An article by Jed Perl in the New York Review of Books (Between Abstraction and Representation Nov. 24th, 2022, article New York Review of Books by Jed Perl.[1]) stimulated me to write this piece about abstraction and figuration – an issue that I have thought about for many years.
In the subheading to his article Perl states that, “Artists today think they no longer have to choose between two opposed artistic traditions”, namely representation (or figurative art) and abstraction. Perl goes on to ask the reader ‘Where do you stand?‘
Perl invites us to consider whether the successful mixing of conventions in one painting is possible. I want to begin by acknowledging my appreciation for Perl’s article and for his recent book, “Authority and Freedom”. As a practicing artist for 50 years, my view is that figurative art and abstraction are two separate mindsets which cannot be combined. In figurative art the illusion of space with objects in that space always suggests a narrative, whereas abstraction is about the elements and principles of design on the picture plane. Representation and abstraction are often seen as being placed along a continuum starting with the depiction of objects, then gradually reduced amounts of figuration until there are just patterns of colour and shape. However, there is always a point at which the narrative [2]is lost and the work becomes abstract.
In this article, I outline some of the arguments for choosing between the two traditions; in my view, figurative art is more complex and more interesting and this article makes the case for a better understanding of the role of figurative art. This is very much one artist’s view and I recognise that others will have another view.
The term abstract means different things to different people. The Australian Oxford Dictionary says: “Abstract: of or existing in thought or theory rather than matter or practice, not concrete’ [3]. In conceptualising abstract art, imagine a plain black canvas. I tell you that it is a black panther on a moonless night, not just a black surface. Are you convinced? A viewer with a good imagination could accept this proposition, but most would still just see a black surface. Completely black paintings pop up a few times in the history of Modernism. The first and most famous was made by the Russian suprematist Malevitch in 1913. Malevitch sought to “free art from the ballast of objectivity.”[4] For Malevich, the contours of the objective world faded more and more until finally - “everything we loved and by which we [had] lived became lost to sight. No more likeness of reality, no idealistic images – nothing but a desert!”[5]
Figurative art is of course also concerned with the picture plane but the distortions are to clarify the narrative rather than for their own sake. Consider for example a still life painting of apples in a dish by Cezanne. To many viewers, the apples painted by Cezanne look more lifelike than real apples! He achieves this by exaggeration of form, colour and perspective. When arranging the apples he often used coins to lift some slightly. In some compositions the apples look like they could fall out of the paintings, creating an energy of active life not still life. Cezanne uses abstract devices to create a more intense view of reality. Morandi is another artist who uses distortion to increase the power of his figurative painting. He reduces his subject to a few bottles and limits his colour range, he pulls the viewer into an intense subtle view of the world of objects. it’s not an abstract world — it’s an intense original vision of reality.
Not all figurative art is strong – figurative work can be purely illustrative with minimal feeling and emotive power. In this article, I want to focus on figurative work that is not limited in this way but attempts to grapple with the kind of complexities addressed by Cezanne or Morandi.
The beginning of abstraction in art coincided with significant economic, social, and political changes in Europe in the decades leading up to the 1st World War. Scientific theories and discoveries were drivers behind many of these changes. Philosophers, intellectuals and writers such as Friederich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and Guillaume Apollinaire predicted a period of cultural and moral decay which could lead to the end of the world.
The beginning of abstraction is usually dated to 1910 when Kandinsky put the first works on public display explicitly called abstract. In these, he associated music with colours and along with many artists at the time Kandinsy wanted to lift art onto another level and worked to ‘make art universal for the benefit of mankind’. He read ‘The Other Side’ [6] by his friend artist Alfred Kubin who had looked into a microscope and discovered other worlds not previously seen by the human eye.
The best works by the early Modernists, like Kandinsky and Mondrian, seem to happen when they are on the cusp of figuration and abstraction. The state of transition is magical. The churches in the landscape with influences from Russian Folk Art by Kandinsky are his best works, and the trees influenced by cubism that Mondrian painted are stunning. Less well known are the very early paintings by Mondrian when he is influenced by the Dutch Luminists whose landscape paintings follow on from Impressionism. Mondrian’s later works, which were informed by Theosophical concepts of universal cosmic order and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, still enthrall staunch abstract painters. He wrote “as a pure representation of the human mind, art will express itself in an aesthetically purified, that is to say abstract form. The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty; he is conscious of the fact that the emotion of beauty is cosmic, universal.” [7]
A different response, from the Dadaist Franz Arp to this historic upheaval was to create work according to the laws of chance. Arp had the view that logical progressive thinking had led to war and destruction so the laws of chance were worth a try. Progress was always a companion of Modernism. The Dadaists played with the ‘absurd’ and this led later into Surrealism. Freud's theories of the subconscious and unconscious mind were adopted and used in a variety of ways by leading artists of the day. Larger scale works by Miro and Monet in Europe influenced American Action Paintings, where the idea was to let the mind run free to express feeling (Abstract Expressionism). Although these works were large they were not meant to be viewed from a distance—the idea was that the work would wrap around the viewer and be a more immersive experience.
One of the early practitioners of Abstract Expressionism was Arshile Gorky, who fled Armenia during WW1 and like many refugee intellectuals brought knowledge and talent to America. I think that his work stands above that of his contemporaries. William de Kooning was his studio assistant and friend and learned from him. In Gorky’s mature work he used biomorphic shapes influenced by Surrealism, particularly Picasso and Miro, and early Christian symbols remembered from his childhood. He has great sensitivity and his paintings seethe with emotional energy, but they retain elements of story. Gorky’s mature works bridge figuration and abstraction and although these works are at the beginning of ‘The New York School’ arguably no artist at the time produced work of higher quality. Jackson Pollock also made remarkable works. I think that ‘Blue Poles’ looks as fresh and exciting today as I imagine it did when it was first painted.. The new abstract painting was about maintaining the integrity of the picture plane, with no illusional depth. If you decide that the only way painting can have value is at the depth of the paint on the picture plane, how is it going to stay interesting? Pollock saw the way the Mexican sand artists worked on the ground and realised that if he put the canvas flat on the floor it would make it easier to get flowing gestures into his own painting. This heroic generation made for themselves a hard act to sustain — some suicided when they felt they could go no further. For those painters to return to figuration would have been a failure. They felt they could make a fresh start in America — away from the battlefields in Europe — to create a more direct emotional impact on the viewer. The figurative content was getting in the way, so why not drop it altogether?
American influence on Australian culture intensified dramatically after the Second World War. Affinities in history and in landscape - both big open countries with a largely immigrant population- underpinned similar interests in the two countries. The influence of the New York School on painting and sculpture in Australia was significant, while English influence on Australian culture (painting and sculpture) lessened. Most Australian abstract work now looks derivative of the Americans. The late works by Tony Tuckson are an exception. Tuckson was looking at Indigenous artists from the Pacific Islands and Australia. (This article does not discuss the question of how Indigenous work fits into Australian art in general, or into the figurative/abstract divide. Suffice to say it has had a huge impact in Australia for the last 50 years.)
One of the great survivors in America at this time was Philip Guston. He achieved recognition as a second-generation abstractionist and later in his career introduced cartooning with political references into his paintings. At the time, this seemed impossible and fellow artists and critics damned him as a traitor. He is an example of an artist who, after years of experience and understanding of the possibilities of handling paint on canvas as an abstractionist, then introduced figurative elements, combining them to create an original vision. Guston made numerous statements on the subject of abstraction, but this one is particularly pertinent: “There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art: That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, and therefore we habitually define its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is “impure.” It is the adjustment of impurities which forces a painting’s continuity.”[8]
Most writers have said the obvious move after Cezanne was towards abstraction. I don’t know why this is so. Cubism with Picasso and Braque was a radical experiment in realism – in the representation of multiple realities. It remains unsurpassed to this day. Some minor Cubists wrote theories about cubism but missed the point, it wasn’t about abstraction. However, the artist, critic and writer John Berger did write one of the most poignant, insightful and informative essays on the subject [9].
“Space is part of the continuity of the events within it. It is in itself an event, comparable with other events, It is not a mere container. And this is what the few cubist masterpieces show us. The space between objects is part of the same structure as the objects themselves. The forms are simply reversed so that, say, the top of a head is a convex element and the adjacent space which it does not fill is a concave element. The Cubists created the possibility of art revealing processes instead of static entities. The content of their art consists of various modes of interaction: the interaction between different aspects of the same event, between empty space and filled space, between structure and movement, between the seer and the thing seen. Rather than ask of the Cubist picture: is it true? or: is it sincere? One should ask: Does it continue?”
Cezanne would have been horrified to think artists could turn away from the natural world! It was his subject matter and to this day the complexity of his vision still holds our attention. I sometimes feel we could have had 20 years of work by artists using his ideas. Alberto Giacometti was aware of Cezanne’s profound convictions and achievement. He stands out as an artist who, like Cezanne, tried to grasp the reality of the world around him and to represent that in his work. Giacometti’s work is about the existential struggle to define the multifaceted aspects of the essence of the nature of being. At the time he was goaded for not moving into abstraction but he stayed with observation and his work remains to this day an important authentic vision of how we perceive and represent reality. How is it that the other two most important modernists at this time, Matisse and Picasso, didn’t move into abstraction? Matisse went close with his paintings of an apartment window in Paris overlooking the cathedral of Notre Dame and doors leading onto a balcony in the south of France, but the work remained figurative. Most of the great works of art have a balance between the subject and the process by which they are made.
This discussion has significance for how art is taught – in Australia, the teaching of drawing, history, skills and critical analysis in art schools has been replaced by an emphasis on conceptual art. Art schools allow for abstraction to be taken up as a ‘style’ halfway through a student’s training, when the student has little experience. However, when you look at the history of the great abstractionists, the artists have slowly worked their way from observation of reality to the germ of what they see inwardly as the essence of their vision.
Recently I read that Gerhard Richter got the world’s highest prices for contemporary art for his work. He does not take a stand on being an Abstract artist or a Figurative one, but both. In interviews he states that he doesn’t want to be tied to any dogma or ideology. However, the great artists don’t work within an ideology like this. They chase an idea, testing the results with a critical intensity. They are following a vision for a unique authority. When you look at a Cezanne, what you get is a balancing act between all the issues he wants to present. He seeks a balance between expression of colour and perfect tonal relationship. He creates movement by understanding peripheral vision and situates the viewer to leverage that understanding. This alongside the subject, which can be a portrait, still life or landscape. This is why we appreciate how radical he is being. It is like being a juggler with many balls in the air. He refuses to develop mannerisms, if he can not see what’s going on he leaves it out and the viewer is left to imagine what existed.
When evaluating art, comparisons are important. For something to be an Art, whether you’re a musician or a knife sharpener, standards are discussed and evaluated. If it’s random and ‘anything goes’ – it’s not an art. One judges like with like. So, the challenge for Richter is that if you compare his realist work taken from family photos and put them up against Manet or Edward Hopper they are weak and have no power. Then put an abstract work by Richter up against Pollock or Gorky and you will fall asleep.
My answer to the question of the choice between figurative art or abstract art is easy now, after years of thinking and working at it. In the early 1970’s I was lucky to be exhibiting in one of the best galleries in Sydney (Gallery ‘a’). The big guns of abstraction were selling well and getting great reviews. I was young and my emotions were tied to landscape painting, I was from the bush. Without knowing it at the time, I felt I was old fashioned and wanted to compete. I remember my teacher, Peter Powditch, saying to me, “Don’t compete with the talent in the room because they may not have much.” I found an approach from looking at bush floor patterns – the leaves and bark under trees – with an ‘all over’ gestural approach – no more deep space, just the picture plane. The work of Mark Tobey, a loner from Seattle – with his heart in eastern mystic leanings – was a great inspiration along with early William de Kooning in works like ‘Excavation’. The Belgian born poet Henri Michaux with his ink drawings also moved me – so imaginative and full of vitality! In Australia you may think I might include Ian Fairweather but he maintained that he was a figurative artist. He put figures in a shallow space so the viewer's eyes would circulate the space, achieving a more meditative experience.
Over the 3 years that I showed these gestural paintings all went well. Towards the end of this period, I hit a wall when I felt I was repeating myself. I remember one night even saying to myself, “I have done red ones, now I could do blue ones.” This is the problem. The subject becomes a personal mark making process and then slips into decorative repetition- wallpaper. The best of these works still holds up as abstract works from the time (1979 - 1983) but I have very little feeling for them. The benefit I gained from this period came from being much more aware of how I was handling paint. When I went back to a landscape for instance I could flow across a cloudy sky with more confidence and the result was a freshness which added to the existence of a real cosmos.
For the last 40 years I have become bored with engaging with abstract works, except to see the best ones in museums, say from the New York School. For all the various abstract markings one can make they still seem confined within a small part of the brain. Indeed, abstract art has had a short life in the history of art and already seems to be repeating itself. Some will find my views conservative and I would say that – like the natural environment some things are worth conserving. A lot of art that is trying to be radical is often just self-promotion and the latest passing fashion. The tension created in a figurative work is always changing because mostly the objects in the environment are around us, are in the present. Meaning in figurative works from the past is conveyed through representations of objects and the environment at that time. Figurative works are not repetitions or recreations of what went before - they are responses to – and interactions with - changing circumstances that use representations of objects, people, and the world that the artist inhabits. Nothing could be more contemporary.
[1] Perl J Between abstraction and representation New York Review of Books, Nov 24, 2022
[2] Perl J Authority and Freedom, USA, Alfred J Knopf, 2021
[3] Moore B (ed) The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, Fifth edition, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp 5
[4] Cited in Chipp HB Theories of Modern Art, Berkely & Los Angeles, 1968 pp342
[5] Cited in Chipp HB Theories of Modern Art, Berkely & Los Angeles, 1968 pp342
[6] Kubin, A (Translated by Mike Mitchell) The Other Side 2nd Edition, Dedalus, 2014, (first published 1909)
[7] Cited in Chipp HB Theories of Modern Art, Berkely & Los Angeles, 1968 pp320
[8] San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Phillip Guston, NY, George Braziller, 1980
[9] Berger J The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays, London Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969, pp23