ART CHRONICLE
wonder that the death of abstract art, which, even in its Kandinsky
and Klee variants, is still essentially Cubist, has been announced so
often during the last ten years. In a world filled with nostalgia and too
profoundly frightened by what has just happened to dare hope that
the future contains anything better than the past, how can art be
expected to hold on to advanced positions? The masters of Cubism,
formed by the insights of a more progressive age, had advanced too
far, and when history began going backwards they had to retreat,
in confusion, from positions that were more exposed because they were
more advanced. The metaphor, I feel, is exact....
Obviously, the present situation of art contains many paradoxes
and contradictions that only time will resolve. Prominent among them
is the situation of art in this country.
If
artists as great as Picasso,
Braque, and Leger have declined so grievously, it can only be because
the general social premises that used to guarantee their functioning have
disappeared in Europe. And when one sees, on the other hand, how
much the level of American art has risen in the last five years, with the
emergence of new talents so full of energy and content as Arshile Gorky,
Jackson Pollock, David Smith-and also when one realizes how con–
sistently John Marin has maintained a high standard, whatever the
narrowness of his art-then the conclusion forces itself, much to our
own surprise, that the main premises of Western art have at last mi–
grated to the United States, along with the center of gravity of in–
dustrial production and political power.
Not all the premises have reached this shore-not by a long shot;
but enough of them are here and enough of them have abandoned
Paris to permit us to abandon our chronic, and hitherto justified, pessi–
mism about the prospects of American art, and hope for much more
than we dared hope for in the past. It is not beyond possibility that
the Cubist tradition may enjoy a new efflorescence in this country.
Meanwhile the fact remains that it is in decline at the moment.
Clement Greenberg
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