[.ca] On Abstract Art (ISBN 0300069758)

Veiling the Subject:
A woman cuts up bits of paper and makes a tacky collage that would disgrace the aesthetic judgement of a pre-schooler; a man paints a big red dot, a big yellow dot, and - wait for it - a small black dot; another man drops bits of torn paper and glues them on a sheet of paper where they fall; another man (famously) paints vertical and horizontal straight lines and fills some of the squares with primary colors; a woman puts rows of bricks on the floor in straight lines that would be extremely thrilling if it wasn't so mind-numbingly boring; and, to cap it all, a man paints a white square on a white square - duh! It's all supposed to mean something. For Briony Few, the the writer, it means a chance to spout over-intellectualized jargon that usually boils away to nothing. For example: Human figures and objects have been expelled from the pictures but there is always at least one body which remains in this scene and that is the spectators. This means that someone is looking at a picture that doesn't have any people in it. Great. I guess this is how they earn their money in academia. This book is a good example of what is quite common in art history and criticism, the pose of knowledge instead of its communication. The history of modern art can be divided into two clear movements. First there was a move towards increasing explicitness in art which climaxed in the efforts of Surrealists like Dali to drag the processes of the mind out into the daylight. This tended to strip away the veils of mystery and made art almost unnecessary, so this was quickly followed by a move to mask and hide the subject of paintings as we see in the work of Miro and his three dots, abstract expressionists like Pollock, and colorfield painters like Rothko. When I read a book like Fer's I realise that the same process has occurred in art criticism. For every critic like Martica Sawin (Surrealism in Exile) who do what they can to make the processes of art history transparent, there are countless others like Fer who do what they can with their lardy, tautological, and over-conditional and ambiguous jargon to mask and veil the true history of art. People like this are driven by the same motives as medieval guilds and the Magic Circle. They want to retain control of their area of expertise by preventing their audience, customers, or readers, from finding out about it. We are simply supposed to read this book and 'sense' their knowledge without being allowed to understand it. Understanding whatever clear ideas such writers as Fer have, would reduce them to the the intellectual minnows they are.

A Fresh Approach To A Challenging Subject:
Max Ernst, the famed Dada and Surrealist artist, once wrote that twentieth century artists were no longer interested in "mere eye-fooling". This, of course, refers to the impulse by 20th c. artists away from the perfect technical illusionism of paintings since the Renaissance and towards a new, more intellectual art which challenges the way we see and think about the world. Ernst reflects an approach to art which has persisted throughout the most influential movements of the 20th c., which values the concept or idea behind it over it's technical execution. This includes abstract art, which seems to epitomize this intellect-over-aesthetic approach, and is still one of the most poorly understood and downright despised modes of art. That being said, Briony Fer has her work cut out for her, as some people's negative opinion of abstract art can tend to overshadow her work on the subject. And while I must admit that abstract art isn't necessarily my favorite means of expression, Fer's approach is fresh, intelligent and thought-provoking. The book is challenging, assuming at least a basic knowledge of modern art history, but it doesn't condescend to its audience and offers some very interesting and innovative interpretations of the subject. Despite being obviously well-researched and full of many strong sources and references to important writers and critics, she rarely reiterates the same old interpretations of the works in her book. Instead, Fer offers up smart, creative approaches that challenge one's pre-existing notions of abstract art. In particular, her recurring ideas about the relationship between abstraction and the viewer's/artist's body- especially in her chapter on the work of Eva Hesse- really prompts the reader to think about the way they look at and engage with art. Try to read the book without the "all abstract art is crap" attitude, and you might be pleasantly surprised to find yourself convinced by its intellectual merits, even if you never find the artwork aesthetically pleasing.