the importance of contrasts of color over those of value. (In
this connection see Clement Greenberg's catalog introduction to the
exhibition entitled Post-Painterly Abstraction currently on view at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.) What Brach has done seems,
in comparison, almost arbitrary and withoutimportance to a broader
context than the development ofhis art alone. And third, despite the
fact that there are no value differences between the different rectangular
zones in a Reinhardt canvas, the bonndaries between the zones
in fact are constant and unf!uctuating. They may appear to tremble,
or to dissolve and recompose themselves as we look at them, but this
is merely an effect arising incidentally from the close, dark valuing
ofthe colors. Brach, however, sometimes actually describes the dissolution
of the perimeters of his circles-that is, he actually illustrates
what in Reinhardt's work is nothing more than an incidental effectand
for that reason his work is sometimes tinged with sentimentality
where Reinhardt's is not. Nevertheless, having said all this, it cannot
be denied that Brach's work is handsome, and within the limits that
the above remarks imply, successful as welL There is an integrity, a
strength ofpurpose and a mastery ofmeans in the present show that
are both impressive and rare.
jOHN CHAMBERLAIN's recent show of small sculptures
at Castelli's was extremely disappointing. Chamberlain has always
seemed to need to work on a large scale for his particular gifts
to manifest themselves. His bestwork is plastically compelling in spite
of his tendency towards artiness of detail: for example, individual
ragged edges which read as bits ofstylized drapery are often an embarrassment.
And in general Chamberlain's sensibility is not the
masculine, overpowering one his materials (and often, his mastery
of those materials) might at first suggest. Rather, it is delicate, introverted,
and prone to a perverse affection for a kind of finish that
belies the seeming rawness of the smashed autos with which he
works. In his recent show, the pieces were all small (roughly three
feet in diameter, but they seemed even smaller), without plastic force
or interest, and finished in high-keyed sprayed colors such as a
gleaming gold that made them seem like ornaments for an immense
326 I NEW YORK LETTER: BRACH, CHAMBERLAIN, IRWIN
Christmas tree. Chamberlain ought to stay away from small sculptures.
It probably reveals something about the limitations of his sizable
gifts that he cannot master them, though perhaps it merely says
something about the limitations inherent in his materials. In any
case, Chamberlain is a far better sculptor than this show indicated
and has never got the credit his best pieces deserve.
FINALLY, TWO group shows atJanis and Castelli provided
little of interest apart from five paintings by the California
painter Robert Irwin atJanis. Irwin paints large, even fields of a single
color-yellow, orange, a kind of lavender pink-on which he
then knifes two long, extremely thin horizontal lines ofoil paint, also
in high-valued color. My favorite was an orange canvas with two long
lines oflight green paint spaced rather far apart, but the other paintingswerejust
about as impressive and itwould be good to see a whole
show of his work in New York soon.
NOTES
1 . Leo Steinberg, "Paul Brach," in the catalog for the exhibition Toward a
New Abstraction at thejewish Museum, New York, May 1g-Sept. 15, 1963, p. 1 2 .
-
Writings by Michael Fried, 1959-77,
Exclusive of Poetry
Articles, Reviews, Contributions to Symposia
Review of The World ofjames M'Neill Whistler, by Horace Gregory. Arts Magazine
34 (Jan. 1g6o): 10-12.
Review of Toulouse-Lautrec� by Henri Perruchot. Arts Magazine 35 (Sept.
196 1 ) : 72-73.
"A Question of Form." Review of My Sad Captains, by Thom Gunn. New Left
Review, no. 1 2 (Nov.-Dec. 1 96 1 ) : 68-70.
'Visitors from America." Arts Magazine 36 (Dec. 1961 ) : 38-40.
"Epstein amid the Moderns." Arts Magazine 36 (Jan. 1962): 50-52.
"Marxism and Criticism." Review of Permanent Red, byJohn Berger. ArtsMagazine
36 (Jan. 1962): 70-72.
'The Winter's Tale." Arts Magazine 36 (Feb. 1962): 65-66.
"Paintings for the Blind." ArtsMagazine 36 (Mar. 1962 ) : 22-"+
"White Writing and Pop Art." Arts Magazine 36 (Apr. 1962): 26-28.
"Two Success Stories." Arts Magazine 36 (May-June 1962 ) : 26-27.
"Words Are Easy." Review of Works and Days, by Irving Feldman. The Review,
no. 2 (June-July 1962) : 44-46.
"Bacon's Achievement." ArtsMagazine 37 (Sept. 1962): 28-2g. French translation
by Annie Perez in the catalog for the exhibition Francis Bacon at
the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, June
27-0ct. 14·• 1996.
"Reputations-II: The Achievement of Robert Lowell." London Magazine,
n.s., 2 (Oct. 1962): 54-64.
"New York Letter." Art lnternational6 (Oct. 25, 1962): 72-76.
"New York Letter." Art Internationa/ 6 (Nov. 25, 1962 ) : 53-56.
"New York Letter." Art lnternational6 (Dec. 20, 1962 ) : 54-58.
"New York Letter." Art International 7 (Jan. 25, 1963): 68-70, 72.
"New York Letter." Art lnternationa/ 7 (Feb. 25, 1963): Go-64-
328 I BIBLIOGRAPHY
"New York Letter." Art interrwtional 7 (Mar. 25, 1963): 5 1-52.
"New York Letter. " Art international 7 (Apr. 25, 1 963): 54-56.
"New York Letter. " Art International 7 (May 25, 1963): 69-72.
"The Goals ofStephen Greene." Arts Magazine 37 (May 1963): 22-27.
"Anthony Caro," Text ofthe introduction to the catalog for an exhibition at
the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Art International 7 (Sept. 25,
1963): 68-72·
Review of Abstract Painting; by Michel Seuphor. New York Review ofBooks, Oct.
1 7, 1963, p. 1 7.
"Some Notes on Morris Louis." Arts Magazine 36 (Nov. 1963): 22-27.
"New York Letter." Mt lnternational 7 (Dec. 5, 1963): 66-68.
"New York Letter." Art International 7 (Dec.-Jan. 1 963-64) : 54-56.
"New York Letter." Art International S (Feb. 1 5, 1964): 25-26.
Review of American Tradition in Painting, byJ. W. McCoubrey. New York Review
ofBookl, Mar. r g, r g64, p. rg.
"New York Letter." Mt International S (Apr. 25, rg64): 57-6 1 .
"New York Letter." Art International S (May 25, 1964): 40-44·
"New York Letter." Art International S (summer 1964): S r-82.
"Modernist Painting and Formal Criticism." American Scholar 33 (autumn
1964): 642-48. Subsequently adapted as part 1 of the introduction to
the catalog for the exhibition Three American Painters.
'Jackson Pollock." Mtjorum 4 (Sept. 1965): 14-17. From the introduction
to the catalog for the exhibition Three American Painters.
"Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland: Some Notes on Not Composing." Lu�
gano Review 3-4 ( rg65): r g8-2o6.
':Jules Olitski's New Paintings." Artjorum 4 (Nov. 1965): 36-40.
'"Hover' by Kenneth Noland." Fogg Art Museum, Acquisitions 1964 ( 1 965) :
60-63.
'"Blue Veil' by Morris Louis." Fogg Art Museum, Acquisitions 1965 ( r g65):
1 77-8 ! .
Contribution to a symposium, Art Criticism in the Sixties, held a t the Rose Art
Museum, Brandeis University, May 7, 1966. Place of publication: New
York, rg67, no page numbers.
"Shape as Form: Frank Stella's New Paintings." Artjorum 5 (Nov. tg66): 18-
27. Reprinted as the introduction to the catalog for Frank Stella: AnExhibiM
tion of Recent Paintings at the Pasadena Art Museum, Oct. 18-Nov. 20,
r g66; and the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Jan. 1 2-Feb. 1 2 , rg67, pp.
3-39. Also in New York Paintingand Sculpture: 1940-1970, ed. Henry Geldzahler
(New York, 1970), pp. 403-25. Excerpted in Art and Theory, I900-
1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harris and Paul Wood
(Oxford, England, and Cambridge, Mass., r ggz), pp. 775-78.
"The Achievement ofMorris Louis." Artjorum 5 (Feb. 1967): 34-40. Text of
the introduction to the catalog· for the exhibition Morris Louis 1912-I962
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Feb. 1 5-Mar. 26, r g67; the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Apr. 1 3-May 24, 1967; and the City Art
Museum, St. Louis, June r6-Aug. 6, rg67, pp. 7-24-
BIBLIOGRAPHY I 329
"Oiitski and Shape." Artforwrn 5 (Jan. r g67) : 20-2 1 .
"New Work by Anthony Caro." Artforum 5 (Feb. 1967): 46-47.
"Ronald Davis: Surface and Illusion. " Artjorum 5 (Apr. 1967): 37-4 1 .
"Art and Objecthood." Artforum 5 (June r g67): 1 2-23. Reprinted i n Minimal
Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York, 1968), pp.
1 1 6-47; in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. George Dickie and Richard
J. Sclafani (New York, 1 977), pp. 438-6o; in Looking Critically: 2 1 Years of
Artjorurn, eel. Amy Baker Sandback (Ann Arbor, Mich., rg84) , pp. 6 1 -68;
and excerpted in Art in Theory, 1900-I990, ed. Charles Harrison and
Paul Wood (Oxford, England, and Cambridge, Mass., r gg2), pp. 822-34.
French translation by Nathalie Brunet and Catherine Ferbos in Artstudio
6 (autumn 1987): 1 1-27. German translation in MinimalArt: Eine kritische
Retrospektive, eel. Gregor Sternmrich (Dresden and Basel, 1995), pp.
334-74·
"Two Sculptures by Anthony Caro." ArtJorum 6 (Feb. 1968): 24-25.
"Manet's Sources: Aspects of His Art, 1 859-65." Artforurn 7 (Mar. 1969):
28-82. Reprinted in Manet's j\1odernism, m; TheFace oJPainting in the 186os,
by Michael Fried (Chicago, 1996), pp. 23-135·
"Recent Work by Kenneth Noland." Artforurn 7 (summer 1g6g): 36-37.
"Thomas Couture and the Theatricalization of Action in 19th-Century
French Painting." Artforurn 8 (June 1970) : 36-46.
"Caro's Abstractness." Artforum g (Sept. 1970): 32-34.
"Problems of Polychromy: New Sculptures by Michael Bolus." Artforurn 9
(June 1 97 1 ) : 38-39.
"Larry Poons's New Paintings." Artforum 1 0 (May 1972): 50-52.
"Toward a Supreme Fiction: Genre and Beholder in the Art Criticism of
Diderot and His Contemporaries." New Litermy History 6 (spring 1 975) :
543-85·
"Absorption: A Master Theme in Eighteenth-Century French Painting and
Criticism." Eighteenth-Century Studies 9 (winter 1975-76): 1 39-77.
"Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder in the Age ofDiderot."
Studies on Voltaire and theEighteenth Centuty, no. 1 54 ( 1 976): 7.?3-77·
Review of The Artist and the Writer in France: Essays in Honor ofjean Seznec, ed.
Francis Haskell, Anthony Levi, and Robert Shackleton. Art Bulletin 59
(.June 1977): 287-9 1.
Exhibition Catalogs
Anthony Caro: Sculpture I960-1963. Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Sept.Oct.
1 963. "Introduction," no page numbers. Reprinted as "Anthony
Caro" in Art lnternational 7 (Sept. 25, 1963): 68-72.
Toward a NewAbstraction.Jewish Museum, New York, May 1 g-Sept. 1 5 , 1963.
"Frank Stella," p. 28.
Kenneth Noland. Jewish Museum, New York, Feb. 4-Mar. 7, 1965. "Noland,"
330 I BIBLIOGRAPHY
no page numbers. Based closely on the Noland section of the introduction
to the catalog for the exhibition Three American Painters.
Three Ammican Painters: Kenneth Noland,jules Olitski, Frank Stella. Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, Mass., Apr. 2 1 -May 30, 1965. "Introduction," pp. 4-
53· The same essay served as the introduction to an exhibition of the
same title but with different paintings at the Pasadena Art Museum,July
6-Aug. 3, 1965, pp. 3-48. Excerpted in Art in Theory, 1900-1990: An Anthology
ofChanging Ideas, ed. Charles Harris and Paul Wood (Oxford, England,
and Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 769-75. The section on Pollock
was reprinted as ':Jackson Pollock," Artforum 4 (Sept. 1965): 14-17. The
section on Noland was adapted in Kenneth Noland (see previous entry).
French translation by Fran{:oise Stoullig-Marin in Peindre: Revue d'esthitique,
1976/I (Paris, 1976), pp. 247-338; "Notes de presentation" by
Louis Marin, pp. 240-47.
Frank Stella: An Exhibition ofRecent Paintings. Pasadena Art Museum, Oct. 1 8Nov.
20, 1 966; Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Jan. 1 2-Feb. 1 2 , 1967. The
introduction, pp. 3-39, is a reprint of "Shape as Form."
A1orris Louis 1912-1962. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Feb. 1 5-Mar.
. 26, 1967; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Apr. 1 3-May 24, 1 967; City Art
Museum, St. Louis,June 16-Aug. 6, 1967. "Introduction," pp. 7-24. Published
as "The Achievement of Morris Louis," Artf(}rum 5 (Feb. 1 967):
34-40jules
Oiitski: Paintings 1963-1967. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C., Apr. 28-:June 1 1 , 1967; Pasadena Art Museum, Aug. 1-Sept. to,
1 967; San Francisco Museum of Art, Sept. 26-Nov. 5, 1967. 'Jules Olitski,"
pp. 5-22.
Anthony Caro. Hayward Gallery, London, Jan. 24-Mar. g, 1g6g. "Introduction,"
pp. 5-16.
Anthony Caro: Table Sculptures 1966-1977· British Council traveling exhibition.
"Anthony Caro's Table Sculptures," no page numbers. Reprinted
along with German translation in Anthony Caro: Catalogue raisonne, by Dieter
Blume, 4 vols. (Cologne, n.d.), 1 : 2 1-35.
Books
Morris Louis (New York, 1 97 1 ) .
Index of Names in "An Introduction
to My Art Criticism"
Andre, Carl, q, 40, 70-7 1 n. 67
Artaud,Antonio, 42
Austin,]. L., 10, 6:m. 40
Bann,Stephen, 58n. 25
Bannard, Walter Darby, 3, 4, 5, 7
Barthes, Roland, 6m. 35
Bataille, Georges, s8n. 25
Bell, Larry, 37
Berger, Maurice, 71 n. 68
Be�amin, Walter, 6gn. 63
Blackmur, R. P., 4, 28, 29, 34
Bogh, Mikkel, 58n. 25
Bois, Yve�Alain, 56n. 13, 57n. 22, 6on. 35
Bolus, Michael, q, 67-68n. 56
Boucher, Fran(.ois, 5 1
Brecht, Bertolt, 42
Bryson, Norman, 71-72n. 72
Buchloh, Benjamin, 70n. 67
BUrger, Peter, 6gn. 62
Caro,Anthony, 1 , 2 , 7, g, 11, 1 2, 13, 14,
16, 22, 23, 27-33· 37. 4 I, 45· 6o-61n.
35, 6 1 n. 37, 6 1-62n. 40, 62-6gn. 41,
64n. 46, 67n. ss, 67n. s6
Castelli, Leo, 5
Cavell,Stanley, 10, 1 8, 25, 33. 37, 54-55n.
4, 6 In. sg, 6zn. 4o, 6sn. 47,68n.59
Chamberlain,john, 23
Champa, Kermit Swiler, 5411. 3
Chardin,Jean�Baptiste-SimCon,
72-73"· 75
Clark, T.J., 57-58n. 24, 63n. 43
Coolidge,john, g
Cooper, Harry, 64-65n. 46
Courbet, Gustave, 2, 10, 28, 33, 48, 49,
50, 51, 7on. 6s
Couture, Thomas, 50
Crimp, Douglas, 68n. 59, 70n. 63
Daumier, Honore, 50
David,jacques-Louis, 49, 50, 71-72n. 72
Davis, Ron, 1 1 , 6811. 58
de Duve, Thierry, 41, 45, 5511. g, s8n. 24,
63n·43, 6sn. 4g, 6s-66n. s t , 68n. sg,
74n. 8 1
Deknatel, Frederick B., 54n. 3
de Kooning, Willem, 21, 22, 23
de Man, Paul, 52, 73-74n. 77
Denny, Robyn, 6
Derrida,Jacques, 46, 6z-63n. 41, 63n. 43,
6gn. 63
Diderot, Denis, 2, 42, 47, 48, 51, 53,
73n· 75
Didi-Huberman, Georges, 6gn. 63, 74n.
78
Donahue,Troy, 1 6
Duchamp, Marcel, 43, 44, s8n. 25,
67n. 52
Eaton,john, 5
Edwards,Jonathan, 46
Ehrenzweig, Anton, 71n. 7 1
Emmerich, Andre, 1 1, 1 3
Ernst, Max, s8n. 25
Fantin-Latour, Henri, 50
Fitzsimmons,james, 8
331
332 I INDEX
Foster, Hal, 43, 44, 68n. �)9• 6gn. 62
Frankenthalet� Helen, 20, 2 1, 64n. 46
Freedberg, SydneyJ., 8, 54n. 3
Freud, Sigmund, 6gn. 63, 71 n. 7 1
Fry, Roger, 17
Gericault, Th€:odore, so, 72-73n. 75
Giacometti, Alberto, 58n. 25
Gombrkh, Ernst., 6on. 35
Greenberg, Clement, 3, 4, 5, 8, g, 1 1, 17,
18, 19, 20, 2 1, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33-
40, 41, 43> 44• 45, 52, 53> 540. 3· 55n.
g, ss-s6n. 10, 56n. q, 57n. 22, s8n.
25, 58-sgn. 27, 6sn- 48, 65n- 4g,6s-
66n. 51, 68n. 57, 68-Ggn. Go, 76n. 65,
7 I n- 71
Greene, Stephen, 3, 4
Greuze,Jean-Baptiste, 2, 42, 48, 50
Gros, Antoine:Jean, 50
Hamilton, Ian, 6, 12
Hampshire, Stuart, 6, 28
Harbison,John, 10
Harrison, Charles, 6gn. 62
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 18
Hesse, Eva, 58n. 25
Hofmann, Hans, 16, 57n. 22
Hopkins, Henry, 1 1
Husser!, Edmund, 46
Indiana, Roben., 23
Iversen, Margaret, 73n. 75
Johns,jasper, 5
Joyce,james, 6gn. 63
Judd, Donald, 14, 37, 40, 43, 51
Kafka, Franz, 6gn. 63
Kant, Immanual, 18
Kline, Franz, 23, 57n. 22
�app, Steven, 52, 73n. 77
Kozloff, Max, 8
Kramer, Hilton, 5, 6, g, 56n. 14
Krauss, Rosalind, 54n. 3, s8n. 25, 5gn. 31,
6o-6111. 35, 68n. 57, 71n. 70, 73n. 75,
74rl- 78
Lacan,Jacques, 6gn. 63, 72-73n. 75
Legros, Alphonse, 50
Leider, Philip, 12, 13, 73n. 76
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 45
Louis, Morris, 2, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, tg, 20,
2 t, 22, 23, 39, 40, 5511. 5· 7In. 7 1
Lukacs, Georg, 18, ssn. 10
Manet, :Edouard, 2, 10, .12, 13, .14, 15, 17,
20, 22, 33, 34· 37, s8, 4o, 42, 47· 4s,
51, 52, 53· 5911- 30
MelvHlc, Stephen W., 68n. 59, Gg-7011. 63,
7 111. 7 1
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 6 , 18, 28, 29, 31,
55n. l O , s6n. l l ' s6n. 12, 5711- 23, 6on.
35, 6u1. 36, 6m. 37, 6g11. 63
Michaels, Walter Benn, 52, 73-7411. 77
Michelson, Annette, 71n. 68
Millard, Charles W., III, g, 54n. 3
Miller, Dorothy, 5
Mlllcr, Perry, 46
Millet,Jean-Fran�;ois, 50
Mitchell, W.J. T:, 70n. 66, T�-73n. 75
Moffett, Kenworth, 54n. 3
Mondrian, Piet, 20, 22, 24
Monroe, Marilyn, 16
Morris, Robert, 14, 40, 42, 45, 51, s8n.
25, 6gn. 62, 71n. 68
Myers,john, 5
Newrnan, Barnett, 16, 20, 2 1, 23, 24, 35,
38. 3g, s8-sgo. 27, 63-640. 46
Noland, K�nneth, 1, 2, g, 13, 14, 16, 17,
tg, 20, 2 1 , 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 37· 38,
39· 44· 63-640· 46
Olin, Margaret, 67n. 55
Olitski,Jules, 1, 2, g, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16,
17, rg, 22, 23, 25, 26, 31, 37, 38, 39,
44· 54n- 3, s8n. 26, 6on. 32, 63-64n.
46, 7on. 65
Owens, Craig, 63n. 4 1
Picasso, Pablo, 58n. 25
Pollock,Jackson, g, 14, 16, 20, 22, 55n.
5, 57n. 23, s7-s8n. 24, 58n. 25, 73n.
75
Poons, Larry, 1, q, 19, 27, 37, 39, 6on.
32, 67n· 53
Rauschenberg, Robert, 5, 72n. 75
Reff, Theodore, 13, 14
Richter, Gerhard, 7411. 79
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 28
Rose, Barbara, 7, 8, 12
Roszak, Theodore, 4
Rothko, Mark, 20, 2 J , 35, g8, 39
Rubin, William S., 59n. 29
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 29, Gon. 35, 6 1n.
g6, 6til. 37
Scott, Tim, 12
Sherman, Cindy, 74n. 79
Shifrin, Seymour, 10
Smith, David, 7, 45, 6gn. 63
Smith, Tony, 14, 40, 44, 47, 51, 710. 71,
74"· 78
Smithson, Robert, 52, 7 10. 71, 7311. 76,
73-740. 77
Stendhal (pseud. of Henri Beyle), 49
Stella, Frank, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, g, 11, 12,
14, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
36· 37· 38, 46, 53· 54l1· 3· 55°·6, ssn.
8, s6n. 12, sgn. 27, sgn. 29, 5911. go,
INDEX 333
63-64n. 46,6sn· 47,6sn. 4g,67n· 52,
70-71r1. 67
Stevens, Wallace, 34
Still, Clyfford, 20, 2 1, 35, 38, 39
Twombly, Cy, s8n. 25
Wall,jeff, 74"· 79
Warhol, Andy, t6, s8n. 25
War.teau, Antoine, 51
VVhistler,James McNeill, 50
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10, go, 31, 33, gS,
4o, 6 t -62n. 3g, 68n. s8
WOlfflin, Heinrich, 45
Wollheim, Richard, 6
Wood, Paul, Ggn. 62
Worringer, Wilhelm, 720. 75
Yeats, William Butler, 34