Abstract Art: Life is change
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Like man in the course of his personal existence, societies undergo a transformation of the mind or spirit, as well as of their outward appearance. The universe is a continuous creation, a bearing or 'bringing forth' in Biblical terms, and all its elements are subject, like the world, itself, to the great law of mutation or change. It might be said that history is only an analytical account of the transformation of mankind of which art is the direct and synthetical expression. The essence of successive societies is embodied in the divers forms of art which have been left to us over the centuries. It is an explicit statement, complete in itself and in need of no commentary: for instance the XIIIth century can be read more easily in the statuary of Chartres cathedral than in the most learned history-books. The tedious, futile series of battles and political upheavals seems to have crawled out of the yellow press, when compared with those tangible witnesses we find in works of art. And what other conceivable evidence for the XIIIth century could there be, than those anonymous illustrations of the Scriptures, made by those sculptors and glass-makers who were as humble as they were effective?
Our century, also, has its own face, its own look, which is reflected in an art made in its own image. It is a century of chain-invention, of short-lived freaks, confused aspirations, violent sensations, accompanied by all the diseases of a society whose institutions are crumbling and in which the very conditions of life are fragile, constantly threatened by a cycle of crises. These features are all to be observed in block letters in the evolutions or revolutions that have occurred in art since the dawn of the century.
There is, however, one dominant idea that permeates the apparent disorder of our time, an idea that determines its spiritual outlook and controls all its reactions whenever they show the slightest hint of seriousness. That is the idea of liberty. I cannot think of a more appropriate word to convey the fundamental characteristic of modern art as a whole. Not only does it define it according to its underlying psychological basis, but the word encloses and sums up all its visible manifestations. There is freedom to say everything, to invent everything, to create a style for its own sake, to prefer discord to harmony, to choose the rule and set limits to it, a freedom from both constraint and licence.
It is the most normal thing in the world for liberty to have its opponents at the best of times, always slandering and failing to understand it. There is a mystery of freedom for every individual, but some are perhaps not mature enough to cleave to it, or else they are inadequately prepared by a misguided education. In any case we know now, after half a century of experiments, that freedom is the best of masters in all that concerns art.
It is a master who by no means condemns the disciplines, easy though that might be to believe. The very opposite is true, for more surely than any other master, liberty teaches restraint and measure through trials and errors of every kind. It alone can enable a personality to discover itself and open out. That is why modern art owes to liberty its discoveries, its infinite variety and freshness.
The same fifty years of experiment has proved that the traditional images -- nudes, landscapes, still-lives -- have all lost their substance and have nothing essential to offer man to-day. Or, rather, the landscape, fruit-dish or mandoline can only be accepted in so far as they are pretexts for the real subject -- which however has now come to the forefront -- that is to say, painting in itself and for itself.
Thus it has been only logical to take cubism to its natural conclusions, and to cut out the traditional subject and give final expression, in a clear style and in absolute liberty, to the values of pure art as they appear to the artist.
Abstract art came into being when, at almost the same time and in different parts of Europe, there appeared a number of fearless creators who saw, at a glance, both the evidence of an existing problem and evidence of how it could be solved.
This happened between 1910 and 1917. The centres in question were Paris, Munich, Moscow, Florence, Zurich and Amsterdam. The main protagonists were Kandinsky, Larionov, Kupka, Picabia, Mondrian, Delaunay, Malevitch, Magnelli and Arp. Others followed quickly in their wake. A hundred men presented themselves to replace those who practically stopped painting (such as Larionov), or who for varying periods returned to figurative painting ( Picabia, Delaunay, Magnelli). It gradually became obvious that there were as many new styles as there were truly creative artists. The greatest of these had their usual band of slavish imitators whose mediocrity did not long pass unnoticed, since an art freed from subject implies and enforces the absolute necessity for creativeness. Thus, under the cheerful finery of 'liberty', obligatory invention has become the new tyrant of art. Henceforward any artist failing to invent himself and become the happy prospector of an autonomous world, was to be condemned out of hand. The object of art became and is now more than ever, to find a personal and inexhaustible mode of expression, the image of our profound inner being.
This put an end to the harlequins, ray-fish, stuffed tomatoes and suchlike trifles. Subject in itself only serves to lull the conscience of the uncreative artist, as he basks in sweet oblivion in the arms of short-term art which can offer the amateur nothing but wallowing in shallow enjoyment.
It is in the manifold tendencies of abstract art that modern man, who is equally manifold, can recognise his own being and find once more some substantial nourishment. I mean that he finds in it some response to his own distinct sensibility, the sensibility of the town-dweller involved in the rhythm and technics of present-day life, as well as an answer to his need for harmony and novelty, equilibrium and surprise, the complex and the simple. It is not surprising, then, if abstract art, in spite of all that tries to stand in its way, is finding a world-wide and ever-increasing favour, for it is the only art that really coincides with the age we live in.
Every man is a complete world in himself, full of astonishing potentialities; but every man is also a member of a spiritual family whose wellbeing he shares. The twentieth century is such a 'family'. It has already bequeathed us an infinitely precious legacy, though so many eyes refuse to see and so many ears refuse to hear it.
Once we have learnt to admire the Fauves and the great Cubists, it behoves us to try and understand those who, having learnt from those predecessors and from the canvases they painted in their days of struggle, have each in his own way invented an independent art of painting.
It so happens, by a sort of miracle, that this intensely individualistic art sums up again and again the whole art of painting, whenever it is grafted on to some richly-endowed sensibility which is both honest with itself and capable of giving and communicating itself.
Thus the key to abstract art lies in the discovery of the self and the exploitation, by a suitable technique, of that hidden store of virgin material which we all carry within us, and to which we must find a path -- and this is perhaps the hardest aspect of the artist's work -- before it can be brought to light.
The next important question is to consider every work in its proper order, watching its apparent tendencies and seeking its autonomous laws. The greatest pleasure for those who care for art is no longer, as it used to be, a matter of penetrating into the represented object by way of a temperament; but to uncover whatever it is in the depths of the artist that dictates the intentions of his work: that is to say, to follow the very process of composition step by step, apprehending it from the inside, much as an orchestra interprets music. The sensitive critic or the informed lover of art can determine where and by virtue of what the artist has remained or failed to remain faithful to himself. And it is precisely at the points where he is unfaithful that we perhaps come closest to the crucial moment of discovery, the enlarging of the self, the shedding of past selves.
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