MECHANICS OF ABSTRACT PAINTING
409
wherever he finds it; it is the final expression that counts and this
cannot be counterfeited. Picasso is the prime example of such
ability to incorporate (and conscious imitation was even more
prevalent in the Renaissance when it was a thoroughly accepted
means of art production). Ben Nicholson presents a different atti·
tude again toward construction. He found that he responded more
strongly to destruction than to construction, and that he got his
richest quality from
destroying
painted surfaces. So in his recent
works he builds up forms thickly, then scrapes them away, leaving
beautiful accidental effects. Needless to say, the maximum skill
is requisite for the free handling of such accidentals.
The above serves to demonstrate that the methods of approach
among various non-representational artists are very. diverse; fur–
thermore that abstract pictures do not spring from
pure
i~vention
but are often linked, however remotely, with the artist's visual
surroundings. This subject will be pursued further when reactions
to color are explored.
Let us now
r~turn
to the three paintings for which I had just
begun
to make marks on scratch-paper. I have said that the shapes
which I select are usually arbitrary; this is true only to a limited
extent. At the picture's first inception-when the abstract motions
are still in my mind-the
kind
of forms that seem to go with the
particular type of composition automatically assert themselves,
not the actual contours but the general style, whether geometric,
amoeboid, circular, quadrilateral, etc. Shapes of the type in
question then crowd into the picture and I enter a sort of trial and
error stage. I think that it is a factor of importance that the trial
and error period comes at this particular point and furthermore
that it takes place on scratch-paper rather than on the canvas. The
result is that when I finally approach the canvas I am in a position
to handle the fabric with considerable freedom. For abstract
painting can present a disturbing problem without some prepara–
tory realization.
If
one side of a picture appears uncomfortably
underweighted, one tries to stick something in as a balance which
in turn makes the opposite corner fly out of control, and the prob–
lem becomes like that of poking an over-sized object into a sack
that invariably pops out the other end. However I hesitate to
expand this into a rule. Many claim, for instance, that Picasso
never knows what he is going to paint until he approaches his
