The Matrix

Recently, as I was writing an essay about formalism and my views on it and my practice, I spent a good bit of time thinking about a dichotomy we are presented in Art school- that art work which purports to elevate or center form is not only anachronistic, it also exists as opposite of (and antagonistic to) all work that is “about” content. So, either work is “just” shapes and colors or it’s “about”… something (the “content”). We’ll leave “but painting for its own sake is content” alone, as we all know the horse is dead, and sigh while putting a pin in arguments like “how would, for example, Hilary Harkness work land if she didn’t consider exactly how to utilize her painterly voice to point the viewer towards content.” Yeesh. All my professors, who hated abstraction, because they were schooled by a generation of Greenbergian douche canoes, are all retired now, so I’m not sure why this notion persists within my generation- I thought Gen X just did what we wanted no matter what the “grown ups” say. Double yeesh.

I don’t think I would be the first person to note that, with any dichotomy we are handed as a given, “hey, maybe these two ideas actually lie on a continuum.” In other words, maybe this imagined dichotomy between painting that emphasizes aesthetic attributes primarily and art that is primarily a sign for an idea, concept or subject, isn’t “either/or” but “also and some of both.”

Actually… Perhaps it might stimulate some usable thinking* to do an exercise where we situate abstraction as a modality within a matrix. One axis would be (I suggest) “inward” and “outward,” inward here being the artist’s inner self and “outward” being the world outside the studio and the space where the work occurs (and also because these types of matrices work best with, if not opposites, dichotomies). *I mean useful for me although if you’re still reading then nerd along with me.

The other axis should be (something like) “planning” and the other would be its opposite. Planning not to make a plan is a plan, so I think we’re really talking about where work falls from fully schematized prior to execution, to fully spontaneous, with lots of points in between. We’ll call it planned and unplanned for the reasons listed above.

Because, um, science.. I drafted a diagram showing different instances of abstraction on such a matrix, as practiced by nine different, real (most living!) creatives, followed by some justification for their placement (like I said, science!) and of course some thoughts on where I see my current practice.

Starting top left we see Terry Winters work from the late ‘90s/early 2000s. I categorize it as “unplanned” because these compositions developed in front of the canvas (we could quibble that the lines are a vocabulary, I see them as generic enough to call them lines) and “outward” because they specifically point towards the natural world.

Middle left shouldn’t be super surprising if we accept the common label that Mark Rothko, as a favorite of Greenberg, was a formalist. Similar to Winters, we could call his staining a “vocabulary.” I tend to think this is because he was an early and prominent painter using this method (staining is generic enough, to me, to call it staining).  Rothko was clearly not pointing at either himself or the outside world specifically, choosing to occupy a space where contemplation of the work acts to pull the viewer towards an acknowledgement of themselves.

Bottom left we see the contemporary genius and 2017 US representative to the Venice Biennale, Mark Bradford, whose compositions are also “unplanned” from a material perspective and point at the self and the experience of the self navigating his direct experience of an outside world. 

Julie Mehretu doesn’t hyperplan her compositions, and has an existing language of forms. The end goal for the state of finish for which she strives somewhat constrains the work as well (and thank goodness because they are amazing to look at). And they point outwardly, at the world and its signs and symbols and systems.

Agnes Martin similarly had some amount of planning to her “assembled” work as well- horizontal and vertical bands are a “language” and she works her way through them, leaving “mistakes” as they occur. Like Rothko, Agnes was painting as a way to make sense of the self in a larger world, but specifically pointing at neither.

Yayoi Kusama didn’t hyperplan her (painted) infinity net compositions, and did also restrict her formal vocabulary somewhat. Her practice and work points inward- she was “always standing at the center of the obsession, over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me.”

Peter Haley’s paintings are, as I understand them, basically assembled (he has a studio team) and they are clearly pointing outward at the “circuits” that form our geometric “prison.”

Jenny Jones work points to itself, almost like formalism, except that she intends to center the work and that self-referentiality, in the context of an outer world. 

Odili Donald Odita executes planned work as well, which refers, like Bradfords at the other end of the continuum, to his personal experience of an outside world.

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I see the work I am making situated in such a matrix closest to Agnes, and not just because she’s in the center. I have a language of forms- a form in my case (the isometric cube)- and its organization, compositionally, relies, to an extent, on chance and intuition. Some other formal choices (color family and tools for application) are likely picked in advance, and a lot of room is left for choice in the moment- as with Stanley Whitney, I am following the painting. And I mean for the work to center itself and its own contemplation, intentionally, not to point at “the sublime” or “beauty” or be devoid of intended outward reference or “subject.”

…

The primary thought I’ve arrived at through this activity is that pointing where (a) work exists as a sign can be situated between (the work) pointing at the artist’s self and the outside world. I centered those works we would typically say are pointing at their “self” (the classic “valid on its own terms”) between these points because, I think, this type of abstraction is really pointing at the viewer; IE, the place “between” pointing at self (inward) and not-self (outward). The “content” of such a work doesn’t exist until the viewer interacts with it; the work exists to call the viewer into an awareness of the act of looking and an appreciation of the same.