Dore Ashton. Twentieth-Century Artists on Art. Part One

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Dore Ashton
Twentieth-Century Artists on Art

New York, Pantheon Books, 1985, 302 pages

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part One

Fig. 1) Dore Ashton’s Anthology on Twentieth-Century Artists on Art

The anthology of Dore Ashton and the contemporary art literature in the United States

We are further examining the history of the anthologies of art literature with the review of a volume published by the American art critic and historian Dore Ashton (1928-2017). It was a collection of texts dedicated exclusively to the writings of 20th century artists [1]. The work was brought out in 1985 with a title (Twentieth-Century Artists on Art) intentionally very similar to that of the previous anthology by Robert Goldwater (1907-1973) and Marco Treves (1902-1990), also issued by the publisher Pantheon with the heading Artists on Art, from the XIV to the XX century. In fact, in the cover flap the publisher explicitly placed the work in substantial continuity with the volume they had produced forty years before.

Ms Ashton was one of the most famous American scholars of modernism in general (her The Unknown Shore: A View of Contemporary Art was printed in 1962) and, in particular, of post-war American art. She was the author of successful monographs on the New York School (The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning, 1973) and on many exponents of abstract expressionism (among them Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Joseph Cornell).

Fig. 2) Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning. From left to right: The 1972 and 1979 editions, the Spanish edition of 1988 and the Russian edition of 2016. The US edition has been the subject of continuous reprints to date. There is no Italian translation.

Ashton began her work in 1955 as an art journalist in the New York Times. From the pages of the city's major daily newspaper she stood in favour of the artists who were living the avant-garde as a radical quest of rebellion. At the end of a clash with the new editor of the newspaper's art section, John Canaday (1907-1985), who instead launched an extremely critical campaign towards abstract expressionism in 1959, Ashton was removed. Paradoxically, her dismissal legitimized her as one of the reference points for many New York artists of those years. Since then Ashton begun an intense activity as a publicist in various newspapers, taught in private art schools in New York and published numerous essays and monographs. In the field of artistic literature, in addition to the present anthology, Ashton also authored a collection of texts related to Picasso (Picasso on Art: a selection of views, 1972).

How did Ashton's anthology fit into the history of this literary genre? As we already know, it was above all in the United States that these collections of writings by artists, initiated in Germany in the previous century by scholars following the idealist historicist approach, knew a new fortune after the flight from the old continent of many European intellectuals to escape political and racial persecution.

Fig. 3) On the left: The anthology Literary Sources of Art History. An Anthology of Texts from Theophile to Goethe by Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (1947). In the centre: The anthology Theories of Modern Art. A source Book of Artists and Critics by Herschel Chipp (1968). It follows the anthology Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. A Source Book of Artists' Writings by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, here in the second edition of 2012. Finally, the anthology Art in Theory 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, here in the first version of 1993 (the second edition of 2002 was extended to the period 1990-2000).

In the United States two anthological traditions actually developed.

The first originated from the work of Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (1905-1987) entitled Literary Sources of Art History. It was a work clearly inspired by a philological culture, based on the citation of a relatively small number of long quotes, and where each artist (from Cennino Cennini to Goethe), was always placed in the context of a thought school. For Holt, the anthology was a tool to document the development of the theory of art. That line was continued at Berkeley by Herschel B. Chipp (1913-1992) with his Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics in 1968 and most recently by Kristine Stiles (1947-) and Peter Selz (1919-2019) with their Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists' writings of 1995. I would also like to signal (again in the Anglo-Saxon area) the publication in 1992 of Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by British art historians Charles Harrison (1942-2009) and Paul Wood (1949 -).

Fig. 4) On the left: The anthology Artists on Art by Goldwater and Treves in the first edition of 1945. On the right: The anthology Painters on Painting by Eric Protter (1963).

Dore Ashton instead opted for a second type of anthology, the one inaugurated by Goldwater and Treves, based on the citation of short and very numerous texts. The two authors were interested in proposing less theoretical excerpts, and rather documenting the variety of the psychological mechanisms of artistic creation. Also in this tradition was Painters on Painting by Eric Protter (1927-).

Those who were following the first line of thought were interested in the concept of "art in context", that is, they saw art as the expression of a culture that was expression of society, economy, politics, as well as of the great philosophical movements (and aesthetics in particular). What derives from it was often the idea that artists differ from each other because they are the expression of a different context. Those who participate in the second line of thought wanted to testify that artists who were very similar in style could be very different in their motivation and, conversely, artists who were completely different in style could be inspired by very similar creative reasons.

A simple comparison between the two anthologies of Chipp and Ashton (or between the two collections of texts that appeared between 1969 and 1985 when speaking of contemporary art literature) reveals the methodological differences. Chipp placed the texts of the artists in broad chapters dedicated to different schools and styles and contextualised them in the culture of their time. He also studied the texts, taking care to explain their origin, to verify the existence of differences between different versions and, finally, to analyse their critical fortune. To this end he prepared an analytical bibliography that recalls the manual of artistic literature by Julius von Schlosser (1866-1938). Ms Ashton instead placed the artists in alphabetical style, simply distinguishing them by country of activity and period (in three chapters dedicated to 1900-1920, to 1920-1940 and to 1940 until the date of publication). As a rule, she proposed only one, brief, excerpt for each of the artists. The origin of the texts was mentioned, but was not subject to comment or analysis.

Chipp's anthology included mostly American and Western European artists. The critic was keen to explain the difference in approach between the two sides of the Atlantic. Europeans were linked to philosophical theories (existentialism) and politics (Marxism), while Americans were fundamentally artists who lived in groups, on the East Side of New York, but nevertheless did not necessarily share common views or precise links with the world of ideas. Ashton did not emphasize these elements of diversity (and indeed treated Americans and Europeans as part of a single creative community). On the other hand, she also included artists from South America and the Communist bloc.

I noticed that Chipp’s work is not mentioned in bibliography of Ashton’s anthology nor does his name appear in the index of names. Obviously she included some key texts already displayed in the previous anthology, but she never mentioned Chipp as a source. In short, much points out to think of two "rival” and, therefore, "alternatives" works.

At the conclusion of this introductory section, it should be added that all the above does not in any way imply that Ms Ashton produced a disorderly collection, simply with the aim to highlight the most different instinctive approaches to art. We will highlight common themes in the collection of texts. To be noted, one of the most surprising aspects is the absence in the anthology of any reference to Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), which in the years in which the work was compiled was at the peak of its popularity. It cannot be a simple forgetfulness. Obviously there was something in the art or personality of the artist that Dore Ashton didn't like. We will see that, in general, the scholar considered pop art as a form of degeneration of previous art experiences.

The five masters at the origin of contemporary art literature

As explained in the introduction, Ms Ashton gave herself the rule not to include artists already present in the anthology of Goldwater and Treves. However, she made an exception for five major artists (Picasso, Matisse, Miró, Mondrian and Léger), to whom she reserved a brief initial chapter, unrelated to the general structure of the anthology (she called it A Preliminary Section: Early Modern Masters in Statements after 1940) [2]. Of all the five she proposed writings or statements published after the 1940s, to avoid overlaps with Goldwater and Treves. In this way these "masters" no longer appeared as (albeit near) ancestors, but as companions to the younger artists, accompanying them on their journey.

Fig. 5) Three editions of Picasso on Art by Dore Ashton (1972, 1977 and 1988 respectively)

One of the themes immediately present in this section is that of the difficulty, and perhaps the impossibility, for an art creator, of communicating his activity in rational terms. “I consider a work of art – Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) wrote in 1955 – as the product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself. It is exactly like the carrier pigeon, calculating his return to the loft. The calculation that precedes intelligence. Since then we have invented the compass, and radar, which enable even fools to return to their starting point… Or else we must suppose, as Rimbaud said, that it is the other self inside us who calculates” [3]. The quote was taken from the anthology “Picasso on Art”, edited (as already mentioned) by Ashton herself.

Along the same line was Henri Matisse (1896-1954). “I can say nothing of my feeling about space which is not already expressed in my paintings” [4]. These were words from 1951. He added: “The sign for which I forge an image … is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention” [5].

The words of Joan Miró (1893-1983) (it was the transcription of one of his interviews that appeared in a catalogue of 1963) have a very strong emotional charge: “The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I am overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There are, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains – everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me. (…) Immobility strikes me. This bottle, this glass, a big stone on a deserted beach – these are motionless things, but they set loose great movements in my mind. I don’t feel this with a human being who changes place all the time in an idiotic way” [6].

A second, obviously different theme was that of the need for other artists to conceive creation as a rational construction. It would be wrong, however, to think that here one could simply refer to the difference between figurative romanticism and rational constructivist. It was Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) who explained how, in his opinion, what mattered was always to understand whether the birth of a work of art takes place as a result of a systematic compositional intention or not. In other words, a figurative picture that is well constructed is always better than an abstract painting that is not able to express a coherent idea. “Consciousness of the necessity of abstraction in plastic art was developed slowly. Originally it was practiced intuitively. Only after centuries of increasing transformation of the natural aspect, more apparent abstraction emerged, until finally plastic art was freed from the particular characteristics of subject and object. This liberation is of the greatest importance. For plastic art reveals that particular characteristics veil the pure expression of form, color, and relationships. In plastic art, form and color are the essential expressive means. Their properties and mutual relationship determine the general expression of a work. Abstraction not only establishes form and color more objectively but also reveals their properties more clearly. Thus we can see that abstract art, even as naturalistic art, must create the general expression by means of the composition. Through the composition and other plastic factors, it is possible for a naturalistic work of art to have a more universal expression than a work of abstract art which is lacking in the proper use of these factors” [7].  These words were taken from a 1941 New York catalogue.

 

Fig. 6) On the left: The original version of Fernand Léger’s The Functions of Painting, published by Denoël et Gonthier in 1975. In the centre, the US text published in 1973 in the collection The Documents of 20th Century Art by Viking Press. On the right, the Italian edition published by Abscondita in 2005.

The aversion to the figurative in Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was instead stronger: “The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it. On the contrary, art consists of inventing and not copying. The Italian Renaissance is a period of artistic decadence. Those men, devoid of their predecessors’ inventiveness, thought they were stronger as imitators – that is false. Art must be free in its inventiveness, it must raise us above too much reality. This is its goal, whether it is poetry or painting” [8]. It was a citation from 1950 taken from Fonctions de la peinture,  the French posthumous collection of writings of 1965, published in the United States in 1973. This is one of the cases in which the anthologist preferred to refer to an essay instead of loose articles, catalogue interviews or magazine articles. It must be said that those chosen by Ashton are still today among the most famous statements by Léger.

The art literature between 1900 and 1920. 

Ms Ashton condensed the first twenty years of the century in the quotes from nineteen avant-garde artists from nine countries: Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Switzerland and the United States. Three among them were women: the Russian Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova (Наталья Сергеевна Гончарова, 1881-1962) and Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova (Ольга Владимировна Розанова, 1886- 1918), to which she added the American Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-86). Among the nineteen artists, two were sculptors (Ernst Barlach 1870 - 1938 and Jacques Lipchitz (1891 - 1973). If it is true that all the artists included in the section were active in the very first part of the century, some of the quoted texts were drafted much later, among the 1940s and 1960s, thus fulfilling an autobiographical and obviously retrospective vision. According to the situations, in short, the writings performed the function of either documenting the action of the artists in the present or of discussing it in a historical perspective.

The art creation was conceived by some artists as a primary and mysterious moment. Egon Schiele (1890-1918) affirmed this in 1910 in a letter to the collector Oskar Reichel (1869 - 1943), whom he also portrayed that year in a watercolor preserved in New York. “There was, is, and will be the old or the new primal spirit, which wants, which out of something, out of interminglings, must bring forth, must create, the real great Mother of all, of everything similar but still separate, who wills, and so was, is, and will be the wish always out of these our eternal means, to be able to create the most manifold human beings, animals, plants, living creatures in general, as soon as the physics is present, just as soon does the common will of the world exist” [9].

Not much different was the reading of artistic creation by the American painter Arthur Garfield Dove (1880-1946). In an excerpt from an autobiographical letter 'prior to 1920', sent to gallery owner Samuel M. Kootz and published by him with the (incorrect) date 1930, the artist identified the creative moment in these terms: “Feeling that the «first flash» of an idea gives its most vivid sensation, I am at present in some of the paintings trying to put down the spirit of the idea as it comes out. To sense the «pitch» of an idea as one would a bell. This is no rule, nor method, but leaves the imagination free to work in all directions with all dimensions that are or may have been realized” [10].

Fig. 7) On the left: The anthology of Expressionist writings by Victor Meisel of 1972. In the center: The autobiography Ein selbsterzähltes Leben (A life told by himself) by Barlach of 1928. On the right: A selection of Barlach’s own letters of 1947.

The mystical motif was very strong also in the writings of the sculptor Ernst Barlach of 1906. “Merely to demonstrate how mystical everything is is futile since it only reminds the public that it must continue living in this gloomy world. But when that artist gives sensuous form to the mystical in such a way that it becomes intimately familiar he has elevated the observer above what is conventional and has placed him in the realm of the infinite” [11]. The excerpt from the German sculptor's diaries was quoted from an English anthology of expressionist writings compiled by Victor Meisel in 1972. Barlach had produced already in 1928 an autobiography (entitled Ernst Barlach, ein selbsterzähltes Leben, translated into English as A Selftold Life only in 1990). He also published his own diaries, a vast correspondence and many prose and theater texts as a playwright.

Some of the artists remained rebellious even in old age. Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was sixty-two years old when he wrote in 1948 a letter to James S. Plaut (1912-1996), art critic and director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, one of the institutions that spread European expressionists across the ocean: “I consider myself responsible, not to society, which dictates fashion and taste suited to its environment and its period, but to youth, to the coming generations, which are left stranded in a blitzed world, unaware of the soul trembling in awe before the mystery of life” [12].

Fig. 8) On the left: The anthology of avant-garde Russian art theory and criticism from 1976, published in the series The documents of art of the 20th century by Viking Press. On the right: The latest 2018 edition of Thames and Hudson.

Other authors, obviously, were instead dominated by the rational element, or even attributed to artists a superior capacity to know reality. Michail Fëdorovič Larionov (Михаил Фёдорович арионов 1881-1964), a theoretician of Rayonism, wrote in 1914: “Nevertheless, between those forms that our eye objectivizes, there exists a real and undeniable intersection of rays proceeding from various forms. These interactions constitute new intangible forms that the painter’s eye can see. Where the rays from different objects meet, new immaterial objects are created in space. Rayonism is the painting of these intangible forms, of these infinite products with which the whole of space is filled” [13]. The excerpt was taken from an English anthology of art writings of the Russian avant-garde (Russian Art of the Avant-garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934) edited by the British art historian John E. Bowlt (1976).

Fig. 9) On the left: The catalogue of the Tenth State Exhibition in Moscow (1919). Source: https://monoskop.org/Tenth_State_Exhibition_(1919)#/media/File:Bespredmetnoe_tvorchestvo_i_suprematizm_1919.jpg. On the right: The collection of Essays on Art 1915-1933 by Malevič, curated by Troels Andersen and published by Rapp and Whiting in London in 1969.

According to Kasimir Malevič (Казимир Северинович Малевич 1878-1935) - who wrote in 1919 in the catalogue of the Tenth State exhibition, an important event in post-revolutionary Moscow, as it marked the separation between suprematism and constructivism - artistic creation was at the same time a purely philosophical and decorative activity. “The system is constructed in time and space, independently of all aesthetic beauties, experiences, and moods: it is more a philosophical color system for realizing the latest achievements of my ideas, as knowledge. (…) In one of its stages Suprematism has, through color, a purely philosophical movement, and in a second, as a form which may be applied, formed as new style of Suprematist decoration” [14]. The English translation of the text was included in the collection of Essays on art by Malevic, published in 1969.

In other cases, what was characterizing an artist was his capacity for detachment and apathy, as a stoic (and therefore superior) manifestation of his intelligence of things. It is also the case of artists known for their completely irreverent attitude, such as Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968), quoted here from a conference at the MoMA in New York in 1961.“It was around that time [note of the editor: 1915] that the word «readymade» came to mind to designate this form of manifestation. A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of these «readymades» was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste … in fact a complete anaesthesia” [15].

Fig.10) The memoirs of Jacques Lipchitz, published by Harvard H. Arnason in the series The documents of art of the twentieth century by Viking Press, in the first edition of 1972 and in the most recent of 2019.

The cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz belongs to the field of artists who relied on solid conceptual categories. This is how he commented on the transition from a curve-based style to a more geometric one and, finally, a Cubist one in his memoirs "My life in sculpture" signed together with the art historian Harvard H. Arnason (1909 - 1986). “Perhaps the greatest revelation that led me in this direction [note of the editor: Cubism] was the importance of light for sculpture. I suddenly discovered that volume in sculpture is created by light and shadow. Volume is light. In a smoothly rounded or curvilinear sculpture the light washes over the surface and may even diminish or destroy the sense of volume, the sense of the third dimension. When the forms of the sculpture are angular, when the surface is broken by deep interpenetrations and contrasts, light can work to bring out the truly sculptural qualities” [16].

The art literature between 1920 and 1940.

The 'heroic' period of the first avant-gardes of the beginning of the century was followed, in the following twenty years, by a particularly complex phase, marked by a moderate change throughout Europe immediately after the First World War, inspired by the recovery of art forms of a classical inspiration (the so-called 'return to order') and the emergence - in the following years - of neo-imperial figurative forms typical of totalitarian regimes, especially in Italy and in Russia. That of the return to order (above all the so-called École de Paris in France, the Magical Realism and the Metaphysical Art in Italy and the New Objectivity in Germany) was the art celebrated in the selected writings in the two parallel anthologies of Paul Westheim and of Florent Fels of 1925. In the collection of Dore Ashton, instead, space was given to the writings of 48 artists of thirteen different nationalities, chosen because they gave the first impulse towards abstract art forms, including the Dada, the Surrealists and Constructivists. The second generation of Expressionists and Fauvists was also taken into consideration as a counterpart to the abstract. Instead, every form of contemporary art conforming to classic criteria was ignored.

Fels' anthology, for example, included writings by artists such as Othon Friesz (1879-1949), Moïse Kisling (1891-1953), André Lhote (1885-1962), Jules Pascin (1885-1930), Georges Rouault ( 1871-1958), André Dunoyer de Segonzac (1884-1974) and Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958). None of these was present in Twentieth Century Artists on Art. As for Italy, Ashton did not include Giorgio de Chirico (1888 - 1978), whose theoretical writings were instead widely reported in Chipp's anthology. Italy was represented instead by Osvaldo Licini (1894 - 1958), Alberto Magnelli (1888 - 1971), Marino Marini (1901 - 1980) and Giorgio Morandi (1890 - 1964). None of these last four artists, on the other hand, had been included in Chipp’s anthology. In short, it is confirmed that every anthological collection in those decades codified a different idea of modern art.

As for the artists chosen by Ms Ashton, alongside the United States emerged the role of Latin American art (with Mexico and Uruguay). Among the European states, she broadened the scope to a broader set of nations (including Greece, Poland, Sweden). In addition to painting, sculpture was also playing an important role with the writings of nine artists, almost all abstract: Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957), Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), Naum Gabo (Наум Габо 1890-1977), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Julio González (1876-1942), Henry Moore (1898-1986), Vladimir Evgrafovič Tatlin (Владимир вграфович Татлин - 1885-1953) and Georges Vantongerloo (1886-1965). The female presence among the 48 artists was limited to one: Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945).

Fig. 11) On the left: The American translation of Beyond Painting by Max Ernst (1948). On the right: Giacometti's interview Why I am a sculptor, published in the number 873 of Arts (13 June 1962)

One of the contradictory aspects of contemporary art literature is that - albeit for different reasons – it often ends up sanctioning in writing the impossibility of rationally explaining artistic production. Artistic creation was seen as a passive act by Max Ernst (who celebrated in his theoretical text Beyond Painting, published in the United States in 1948, the implications of the use of the frottage technique): “Even as the role of the poet, since the celebrated lettre de voyant of Rimbaud, consists in writing according to the dictates of that which articulates itself in him, so the role of the painter is to pick out and project that which sees itself in him. In finding myself more and more engrossed in this activity (passivity) which later came to be ‘critical paranoia,” and in adapting to the technical means of painting (…) I came to assist as spectator at the birth of all my works (…)” [17]. With frottage, creation became an automatic psychic result.

Fig. 12) On the left: The recent publication of Kurt Schwitters’ texts of the Merz series (here the fourth volume of the edition of all the writings, published by De Gruyter and edited by Ursula Kocher and Isabel Schulz). On the right: Some issues of the ABC Beiträge zum Bauen magazine between 1924 and 1928.
Source: https://shop.berlinbook.com/images/product_images/thumbnail_images/22729ab_2.jpg

According to the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), writing about art had an exclusively enigmatic, evocative function, based on the use of invented words, which belonged to the moment of creation. He attributed to the neologism merz (a term invented by him and not existing in German) the ability to express the nature of the work of art. “I called my new way of creation with any material ‘merz’. This is the second syllable of ‘Kommerz’ (commerce). The name originated from the ‘Merzbild’, a picture in which the word Merz could be read in between abstract forms” [18]. These were words from 1927, taken from the "Merz 20" catalog. Translating the creative act into a verbal process had an emulative value here, but it certainly did not offer exegetical elements. Similar (but more complex) was the mechanism by which the Russian supremacist El Lissitzky (Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий - 1890-1941) decided to call his works "Proun" (Проун), an abbreviation which in itself did not mean anything , but to which the artist gave general value: “My aim – and this is not only my aim, this is the meaning of the new art – is not to represent, but to form something independent of any conditioning factor. To this I gave the independent name Proun. When its life is fulfilled and it lies down gently in the grave of the history of art, only then will this idea be defined” [19]. El Lissitzky's writing was published in German in Basel in 1925, in the ABC Beiträge zum Bauen magazine (ABC Building Contributions), whose complete translation in English dates back to 1993.

Also for Alberto Giacometti - in line with the existentialist philosophy - creation cannot be translated into words; it ends with the creation of an object (the work of art) as close as possible to the subject (the idea of the artist): “One could not express in words what one feels with one’s eyes and one’s hand. Words pervert thoughts, writing distorts words – one no longer recognizes oneself. I do not believe in the problem of space; space is created solely by the objects; an object that moves without any relation to another object could not give the impression of space. The subject alone is decisive. Space, shapes, canvas, plaster, bronze … so many means. The only important thing is to create a new object which conveys an impression as close as possible to that received when contemplating the subject” [20]. These words were taken from an interview with André Parinaud entitled "Why I am a sculptor" and published in 1962 on the occasion of his important presence at the Venice Biennale, with a retrospective dedicated to him. Giacometti was keen to clarify that his perseverance in the field of figurative art did not make at all his creative process simpler.

Fig. 13) The collection of interviews Dialogues on the art by Edouard Roditi of 1960, published by Secker and Warburg in 1960.

A similar message transpires from an extract from an interview with Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964). The page was taken from Dialogues in Art (1960), a collection of interviews by American writer and art critic Edouard Roditi (1910-1992) with twelve European artists. Morandi stated: “Nothing is more alien to me than an art which sets out to serve other purposes than those implied in the work of art in itself … I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all that we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. Only we can know that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree” [21].

Fig. 14) The essay by Suzi Gablik on René Magritte, in the original 1970 version (top left) and in numerous editions in English, French, Italian and German in the following fifteen years

Magritte - in a 1959 essay quoted by Suzi Gablik in his successful US monograph on the Belgian painter of 1970, and then published in various languages - warned the reader not to seek comfort in too easy cultural solutions. For example, anyone who considered him a symbolist painter was wrong. “The images must be seen such as they are. Moreover, my painting implies no supremacy of the invisible over the visible. (…) The word dream is often misused concerning my painting. We certainly wish the realm of dreams to be respectable – but our works are not oneiric” [22]. 

Fig. 15) The first issue of the Polish constructivist magazine Blok in 1924, directed by Henryk Stażewski (source: https://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/publication/92554/edition/85906/content?format_id=1).

The rationalist tradition of Léger was continued by the Franco-Polish constructivist painter Henryk Berlewi (1894-1967), at least in his youth (he later became a figurative painter). His text on the so-called Meccano-structure was from 1923 (it appeared in a German catalog of 1976 on constructivism in Poland): “However, the old technique is no longer appropriate for the principles of art of today which can be summarized as follows: a breaking with all imitation of objects (even if it is the most free), autonomy of forms, discipline in the broadest sense of the word, clarity permitting everyone to grasp the artist’s intention, schematism, geometry, precision that facilitates everyone [in] the ordering of his impressions obtained from the given work” [23]. Ashton proposed similar structuralist writings for the Polish painters Henryk Stażewski (1894-1988), the creator of the magazine Blok, and Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952). The first was a very late declaration of 1982 (when he was already eighty-eight years old), the second one a very early one, from 1923. The Russian constructivists Aleksandr Michajlovič Rodčenko (Александр Михайлович Родченко - 1891-1956) and Vladimir Evgrafovič Tatlin (Владимир Евграфович Таллин, - 1885- 1953) were present with texts of 1932 and 1934 respectively.

Fig. 16) On the left: The 1921 magazine L'Esprit Nouveau. On the right: The American translation (1947) of the monograph on Gris by Daniel-Heinrich Kahnweiler, originally published in German in 1929.

Sometimes, on the other hand, abstract artists had a simpler and more inspired soul, as proved by the words of the sculptor Julio Gonzalez, taken from the catalogue of the traveling exhibition Sculpture of the twentieth century by the critic and curator Andrew C. Ritchie (1907- 1978), held in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York in 1952-1953: “In the disquietude of the night the stars seem to show us points of hope in the sky; this immobile spire also indicates to us an endless number of them. It is these points in the infinite which are precursors of the new art: To draw in space” [24]. Juan Gris added: “I work with the elements of the intellect, with the imagination. I try to make concrete that which is abstract. I proceed from the general to the particular, by which I mean that I start with an abstraction in order to arrive at a true fact. Mine is an art of synthesis, of deduction” [25]. These words were from 1921; they were published in the magazine L’Esprit Nouveau and diffused in the Anglo-Saxon world after the war, with the English translation of the monograph on Gris by Daniel-Heinrich Kahnweiler (1884 - 1979). The essay by Kahnweiler, originally in German (1929), appeared on the American market in 1947.  

Fig. 17) On the left: the anthology The Painter's Object, edited by Myfanwy Evans (1937). On the right: The special issue 119-121 of the magazine Cimaise dedicated to Hans Hartung (September-December 1974)

The French abstract painter Jean Hélion stated in 1937: “I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basis sensations of the eyes” [26] (it was a quote from The Painter's Object, an anthology of the writings of twenty abstract artists by the British art critic Myfanwy Evans (1911-1997). Hans Hartung (1904-1989) added: “The first and most important thing is to remain free, free in each line you undertake, in your ideas and in your political action, in your moral conduct. The artist especially must remain free from all outer constraint. Everything we feel deeply must be expressed.” [27]. The statement was not taken from the autobiography "Self-portrait" of 1976, never published in English, but from an interview with the German art critic Heidi Bürklin, inserted in a special issue of the 1974 Cimaise magazine. 

Fig. 18) On the left: The US collection of writings Arp on Arp by Marcel Jean (1972), in the Documents collection of the 20th century by Viking. On the right: The monograph Derain published in Geneva by Georges Hilaire in 1959.

For Jean Arp (1887-1966) making art was always a physical delivery. The artist creates a new object that has a life of its own, and never imitates reality. “We don’t want to copy nature. We don’t want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce like a plant that produces a fruit, and not reproduce. We want to produce directly and not by way of any intermediary” [28]. These words were taken from "Abstract Art, Concrete Art", also presented in Chipp’s anthology. As already mentioned, Ashton did not cite that work, but referred as a source to a subsequent collection of Arp writings from 1972 (Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories) of the Viking publishing house edited by the surrealist art historian Marcel Jean (1900-1993). The symmetrically opposite position was represented by André Derain (1880-1954). “Everything comes from nature and everything returns there … It is impossible to produce an art anterior to or exterior to the real … or then you’re working with more poverty than reality itself… which is typical of decadent art” [29]. These were statements dated 1939, presented by the critic Georges Hilaire (1900-1976) in a 1959 Francophone monograph.

Fig. 19) On the left: The Realist Manifesto by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner from 1920 (Source: https://monoskop.org/File:Gabo_N_Pevsner_N_Realisticheskii_manifest_1920.jpg). On the right: The catalogue of Gabo's exhibition in London in 1956, with introductory essays by Herbert Read and Leslie Martin (Source: https://www.maggs.com/constructions-sculpture-paintings-drawings-engravings_217195.htm)

Alongside artists focused on the meaning of artistic creation as a psychological-personal moment, others saw it as the expression of a collective culture. The Russian constructivist Naum Gabo - author of the Realist Manifesto in 1920 - explained in 1956 how the concept of space, or one of the fundamental concepts of sculpture, depended not only on the ability of reflection of individuals, but also on collective beliefs: “The real sources of the conception of space in sculpture are to be looked for in the whole state of our intellectual development and of the collective mind of time” [30]. These words were taken from a catalogue edited by Herbert Read (1893-1968) and Leslie Martin (1908-1999).

Others attributed to the art creation a real political meaning, even if this aspect can be seen simply as a subliminal effect: according to László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), “the so-called ‘unpolitical’ approach to art is a fallacy. Politics is taken here, not in its party connotation, but as a way of realizing ideas for the benefit of the community. Such a Weltanschuung is transformed, in the arts, into an organized, felt form by the concrete means of the different modes of expression. This content can be generally grasped directly through the sense, on a subliminal level, without a conscious thinking process” [31].

For the English William Coldstream (1908 - 1987) - quoted in an essay by R. S. Lambert of 1938 on English art - the task of the modern artist cannot be that of abstraction from a reality of desolation and oppression: “The slump has made me aware of social problems, and I became convinced that art ought to be directed to a wider public; whereas all ideas which I have learned to regard as artistically revolutionary ran in the opposite direction. It seemed to me important that the broken communications between the artist and the public should be built up again and that this most probably implied a movement toward realism” [32].  Therefore the artist had the duty to try to strengthen the social fabric.

Fig. 20) On the left: The poster for the first American Artists Congress (1936). On the right: The original German edition of The Principles of New Fine Arts by Theo van Doesburg (1925)

For the Mexican revolutionary muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) - who spoke at the first American Artists Congress (ACC) in 1936 - art was political in itself. The AAC was an organization of the Communist Party of the United States. The muralist believed that, in iconographic terms, it was necessary to replace the European models with a "nationalist" aesthetic, which in the Mexican case meant rediscovering the pre-Columbian tradition and folklore [33]. The idea of the Dutch constructivist Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) was completely the opposite. For him the art had to be political and supranational: “The progressive artists of Holland have from the first adopted an international standpoint. Even during the war … the international standpoint resulted from the development of our work itself. That is, it grew out of practice. Similar necessities have arisen out of the development of … progressive artists in other countries” [34]. It was an excerpt from a 1925 script (Grundbegriffe der neuen Kunst), published by the German artist for the Bauhaus and available in full in English since 1969.

Of political value, even if only implicit, was also the identification of reference models different from those of the history of 'canonical' art: artists wanted to abandon the nineteenth-century narrative, which was born in universities and museums, to pursue objective targets of 'normalization' education of public opinion, often for nationalist purposes. The abstract sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) celebrated the value of "primitive" art in 1941 (in a statement to the weekly The Listener published by the BBC): “The most striking quality common to all primitive art is its intense vitality. It is something made by people with a direct and immediate response to life. Sculpture and painting for them wan not an activity of calculation or academism, but a channel for expressing powerful beliefs, hopes, and fears. It is art before it got smothered in trimmings and surface decorations, before inspiration had flagged into technical tricks and intellectual conceits. But apart from its own enduring value, a knowledge of it conditions a fuller and truer appreciation of the later developments of the so-called great periods, and shows art to be universal continuous activity between past and present” [35].

Fig. 21) On the left: The May issue of the New York magazine Creative art. On the right: The volume Letters on the New Art by Charles Joseph Biederman, self-published in 1951

The Americans between 1920 and 1940

What about the nine American artists included in the 1920-1940 section? They were Charles Joseph Biederman (1906-2004), Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Burgoyne A. Diller (1906-1965), Philip Evergood (1901-1973), Ben Shahn (1898-1969) and Joseph Stella (1877-1946). They offered an image of American art between the two wars that was richer than the one, which Chipp offered (in the anthology of the latter only texts by Calder and Davis were included).

It is however singular that Dore Ashton, in reality, inserted in the section texts mostly dating back to a later period than the one covered by the chapter. Only for Stella and Demuth she offered pages that actually dated back to the twenties, i.e. the period taken into consideration. In both cases they were texts of the first part of the fateful 1929, the year of the outbreak of the stock market crisis in October. Demuth was present with an excerpt from an article published in the May issue of the New York magazine Creative Art. The writing by Stella was taken from the periodical Transition. An International Quarterly for Creative Experiment, a quarterly English literary magazine published between Paris and New York, founded and directed by the pro-modernist writer Eugene Jolas (1894-1952). In reality the manuscript text had existed since the 1920s and was circulating among modernist poets and writers for its literary qualities. All the other artists were present with texts from the 1940s-1950s (Biederman - 1951; Calder 1951 and 1958; Cornell 1946 and 1948; Davis 1943; Evergood 1946, Shahn 1957) and in the case of Diller, 1961. For many of them (Calder, Cornell, Diller) these were really short quotes.

Perhaps the anthologist did not want to miss an American section between the two wars but, though perhaps unconsciously, certified the thinness of art literature in the United States between the two wars. Or perhaps the American texts of those years were not in line with her aesthetic preferences. In any case, it would seem that the US artists between the two wars succeed in rationalizing and writing down their aesthetic views only after many years.

Fig. 22) On the left: The autobiography of Stuart Davis, published at the American Artists Group in 1945. On the right: the essay The form of content by Ben Shan, appeared in 1956

As for Chipp, even for Ashton the most thorough of the American artists of the two wars was Stuart Davis. While Chipp referred to his autobiography of 1945, the passage quoted by Ashton was taken from an article in the fortnightly ARTNews of February 1943, then reproduced in a monograph on the artist of 1971 by Diane Kelder, and still studied today by specialists [36]. The artist explained (and it seems important to me, given that World War II was underway) that modern art has the aim of rediscovering “humanity in painting, an essential social service unrestricted by racial or national boundaries” [37]. Then he made it clear that every form of avant-garde art, both in the United States and in Paris, had always to be understood as a representation of American life. “In my own case, I have enjoyed the dynamic American scene for many years past, and all of my pictures (including the ones I painted in Paris) are referential to it. They all have their originating impulse in the impact of the contemporary American environment” [38].

Shahn was a politically-inspired muralist. In his essay on The Shape of Content, he spoke of the collective value of art: “I have always believed that the character of a society is largely shaped and unified by its great creative works, that a society is molded upon its epics, and that it imagines in terms of its created things – its cathedrals, its works of art, its musical treasures, its literary and philosophical work” [39]. Evergood adopted an expressionist style to denounce the misery of the years of depression, but his words showed that in reality he wanted to bring out the feelings and personalities of individuals. He explained in 1946: “I feel the search of an artist should be for the richest and fullest of human experiences and that he should look for both the visual manifestations and those transmitted intuitively. The more the artist contacts the inner qualities of people the more he will understand Life and where he fits into it” [40].

Fig. 23) Issue 16-17 of the journal Transition. An International Quarterly for Creative Experiment, in which Joseph Stella published the article The Brooklyn Bridge (A Page of My Life). Source: https://biblio.co.uk/book/transition-international-quarterly-creative-experiment-number/d/1026338267

Among the abstract artists, Stella showed to have a highly emotional style. His description of the mind-set experienced when admiring the Brooklyn bridge was poignant and, at the same time, a symptom of how an artist could be overwhelmed by feelings to the point of losing the thread of a linear story: “Many night I stood on the bridge – and in the middle alone – lost- a defenceless prey to the surrounding swarming darkness-crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers- here and there lights resembling suspended falls of astral bodies or fantastic splendors of remote rites- shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion. Like the blood in the arteries- at times, ringing as alarm in a tempest, the shrill sulphurous voice of the trolley wires- now and then strange moaning of appeal from tugboats, guessed more than seen, through the infernal recesses below- I feel deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new Divinity” [41]. The cover page of the issue of the magazine Transition in which this paper was published sought to convey through photography the same sentiment of Stella's writing: the submission to a world of giant skyscrapers, now the true totem of a new religion.

Instead, Biedermann made it clear that he had freed himself from any need to reveal the artist's inner world, abandoning all the mimetic necessities of nature and searching for elements of a structural nature, thanks to the in-depth study of the art of Monet-Cézanne. In the fifties he explained the reasons for constructivism in a conceptually similar way to those of the Russian and Polish artists of the twenties and thirties.“The new art I advocate, in the line of Monet-Cézanne, acts in the very opposite way. That is, not ‘reducing’ but extending the past evolution of human art by ceasing any form of imitating what nature has already created, ceasing the limitation of imitating light as in painting, and ceasing the limited notion of form as in sculpture. The new art liberates the artist to create his own art in the full dimensions of the actualities of spatial reality. The artist is freed from conditioning to the biological creations of nature to adopt what is uniquely suited to human creation – geometric structuring” [42]. Finally, Calder also offered - twenty years later - a structuralist interpretation of his suspended models of the thirties: “The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from” [43].

End of Part One
Go to Part Two (Forthcoming)

NOTES

[1] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art, New York, Pantheon Books, 1985, 302 pages. The book can be consulted at the address: https://archive.org/details/twentiethcentury0000asht.

[2] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), pp.3-13.

[3] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.4.

[4] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.7.

[5] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.7.

[6] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.9.

[7] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.11.

[8] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.13.

[9] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), pp.18-19.

[10] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.41.

[11] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.26.

[12] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.17.

[13] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.35.

[14] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.37.

[15] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.21.

[16] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), pp.22-23.

[17] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.55.

[18] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.71.

[19] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.90.

[20] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.57.

[21] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), pp.79-80.

[22] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.47.

[23] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.86.

[24] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.58.

[25] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.59.

[26] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.61.

[27] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.60.

[28] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.50.

[29] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.54.

[30] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.89.

[31] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.68.

[32] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.72.

[33] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.81.

[34] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.83.

[35] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.73.

[36] The text is available at the address:

http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_historyview_details.asp?aid=424974671&awc_id=41831&info_type_id=5.

[37] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.98.

[38] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.99.

[39] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.104.

[40] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.103.

[41] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.105.

[42] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.95.

[43] Ashton, Dore - Twentieth-Century Artists on Art (quoted), p.96.