On Art
RAYNOR, VIVIEN
On Art OPERATING ON INSTINCT BY VIVIEN RAYNOR The critic inevitably confronts art on two levels. An exhibit viewed casually is perceived differently from one looked at for review. With no...
...But innocence has little relevance to today's world, and clearly none to the appreciation of modernism...
...Possibly, art made to divert must be more, not less serious than the cares it is competing against...
...He is indulging in purely lyrical song, escapism...
...Contrasts loud and soft are this painter's theme...
...It then occurred to me that an explanation of my ensuing turmoil might be interesting, perhaps even illuminating...
...I was sorry that my first, pleasurable impression of Diebenkorn's paintings wore off—the delight in undiluted sensory freedom is hard to shake...
...Yet, after a while, they began to convey an emptiness (was the critical censor in me taking over...
...In fact, stretched around the great white expanse of the gallery, they seemed like slightly old-fashioned, gentle esthetes trying to hold on in an ever more sci-fi world...
...Spontaneity is a luxury denied them—an irony considering that art is an area where spontaneity is thought of as being crucial...
...It was continued into the '60s, most notably by Elmer Bischoff and—surprisingly if one knows only the work shown at the Marlborough—by Diebenkorn himself...
...Most of the canvases are divided into a few rectangles by a romantic line in black chalk or pure pigment, and then filled with low-keyed, scumbled colors...
...Contemplating such work, one thinks of Matisse's stated desire to make an art of diversion, and wonders why Diebenkorn's paintings don't qualify...
...Indeed, this argument has led to constant reactions against Abstract Expressionism by figurative painters...
...Like other rebelling artists of the time, the members of the California school complicated matters by their impersonal, almost abstract handling of the figure they were trying to reinstate—by the use of improvisational techniques derived from the very Abstract Expressionist style they were opposing...
...Now 53 years old and the recipient of many awards and honors, with a distinguished career in teaching behind him, Diebenkorn may be the victim of academic success...
...The exhibition consisted of 12 oils, measuring from five-feet square to about 8' by 7', plus several line-and-wash drawings...
...For I think the artist who bases expression on color (the maplike forms of the pictures are really only a device for presenting subtle color variations) is evading reality...
...Unquestionably made by hand and human in scale, they spoke of air, light and all the subtle variations of feeling possible in a tranquil rural setting...
...But when there is an obligation to form an opinion, one approaches a show with the intellect as fully mobilized as the senses—analytic faculties well honed, eyebrows raised against the hype of publicity—trying somehow to strike a balance between duties to the artist, to the public and to one's individual taste...
...But this decorative quality is more than offset by a certain cocksureness of brushstroke...
...I can't believe, for instance, that Busby Berkeley Depression musicals distracted anyone who was not already off the walls...
...In any case, he appears content to exercise his considerable skills in the production of pleasurable effects...
...I recall being struck by his audacious sweeps of raw color alternating with patches of impasto...
...With no pressure to verbalize the visual, paintings and sculpture can be treated as sensory experiences like any others, taken or left according to one's moods...
...Diebenkorn skims across the canvas effortlessly, smudging or obscuring a line here, not quite touching it there...
...He will, for example, fling a pale purple frosting across vivid yellow, or cut two masses of the same blue-gray with a thin, sharp orange line...
...In their company, one might imagine living the good life —and feeling the need to have some Diebenkorns on the walls...
...Because I did not plan to review the show, I saw it in an off-duty frame of mind, sauntering through the rooms, letting my eyes lead me around, in short, following my instincts...
...He also puts together combinations that are crude and sentimental, leaving no doubt about his cultural locale—a fierce blue against a cheap green, or a sweet red and yellow with black...
...One of the most significant of these upsurges took place at the end of the '50s in California, with the late David Park among its leaders...
...All of which brings me to Richard Diebenkorn's recent abstractions, displayed last month at New York City's Marlborough Gerson gallery...
...Some saw him as a landscapist primarily, finding his bravura way with the figure too imprecise...
...Even the bands of hard posterish colors that edge pictures otherwise composed of neutral washes suggest the intrusion of rude civilization into pacific nature...
...Given the current trend toward realism and the increasingly literary tendency in art exhibitions, the nonrepresentational Diebenkorn canvases look somewhat out of date...
...As a result of having to keep so many balls in the air, commentators on the arts (excepting those who write for avant garde journals and the countercultural press) seldom express their unguarded, instinctive reactions...
...By and large, critical remarks about this work centered on Diebenkorn's abandoning the abstract ship—in which he had earlier sailed under the influence of Clyfford Still and de Kooning—and turning to Bonnard, Matisse and, to some extent, Hopper...
...and eventually I came to believe that Diebenkorn territory was a place to visit, not to live in...
...For some years now, Diebenkorn has been engrossed in this Ocean Park series, as it is called, inspired by the California countryside where he lives...
...Yet one does not really have to remember this artist's past in order to be disappointed with his latest work...
...Diebenkorn's painterliness long ago laid him open to the charge of being "Frenchified," an accusation that, whether or not one regards it as criminal, has some foundation...
...But to a number of artists looking for a means of returning to the figure without self-consciousness, and in an atmosphere hostile to the very idea, Diebenkorn was something of a beacon...
...Hints of landscapes—sea mists, the tracery of roads as seen from an airplane—are strong...
...For a time I was able to enjoy the pictures...
...Of the three artists mentioned, Diebenkorn was the most courageous: His drawing had an awkward "rightness" to it, and his spacious interiors containing one or two figures—sitting or standing around, drinking coffee, reading and so forth—were a distinctive and rewarding combination of grandeur and intimacy...
...Complacency is there for all to see, critic and layman alike, in the lines too studiedly nonchalant, in paint too gracefully gestural...
Vol. 59 • January 1976 • No. 2
