Action/Abstraction: Contrasting Views on Abstract Expressionism

Erin Ford Action/Abstraction: Contrasting Views on Abstract Expressionism It is 1945, and America needs a new art, a modern art. Before long, a new, distinctly American movement of modernist abstraction will emerge. It all starts with the New York School, whose radical new art will earn the names “American-type painting”, “Abstract Expressionism”, and “Action Painting”. These terms were first used to describe the New York School in the writings of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, who would go on to become the primary critics of Abstract Expressionist art. Greenberg and Rosenberg were both Jewish men writing about the New York art scene, with diametrically different views and a lifelong competitive rivalry; yet, they supported the movement with equal fervor. While Clement Greenberg's theories, as developed in his 1939 “Avant-Garde and Kitsch", revolutionized the conceptualization of modern art, influencing the art world in a significant, lasting way, Harold Rosenberg has contributed the most to discourse on Abstract Expressionism Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," Partisan Review, vol 6, no. 5 (1939): 34-49. Reprinted in Francisca, Pollock and After: The Critical Debate, (London: Routledge, 2000), chap. 1.. The movement, which emphasized the gestural mark of the artist as part of his individual expression, is hard to fit neatly into the narrow theories of Greenbergian formalism. Greenberg’s reductionist approach to analyzing the art of the avant-gardes, while incorporating an admittedly intelligent tracing of the historical development of modern art, leads him to prescribe an equally reductionist methodology for art criticism and creation. What Greenberg misses, or dismisses, Rosenberg seems to grasp with an acuity and openness that, lacking of Greenberg’s dogmatism, is challenged by later generations. In their original context, however, Rosenberg’s words on the New York School in his 1952 “The American Action Painters”, present a radical re-thinking of the act of painting, one not hampered by the exceeding limitations of formalist theory. Harold Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters,” Art News, Dec. (1952). Reprinted in Shapiro, Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970): 75-85. No discussion of Greenberg’s “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” can be had without acknowledging the truly innovative theories he presents in the text, and the way in which he attempts to model the development of modern art in a historical context. Formalism has its benefits, especially for analyzing formal principles of a work. Drawing from Hoffmann’s theory of push-pull, Greenberg considered the aesthetic experience as stemming from an abstract painting’s self-referential nature; an image composed of abstract forms as existing only in a shallow, chimeral figure ground—an optical space in constant flux—where the shapes move toward an against each other, in and out, thereby providing an illusory sense of space that ultimately emphasizes the pictorial flatness of the canvas support. While this is a legitimate perceptual experience, it is not the only manner of perceiving a piece, or even one of which most people are necessarily cognizant. Although these theories, terms, and critical considerations of Greenberg have proven influential to the art world, and even revolutionary, they do not make up for his limited consideration of Abstract Expressionism. Furthermore, his static consideration of “art for art’s sake”, and formalist belief that subject matter, artist intention, and all aspects of subjectivity are peripheral and to be purged for greater abstract purity, is limiting. This is where Rosenberg is able to pick up the slack left by Greenberg’s static narrowness, by re-defining the relationship between the artist and painting, the painting and its audience, giving each a chance for meaning by considering them all elements of the creative process. Central to Rosenberg’s re-thinking of the essential act of painting, is his consideration of the canvas not as a planar surface, but as an arena in which to act, and of the painting as an “event”. Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” 76. Here, Rosenberg says “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act—rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or “express” an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.” This radical re-consideration of what it means to paint, and of the painting as a record of an action, a visual recording of the artist’s actions and psychological states, rather than a static support for a collection of formal stylistic principles, as Greenberg considered it. By placing the act of painting over the importance of aesthetics, Rosenberg is considering the artist primarily, rather than using them as a vehicle to develop a supposed continuance or progression of modern art in a specific manner. To Rosenberg, the creative act far surpassed the formal principles, as it was a way of declaring personal identity by expressing your individual self through a physical involvement or relationship with a work. Sam Hunter writes of the nature of action painting, saying "it is now through the act of creating rather than in the finished product that the artist must 'grasp authentic being' to use Karl Jaspers' phrase." Sam Hunter, Art Since 1945, 2nd. Ed, (New York: Washington Square Press, 1968), The United States: 270-271. This elucidates Rosenberg’s theories quite beautifully, explaining that individual authenticity, or creative originality, comes through the physical act, the cathartic expression of personal identity through art. If painting is an event, the paint stroke is an expression if self, says Rosenberg. Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters”, 82. Hunter elaborates on this notion, "An unprecedented liberty of gesture has now become the sign of the artist's personal identity, for only the self that is securely rooted in its own existence can do without the support of systematic certainties and be free." Hunter, Art Since 1945, 270. The gestural, physical mark of the action painter shows both the artist’s unique self, an essential expression in an Existentialist world, and incorporates an innate aesthetic understanding, is nevertheless unhampered by limited theories of formalism. The fact that Greenberg excludes a consideration of the act, which produces the final product, shows how limited his formalism is. Ultimately, Greenbergian formalism is too reductionist, overly hampered by self-imposed limitations. Greenberg’s disavowal of the subjective matter of a painting was rather limited to his own mind, and he insufficiently considered the extent to which others—artists and audiences alike—may not “see” form as contextually absent. Form (or its absence), while necessary for perceiving content, is not inherently greater than or separate from contextual or associative meaning. Furthermore, Greenberg’s insistence on modern art’s progression as dependent upon the continued, furthered, abstraction of American art is ironic in how much it draws from a European tradition of cubism, under the guise of originality. Given Greenberg’s belief in the temporal progression of art towards a pure abstraction, given arts progression from European roots, this is not surprising. What is fundamentally troublesome is Greenberg’s belief that modern art will progress toward a sort of non-figurative, non-hierarchical, non-referential (or self-referential), artistic ‘purity’. This narrow-mindedness is intrinsically limiting to his theories, especially when considered in light of Rosenberg’s theories. It is an apparent break in Greenberg’s logic to consider the historical path modern art has taken and even propose a trajectory for it, but not to consider the individual artist as a human being. Therefore, while Greenberg is important for developing such ideas, and promoting and influencing the innovations of Pollock with a non-hierarchical, non-figurative, post-cubist space and all-over composition, he illogically disregards the very theories that would influence artists like Pollock to create their masterpieces. This is precisely where and why Rosenberg’s consideration of the artist, and of the integration of art and life as one, is so effective. The essential brilliance of Harold Rosenberg’s consideration of Abstract Expressionist art lies in his consideration of the artist. Rosenberg is not saying “Art for art’s sake” as Greenberg has, but is re-considering the active role of the artist in relation to the painting. Rather than start at the beginning of time and end his critical analyses with the finished product, Rosenberg starts within the artist, saying, “The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history” Harold Rosenberg, Art on the Edge, (University of Chicago Press, 1975), Olitski, Kelly, Hamilton: Dogma and Talent, 64-65. He says, “However the historical pattern is drawn, it will not fit the developing sensibility of the individual.”. This biographical approach to considering the painting is fundamentally different from Greenbergian formalism’s separation and sterilization of the work from its maker. Whereas "Greenberg was an unreserved enthusiast of the new work, he also insisted on measuring it against the strict aesthetic standards of European modernism." Hunter, Art Since 1945, 272. Rosenberg considered the new work as a radical departure from the history of American art, and realized the importance of the work as an expression of the painter. Rosenberg was intensely interested in the psychic state of the artist, an interest no doubt piqued by the influence of Surrealist automatism and theories of Freud and Jung on the ‘action painters’. When asked about his own work, Pollock said, "The source of my painting is the Unconscious. I approach painting the same way I approach drawing, that is, directly, with no preliminary studies." Pollock qtd. in Hunter, Art Since 1945, 275. is a sentiment echoed, by Rosenberg in “The American Action Painters”, where he considers the physical gestural action as an expression of personal identity on a psychic level "the sketch is one action, the painting that follows it is another." Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” 80. The similarity between these two quotes is indicative of the level on which Rosenberg was able to critically comprehend the abstract expressionists. While Clement Greenberg is celebrated and remembered for his theoretical and critical analyses of modern art, his restrictive view on what “American-style” painting should be is overly academic, holding to strictly to a linear progression of modern art towards a non-representational, non-objective abstraction, which he equates with ‘purity’ of abstraction. His reduction of modern art to a goal of purist abstraction is a pigeonholing of the movement, an excessive rationalization of the highly subjective, personal, and psychological process of painting. Where Greenberg prescribes a consideration of Abstract Expressionism outside of any meaning, Rosenberg brings the act of painting and the painter to life, crediting them with innate psychic and emotional content. Rosenberg’s critical re-thinking of the very act of painting, as a synthesis of previously dialectical notions of art and life, proves an insightful and invaluable framework from which to analyze action painting. By focusing on the biographical content of the artist, his own subjective mind and assertion of personal identity through a physical act of art-making, Rosenberg places the artist as a sort of existential hero, able to assert his identity in the anonymity of a modern America. Furthermore, Rosenberg’s consideration of Abstract Expressionism as a radical departure from the tradition of American art, while not devoid of historical influence of context, gives yet more power to the creative role of the artist. The importance of Rosenberg’s theories, as championing the artist and the movement, are undeniable. Rosenberg truly is the “Influential champion of American painting” E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, (Phaidon, 2006): 475., and a critic whose writings should be championed more.