Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas

ion and Form 1 Man Ray (1890-1977) Statement American by birth, though involved for most of his career with the European avant-garde centred in Paris, Man Ray is normally associated with his development of photographic techniques in the orbit first of Dada, and later, Surrealism. In this early statement he articulates a more orthodox formalist point of view. The 'Statement' was originally printed in 'The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters', Anderson Galleries, New York, March 1916. It is reproduced here from Lippard, 1971, op, cit. Throughout time painting has alternately been put to the service of the church, the state, arms, individual patronage, nature appreciation, scientific phenomena, anecdote, and decoration. But all the marvelous works that have been painted, whatever the sources of inspiration, still live for us because of absolute qualities they possess in common. The creative force and the expressiveness of painting reside materially in the color and texture of pigment, in the possibilities of form invention and organization, and in the flat plane on which these elements are brought to play. The artist is concerned solely with linking these absolute qualities directly to his wit, imagination, and experience, without the go-between of a 'subject.' Working on a single plane as the instantaneously visualizing factor, he realizes his mind motives and physical sensations in a permanent and universal language of color, texture, and form organization. He uncovers the pure plane of expression that has so long been hidden by the glazings of nature imitation, anecdote, and the other popular subjects. Accordingly the artist's work is to be measured by the vitality, the invention, and the definiteness and conviction of purpose within its own medium. 2 Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) from 'Art as Technique' The author was a participant in the Russian school of formalist linguistics which addressed crucial problems about the technical nature of art and literature in the years llle Abstraction and Form 275 around the Revolution. Taking as his stalking horse a Symbolist literary theory, Shklovsky outlines an opposing view of the nature of art. According to this, the purpose of art is 'de-familiarization'. As Shklovsky wrote elsewhere: 'A new form appears not in order to express a new content, but in order to replace an old form, which has already lost its artistic value.' Originally published as 'Iskusstvo kak priyorn' in Sborniki, II, Petrograd, 1917. These excerpts are drawn from the English translation ('Art as Technique', or 'Art as Device') in L. T . Lemon and M. J. Reis (eds.), Russian Formalist Criticism, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1965. 'Art is thinking in images.' This maxim, which even high school students parrot, is nevertheless the starting point for the erudite philologist who is beginning to put together some kind of systematic literary theory. The idea, originated in part by Porebnya, has spread. 'Without imagery there is no art, and in particular no poetry,' Potebnya writes. And elsewhere, 'Poetry, as well as prose, is first and foremost a special way of thinking and knowing.' Poetry is a special way of thinking; it is, precisely, a way of thinking in images, a way which permits what is generally called 'economy of mental effort,' a way which makes for 'a sensation of the relative ease of the process.' Aesthetic feeling is the reaction to this economy. This is how the academician OvsyanikoKulikovsky, who undoubtedly read the works of Potebnya attentively, almost certainly understood and faithfully summarized the ideas of his teacher. Potebnya and his numerous disciples consider poetry a special kind of thinking thinking by means of images; they feel that the purpose of imagery is to help channel various objects and acti vities into groups and to clarify the unknown by means of the known. [ ...] 'Without imagery there is no art' 'Art is thinking in images.' These maxims have led to far-fetched interpretations of individual works of an. Attempts have been made to evaluate even music, architecture, and lyric poetry as imagistic thought. After a quarter of a century of such attempts Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky finally had to assign lyric poetry, architecture, and music to a special category of imageless art and to define them as lyric arts appealing directly to the emotions. And thus he admitted an enormous area of art which is not a mode of thought A part of this area, lyric poetry (narrowly considered), is quite like the visual arts; it is also verbal. But, much more important, visual an passes quite imperceptibly into nonvisual art; yet our perceptions of both are similar. Nevertheless, the definition 'Art is thinking in images,' which means (I omit the usual middle terms of the argument) that art is the making of symbols, has survi ved the downfall of the theory which supported it. It survives chiefly in the wake of Symbolism, especially among the theorists of the Symbolist move-