In Search of Form by Jack Shadbolt (review)

186 Books This is not the only section of this lengthy volume wherein the author does not develop his points fully enough. His sections on the recent achievements, the work of the Abstract Expressionists who helped America take' ... the lead in painting in the Western world that it had partially assumed in architecture' seem inadequate. He does not analyze enough individual paintings and the section on Action Painting suffers from a lack of reproductions. His final statement, 'Abstract Expressionism was an art of transition. As a movement it was soon over-' presents a quick way ofnot deeply examining a trend that had helped America take the lead in painting. Even when he does analyze the artists, he only seems to skim the surface by describing de Kooning's imaginative style as pushing 'bravura brush handling to the limit of automatic, compulsive slashing'. Indeed, instead of examining the impact of the Abstract Expressionists on Op art or even Pop painting, he also fails to examine these recent developments. Perhaps, in defense ofMcLanathan's approach, one might argue that sufficient time has not elapsed to view these styles objectively but, still, one should recognize them as a sizeable portion of the American tradition in the arts. How can a book that purports to study an entire artistic tradition fail to examine it completely? The American tradition is a study of the individualism of the twentieth century. To omit this type of development or to study it superficially, sadly undermines the relevancy of this book. With so many other books available on American art, this encyclopedic work, somewhat heavily written, could be bypassed. This would be unfortunate , nevertheless, given the useful early chapters on American art and the detailed examination of the minor arts of the colonial period. Unfortunately, this approach was not carried through into contemporary times. New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970. Henry Geldzahler. Pall Mall Press, London, 1969. 494 pp., illus. £3.50. Reviewed by: Henry P. Raleigh* Published in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this book is, in fact, a very elegant catalog of the exhibition of the same title that opened the Metropolitan's Centennial year. The exhibition was controversial as indeed it should be to gain publicity points in the current and strange competition that engages the energies and monies of New York's museums of modern art. The four hundred and eight works of art in the show are reproduced and cataloged in the book: forty-eight in middling-fair color, the remainder black and white. Sandwiched between the sections ofreproductions and biographical data ofthe artists *Division of Art, State University College, New Platz, N.Y. 12561, U.S.A. (there is a selected bibliography for each artist also) is a short collection of contemporary criticism; a nostalgic bag of articles which had appeared over those years in art magazines. Included here is the well-known piece of Harold Rosenberg's, 'The American Action Painters', reprinted from Art News in 1952; Clement Greenberg'S, 'After Abstract Expressionism' (1961), a eulogy to Newman, Rothko and Still. It is instructive to read again Michael Fried's, 'Shape as Form: Frank Stella's New Paintings', first published in Art Form in 1966, revised in 1969. While Fried's confusing verbal style is quite the same, his suggestions ofthe aesthetic principles of modernism, obscure in 1966, are much clearer now. What might have seemed then as the belaboring of the trivial gains greater force in the present day conceptual art movements-little represented in the Metropolitan's exhibition nor, for that matter, was the new figurative art. Note, for example, Fried's comment on Stella's work: 'His initial breakthrough to major achievement . . . came when he began to locate the centre of concentric or radiating motifs at the exact center of square canvases.' The seeming absurdity of this dissolves if one observes, along with Fried, the fascinating conflict in modern art between literalness and illusion and hence, the startling reevaluation of the status of the object of art. In his introduction, Henry Geldzahler, critic, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan and organizer of the exhibition, frankly states that the show is not a general...