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FRANK KERMODE
a philosopher presented exactly that point of view, that action painting
was the
art
of the next four or five hundred years-though I don't
know whether it is or not.
KERMODE:
Can you see a kind of painting which belongs in the future–
which stems from action painting yet all the same gives up some of the
aesthetic presumptions of action painting?
ROSENBERG:
If
I understand you correctly, you're saying is there pos–
sibly an idea here which is susceptible of further development in all
sorts of unpredictable directions?
KERMODE:
Yes.
ROSENBERG:
If
that's the question, I would certainly say yes. I do feel
that action painting is very deeply related to the situation of the in–
dividual in the contemporary world-a situation in which every pro–
fession, you might say, finds its practitioners using it to identify them–
selves as human beings; this is, of course, a very deep cultural problem.
KERMODE:
What would a theologian or a lawyer have to say about his
discipline if you told him that it was to be subject to a similar or an
analagous revolution?
ROSENBERG:
Well, I doubt if a comparison could be made since law
and theology 'are both essentially conservative disciplines, rather than
formative investigations of experience.
KERMODE:
But do you think that the tradition of the new has no applica–
tIon to historiography,
to
law and other subjects of that kind? In
other words, is art here in an intellectual vacuum?
ROSENBERG:
No, I don't think so. I think it has application to experience
of mankind in all fields but it's most obvious in politics. I mean the
attempt of the artist to formulate himself through his art. As
de Kooning said some time ago-I think I have the exact quotation
here-"Painting is a way of living. That is where its form lies." Now
if painting is to derive its form from the artist's way of living.
KERMODE:
Yes--but wouldn't this apply–
ROSENBERG:
What's that?
KERMODE:
What about poetry, for instance?
ROSENBERG:
I think that has been said about poetry probably before
anyone ever said it about painting.
KERMODE: .
What I'm trying to get at is that this modern crisis is
really a crisis in our consciousness of history, the way we use history.
Does this apply only to the arts or has it a more general application?
ROSENBERG:
My answer is it has a much more general aspect. In fact,
I have written in
The Tradition of the New
about the split in all pro–
fessions in relation to their mere practice as a profession and the at-
