175 comments

1. Hooray! Robin has finally put an image up of one of my paintings on abcrit, even if it is an old one. Now try Mandalaysian Orchid 2016, so titled because of its distant affinity. Direct comparison is all. Like for like. Abstract for abstract. We all like Tintoretto, but he’s not ” genuinely trying to paint an abstract picture” is he? Or is he?

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2. I’m like Harry, I learn from these arguments (I realise Alan has nothing to learn).

   What I’ve learnt today is that pretty much any painting that purports to investigate the condition of painting itself, by means of staining, flatness, reiterating the edge of the canvas, stripes, orthogonal formats, Greenbergian theory, etc., etc., is actually much more boring than even the ironic shamatuerism of the evil 80s Richter.

   What’s more, I don’t just like Tintoretto, I love him. He’s brimming with fantastic stuff. And he is a direct comparison, whether you like it or not. Face up to it. It’s just a painting. Can’t you match it? Can any abstract painting match it? Why not? Let’s do it!

   And please, Alan, learn how to put your own pictures up. Learn at least that…

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3. That’s not what you learned today. You’ve been saying it for years. In art-school terms it used to be known as the Brummie syndrome (Birmingham, for our American reader), as typified by the likes of John Walker, Trevor Halliday (remember him), spreading to Hughie O’Donoghue, Hugh O’Donnell, Manchester, Newcastle, — Sean Scully being another typical by-product — paint like the old masters, ie. Walker clumsily and in artistically heaving great sculptural shapes around in echo of Caro’s Straight Cut series, and grappling to turn bas relief into some semblance of pictorial art, muscle bound Rembrandtesque wrestling with dark and dread “hard won images” drawn machismically from paint used like asphalt — ending, all of it, like a stage-set for a modernistic version of Wagner’s Ring in a provincial German town, (early Christopher LeBrun) (Encounters at the National Gallery, transcriptions from the masters). The right love this kind of thing.
   That’s what happens when you want to reverse and abandon the redefinition of painting’s relation to visual experience that has been going on in modern painting ever since Gauguin, Van Gogh and Matisse, and Cezanne and Manet too, and in which the painters in this forthcoming exhibition, that we haven’t even seen yet, and not only they, have , as Greenberg would say, continued to redefine, refocus, and renew , (yes even purify) the essential eloquence of the art of painting in its relation to visual sensation.
   “That it respect the limitations of its medium and play to their strengths. The torturing of paint in the service of flaunting ones neuroses or bearing witness to the insanity of contemporary history is, in its own small way, a crime”…… And more in that vein. Proof read and punctuate that!

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   1. “That it respect the limitations of its medium…” doesn’t sound grammatically quite right. And it’s nonsense – what are the limitations, huh? Care to define them? Perhaps they’re just inventions to make it all easier – modernist ease-ier. Does the Tintoretto conform to these limitations?

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      1. The more I think on this, the more stupid it is. Do you really think Rothko, Still, etc have “continued to redefine, refocus, and renew, (yes even purify) the essential eloquence of the art of painting”, above and beyond the Tintoretto? And you call me purblind!

         While we’re at it, where are all the planes in the Tintoretto? Or perhaps because it has none, it can’t be a great painting, eh? In a purified Stag’s arse (top left).

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      2. Yes, the Tintoretto conforms to those limitations (i.e., conventions). Tintoretto made paintings, including this one. His acceptance of those conventions (such as they were at the historical moment he made the painting) are what allows the thing he made to be recognized as a painting.

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   2. In great haste: this comment is SO helpful to this (more/less) American reader. Many of the guys Alan mentions have visited/taught at the NY Studio School. They weren’t the founding faculty. The founding faculty was mostly what might be described as second generation Ab Ex, people closer to Alan’s point of view (though the founding faculty mostly kind of hated Greenberg). The English guys were smart, serious, generous, but they seemed somehow incomplete to me. Alan has very clearly, very colorfully spelled out what made them “incomplete.” I can see them/their work better now. And I can understand the tension that was apparent between the two “camps” at the Studio School as something more than just a matter of personalities.

      Also very helpful to see or at least think about Alan’s Wild Orchid beside Olitski’s Princess. I don’t want to make too big a deal out of work I’ve seen only in tiny reproductions, but the fearlessness, the full-of-life-ness, the “bigness” of Alan’s painting makes me think of Mondrian—and of Alan’s piece on Nicholson and Mondrian (http://www.abstractcritical.com/article/mondrian-nicholson-in-parallel-2/index.html): Alan surprised me by NOT going nuts over Mondrian, by, as I remember, preferring Nicholson—but Mondrian is Mr. Pure Proportion: he “demarcates”/draws: I’m not sure Alan thinks as much about proportion as a good boy should.

      And good for Robin for bringing in Tintoretto—though I wish Tintoretto (and drawing) had been brought into John Pollard’s Brancaster: there kind of doesn’t seem to be much of a “vocabulary” for talking about drawing at Abcrit/Brancaster. The full name of the Studio School is the NYSS of DRAWING, Painting, and Sculpture. Drawing is first. And at the Studio School Tintoretto is very much an abstract painter. We’re taught to see the de Koonings inside/outside Tintorettos. . .

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      1. Interesting how you have mentioned drawing Jock, it almost seems as if it’s a separate category and perhaps doesn’t get enough scrutiny. Much as I think the Tintoretto is great, the female figure has a strange proportion which bothers me, but odd female proportions often occur in old masters, so maybe it doesn’t really matter if you can get past that?

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      2. Drawing in abstract art is a whole new topic. Someone (come on, Jock, seeing as your teaching the kids of New York this crap) ought to write an essay for Abcrit on it.

         You can obviously have elements of drawing in abstract art – John Pollard and Anne Smart, for example, both have that – and it is not to the detriment of their work, but an integral part of the process of how they build a painting. But that’s probably not what Jock is talking about. I get the sense he is stressing the importance of drawing as a preliminary to painting or sculpture – in which case I think it is VERY problematic, almost always detrimental, to abstract art.

         If you are an abstract artist, what are you going to draw? Rectangles? Stripes? Scribble? Are you going to practise your wrist movements for when to take up painting spontaneously? Or are you going to kill the thing before you start by planning proportions, formats and design moves? We’ve had that argument before. There is nowhere genuine to go with any of these if you believe that advanced abstract art is a discovery in and with the actual material itself, which can only be compromised by any kind of pre-emption. I repeat, drawing elements could be an integral part of that discovery, but as a preamble to it they are worse than superfluous.

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4. it is very difficult to translate a drawing, abstract or other, successfully into a painting, and as Robin says can be problematic and possibly inhibiting unless used as a guide to composition. i do feel that drawing as part of a painting can be very exciting, but that is drawing while painting which is immediate and part of the process. It would be interesting to hear what Jock would say. I feel drawing, as a separate way of working, feels much more like sorting out ideas, and therefore almost a private function.

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5. Cheerful amateurism? It’s like saying you prefer the sound track to a Tom and Jerry cartoon to Schoenberg’s Septet Suite, (and some people do). It’s the three ‘C’s — the corrosive and corrupting curse of the Internet. Here we are judging 11feet wide paintings on postage stamp back-lit reproductions of paintings we haven’t even seen, and issuing blanket dismissals of whole generations of painters on nothing more than blind philistinism,( though that’s once again to malign the Philistines, who it turns out were quite a cultured people).
   On the seeing through and seeing in that pertains to the Olitski and Richter, that’s just what you don’t get in Monet’s Day Lilies 1914-16. They are right there, in and at the surface, and the rising and falling, advancing and receding are all in relation to a firmly established datum of continuous surface, physically present, of overlapping broken planes of colour. So Michael Fried is right when he says that the vision of homologous surface invented by the impressionists still lies behind the best of modern painting. And Bannard too is right when he says ,in critique of the post-painter-lies, that their opennesses and emptiness es ” do not give themselves fully to surface which is the first property of the art”. In my Principle, Appearance, Style , Artscribe June 1974 , I go on to qualify that considerably, but it’s largely right, right for modern painting that is. Tintoretto is another matter.
   On purity –that’s what is so good about Hilde’s latest pictures, featured on Brancaster No 38. They are about the purest all colour paintings I’ve seen in some time( though of course I haven’t really seen them). So don’t please malign “purity”. It is beautiful on the rare occasions when it happens.
   For my considered opinion on Greenberg and Modernism, see ibid on Abstractcritical.com .

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   1. In the good old days it was slides—not little JPEGs—that were the corrosive and corrupting curse. Louis Finkelstein hated slides. He hated words too—but, thank Goodness, he lectured regularly and at great length (with slides) at the Studio School. He also took students to museums. I remember standing in front of MoMA’s Waterlilies with Louis. I don’t remember exactly what he said. I doubt I understood all he was saying, but in all the important ways it was EXACTLY what Alan is saying.

      Alan’s “Principle, Appearance and Style” appears in Studio International, June, 1974—not Artscribe. Publishers take note! Also note there’s a ridiculous number of things Alan’s written that haven’t even appeared in magazines—online or otherwise. These things are precious. When Alan says he wants out—I believe he’s serious. He knows, just as Louis knew, all this talk is hopelessly inadequate—but he also knows, thank Goodness, it’s better than nothing—and it’s so so much better than what passes for understanding today.

      I don’t think drawing in abstract art (whatever that is!) is a whole new topic, Robin. You and Noella—even Alan—understand the important things about it. A painter doesn’t first draw the lines, then fill in the colors. A sculptor doesn’t make a drawing, and then turn it over to a fabricator. (That NEVER happens, right Robin?) Drawing is/should be part of “the process,” as Noella says.

      At Brancaster the sculptors have a kind of special “vocabulary.” They use words like “three-dimensionality,” “physicality,” “spatiality” often and “effectively.” Robin has talked about the sculptors having a sense of getting somewhere. Maybe this “effectiveness” is illusory. Words are tricky. Maybe the sculptors are just a bunch of Dodos. Maybe the words are pushing them to be too “pure.” I think the words help the sculptors to see more. I think the words are useful.

      At the Studio School (at least parts of it) there’s a kind of special “vocabulary” for drawing. There are three “forces” or sets of “ideas” associated with drawing. (Note how “abstract” these “forces” are—just like the words “three-dimensionality,” etc.) There are psycho-visual forces/perspective/Rembrandt. There are mechanical/axial forces/push/pull/Cezanne. And, overwhelmingly, there’s pure proportion/Mondrian. (Noella,the proportions of the Sussannah figure in the Tintoretto are perfect not because they correspond to the proportions of an actual human being, but because the relationships among the parts within the figure are “musical,” and the relationship of the figure to the rectangle is “musical.”) All painters and sculptors “use” these “forces” one way or another. Maybe it’s useful to think of this stuff as drawing. Maybe not. Color is a kind of fourth “force”—interesting in that it’s kind of separate from drawing, but not completely separate.

      Alan has said many important/interesting things about Hilde’s painting, about the way the drawing comes out of the color, etc. I’d be happy to hear him say more. But I think what Tony Smart said in Hilde’s recent Brancaster was important too. He was unhappy about something. He said something like I wish that something or other wasn’t a rectangle. I think he was getting at drawing problem, at a general weakness in the drawing—a weakness than MIGHT be strengthened just by trying to bring some new words into the discussion—NOT by trying to paint the way Tintoretto or Mercedes Matter (the founding dean of the beloved Studio School) did. Hilde “understands” the word “color.” It doesn’t mean she can write about it, but it kind of allows her to paint. I’m not sure the word “drawing” is as helpful to her—it could be—maybe. . .

      What does all this have to do with the Ab Ex show I’m not even going to see? Well, I expect there’ll be some de Koonings in the show. Darby Bannard loved de Kooning, isn’t that right? And there’ll be Pollocks and Rothkos. Rothko cut out most of the drawing in his paintings to release the color—but do the paintings still hold together? What about Pollock’s drawing? Very different from Tintoretto’s. . .

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      1. Thanks, Jock, for the Tintoretto appreciation, I understand what you are saying and can see the ‘musicality’.

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6. There is really only one answer to all this. Show us ,Robin. Show us your own paintings, show us by example what you mean, otherwise it’s just wishful thinking.
   Robin did a good painting once. It is called Vaulting Horse. 2009-10. (Photo please). Well I would say that wouldn’t I, since it is heavily influenced by paintings I had done 15 to 20 years previously, take your pick from 1991- 96,(the Bawd of Boddin for example), but most obviously The Twilight of the Dog-Roses.Since then he seems to have confused himself with all the talk, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong on that. So, I repeat, put up or shut up!

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   1. Sorry, not painting these days. So what? Doesn’t stop you mouthing off about sculpture, does it, and your last sculpture was 197?

      Why don’t you put up a better modernist painting than the Tintoretto? And what do you mean, “Tintoretto is another matter”?

      P.S. nowt wrong with wishful thinking.

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7. You see, I know my limitations. And I know you can’t “start from scratch” either. If I wasn’t 77 years old and hadn’t touched a welding torch in over forty years, and have no sculpture studio or equipment, I might be tempted to have a go, with a team of assistants to help,me lift the stuff. I may send you by carrier pigeon a photo of the Sculpture No 1 I made at St. Martins in 1971, which was severely criticised by Tony Caro as setting a bad example to the students. (It included squashed tubes years before he began incorporating them himself). Maybe he was right, about the bad example. If I remember correctly you were upstairs making a hardboard replica of Marble Arch at the time. But please, no more of this. I want out. I really do.

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   1. Bye.

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8. I think it’s possible, desirable, imperative even, for an abstract artist not to know what they are looking for and yet be able to discover and establish character and identity, through a working process that is governed by on-going visual assessment and which is ultimately measurable visually against clear ambitions and goals (for example the desire to work deliberately with complexity and variety of shape, colour and so on) That is, for me at least, a useful view of the creative /imaginative process, ‘the job’. There is in my view no certainty about what is there to be found and revealed through the working process or indeed any objective understanding needed for either viewer or maker of the myriad sources and influences that might inform the visual judgements that an artist makes.
   To address the two questions that you pose (and I’m possibly misunderstanding the concept here) but ‘abstract content’ sounds too much like a sort of commodity or ingredient (perhaps rather in the same way that certain shapes, through repetitive use, have had bestowed upon them the status of being automatically abstract) so I’ll pass, if I may, on the opportunity to discuss it.

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9. Maybe it’s time to knock Abcrit on the head. What do you think – have we all had enough of this? Are we getting anywhere or going in circles?

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   1. Come on Robin, we haven’t even got started yet! Maybe you should give yourself a rest from chasing your own tail or Alan’s tail for that matter- but you can’t shut abcrit down. I’ve written this piece in the hope it might fire other much more talented abcrit writers (or maybe some new potential contributors) to write about the Ab Ex show when it opens. I for one look forward to reading other’s responses to the actual works- as I’m sure the abcrit readers will.

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   2. I’m not sure that “getting anywhere” is all that important in discussions about art.
      Even if they are roughly the same attitudes and arguments that get repeated in different words by different people, they are still that – different words by different people. None of us would find it necessary to paint or make sculpture if we thought there was any kind of ultimate truth to be found in words. No-one is going to be converted here (or anywhere else), but I bet that just about everyone has picked up something that has contributed either directly or indirectly to their thinking about art.

      To any “silent readers” out there, I would say that in my experience, contributing to the conversation is a great test of one’s own ideas, whatever the subsequent reactions. It inspires a particularly intense and honest self-inquiry that is very much its own reward.

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      1. I understand the phrase, “knock on a door,” the phrase, “knock on wood”—not sure exactly what “knock Abcrit on the head” means: drastic change, ending it outright?

         Anyway, my response is essentially the same as John’s and Richard’s. It’s been great for me. I’d be sad to see it go. At the same time (taking advantage of my season tickets), you, Robin, have to be excited/amused/whatever about it.

         I talked about Abcrit with the guy I share studio space with today. He read John’s piece and all the comments. First time he’s gone that far with Abcrit, though I’ve been talking about it to him for years now. He got a kick out of it. Especially liked Patrick’s comment. Patrick brought the discussion “back to the work.” He very much liked your comments and Alan’s, the ease with which you guys “talk.” He didn’t like my comments. Crabby, calculated. Very American. (My friend is Australian.) Trying to sell something. He especially hated my bringing in the Studio School. (He’s an alumnus too.) I hope he’ll continue reading—maybe start commenting himself—but he has a family, teaching responsibilities, etc.

         Can you do something special to keep my friend interested? To bring in more readers, more writers? Should you hire a consultant to get better “numbers”? I don’t think much of that way of thinking. I don’t think you do.

         At the Studio School nothing ever changes—except people die. And things do seem to be on the verge of collapse. Many people consider the Studio School leadership irresponsible, stupid, etc. But the school has been on the verge of collapse from the day it was founded. I’m sure the Whitney Museum brought more people in to see their Jeff Koons show than the Studio School has in its 50 odd years in “business.” Question is obvious, answer too.

         There are lots of good websites out there that try to appeal to lots of people and succeed not only in reaching lots of people but in delivering substance. Abcrit doesn’t. Neither does Nonsite. It’s great. Like Abcrit in many ways. Seems to be run by former students of Michael Fried. Very intellectually distinguished, but in touch with the “real” world. It has all kinds of resources you don’t have, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

         You read Todd Cronan’s book on Matisse. Cronan’s a Nonsite guy. Charles Palermo is another one. He has a new book out: Modernism and Authority: Picasso and His Milieu around 1900. I just started it. It’s great—and what he has to say about “authority” is worth thinking about in the context of Abcrit. What kind of “authority” does Abcrit have? It’s easy to say “negligible”—to talk about money as the only “authority” that matters: Palermo doesn’t take that route.

         Of course Picasso in 1900 wasn’t making abstract paintings. He never made abstract paintings. But then all painters and sculptors are abstract artists, as I’ve tried to explain. Thing is: in 1900 Picasso wasn’t even making cubist paintings. Cubism is so much fun to talk about! All the drawing in cubism, all the mechanical/axial forces!!! No color! But Palermo has found something more important to talk about—in part thanks to all the crazy talk at Nonsite.

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      2. Make that four

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10. Keep going!
    There is so much good stuff to chew on in these comments. i do get exasperated at times at some of the personal baggage and apparent ill-feeling and I even worry about some people’s well being at times, but maybe I’m just too sensitive: perhaps it is all pantomime stuff but it sometimes puts me off posting and I know for sure of people who have a negative view of abcrit partly because of its excesses.
    So while I would appeal for a more reasoned and little less antagonistic forum I would also say abcrit with its excesses is still better than a world without it.

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11. Richard Ward has encapsulated what is essential to the experience of engaging in this foum, there has been so much to learn from!

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12. ‘Make that four’ was for Richard Ward’s comment bit I ”like’ Jock’s and Noela’s too. Must learn to do that ‘like’ thingy. keep up the important work Robin.

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13. Probably as a result of being a little disturbed by Robin’s suggestion of potentially ending Abcrit, I undertook to re-read all 127 comments on this article. Boy oh boy! Maybe Abcrit has soared again. It would be an inopportune time to throw that all away. Despite some of the usual bickering we would have expected an essay on this topic to set off, none of us could have seen just where it would all go. We’ve gone from Rothko and Still to Patrick Heron, brought in Samuel Barber, Mozart, dodos, sculpture from the body, golf, drawing, intentionality and the internet itself. We’ve all taken it in turns to can Richter, and then dragged in Olitski and Frankenthaler… and somehow it’s all relevant. We’ve more of Alan’s essays to look forward to (complete and unabridged?), Jock’s essay on drawing? A Robin on Rauschenberg?

    Meanwhile Shaun and Terry, rather than Alan, Robin or Tim Scott are discussing or nearly discussing abstract content. Whether you’re with Robin on that one or not, I think it helps to be thinking about it. Think of all the work out there being made by people who don’t. Did Robin not say in the Tim Scott conversation, that the term was something he had found helpful in direct relation to his own work? I don’t really have a problem with it. I don’t think about it while I paint, and the term is Robin’s, it works for him. But I think I get it. It is a fine ambition to want to put more exciting visual stuff into a work, that does not bear obvious if any association to the figurative, literal or symbolic, and to still have to reconcile it all with a larger and simple conception, as Alan may have put it. But these are just pointers and none of this accounts for taste, imagination or poetry, and it will still be incumbent upon each and every artist to find their own way.

    Maybe we do go over a lot of old ground, but I think that actually is what makes the site so effective. It allows all these ideas and arguments to actually make an impression, rather than just being fired out into the ether and quickly forgotten. Abcrit doesn’t need to change or impress anyone in this regard. It’s a place for weirdos who have few other refuges to congregate, pick up where they left off and then go away and do something with it all.

    Long live!

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14. Harry — you’ve restored my faith in humanity.

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    1. Thanks Alan. You’ve renewed my curiosity for golf. And a great many other things.

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15. I too have been reading the whole series of comments, just as I did with the Scott/Greenwood dialogues. What it all reminds me of is watching the late lamented (by some) Peter Fuller on T.V. , holding up a Rothko catalogue and jabbing with his finger at a 5″ x 4″ reproduction, condemning it on some utterly spurious grounds of his own devising. And then extolling Robert Natkin (who he?) on much the same way that Robin favours Richter, I.e. For “putting things in”.
    Like John Walker “putting in ” skulls, aboriginal wall drawings, lumps of coal, giant pills — it all amounts to nothing at all, but the ghastly “mind forg’d manacles” of man. Even if it’s “abstract content”, what matters is imaginative synthesis in terms of the eloquent means of painting. I came across this from Robert Motherwell yesterday — “A picture is a collaboration between artist and canvas. ‘Bad’ painting is when an artist enforces his will without regard for the sensibilities of the canvas”. Sneer at that if you must, but before you swallow all that stuff from Alloway, do your home work on Motherwell’s links with the Dada painters and poets, and much else besides in his highly knowledgeable background.
    Daring to put things in, daring to take things out? What matters is “our response to the qualitative character” of the result, and not demanding of it things that it is not trying to do, or has explicitly rejected. All those hoary old modernist cliches, right?.
    And on Tintoretto, it’s like comparing Prokofiev or Stravinsky with Palestrina, (( John Tavener, Gorecki, Arvo Part, anyone?). Even the anti-modernist modernist Stravinsky had to concede late in life that something had happened, something that had to be reckoned with and could not be avoided in the clarifications and simplifications of the 2nd Viennese School, (and their complexity) — and so he embarked on his own peculiar version of Webern’s serialism, and in doing so rediscovered some of his own earliest harmonic creations. Synergy is indeed all! I wish Robin and Tony would rediscover some of their own earlier creations, from the laid to late 70s for instance.
    Just as when The Brancastrians are assessing the pros and cons of Anne Smart’s and John Pollard’s paintings they are having to resort to well worn modernist values and criteria, of integrated surfaces, of “resolving” , colour that works, colour that doesn’t, colour/form that’s in the picture, colour /form that’s not, that’s ” leaking” in the old parlance, and a host of other modernist subtleties. (And nothing wrong with that) Face it, you’re modernists through and through.

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16. Mid to late 70s, I meant. God, it’s addictive this commenting lark. Stop it Alan!

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    1. Well I agree with that. Stop it Alan. And stop mashing up my viewpoint on abstract art with all sorts of claptrap. And shut up for a bit, unless you have some constructive ideas about Abcrit.

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    2. God, but you do annoy me! “what matters is imaginative synthesis in terms of the eloquent means of painting” WTF.

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17. OK, thank you for those comments – those from down under especially welcome.

    I’d appreciate any thoughts about what and why we are trying to do what we do, and how we might do it better. Abcrit is two years old, and maybe it’s time to assess where we are. The reason I got a bit fed up with the original ‘abstractcritical’ was that it never seemed to get anywhere, it was just one article after another, unrelated, like a sort of weekend supplement – interesting reading, if you wanted to pass the time. I don’t.

    I’ve seen the Nonsite that Jock mentions. That’s interesting sometimes too, but a bit too intellectual/theoretical for me. What I like most about Abcrit is that it is written and commented on almost exclusively by artists. That may mean that the writing is inconsistent and maybe not always to a professional/academic standard, or too pie-in-the-sky, and the comments (including mine, I’m sure) too naive, but that matters less to me than the fact that actual real abstract artists are exchanging views and ideas in a forthright and uninhibited way. That is Abcrit’s USP.

    I’m also not really interested in it being a site for a kind of display of connoisseurship and art appreciation, which I think is a factor in some of my disagreements with Alan. (That said, in my opinion some of those disagreements have created at times at least as much light as heat.) When I started Abcrit, the whole idea was that all of the essayists would always contribute comments/criticism on all the other essayist contributions, every time. So for each essay there would be a round-robin (pardon the pun) of points of view, plus other commentators. I had to abandon that idea quite quickly, as few people actually did it, despite agreeing to at the beginning. I still think it’s a good idea, but I can’t make it work.

    What I have tried to do since then is to create some kind of continuity going through both the essays and the comments, so that it is not just one thing after another, but is interlinked. That can sometimes seem like going over the same old ground again (much to the disdain of some), or going in circles. More contributors would probably help that, to take the threads in different directions.

    So, some specific new ideas for taking Abcrit onwards would be good. My feeling is that it DOES have to change, and that changes should reflect the views of those who want to invest something in it, in terms of time and effort.

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    1. I forget how I stumbled onto Abstract Critical maybe three years ago. Don’t remember anybody telling me about it. Must have been just “surfing the web.” I might have been looking up something/somebody Garth Evans had mentioned—John Panting MAYBE.

       My sense of things was that there was a bunch of people who had some “ideas” about abstract art, “ideas” that had proved fruitful over years of exchange within the group, “ideas” that were out of step with the times/“marginalized” today. Robin had some ideas about asserting the presence/reality of abstract art in today’s strange world: very plain, ordinary, modest ideas: essentially just “talking” about abstract art in public/on the web.

       Also, importantly, it struck me that there was something about the “ideas” about abstract art at Abstract Critical that was clearly and fundamentally “wrong”—wrong to me. It also struck me that it was OK say these “ideas” were wrong. The comments people were making were like that: people were saying you’re wrong about this, and this is why you’re wrong. I liked that.

       My sense of what’s happening at Abcrit and Brancaster now is more complicated. I associate Alan with modernism more than abstract art. Really now I associate Abcrit simply with painting and sculpture more than with abstract art.

       Robin, you seem to be impatient with the “progress” being made. You seem to want more focus.

       I’ve spent way too much time over the past few years reading Abstract Critical and Abcrit essays and listening to Brancaster Chronicles. But do I wish things had been less confusing, more “focused”? Of course NOT. That’s just not the way you/(I) learn about art—even “abstract art.”

       I might just note here that one of the most “useful”/“wise” (to me) things Alan has said recently was about Richter. Alan just wondered out loud, did Richter ever stop by the Stockwell Depot shows? Alan reminded me that Richter has looked around—and he has made a whole bunch of paintings. Richter’s paintings might be worthless, his “ideas” might be cynical/stupid—but he has made a bunch of paintings. The Brancaster Chronicles “remind” me of the same thing: it’s the work that counts, not the “talk”—exciting though the talk is, at Abcrit and Brancaster it’s kept in “perspective.”

       (The thing about Nonsite that I was trying to underline is its independence of “mind.” There are a bunch of great “minds” there for sure. I can’t even begin to keep up with them. It’s not the fancy thinking that Nonsite has in common with Abcrit, though: it’s its cussedness.)

       Anyway that’s what I think Abcrit is about. I kind of really can’t imagine it being better. Robin, you’re wrong to want to change it!

       I just read John-Paul Stonard’s review/preview in The Guardian of the Ab Ex show. (Thanks, Harry.) I think John-Paul is great, but even I (I’m a guy who insists that Mark Skilton must come to terms with The Laocoon in his sculpture, a guy who is happy to see Mark coming to terms with it in his sculpture (or maybe in my fantasy life)—and a guy who read and listened to Robert Rosenblum without afterward plotting to assassinate Robert)—even I was shocked to read that Mark Rothko painted sunsets. As I say I think John-Paul is great: serious, intelligent: what he thinks about art is what most intelligent, serious people think. I think/hope John-Paul would agree that given the way things are Abcrit is absolutely necessary for the mental health of the cosmos.

       One more thing about what I think Abcrit is about: Clement Greenberg/Formalism. Those words mean different things to different people. To most art world people they mean bad/evil. Not to Abcrit people. Of course, the words mean something different to different Abcrit people. But at least my perception of Abcrit (and I’m over-simplifying ridiculously as usual) is that Abcrit is NOT a Formalist club: it’s a place where something that might be called “Clement Greenberg plus Andy Warhol” is getting sorted out—but not neatly sorted out—sorted out with stupendous difficulty.The more stupendous, the better.

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18. Some more connoisseurship? The one person Heron got wrong in his otherwise marvellous quote was of course Henry Moore, but he can be excused that on account of the date it was written, before Moore thought to take on Michaelangelo, an illustration if ever there was one of the perils of flirting with the old masters.
    It is true that the giant figure of J.S.Bach copied out whole stretches of Renaissance polyphony (by whom I can’t remember, and there is a link to Venice and Monteverdi via Schutz) in preparation for his composing of the Gloria and Donna Nobis Pacem of his B minor Mass. (Give us peace I hear Robin cry). Palestrina’s art is known as the Ars Perfecta for the simple reason that it reached a pinnacle of perfection that cannot be surpassed (the human mind being limited in the number of strands of polyphony it can hear at the same time).
    But there is a difference with painting. There are structural elements in music that are so to say style neutral, and which do not determine or limit the outcome of what can be done with them. Hence Schoenberg and co. We’re able to adapt and apply polyphonic devices from the Renaissance in a new context, (a harmonically neutral context as it happens) without the result sounding churchy, archaic, or a parody of the originals. The issue of representation or figuration/abstraction does not arise, ( though “absolute music”, total abstraction is a delusion). Whereas in painting, representation or non-representation is a burning issue. Whenever a sequence of convex markers (or planes) moves into the depth of the picture, the illusion of a quasi-sculptural object is created, “the two-dimensionality of the picture is destroyed ….. It creates the effect of naturalistic space” (Hofmann) , and the picture is no longer abstract.
    This is why Tintoretto’s baroque plunging depth and dramatically foreshortened flying figures, and his walls and wooden structures raking into crazy perspectival depths, though spectacular indeed, are simply not compatible with abstraction (though sculptors may envy them and even gain something from them).
    Renoir and Monet greatly admired Veronese’s Marriage Feast at Cana, and Cezanne in his adolescent fantasy tried to paint like Tintoretto. His Christ in Limbo and its cut down twin, the Penitent? Were copied from Tintoretto. But they are a world away from the mature Cezanne. Something has happened to the evolution of painting that cannot be ignored or reversed, like it or not, and you merely affirm this in using precepts learned from the very painters you affect to despise.
    One is faced with a stark choice. Either return to figuration, (a la Frank Auerbach?) or continue to engage with the broad expansive freedoms from volume defining constraint which modern painting has opened up.

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    1. Would it be possible to clarify what you mean by ‘broad expansive freedoms from volume defining constraint’, and list an artist who works in that way? I see the semi figuration in Auerbach.

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19. ” the sensibilities of the canvas” — badly put I know, but what he means is — the canvas is a membrane, like the stretched skin of a drum ( only a literalist like Fontana is going to want to penetrate it) , but if one trusts ones involuntary response to surface, whether gentle or emphatic, delicate or firm, it can be made to open up a whole world of colour/form/light/expression. What was it Gauguin said?
    But hey, yes, I too am just repeating what I’ve said many times before — to the deaf, apparently.
    GOODBYE , and the best of British luck!

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20. Positively last one. Noela, our comments clashed. Mine is not a reply to yours. But Monet’s Day Lilies 1914-17 ( I mean the ones in the recent R.A. Show, the square ones 78″x78″ from Oregon and private Coll.) are on the cusp of abstraction. Heron wrote of them as a distended representational idea, but the Americans claimed them for abstraction. As with all the greatest paintings of the 20 th century, The Moroccans for example, they are on that borderline between representation and abstraction. Hofmann, Rothko and Heron just about cross over to the other side, but Hofmann knew that it could sometimes be a close run thing. Sanctum Sanctorum is “abstract”, Summer Night’s Bliss is borderline. As Greenberg said to me once, “I wouldn’t want to be categorical about it”. All the best, GOODBYE.

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21. I don’t think Robin is suggesting we literally go out and try and incorporate Tintoretto perspective or sculptural modelling into abstract paintings. Rather that we look to painters like Tintoretto or Breughel, not as fields to be harvested (see what I did there?), but as a kind of standard or benchmark for captivating visual stimuli. And Alan is also right to point out the proven dangers of thinking along these lines, should anyone go and get the wrong idea.

    Is it at all possible that Matisse and Cezanne, great as they are, have too much of a hold over the imaginations of abstract painters and their understandings of the capabilities of the medium? Has the time come to delve back further than them, not to borrow and appropriate, but to hold ourselves to a different kind of standard, even if ever so slightly? I want to make it very clear too that I’m not for one moment suggesting that abstract artists don’t appreciate pre-modern painting as much as they should. Abstract painters love the masters. But I am suggesting that there could be in all of us, an automatic and understandable feeling of distance to older work, of a kind of cut-off point where we no longer see it as having any bearing on what we do or could do. I’ve long felt this issue to be one of the most promising ones that Abcrit and abstractcritical before it has tackled, probably since I read Robin’s “Abstractness of Poussin” article, or Emyr Williams’ “Closeness” on the old site. Maybe the issue always jumped out at me because unlike many contributors here, I did not live through the 70s or 80s. I finished art school only three years ago, in a country that as I’ve said before, does not get abstract art! It’d be fair to say that I didn’t, probably still don’t get abstract art. So when I first read an abstractcritical article, I had no idea what Sculpture from the Body was, or New Gen, or Stockwell or any of this stuff. I had to do my homework.

    I think it would be great if more people commented, and maybe it is hard to just jump in not only because of the infighting but because we’re often bringing up stuff that a wider readership would have to read a year’s worth of essays and comments to fully comprehend. But that is also marvellous and unique, the depth of it all! But I can only bring up Richard’s comments again and confirm that “to any “silent readers” out there, I would say that in my experience, contributing to the conversation is a great test of one’s own ideas, whatever the subsequent reactions. It inspires a particularly intense and honest self-inquiry that is very much its own reward.”

    But I will come back again to this Tintoretto thing. There is more mileage to be got out of that topic, and not just for the sake of it either. We could do a better job of trying to understand how abstract art could be made with old man Jacopo’s achievements in mind, without thinking for one moment that it involves some sort of stupid figurative hybrid bullcrap. Perhaps I’m being extremely naive as a result of abstract art not having always been such a dominant presence in my life. I don’t know if any of this helps to suggest another way that Abcrit could go about it. Perhaps Robin is thinking of far more structural changes to the way the whole thing operates. In any case, as John B. said, we should see how it goes over the coming weeks as we read other people’s reactions to the RA show, and hopefully some new voices please!

    Also, I didn’t quite notice this comment by Shaun the first time round, where he said…

    “The social theorists, have us in a Post-Modern world. That has implications for painters. The only way to free ourselves from the implications is to bury our heads in the sand so to speak, and pretend nothing has changed over time. Or, we get to work at extending the ‘abstract artwork’s’ relevance into today; the postmodern today.”

    At first I thought, who cares about the Post-Modern world. But maybe it does matter some.

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22. Also, if I may return to the topic of the abstract expressionists, here is another anticipatory essay on the show. A non-abcrit take, for a much wider audience. Let the well worn mythology roll.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/03/abstract-expressionism-not-just-macho-heroes-with-brushes

    Stonard seems more than happy to see figuration or landscape in the works of these “celebrated beasts”.

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    1. Yes indeed, same old same old. The irony is that Alan is content with a state of semi-abstraction, even in his own work, whilst damning as irrelevant my comparisons with the best of figurative art, juxtapositions that might help to push abstract art into new and more abstract territory as it strives to undo some of the limited thinking surrounding abstract art. The fact is, Alan wants no part of any change. He’s made up his mind, and we’re just idiots not to recognise his authority.

       The late Monets that are “on the cusp of abstraction” are seemingly Alan’s benchmark, because they don’t break the damn precious surface tension of the picture plane (or something or other). I think they are mostly poor paintings, and fall well below the level of Monets best work, of which I am a huge fan, mostly before 1880 – “Le Dejeuner”, 1873; “Au Bord de l’Eau”, 1868; “La Pie, Effet de Neige”, 1869, for examples, all of which are complex and three-dimensionally spatial, as well as reconciled to the two-dimensions in which they exist. As is the Tintoretto, in my opinion. The big thing to recognise is just how fantastically varied, in every dimension and attribute, that Tintoretto is, and consequently how fabulous a thing it is to look at, on and on. That’s the bottom line for me. That hasn’t changed, just because modernism came along. For me the Tintoretto is more alive and more “in the moment” than pretty much any abstract painting – so far.

       It’s not that I don’t recognise the dilemma for painters; I’ve tried and (as Alan is fond of pointing out) failed myself. Of course you don’t want figurative spaces or lumpen modelling in abstract painting (except, apparently, when it’s semi-figurative!?!). But surely you want flatness even less, in any of its ubiquitous but persistent guises. Abstract painting will square that circle sometime soon, if it’s not already on its way – see Brancaster for the latest on that.

       Your previous comment, Harry, was up there with the very best on Abcrit. And I too am interested to know more about where Shaun is coming from. I found his comments annoying at first, but I’m interested in hearing more from him, about what he thinks is good, and what sort of work he does himself. I hope he opens up a bit…

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       1. Hah! well, erm… a bit MORE about what you like, why you stopped working, what you were doing before you stopped. And why you are even interested in abstract art.

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23. Just in from the golf course, and managed not to get into a Bunker. (See what I did there, as I’m sure John has heard many times before). A final afterthought — my guess is that the R.A. Show is going to be something of a disappointment after all this, unless it has been able to borrow the finest examples. Take De Kooning’s Easter Monday, Metropolitan Museum N.Y. , (photo please) (John Pollard please note) probably his best ever painting. And probably the last “abstract” painting to try to draw depth, and excavate some kind of deep space other than by means of colour., an issue that came up over on Abstractcritical with regard to Diebenkorn. (and it was not repeating itself by the way half as much as abcrit is.) If it could be compared directly with Hofmann’s Goliath or Sanctum Sanctorum, we might be able to take this discussion further, but I fear comparisons of that quality are not going to occur. Hope I’m wrong. A final, final goodbye!

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    1. Breeze in from the golf, take a supercilious swipe at John P., a condescending little comment about Abcrit, and sashay out the door. End of.

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    2. De Kooning, middle/late fifties (and occasionally the odd later painting) is an obvious influence. He was getting somewhere then. Perhaps a more considered synthesis of the urban landscapes (such as Easter Monday) and the slightly later Parkway landscapes would have been interesting.

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24. As a personal statement about abstract art, that seems pretty good to me. Building a house is pretty good too!

    Do you think you will start painting again?

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25. Shaun, I particularly like the qualification that you introduce around the notion of abstract painting being able to say ‘something about nothing’. ‘Nothing comes from nothing’ (King Lear), and Will is seldom wrong. Ultimately that unfamiliar world (surely a desirable destination for an abstract artist) might only be an alternative view of the familiar but crucially, one that doesn’t lead us, in a visual sense, back to familiarity.
    Interesting to read your comments relating to considerations of the commercial viability of your work You seem to be suggesting that it is only possible for you to be a ‘proper artist’ if you are commercially/critically successful. My view on that is that you can be a good abstract artist without enjoying either but there is no questioning the feel-good factor if someone throws some money at you for your efforts. Nice to have a bit of ‘grubby’ talk amidst all the purity.

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26. Going back a few comments…

    If Tintoretto and the other old masters were “acknowledging the picture plane” or “acknowledging two dimensionality” by creating an unbroken surface skin, and modernist painting, since the breaking up of the surface, initiated by Constable (according to Heron, quoted by Robin in a recent thread), has acknowledged the picture plane through flatness of the remaining fragments/pictorial planes, then maybe one way forward would be to discover new ways of acknowledging two dimensionality that do not involve flatness.
    Put another way:
    If Kenneth Noland and co. were investigating different ways of acknowledging the frame, while taking the flatness-solution (for acknowledging the picture plane) for granted, maybe it is time to look at the other side of that equation.
    I must say, this isn’t my way of approaching painting at all, and I imagine it could lead into equally arid territory to that of the post-painterlies, but it might be one way of initiating fresh formal advances.

    I like Shaun’s statement too.

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    1. Interesting, but not sure I understand the second part fully. Can you explain further?

       I also think that the Tintoretto (and much of Constable, for that matter), whilst dealing fully with three-dimensional spatiality, comes to terms with it’s two-dimensionality by how that quality (the 3D space) is organised on the canvas, rather than by “unbroken surface”. This needs more explanation… because, for one thing, I DON’T mean how it is composed! Thinking on it.

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       1. I suppose I’m assuming that the old masters and modern painters have always been concerned to create pictures without “holes” and “bumps” but that they have maybe achieved this in two different ways – modernist with flat planes parallel to the picture surface; old masters with an unbroken “skin” across the entire picture. The thought was then that there might be further, as yet undiscovered ways of doing this. And this reminded me of Carl’s essay on Kenneth Noland discovering new ways of acknowledging the picture frame. It seems at least theoretically possible that a similar investigation into new ways of acknowledging the picture surface might turn up something other than parallel flat planes.
          Personally, I am think I am quite happy at the moment with the flat planes. But on the other hand they do form a restriction on what you can do.

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27. Reading the comments is a bit like listening to a very long drum solo, ok for the first ten minutes, then you gradually lose the will to live.

    The initial essay summarised some of the issues associated with the vast cultural organism that is Abstract Expressionism, but a show of actual Abstract Expressionist works in the contemporary moment is likely to present different challenges. Approaching it as existentialists rather than ideologues, we might be able to see it better, re-invent it, offer alternative readings, recalibrate reputations, discover something we can’t predict. Or we might spontaneously cry, “Of course! It’s clearly about the crisis of US capitalism”, and want to downgrade the whole movement, deploying whatever 21st century terms are in vogue for such tasks.

    My guess is that someone will link it to the rise and current interest in identity politics and self-fashioning, because there is always an attempt to argue that a show of old stuff has contemporary resonance.

    But it’s a good chance to look at the achievements of a generation who took painting seriously. Don’t anticipate, visit the show, think about it, write the article, then the drumming can start.

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28. Richard,
    OK, but aren’t there already other ways to acknowledge the picture surface – like Pointillism or even Art brut, for example – which don’t rely on a planar organisations parallel to the surface? They don’t seem to get us very far; they only narrow things down again. And in Brancaster, some of the paintings do acknowledge surface – like Anne Smart and Hilde Skilton, but some don’t, like John Pollard and John Bunker, who both seem to me a lot of the time to be utterly unconcerned with it, and none the worse for that; in fact, to me, very interesting for that.

    I’m still wondering why the surface should have to be acknowledged, and still not convinced that it must be to make a successful picture. I’m thinking it is perhaps something of a modernist trope, a habit, maybe even a cliché.

    Nor do I think surface intrudes (yes, intrudes) in either Tintoretto or Constable, for example. Other things are at work to prevent the spatiality becoming either trompe l’oeil or atmospheric illusionism, or any of the unwanted things in between that make painting “unreal”. As I hinted in my last comment, I think maybe the thing with these guys is the way the space is thought about and manipulated on the canvas, to “bring it into view”, so to speak. Indeed, to bring it together in a very particular set of views, which are orchestrated into a coherent painterly/pictorial vision of 3D space, arranged so we can see what we need to see from our 2D point of view.

    I feel this “surface” thing in painting as something akin to acknowledging gravity in sculpture. There are lots of ways of doing that, but I’m no longer convinced it is necessary or even desirable. Caro made lots of sculpture – perhaps most of his sculpture – laying stuff out across the floor in a very literal acknowledgement of gravity; as did the minimalists; as did I for a long time. Another very different and more exciting kind of acknowledgement of the physicality, or even the “physics”, of gravity, was seen in the recent work of Mark Skilton, until he freed himself of that in this year’s work.

    I recall I’ve already said elsewhere that I don’t think Degas’ sculpture is preoccupied with gravity. Enough of my cowbell solo for now.

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    1. Yes, I suppose it does come down to the conventions you choose for yourself, and whether they still have any mileage left in them.
       I find it difficult to “see” stuff that abandons too much of artistic tradition though. Maybe I am quite reactionary in that respect, but I do think that an over hasty abandonment of traditional conventions is just as problematic as sticking too long with conventions that are tired and may have become irrelevant.

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       1. …And I do think that there is probably more work around at the (“post-modern”) moment that is breaking with/ignoring tradition in an unreflected and gratuitous way, than work that is adhering to tradition in an unreflected and gratuitous way.

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    2. Robin, you’re being a Bad Boy about acknowledging the picture surface/plane—and I can’t really follow your thinking, but you seem to be at least mostly kind of serious.

       Richard, I can’t bring myself even to think about Kenneth Noland, and I’m not sure I understand your thinking completely either. At least I know you’re serious.

       I’m serious too, believe it or not.

       I’m thinking it might be useful to make another glancing comment about drawing here. (Useful to me mostly: to find out whether or not I can say anything coherent. More useful if somebody points out errors in my ways. This is NOT a display of erudition, as I hope will be obvious to everybody except maybe Robin.)

       The issue is acknowledging the picture surface/plane. I have a feeling Tintoretto never really thought about or at least never named anything a “picture plane.” I’m pretty sure de Kooning did talk about this thing/idea regularly. I have a feeling this is a real/deep difference between the world of the Old Masters and our world. But it’s also interesting that we can read Tintoretto more/less the same way we read de Kooning. Both guys “knew how to draw.” Tintoretto’s “Susannah” is very different from de Kooning’s “Easter Monday”—but the paintings are very much alike too—kind of exactly alike if you look at the drawing abstractly.

       Alan quoted Hofmann a few comments back about overlapping planes creating depth. That’s not a bad start. Imagine two overlapping planes, and join the corners of the planes with lines. You get a nice, volumetric box floating on your piece of paper/canvas. But the picture plane—its flatness—hasn’t been “acknowledged.” But erase some of your box’s lines, and you begin to acknowledge the picture plane: the box gets “flatter”—but maybe no less real. Push things, you might end up with three lines configured more/less like the letter “Y.” The box is still “implied”—but the flatness of the picture plane has been acknowledged.

       Does that make sense to anybody??? Is it old news? I see it happening over and over in both the Tintoretto and the de Kooning. Of course, 10,000 other things are happening too. But “essentially” that’s what those guys were doing over and over: creating some depth/space/volume then “collapsing” it, “bringing things back to the plane.”

       It’s funny the deepest point in both paintings is in almost the same place: top/center/right. It seems pretty clear to me both guys organized their paintings around that point. At first glance, you might say de Kooning’s “abstract,” and Tintoretto uses perspective. But really both guys—good Mannerists both of them—use a lot of mechanical/axial forces. De Kooning erases more. Tintoretto uses light and dark to “collapse” his drawing. But you can look at that pool at the front of the Tintoretto as one of de Kooning’s floors that fall off the canvas.

       What’s a “mechanical/axial force”? I don’t have a good definition. I might say, Hofmann: push/pull—and hope you understand. But I just watched the 40th Brancaster. Hilde Skilton’s pointing out mechanical/axial forces all over the place in Tony Smart’s sculpture. She doesn’t call them “mechanical/axial forces,” but very often that’s what at least I hear her talking about.

       So what? Well, I can’t say more than I find Robin’s attempt to connect the picture plane in painting to gravity in sculpture wild/desperate—kind of fun, but mistaken in the same way Richard (it seems to me) is: both you guys are focused on the future/tomorrow/a way “forward.” You’ve figured out today?I’m interested in how fundamental drawing seems to be for all painting and sculpture—from the caves to Tony Smart. Everybody does it. Maybe everybody does it exactly the same way. What else is going on? What does drawing allow people to say? Is it just a display of “erudition”?

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       1. Jock,
          Thanks for your explanation of “bringing stuff up to the surface” with drawing. I’ve always approached this from the angle of painting, so it was new to me.

          Strange to be thought of as a progressive. I think I probably belong to the “conservative wing” at abcrit. My comments were an attempt to find some common ground with Robin, or at least to find a way of understanding his thinking in terms of what I find useful as a conceptual framework for art.
          It occurred to me that my way of thinking could accomodate the discovery of new ways of acknowledging the picture plane as an element of formal progress, and this is what I was trying to express, even though formal progress is not a particular concern of mine.
          Correct me if I’m wrong Robin, but it seems you want to do away with acknowledging the picture plane at all. Wow! That really is radical. I can see that it’s a theoretical possibility but I don’t see the need. There aren’t many conventions left in painting – they may sometimes be difficult to comply with but, for me, overcoming the difficulties is what gives painting its human content. I don’t believe you can have art that is completely free of conventions. Doing away with acknowledging the picture plane is almost like saying “painting is dead”.

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    3. Although Anne’s paintings acknowledge the surface by their rich texture, when one stands back from them the surface disappears and the viewer is completely drawn into an illusion of space. Perhaps both qualities surface and depth or whatever can occur simultaneously. I am a little confused when you (Robin) say John Pollard and John Bunker’s work is not concerned with the picture surface. The surface and textures are very much there to experience in some of the works, but maybe they are just a by product of the coming together of ideas? Is it about texture and no texture?? Weight and no weight in sculpture? Painting a sense of 3D space rather than flatness? If a painting is just about the surface texture perhaps that can have limitations, is that what this thread is about, put simply?

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29. Jock,
    Why so bad to question the picture plane? I still think it’s not a factor with the Tintoretto (I don’t get the drawing thing), and I can no longer see it as integral to abstract painting – “abstraction”, yes, but not proper “abstract”. The process of abstracting from something representational would be more likely to require not only a drawing/design, but also a flat plane upon which to compose. But we are not interested in abstraction (well. I’m not).

    I think this stands up: “…orchestrated into a coherent painterly/pictorial vision of 3D space, arranged so we can see what we need to see from our 2D point of view.” I think it stands up for Tintoretto, and perhaps it will stand up for abstract painting too.

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30. Do you think, Richard, that John Pollard’s or John Bunker’s recent work acknowledges the picture plane? I’d be interested in John B’s views on this topic.

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    1. It’s hard to say from jpegs, but I think that John Pollard is probably doing it. If de Kooning is an inspiration, then de Kooning was certainly very concerned with “bringing it up to the surface”, and he managed to combine this with a startling, immediate and deep spatiality. I’ve seen two of his 1977 “landscapes” in the last few years and I think they were among the best paintings I have ever experienced.
       I think that John Bunker possibly isn’t acknowledging the picture plane (maybe from a distance but I imagine that the actual physical layering destroys the surface closer up), but then he is not painting. Collage maybe has to find its own “special thing” that makes it particularly suitable as an artistic medium. For painting I think the special thing is the surface/depth duality, so I find it hard to imagine painting ignoring that and still having any importance as a medium.

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    2. I’m not much interested in a continuos painted surface, although I respect those qualities and can love those qualities in other’s work. In collage, discontinuity and contrast are for me the vital ingredients- but they have to add up to something more. This ‘skin’ whether it be canvas or the paint itself are just different kinds of texture and material that can be combined with many others- but I also try to be as sensitive to these properties as I can. Some of these qualities are very painterly others aggressively not so. I’m hoping to get all these different discontinuities in colour, texture and edge to sing as one- so there is a quest for continuity of sorts. Its a ‘wholeness’ born of a colour/shape dynamic. It comes into being through a process of making that emphasises experiment and invention often at the expense of a flat rectangular skin. The picture plane gets atomised and reconfigured as a series of dynamic juxtaposition and axiel counterpoints and rhythms. It is also basic and canabolistic. The modernism that interests me is to do with the improvisatory spirit of collage.This strand, of course, leads down the road to novelty and theatre and everything that M Fried and many Abcrit readers find so hard to stomach. But I think it is a modernist impulse non the less. It is a place where “the transient, the ephemeral, the contingent” (Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1863) can grow new hybrid forms. From this perspective, painting becomes a realm in which the mind’s cognitive processes are echoed or played out. There might be a latent sleeping ancestry in Surrealism in here. But I do not find the ‘Literary’ illustrational strand of it here, nor a ‘psychic automatism’ either. There is a physical and bodily side to all this too though. I prefer Motherwell’s ‘plastic automatism’ which, for me, focuses on the exploration of the peculiar physical properties of whatever materials you are working with- whether that be paint, paper, the sensuous properties of our constructed environment or the images the city is coated in, for instance. I like the idea of paint itself acting as a kind of binding agent transforming anything it touches, bringing disparate collaged elements into new relationships, by turns masking and revealing, heeding some boundaries and breaching others- including the picture plane.

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31. I find it very interesting to think that John B’s collages are acting in a way that doesn’t acknowledge surface, given that they are made of mixed materials that each have their own textures and physical properties. I can only assume as I have not seen the work, but could it be that the need to purposefully integrate the different components in the collages, creates a sort of disregard for surface, because the individual parts have to become anonymous and give up their literal identity to the work as a whole. As in, if you put a piece of ribbon in a collage, you would have to make it disappear somehow, otherwise it’s an isolated piece of ribbon with no meaning. So perhaps this creates a preoccupation with how one bit in the collage (like how one mark in a painting) effects another bit, and not so much how it returns to the plane. John seems to me to be more interested in the edge and how it returns to the inner goings on of the collage. And a collage doesn’t really have to be concerned with a sort of consistency across the whole surface as say many abstract paintings have been, or the “unbroken skin” (Richard) in old masters. It still has to look like it’s all connected (perhaps), but collage has by it’s very nature the licence to have abrupt and perhaps jarring juxtapositions. Perhaps collage, or at least John’s collage is free to not worry about surface and get straight into just resolving tensions between the stuff he decides to “put in” there.

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    1. Sounds good to me.

       I’d like very much to hear from Jock just how he thinks this:https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrrVZKUWIAgS-gN.jpg is like the Tintoretto, in drawing or anything else.

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       1. I haven’t seen the de Kooning (I don’t think I have), but my memory of the Tintorertto is such that any similarities seem very, very unlikely. There is a lot of overt drawing in the de Kooning, on the surface, indeed, but it does not look to me very spatially engaging, though I can kind of imagine its materiality. When I read the Tintoretto, not only am I NOT engaging with surface, but nor am I concerned with drawing as an element of the content.

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       2. But Robin I thought I was PERFECTLY clear in my earlier comments about drawing.
          I have to run, but just a few quick thoughts:

          About your “badness:” maybe that’s not the right word: maybe extreme self-consciousness is something more useful to think about. De Kooning, actually thinking and talking about “picture planes,” was more self-conscious than Tintoretto. You (and I)—we’re all even more self-conscious than de Kooning: maybe we’re too self-conscious.

          You say you’re “not concerned with drawing as an element of the content.” I smile. I smile at the self-consciousness of the phrase “an element of the content”—but mostly at your claim not to be concerned about drawing. I don’t really not believe you, but I do see you—and Mark and Tony—as being kind of totally obsessed by drawing 24 hours a day.

          We come from different places. I’m an enlightened product of the NY Studio School. You come from the gloomy halls of wherever. But I certainly am learning lots trying to understand you.

          It might help to say something more about mechanical/axial forces. Take a Rembrandt portrait: the head’s more/less in the middle of the canvas: there’s deep space: psycho-visual forces/perspective are/is at work. If you moved the head up on the plane, it would “fall out of” the picture. But Cezanne does just that: moves, say, his wife’s head close to the top of the plane: she’s a goddess: he looks up to her. Why doesn’t his wife’s head fall out of the picture? Because of “mechanical/axial” forces: a curtain pushing in from one side, an armchair pulling something or other around something else.

          Unless you’re an art student, you might not be concerned about drawing in the Rembrandt or Cezanne. You’re probably overwhelmed by other things—though a Cezanne is often “weird” enough to provoke interest in drawing, in “technical” things. De Kooning certainly is weird enough to provoke all kinds of concerns.

          You might think the Tintoretto is a lot less weird than the de Kooning, but remember Noella’s response: she was disturbed by something in the figure of Susannah. Noella said it was proportions. I’m not sure that was it. There is something kind of basically disturbing about the Tintoretto.

          It’s a “weirdness” that might be kind of officially described as mannerism—but that might also be thought of Bunkerism. John Bunker is a guy who thinks he can pick up an old shoe off the street and just stick it in one of his collages: put it anywhere he wants. You, Robin, kind of do the same thing: you pick up any old piece of steel and put it anywhere you want. Thing is: unless there’s one of Cezanne’s curtains doing something on the right and something else doing something on the left—unless there are “mechanical/axial forces” at work—unless the drawing’s terrific, your piece of steel/John’s old shoe—they aren’t going to stay in place no matter how talented a welder you are, not matter how strong the glue John uses.

          Well, there’s a book-length quick response. Please: rip it apart. I’ll TRY to do better later

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       3. Congrats, wrong on every single point.

          Could you not just answer the question? Why is the de Kooning like the Tintoretto? No clever shit.

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       4. Clever shit???

          I answered your question quite succinctly a long time ago. You seem incapable of listening to anything you don’t want to hear.

          The de Kooning and the Tintoretto are drawn the same way—abstractly. It may be that you’re the only person in the world who knows the true meaning of the word “abstract.” I’m still trying to understand it. I understand it as something that’s difficult to talk about. I try to talk about it clearly. My tone is sometimes light-hearted, as Alan’s is, because we both know we’re always getting many things wrong. Have you no sense of humor?

          Can we agree about the deepest point in space in the two paintings? If not, tell me where you think the deepest points are. Can we agree that the paintings are “organized” around the deepest point?

          I don’t think there’s anything clever about talking about a painting in terms of drawing. It’s basic—basic for me: maybe not basic for you: I can’t read your mind. Does it make no sense to talk about Rembrandt’s paintings as seriously different from the de Kooning and the Tintoretto? Rembrandt paints the world as human beings see it. He uses perspective. There’s a ground plane. In the de Kooning and the Tintoretto everything’s way up on the plane. It’s not really the way we see the world, but it’s coherent because “mechanical/axial forces” are brought into play. Wipe out everything except Susannah, and she floats. The rose trellis thing—a “mechanical/axial force”—helps hold Susannah in place: the trees and bushes (the axes of the trees and bushes) on the right “push” or “pull” or “drive” in different directions: again holding Susannah (and the rose trellis thing) in place. Same thing’s happening in the de Kooning. Same thing’s happening in the good parts—the parts you’ve commented on in Brancasters—of John Bunker’s collages.

          The first time Andrew Forge heard drawing talked about in terms of psycho-visual forces and mechanical forces and proportion, he said he thought it was a crazy way to talk about drawing—but he couldn’t come up with a better way, with better names for these “forces.” Andrew was English, but he was tolerant, open-minded . . . intelligent. Relax! You’re not too old to learn some new tricks. Maybe.

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       5. Jock, Maybe I just don’t get art-school-speak.

          On the one hand you are putting de Kooning and Tintoretto together, because they both work (in some way) abstractly(?) and on the picture plane (shallowly?); and on the other hand is Rembrandt, who paints in deep (human? literal?) space? Don’t agree.

          Where do I think the deepest space is in the de Kooning? Hard to say in repro – my guess might be half way up the right hand side. I don’t see the painting being built around that. I see the painting as pretty shallow, mainly composed of rather graphic semi-geometric flat planes. Floating, yes. It looks a bit semi-abstract, suggestive of stuff, as is often the case with de K.

          That’s nothing like the Tintoretto, who’s entire oeuvre is predicated on deep perspectival recession, which is reconciled with its 2D organisation and viewpoint, but rarely to the point of a flattening of the spatiality. In any direct comparison, Tintoretto makes Veronese (and often even the great Titian) look flattened, squashed up even, and two-dimensionally “designed”. That view is based upon seeing the Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese show at the Louvre a few years back. Tintoretto took all the prizes. He very seldom looks flat. He is anti-surface. He may well err in the opposite direction from time to time, in failing somehow to reconcile his deep spaces with two-dimensions, but even his failures are worth applauding.

          Worth saying too that this particular Tintoretto is at every point of the compass very specific in what it is saying. By contrast, the de K. is vague, and has to be so in order to fulfil its semi-abstract ambiguous ambitions/pretentions.

          Obviously, the deepest space in the T. is top middle, but I don’t see it as pivotal to the work. So I don’t follow your argument, other than to agree that the de K. is based upon overt drawing, sketching in the edges of planes. It is perhaps for that reason that the de K. is not a painting I can sustain much interest in for long.

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       6. Robin, I love “talking” to you!

          I don’t know how to characterize the “speak” in your second paragraph, but it’s very “Robin.” You seem to be asking questions: you use question marks—but you also seem to know all the answers to all the questions—and the answers are all wrong: you disagree.

          Let me try to answer your “questions.” I’m putting de Kooning and Tintoretto—and Rembrandt—together because they’re all great draughtsmen, great artists with great plastic imaginations/consciousnesses. They all work abstractly. They all manage to get deep space into their work. On the “surface,” de Kooning and Tintoretto might look very different—but there are things/ideas/forces they work with, things/ideas/forces I think of as abstract, “underlying” things/ideas/forces that make their work surprisingly similar. I have names for these “underlying” things/ideas/forces, names they mostly didn’t use, but names that help me begin to “understand” their work—help me “understand” their work—de Kooning’s and Tintoretto’s—as similar—and as different from Rembrandt’s.

          I’m saying de Kooning and Tintoretto use “mechanical/axial forces” primarily—but NOT exclusively. I’m saying Rembrandt uses perspective primarily. Art historians might say, in de Kooning and Tintoretto, you get “Mannerist space;” in Rembrandt, you get “Baroque space.”

          It IS hard to talk about a deep point in space in “Easter Monday”—especially if you’re not in front of the painting (it’s huge—and I think it’s still up at the Met: it’s not going to London). It’s hard to talk about deep points in all de Koonings, but it’s kind of fun too. And even if you end up arguing about or just not satisfied by this or that point being the deepest, I find it’s useful to think of de Koonings—and most (but NOT all) paintings—as having deep points—and to think of those points as playing an important role in the paintings’ “organization.” Things are always moving toward or away from a deepest point.

          Looking at a blank piece of paper or canvas, most people see a flat surface. De Kooning/Tintoretto/Rembrandt—guys with “plastic consciousnesses”—see space. They see the deepest point as somewhere close to the center—not right in the center: the center’s dead: it jumps to the surface—just as the edges do. That’s not a fantasy of mine. Maybe it’s a fantasy of Hans Hofmann’s I’m blindly regurgitating—but maybe there’s something to it.

          Robin, you say Tintoretto’s work is predicated on deep perspectival recession. I agree. I feel Tintoretto knew the word “perspective”—and made paintings in the spirit of “out-perspectiving” everybody else around. Tintoretto was a maniac. When he was 12—12!—he was kicked out of Titian’s studio. (Titian didn’t like to have competition around.)

          The thing about Tintoretto’s perspective is that he pushed it into “unnatural” territory: there’s deep recession: it’s STEEP too: the ground plane is lifted—just the way it is in de Kooning. In order to keep things “on the ground,” he has to bring in “mechanical/axial forces”—something more than just perspective.

          I agree about the specificity you find in Tintoretto. Maybe it’s a little predictable, the way those planes march up the middle of the picture—but it’s almost funny the way he puts this great figure (Susannah) in (“in,” Harry) just to flatten things, to calm the perspective down—and then with Susannah’s lower left leg he quietly reminds us of the perspective/the space again. I think de Kooning is just as specific with his divisions, less predictable, maybe funnier: is that Susannah’s head upside down at the bottom right of “Easter Monday”? Is there a little fish about to swim past it? (No!) I’ve spent hours in front of “Easter Monday.”

          Enough fun for now. Off to work!

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       7. It seems to me that Robin’s question is tendentious and for that reason prejudicial. It seems to me that Tintoretto and de Kooning were both trying to make things that would be seen as paintings within a common tradition, meaning, using a broadly defined set of conventions or criteria that allowed something to be experienced as “painting” at two very different historical moments. That set of conventions might be loosely described as the organization of lines and colors on a flat, two-dimensional limited surface (to be suspended on a wall) so as to establish (in the painter and therefore in the viewer) a compelling sense of reality. But if at these two different historical moments (respectively), “establishing a compelling sense of reality” meant something quite different, it would follow that the ways in which lines and colors were organized in a painting would be quite different also. (For example, for Tintoretto, it may have meant something like creating an illusion of objects and persons occupying three-dimensional space using inherited religious themes, whereas for de Kooning (at a time when inherited religious themes had lost their authority), it may have meant something like outlining mere suggestions of three-dimensionality while acknowledging the reality of what he was really doing, for instance, organizing lines and colors on a limited flat surface. If that is at least a crude outline of the common enterprise (tradition) that allows or makes worthwhile comparing the Tintoretto with the de Kooning in the first place, then looking for specific similarities between the two is probably less productive than identifying the specific differences. (This is said by someone who has not followed this specific dialogue in detail.)

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       8. I think Robin’s genius as an editor is that he’s provocative. He stirs things up—sometimes usefully. “Tendentious” and “prejudicial” make sense, but they’re kind of secondary—though sometimes not secondary enough. You, Carl, are very different from Robin: you bring law and order to town.

          I think I follow what you’re saying, but I want to ask, what’s the difference between a difference and a similarity? You’re a philosopher! Not trying to be clever. Things get mixed up so quickly.

          Maybe the most obvious difference is the one you pointed out in your very uncrude, very philosophical/conceptual outline. To put it really crudely: in the Tintoretto there are things that you can recognize, in the de Kooning there’s nothing there: it’s “abstract” in the crudest sense. But when you look at that big Nude in the Tintoretto, as I did kind of for the first time (thanks to Robin’s provocation), you/I begin to ask, is it really there? Is it not some kind of “joke” to cover up Tintoretto’s real/underlying interest in drawing “issues.” (If Susannah weren’t there, there might be some kind of diagonal sister to the rose trellis thing, a diagonal that just couldn’t “work” in the context of “pure” drawing, a diagonal that Tintoretto was compelled to “erase” with the figure.) You/I might ask, is Susannah real for us? For the elders? Is the painting asking those questions? Is Tintoretto? Then, of course, aren’t those exactly the questions de Kooning was asking?

          What I’m trying to say is that when I’m looking at the paintings today I see similarities—maybe only similarities. Art historians can help with differences. I really don’t “hate” art historians. I believe the differences between yesterday and today are real, and worth trying to understand—but it’s kind of a “separate” project.

          Even if I say a Rembrandt’s different from Tintoretto or a de Kooning because, say, there’s a ground plane in a Rembrandt and there’s no ground plane in a de Kooning and ground planes are at least on their way out in Tintorettos, I’m looking at all the paintings similarly, abstractly maybe—as if they were all abstract paintings—or maybe “critically” (as a critic, or a philosopher).

          I said I followed your thinking. I’m really not sure I do—at least not completely. You’re saying the similarities, the similarities I have so much fun talking about, similarities that are not obvious (I don’t feel I’ve discovered these similarities, but I do feel it’s taken me time/energy to see them—and that the time/energy was well spent: the similarities are “real,” not fantasies—but there’s more to both de Kooning and Tintoretto than “similarities”), are not as important as the differences: identifying “specific similarities between the two is probably less productive than identifying the specific differences.” That’s fine. It’s VERY interesting to me. But I have to go to Yves Bonnefoy to get a sense of why the similarities might not be as useful as the differences. I’m not sure you and Bonnefoy are thinking along the same lines.

          In order to be clear about what he’s doing as a poet writing about art, Bonnefoy talks about why what he’s doing is NOT art history—and NOT art criticism.

          Bonnefoy respects art historians:

          “Indispensable, therefore, is the rigorous work of the historian and the philologist; they reconstruct the object or, more precisely, the event upon which the critic must reflect. The unrelenting discontent of those investigators and their talent for calling into question the so-called evidence that our knowledge of works supposedly provides are our safeguard.”

          “The true historian knows, even if unconsciously, that under the signifying aspects that contribute to an understanding of the work or its author lies a form of reality that can be called the presence of the artist in a given place and moment; and thus we reminded that this place and this moment are the fundamental elements of our own relationship to the world. Now, this feeling of their own finitude, with what it possesses of the tragic and the felicitous, is precisely the most enduring experience artists have, as I will try to show.”

          Bonnefoy likes critics too: critics who interpret “works not from the point of view of history but from within these works, in order to discover the meanings and structures that are concealed there”—but he has some reservations:

          “First, because criticism, whatever its methods, is essentially a mental process, which employs concepts; and second because these concepts are by nature timeless and universal, making them blind to that existential experience of time and place I sense in the work, and making it difficult, therefore, for them to adequately determine its intention.”

          “Criticism, in short, does not wonder whether artistic creation might not give rise to an original act, existing deeper than language, or at the very least in revolt against the conceptual discourse of language.”

          I’m quoting from Bonnefoy’s The Lure and the Truth of Painting. Have I gone way off track? Is there a simpler more obvious explanation for why the differences between Tintoretto and de Kooning are more important than the similarities? Do I not understand what “difference” means?

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       9. I don’t mind being a little tendentious at times, but I don’t look for it. Carl, it seems to me that your argument, logical though it might be, as usual, is something of a tautology. You seem to be saying that both the Tintoretto and the de Kooning paintings are paintings because they are paintings. More or less. Which is a bit flat, and gets us not very far. I can’t really get on with this “tradition” thing, inside of which these two works exist. In my mind, good painting and good artists MAKE tradition, when seen in retrospect, rather than assuming themselves to be in that tradition before they exist as anything. Otherwise, they are mannerist (with a small “m”). Well, de Kooning might be, but not the Tintoretto. It’s just too original. Look at the painting and tell me what SPECIFIC “tradition” that extraordinary vision is from/in. And it’s for those same reasons that I think abstract artists now should be looking outside of known “traditions” or modes of operation, especially those that have become familiar in modernist dogma.

          Returning to the business of drawing: I think there are some artists who, to their advantage or not, base much of their work around their fabulous abilities as draftsmen. Rembrandt (whose biggest admirer, Picasso, is also inclined this way) strikes me as one such person; his etchings/drawings are almost unfailingly brilliant. That extraordinary draftsmanship feeds directly into a lot of his paintings, in the characterisation of his human subjects. But often what he is able to achieve in painting is not a great deal more than what he can do so fluently and economically in black and white.

          Sometimes when Rembrandt strays into the spatial territory of landscape painting, he gets a little lost. But not in his landscape works on paper, which again are outstanding: http://www.rembrandthuis.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Diemerdijk-1.jpg

          (BTW I think van Gogh, whilst very different in sensibility from Rembrandt, also has paintings that are predicated on the act of “drawing in paint” in a manner that mimics his actual drawing technique. Generally, I prefer his drawings to his paintings: http://drawingacademy.com/vincent-van-gogh-tree-drawings and http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/994/Harvest-Landscape.html)

          Coming to de Kooning, he is one of many abstractionist and semi-figurative painters who over-rely on drawing to structure their paintings. The “Women” series, for example, are basically “drawn” images, the drawing being done with the paintbrush: http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2014/june/19/the-strange-story-behind-de-kooning-s-woman-i/ compare with: https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/willem-de-kooning-works-on-paper-from-the-estate-of-dr-henry-vogel/lots/6

          Tintoretto’s work on paper, such as we know it, is in contrast mainly concerned with generalised figure studies or specific parts of figures that are simply intended to inform the content of his paintings. It is only in the paintings as a whole that he really gets going, at which point drawing becomes a theoretical adumbration, not really present to the eye. His content is true painterly/pictorial content.

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    2. The thing is although John Bunker’s collages perhaps do have some disparate materials placed together, his choices still do create a consistency across his work, even whilst using jarring elements. Surely anything is possible within a painting also, but maybe more consistency is expected of painting.

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       1. But the question is, what forms that consistency in John’s work – or perhaps a better word would be coherence – and how much is it dependent upon surface or establishing a picture plane? If it is NOT to do with either (and I don’t think it is), what’s holding together his best work?

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32. I think Harry might have at least a partial answer to your question Robin as to what holds John’s best work together (the irregular shaped pieces?) when he says ‘individual parts have to become anonymous and give up their literal identity to the work as a whole’. The same principle can come into play for sculpture that includes functional items (David Smith’s use of metal tongs springs to mind). It is a risky route for an abstract artist as materials and objects that have already been formed with a particular purpose do not willingly give up their character and perhaps never do entirely but maybe in the right hands they don’t have to.

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33. I have just looked on John Bunker’s Twitter media stream to see what seems to hold his work together and apart from his excellent handling of colour, I was very conscious of the angular pointers, many ‘off ‘ triangle shapes, that seem to rhythmically take the eye round to every part of the collage. You can take in the whole piece but travel all over it at the same time.

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34. In my earlier comment, I think I quite deliberately used the term “put in”, in relation to how John’s collages arrive at what they are. I was happy to use it despite Alan’s point that content is not simply put in to a work. I used it because in a way, I see a relation to how Tintoretto MIGHT have approached his canvases, that he MIGHT have seen himself as putting things in, and subsequently had to integrate them, which just means putting more in still. And the choice of language is significant, as putting IN implies there is an existing space. Was the bare canvas a void and not a surface? Putting ON sounds more Modern, though a space may still be forged from that.

    However, in John’s irregular shaped work there is no blank canvas, surface, void, whatever. So maybe “putting in” doesn’t apply as in Tintoretto (maybe), but I still get a sense of John having to have a degree of belief in particular elements he includes being able to fulfil a certain function within the work, just as Tintoretto must have thought to include the Stag in “Susannah”, though would have still been unsure of how it would effect the work and would have altered it until it looked right. This probably sounds pretty obvious. You have an idea, you put it in the work, it doesn’t work and you make changes accordingly. But I’ve had to write it to try and get my head around why John’s work might not be about surface. I think it has something to do with treating the stuff you put in as “real”, not “real literal”, but real occurrences within the imagined field the work offers to us, having an effect upon all the other elements, because it’s an ecosystem. When something foreign goes in to an artwork while it is being made, by foreign I mean a fresh stroke of paint or maybe a piece of coloured paper, it immediately looks wrong or makes everything else look wrong, so you have to get to work at taking it out, which soon proves impossible (at least in painting) because it leaves its residue. So you have to then try and make that mark and the others around it get to know each other. It’s treating the marks and bits and whatnot like real stuff in a real world. I don’t really feel qualified to say whether that is what John’s work is doing (creating a visual field of correlated activity that bypasses surface), because I haven’t seen it. I’m just trying to understand how it could do that, when I think about how the things might get put together and how such a process of having to integrate mixed materials could eradicate the surface out of sheer necessity.

    If John’s work is not acknowledging surface, it is definitely doing it (or should I say not doing it?) in a completely different way to Tintoretto. I feel like Tintoretto might have been more self-conscious than any of us. As Carl said earlier, he had constraints too that he would have been aware of. He didn’t want to paint like his predecessors. He would have known that he simply couldn’t if he wanted his art to be relevant and remain so well into the future, as it has done. But we are more self-conscious than De Kooning, and the better for it.

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    1. Considering you haven’t seen it, that’s a good analysis of how John B’s work might operate. I pretty much agree with all of your comment.

       Two further points on this topic:
       It’s really easy in our present culture to overlook the fact that the Tintoretto is a profoundly radical painting.I’m sure there are lots of people who, if they bothered to even look, would think it is a conventional “picture”, but compared to pretty much anything you care to mention, especially any abstract painting, it’s an outlandish and ravishingly imaginative visual invention.

       And lastly, I recall a few years back at a Sotheby’s sale looking closely at a Patrick Heron painting – thinnish scumbled oil paint on a silky off-white primer coat – and thinking it a really beautiful and sensitively painted surface. The canvas/picture plane was not only acknowledged, but positively drooled over. But I didn’t like the painting, it was really boring, and now can’t even remember what it looked like.

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35. Whether Robin decides to close Abcrit seems to me to be related to the difficulty of discussing the visual without recourse to theory .I was struck by the mention of Abstraction being about Nothing ,in the best Beckettian sense.I can also see the opposite ,that it is in fact about everything as we cant help see visual clues everywhere.My story with regard to Abstract Expressionism is related to Pollock ,who I am really looking forward to seeing and consider him the Greatest,like Ali.My son and I hired bicycles from East Hampton railway station on the Long Island line and cycled up Fireplace Road to the Springs.The Pollock house was empty and with the utmost delicacy and respect we were able to walk around the house to the studio behind .I climbed up on a log and peered through the window to see the reverse image of Blue Poles etched onto the masonite floor.We went down to the creek at the back of the property and poked a stick thro the myriad clam shells and beautifull white and pearl sea shells.On the way back, the star covered night sky ,which flashed through the black trees,had a hint of the northern lights.Not the curtains ,just undulating waves of light.We cycled past the big Rock headstone on his grave .Luke fell off his bike and we spent time in the hospital having new skin applied ,but it was clear to me Pollocks work was everywhere,if as the shaman said,you beleived in it.Fortuneatly I beleive Stony Brook University now looks after the site,

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    1. ‘Blue Poles’ looked alive and well today. The painting held the cavernous space of the RA in its orbit.

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36. Ill reply to my own post as its not getting airtime elsewhere.Im gutted of course to not be living in London when such a show is opening and the reviews coming out .Mostly the bad ones seem related to the hanging ,or to the world of curatorship ,rather than directly to the work itself.I am still 50 years on ,fascinated my the eagerness with which I greeted the Abstract Expressionist movement .My art education through Tom Hudsons colour theories ,Harry Thubrons walk through Matisse,excellent in every way ,prepared me to love this work wholeheartedly.This work ,over and above so called colour field Painting ,was the key and I beleive,still is.Unless this site is a 19th century mirror focussing on Cezanne ,Matisse and Courbet ,lets hear how fantastic is Arshile Gorky ,Pollock ,Rothko and Still,and David Smith/Barnett Newman and how relevant today,unless of course you are entering the Turner prize!

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37. Pingback: AB EX AT THE RA – Ruminations: Exhibition Reviews