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PARTISAN REVIEW
sense, there is no communication, no work of art that's not essen–
tially "abstract" by definition, abstracted for the purposes of empha–
sis.
But there is a lot of art now that is abstracted to such a degree
that it is difficult to know
what
is being emphasized. Not only that–
there is some contemporary abstract work whose apparent basic
premise is that all things are equal, so nothing is emphasized. I find
it a kind of madness. Yet Mondrian is as passionate as van Gogh. Not
theoretically, but concretely and discretely, yes. (Here we have to rely
on the eye, whose discriminations are far finer, subtler and more
immediate than can be measured or described in words.) Intensity
overcame decoration
I
Diamonstein:
You 've said, " I feel pain for young artists today. The
territory of modernism has largely been conquered, there is no longer
much unmapped territory, the ground has pretty much been
covered." And then you said, "As modern painting completes its
task, younger artists are reduced, by arriving so late historically,
to
adding paragraphs or footnotes of great refinement, rather than
whole chapters to the body of modernist art. " What's a young
painter to do? Give up paint and brush?
Motherwell:
Let me amplify a little bit what you say, because it sounds
arrogant, or as though I am an old man, which I am, unsympathetic
to the young, which I am not.
Diamonstein:
Maybe I read it improperly.
M
otherwell:
No, no, I said it, but I have a horror of boring people, and
often say too briefly what I mean.
Obviously, the first generation in a virgin territory has the
biggest area to conquer, in this case, modernism. The next genera–
tion still has lots, and the next generation after that still has lots, but
there does come a moment when one reaches the Pacific, so to speak,
where all begins to be pretty thoroughly inhabited. Then come
refinements, or embellishments of specific things that have been
already discovered, but maybe not thoroughly developed. It's in that
context that I made the statement. Historical time is real. So, to
answer your question, one can't
invent
a whole new continent. I
mean it so happens that in 1863, or whatever year you like, say, 1803,
there was a whole continent of modernism to discover. In my
opinion, that continent, that dictionary, now is largely complete; the
younger artists are, the more they have to deal with an established
modern language rather than inventing a new one. So there are
perhaps two possibilities for young people: one is to add historical
