MECHANICS OF ABSTRACT PAINTING
415
Much has been written of the cultural cycles and their con–
tinual fluctuations between abstraction and naturalism. Music has
presented similar courses, although historically in reverse. Paint–
ing has started its cycles quite abstractly (with markings on vases,
textiles, and simple funeral objects) and proceeded toward natu–
ralism, with abstraction coming forward again and again as the
herald of a new opposing order whenever the cycle recommenced.
The roots of musical traditions, on the other hand, were grounded
in literature, as an embellishment for religious rituals and dramas,
or to accompany dances usually of narrative significance. (At sueh
stages in the cycle most audiences would doubtless have found a
string-quartet or orchestral concert as unrewarding as the average
visitor to the bourgeois galleries today looks upon a show of
abstract pictures.) History is inclined to refute the popular con–
ception that painting is essentially a literary art-for.m and music
the true abstract expression.
The influence of the present abstract movement has already
been deeply felt; a key-note has been set for modem architecture
that has helped to strip our walls of tasteless non-essentials for–
merly considered "artistic." We must await the coordination of
the arts* that has to date been curiously lacking. However, as
functional architecture ·and decoration, with roots genuinely
grounded in modem living, become more .familiar and more widely
disseminated, perhaps we 'can again find a unity and directness of
expression which America has not known since the days of the
New England primitives, when society was homogeneous and self–
sufficing. As the world awakens now to the new and appropriate
language, there should be a place in this atmosphere for paintings
in which every section is completely felt and understood, that do
not depict "life" but which are themselves fragments of life, inde–
pendent and self-contained as any tree or stone.
*The ill-digested expressive coordination of our time can be appreciated
if
we
examine the comparatively few modern interiors in American buildings. When art–
works are selected for rooms in other respects suggesting the twentieth century the
favorite resort seems to be an object from the Orient or an Audubon print. Rocke–
feller Center demonstrates on a larger scale how modern architects fall back on
vulgar and out-moded types of illustration for decorative accents.
