responding to Abstract Art Isn't Art by Robert
J. Lewis
from Lydia Schrufer, Arts Editor
As Arts Editor of Arts & Opinion, I want to put
on the record my disagreement with my editor and author of the
essay "Abstract Art Isn’t Art." I find his views
uninformed, if not ignorant, and at best, very narrow minded.
If he were to pick up a brush, he would discover just how difficult
it is to produce an abstract painting he assumes himself capable
of. I will grant that there is a great deal of pseudo, bad art
on the market, but a blanket statement isn't helpful.
He goes on to suggest that Newman, Gaucher, Molinari
et al, spent their entire careers pulling the wool over the
public’s eye, that they were not interested in advancing
a new concept and shaking up the status quo.
Looking at Lewis’s argument from the perspective
of music, one could make the same blanket statement about contemporary
jazz which many people consider noise. There’s much in
music between Cage and Marsalis that listeners find offensive,
but these artists felt compelled to push the envelope despite
public opinion. Artists have always been driven by the zeitgeist
of their environments; at times their creative efforts succeed,
sometimes not, but it's important to applaud their efforts.
I am not against honest criticism, but it should be educated
and authoritative. The fact of the matter is that most museum
and gallery visitors spend mere seconds in front of a works
before passing judgment, and usually in front of works that
are traditional. They then take their habits of viewing to more
complex, demanding works and are disappointed. Before one can
develop an appreciation of complex music, one must listen and
listen again; the same applies to the visual arts.
And let’s not forget that the impressionists
were the pariahs of their time and now we revere their bravado
and innovation.
from Neila Mezynski:
Having painted abstractly
for 18 years I have some energy on the subject. The Eastern
painters give as much importance to what is not on the canvas
as to what is, some Zen philosophy there, I suppose. The painter’s
choices are defining and revealing. What is on the canvas and
what is not is all about the individual’s life experiences
and how he wants to “discuss” it through his work.
The hard core abstract painter spends years developing a “language”,
if you will, and sometimes that language is in the form of drips
and dabs and marks, mixed media, collage, you name it. The most
surprising thing is that the painter is looking for something
that only he/she can recognize as working or making sense. Robert
Motherwell, a great abstract painter of the 20th century, called
it “the shock of recognition.” If one is going to
dismiss this sophisticated and intelligent painter’s entire
body of work as nothing, or not art then I guess you would have
to dismiss the whole person and the whole movement of modernism.
Warhol and Duchamp rattled our cages and knocked “art”
off its gold encrusted pedestal and showed us that great art
is not any one thing. That would be too easy!
