300
PARTISAN REVIEW
Jane Collear:
I was a bit surprised that you failed to deal with the many
artists around the turn of the century who dealt directly with some of the
issues of change, utopia and dystopia that were also prevalent in the liter–
ature of that time. I'm thinking specifically of the symbolists around the
end of the nineteenth century and the expressionists at the beginning of
the twentieth century. One of the reasons that a formalist, Greenbergian
view of modernism has fallen into disrepute today is that it does not work
terribly well. Vast stretches of modernism such as symbolism and expres–
sionism are not properly accounted for in that view and even aspects of
modern art, principally French and then later American, that fit into a for–
malist view are not fully explicated by a formalist approach. To me, one of
the things that the fin de siecle is about is messiness. The certainties that
were posited earlier in this century just may not work terribly well in deal–
ing with the situation that we are in today or were in the past.
Karen Wilkin:
You are absolutely right. I did not discuss the symbolists in
any detail, and I certainly did not discuss the expressionists for the specific
reason that I was trying to stick very closely to the year 1896, which is not
a great year to
talk
about symbolism or the German expressionists. The
notion that there is a great deal that is not dealt with and is not addressed
by formal criticism is obvious.
It
does not matter whether you are speaking
of Roger Fry or Clement Greenberg or any of the younger formalists who
have come out of this tradition. I was attempting to stress an attitude
towards the past which has changed, whether because of a disbelief in the
validity of the past or a sense of discontinuity caused by entirely new situ–
ations. These questions remain to be answered. Messiness, absolutely! That
messiness was taking the form of inclusiveness, of denying the exclusive and
very clear-cut rules and tastes of academic art-where the only acceptable
model was the Greek canon with certain selected old masters allowed as
models, not even the entire range of the old masters. If you read Sir Joshua
Reynolds's
Discourses,
his addresses to the graduating class of the Royal
Academy, you will discover that there is not only a hierarchy of subject
matter, but that he is very specific as to which artists he recommends
younger artists look at. The inclusiveness that allows the young Picasso to
be profoundly affected by African art or Matisse and Derain and Vlaminck
to become equally excited about Oceanic art and Islamic art, and Van Gogh
and Gauguin wildly enthusiastic about not only Japanese prints, but about
the most ordinary popular art of the day, the mass-produced religious
prints, can be called messiness, too. It can be very enriching and it has cer–
tainly been part of our post-modernism as well.
Tibor Machan:
It
seems to me that the relationship between progress and
moral sensibilities is not as dismal as some of you make it sound, because
