MARKUS LÜPERTZ
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TURPS BANANA
ISSUE FIFTEEN
HOW CAN WE THINK ABOUT ABSTRACT PAINTING? PT.1
HOW CAN
WE THINK
ABOUT
ABSTRACT
PAINTING?
PT.1
BY
SIMON BILL
…an essay about
abstract painting and
current trends
in the theory of art,
in two halves – The
first half adumbrates
the situation to date
and describes the
critique of Formalism
conducted within Neo
Geo painting.
PAGE 16/78
‘Abstract’ painting and critical theory
Abstract painting has been a big
thing for art in the last hundred years,
but trying to talk about it has become
difficult because the intellectual life of
art is currently monopolised by Critical
Theory. So what actually is Critical
Theory? And why is the theory of art
they teach in art schools being called that
rather than anything else?
There can be different names
for the theoretical aspect of an art school
education, and, until recently, that was
fine. It could just be called ‘art theory’,
or something like ‘complementary
studies’, or even, sometimes, ‘aesthetics’
(but this is more typical for philosophers).
Now, though, the terminology is
approaching standardisation. The term
‘Critical Theory’ has a history,
principally as another name for the
neo-Marxist ‘Frankfurt School’ of
philosophy – Adorno and Habermas
and others. The critique it refers to is an
analysis which seeks to expose ideology
in social formations and practices, texts,
institutions, works of art, and so on.
To call all art theory critical theory could
mean that you believe thinking about art
is always and only thinking about how
it embodies ideology; which would be
limited but ethically sound. But there are
conditions other than those arising from
art and philosophy which may provide
the stimulus for this new development.
In the mid 1980s the axis of thought
then known as just ‘Theory’ became
influential in the art world. The list of
key figures here may include Frankfurt
School, but the term more usually refers
to French thinkers – Derrida; Lacan;
Foucault; Baudrillard; Deleuze; Barthes;
Badiou; Bourdieu etc. Critical Theory in
art schools can be described as a way of
thinking for which these French authors
are canonical (especially Gilles Deleuze),
but which is not grounded in scholarship
of the kind you would see in other
branches of education. So, for example,
Critical Theorists in art schools generally
can’t read French.
There isn’t a philosophical
reason why this thinking and pedagogy
has been rechristened Critical Theory,
instead of just Theory: but any observer
of the interactions in British art schools
in recent years may suspect there is a
reason of a different sort. It’s to do with
a habit or linguistic tic very common
now in lectures and seminars and so on.
This is the practice of adding the word
‘critical’ to anything at all you say. Saying
‘critical’ somewhere can confer an air
of knowledge and authority upon an
utterance that otherwise may not have
it – that may, in fact, be commonplace
or empty. (Other words doing a similar
job are ‘performative’, ‘ontology’ and
‘trope’.) So, the increasingly standard
renaming of Art Theory courses as
Critical Theory may be the outcome
of a habit of reflexively adding a word
whose function has become to convey an
impression of learning.
And the reason art academics
want to look authoritative, now
especially, is because of a strong
imperative particular to art education
in Britain. Theory was already, like
any orthodoxy, becoming tired, when
art schools became aware that they
TURPS BANANA
ISSUE FIFTEEN
FEATURE
Red Barn Door - Gary Hume
2009
Enamel on aluminum
Each: 282 x 132 cm
Overall: 282 x 264 cm
© Gary Hume / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
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Left: Prison with Conduit - Peter Halley
1981
Acrylic, Day-Glo acrylic
and Roll-a-Tex on canvas
137 x 91cm
Courtesy of the Halley Studio
Right: Heygate Estate - Keith Coventry
1995
Oil paint on canvas, wood and glass
96.6 x 71.2 x 5.4 cm
Collection Tate
HOW CAN WE THINK ABOUT ABSTRACT PAINTING? PT.1
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were being watched. They were under
pressure to make what goes on in them
look more like what goes on in other
branches of education. Historically,
post-war in British art schools, any
required written component had been
minimal, and any reading students
did had been a matter of personal
preference. But in most other branches
of education they have proper textbooks,
the repository of a body of knowledge.
The teaching of Fine Art, which had
relied heavily on the unwritten
knowledge, or creative horse sense,
of tutors (with very mixed results it has to
be said), needed an authoritative written
canon and a technical, or technical
sounding, language.
Critical Theory now, in art
schools, is a bureaucratised version
of Theory – something that can be
presented to the outside world,
and especially the government, as a body
of knowledge and a set of ‘methodologies’
comparable to, say, law, or chemistry and
physics. It is important to remember here
that, until recently, Theory in art schools
was not associated with any exams or
qualifications. Those of us who had been
in the habit of reading art theory and
philosophy were self taught. But now,
with everybody needing to look busy and
qualified, works of Theory, rechristened
Critical Theory, are being recruited to
serve as textbooks for teaching Fine Art.
There is already a substantial minority
of art school teachers who know this
field quite well, and it suits all the others
because it’s the sort of thinking where
nobody’s going to notice if you don’t.
Deleuze scholars suddenly abound,
partly just because, with Deleuze,
if anyone claims to be an authority you
have to believe them – you can’t usually
tell the difference between a lifetime
student of Deleuze and someone who’s
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FEATURE
spent an afternoon reading bits of ‘
A Thousand Plateaus’.
And, to return to my original
point, one of the consequences of this
is that it has become difficult to talk
intelligently about abstract painting.
This interdiction is an academic custom;
but, it is important to recognise that
it emerges from a considered and
principled response to abstract painting,
and it deserves our consideration because
it’s a necessary stage in the developing
theory of abstraction.
Before looking at the particular
moment in the history of art theory
in which this stock position was
formed we have to consider a primary
question: What is ‘abstract painting’?
The dictionary definitions of ‘abstract’
as an adjective vary, but here are the
two typical examples we need, from
Dictionary.com – a general definition
and a fine art definition:
1) expressing a quality or characteristic apart
from any specific object or instance, as justice,
poverty, and speed.
2) (a) of or pertaining to the formal aspect of
art, emphasising lines, colours, generalised or
geometric forms, etc., especially with reference
to their relationship to one another.
(b) (often initial capital letter) pertaining to
the nonrepresentational art styles of the
20th century.
That first one is recursive,
because it means that ‘abstract’ as an
adjective applies to something adjectival;
that is having to do with attributes,
qualities or properties of things, but not
the things themselves. These abstract
properties can be states, like the example
given in the definition of being poor; or
they can be attributes like that of being
just or fast; but in abstract painting we
are, obviously, talking about visually
perceptible abstract properties, like
redness, roundness, being long or
short, etc. The idea that an object is,
basically, an assemblage of the individual
properties that you would list in any
description of it is an important idea in
philosophy. Bishop Berkeley says that a
cherry is its roundness, its sweetness,
its fragrance, its redness and its shininess.
And these would be the ‘generalised or
geometric forms’ of the second definition.
Any property that can be deducted from
a list of the ‘ingredients’ making up an
object and substituted with another is
an abstract property: So, a thing may be
blue, short and spiky; or it may be green,
short and spiky; green, long and spongy,
and so on.
The term Abstract Painting
seems quaint and anachronistic, but we
still use it. The term hasn’t been replaced
by a newer one that better represents
what we now feel this type of painting
is or does. We do generally know what
sort of painting it refers to: So, rather
than being a description of the painting,
identifying something it has or does that
other paintings don’t, is ‘abstract’ actually
a style of painting? Obviously not –
a Pollock, a Mondrian, a Richter and a
Kandinsky do not look very much alike.
There are many styles within the abstract
canon, but abstract is not itself a style.
What then is it that all abstract paintings
have in common that allows us to pick
one out from a group of other paintings?
Surely it’s that an abstract painting is
one that doesn’t have something that
other paintings have – it doesn’t have
representation.
Saying ‘non-representational
painting’, besides being a mouthful, also
fails to cover the scope of reference you
get with ‘Abstract Painting’. It refers,
you feel, to a subset or more recent
historical extension – and actually
a development that serves to identify one
source of our discomfort with the older
term. We are uncomfortable with the
word ‘abstract’, partly at least, because
we now think, in the wake of semiology,
that the claim that this kind of painting is
non-representational must be false.
A key figure in Theory was
Roland Barthes, with his demythologising
brand of semiology. Barthes identified
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Rio (with Palms) [Las Vegas] - Sarah Morris
2000
Household gloss paint on canvas
214 x 214 cm
Courtesy of White Cube
HOW CAN WE THINK ABOUT ABSTRACT PAINTING? PT.1
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two levels of signification, which he called
denotation and connotation: Not only
are we confronted with a great many
obvious signs and messages in our image
and information rich culture (denotation),
but there is also a kind of secret language
disseminating right-wing propaganda
(connotation). An image has the meaning
we’re allowed, and indeed expected,
to notice, but it also has a sort of
subliminal message designed to reinforce
the values of whoever is in charge.
Semiology is the task of disclosing these
hidden meanings.
The formative encounter of
Theory and abstract painting was in ‘Neo
Geo’, a theoretically informed movement
in painting based on the idea that
TURPS BANANA
ISSUE FIFTEEN
FEATURE
abstract painting was a vehicle for this
sort of stealthy propagation of capitalist
ideology. Just because a painting is not
a picture (they argued) that doesn’t
mean it is not representational. For the
painter Peter Halley and his ilk, abstract
paintings serve to represent a set of
values. They purport to be politically
neutral avatars of transcendental,
pancultural, and even of ‘metaphysical’,
values; but, actually, Halley says,
their alleged ‘abstraction’ is a sort of
smokescreen. Abstract paintings are
really capitalist flags.
The strategy adopted by Halley
and other Neo Geo artists was to expose
and make fun of the abstract painter’s
pretended transcendence with a sort
of visual pun – Geometric abstraction
is supposed to not look like anything
in particular, but actually it looks like
circuit diagrams (or like schematically
rendered prison bars; or any other sort of
diagram really). This visual pun strategy
has since been adopted by quite a few of
the painters who continue to flourish in a
climate in which putative ‘criticality’
is at a premium – Keith Coventry –
Sarah Morris.
The political deprogramming
that Neo Geo set out to achieve didn’t
really happen, but it’s hard to fault the
reasoning about representation and nonrepresentation that was behind it:
Theory set out its stall in opposition
to the aesthetic doctrine known as
Formalism; and, in Neo Geo, to the belief
set forth by its founder Clive Bell that
you should look at works of art without
heeding their semantic content or
noticing what a picture may be a picture
of. Any associations prompted by context
or memory must be disregarded, he said.
Confusingly Bell called what remains,
and what he believed you should attend
to in any encounter with a work of
visual art, significant form – confusingly,
because signification was really its
opposite. By significant he meant
important, rather than that it signified
anything other than itself. The faulty logic that underlies
this kind of Formalism is identified in,
of all places, Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead
Revisited’:
“…The whole argument from Significant
Form stands or falls by volume. If you allow
Cézanne to represent a third dimension on his
two-dimensional canvas, then you must allow
Landseer his gleam of loyalty in the
spaniel’s eye.”
Formalism rests upon a theoretical
distinction between Form – general
properties like colour and shape – and
Content – the semantic components of
an image; which can be rendered either
pictorially (illusionistic space; likenesses
of faces and other things) or symbolically.
But in practice that form/content
distinction is not so easily made, because
(a) paintings can and do function just like
any other sign or symbol, so that they
can stand for things; and (b) because the
framing of a rectangle in painting sets up
an expectation of picturing, of illusion.
A black dot on a white canvas gives
figure and field. Even if it’s not figurative,
one thing traversing another thing, a
blob with a line over it on the 2D picture
plane, sets up the illusion of a third
dimension. Which then, as Waugh points
out, opens the door to the sentimentality
of Landseer and his loyal dogs,
because it’s representation (narrative
sentimentality is one of representation’s
most egregious outcomes – remembering
that the ideal for Bell was what he called
the ‘…cold, white peaks of art’).
The second half will offer an alternative
to the current orthodoxy of Critical Theory
with a theoretical approach that brings the
neuropsychology of visual perception to bear upon
abstract painting. It will be published in Turps
Banana Issue 16
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Anthony Hopkins - Simon Bill
2001
Undercoat and gloss paint on MDF
127 x 97cm (oval)
Courtesy of the artist