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BARBARA ROSE
are a good indication of the present state of moral as well as esthetic
confusion. The combination of a purely pyrotechnical display of
spectacle for its own sake, together with an emphasis on paint as
literal matter is a particular kind of contradiction that could only
occur to a consciousness capable of mistaking the hedonistic for the
visionary, the material for the mystical. Although advanced abstract
art today is free at last of any ties to the representational art of the
past, it is not free of
all
limitations, for it must continue to operate
within the boundaries of what constitutes a convincing pictorial state–
ment. The issue of limits is as crucial to painting in the seventies as
it is to other areas of thought.
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