U.S. Art Force
And what if it was at that very moment that everything changed? Just before art ran out of steam due to a lack of novelty. Even though the novelty of a work had been its raison d'être since the end of classicism. What use is art that merely reproduces what already exists?
L'Œil sets out to find the keys to determining the role that American painters and those like them from the fifties who settled in France may have played in the history of art. This is a very good idea, because when you read this article you realise that these years, which seem so clear-cut in artistic terms, were in fact a time of great confusion.
We thought things were clear-cut. With Pollock on one side, De Kooning a little further away and Kline still elsewhere. But now the gaps are closing. The sea turns into land between these lighthouses. It is enough to confuse the sonar.
Names like Russel, Jaffe or Bishop, thrown from the depths of nowhere by the Eye, suddenly come to colour the void with canvases that shake up the established values, so much so that they seem to be daughters of Kandinsky's paintings here and sisters of Newman's paintings there. For better or worse.
For, opposite an Ossorio, stands a Stanley William Hayter. The first mixes. The latter seeks. Result: Hayter, a 20th century engraving virtuoso, appears to be the true inventor of dripping. He is now completely anonymous, whereas Picasso, Miro, da Silva, Giacometti and Louise Bourgeois were all present in his studio. Today it seems that the Dürer of the rock'n'roll years had a nice network. Why did he sink into oblivion? Mystery and gumdrops.
As for Ossorio, a kindly collector with good taste, he could see no harm in finding an interest in intimately mixing Pollock and Dubuffet on the same canvas.
In both cases, the confusion is the same. Pure creations and pastiches are displayed side by side like rectangles of firecracker colours on a white background with which everything blends.
Photo:
- Hayter: Seated Figure - 1944
- Ossorio: Beach Comber -1953