Post-Modern (PAINTING IN THE 1980s)

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PAINTING IN THE 1980s

Art since 1980 has been called Post-Modern. The term itself is anomalous: modernity can never be outdated, because it is simply whatever is contemporary. The word nevertheless suggests the paradoxical nature of Post-Modernism, which seeks out incongruity. Post-Modernism is marked by an abid­ing scepticism that rejects modernism as an ideal defining twentieth-century culture, as we have known it. In challeng­ing tradition, however, Post-Modernism resolutely refuses to define a new meaning or impose an alternative order in its place. It represents a generation consciously not in search of its identity. Hence, it is not a coherent movement at all, but a loose collection of tendencies, which, all told, reflect a new sensibility.

We are, in a sense, the new Victorians. A century ago, Im­pressionism underwent a like crisis, from which Post-­Impressionism emerged as the direction for the next twenty years. Behind its elaborate rhetoric, Post-Modernism can be seen as a stratagem for sorting through the past while mak­ing a decisive break with it that will allow new possibilities to emerge. Having received a rich heritage, artists are faced with a wide variety of alternatives. The principal features of the new art are a ubiquitous eclecticism and a bewildering array of styles. Taken together, these pieces provide a jigsaw puzzle of our times. Another indication of the state of flux is the emergence of many traditional European and regional American art centres.

From all the recent ferment, a new direction of art has begun to appear, at least for the time being. Much recent art has been concerned with Appropriation and Deconstruction. Appropriation looks back self-consciously to earlier art, both by imitating previous styles and by taking over specific motif's or even entire images. Artists, of course, have always bor­rowed from tradition, but rarely so systematically as now. Such plundering is nearly always a symptom of deepening cultural crisis, suggesting bankruptcy. The first sign of this historicism actually occurred in the early 1970s with the widespread use of "Neo" to describe the latest tendencies. Unbound as it is to any system, Post-Modernism is free not only to adopt earlier imagery but also to radically alter its meaning through Deconstruction by placing it in a new con­text. The traditional importance assigned to the artist and the object he or she creates is de-emphasized in this ap­proach, which stresses process over content. Hence, Perfor­mance Art is perhaps the most characteristic art form to emerge in the 1980s.

CLEMENTE. The Italian Francesco Clemente (born 1952) is symptomatic in many respects of his artistic generation. His association with the Arte Povera ("Poor Art") movement in Italy led him to develop a potent Neo-Expressionism. His career took a decisive turn in 1982 when he decided to come to New York in order "to be where the great painters have been," but he also spends much of his time in India, where he has been inspired by Hinduism. His canvases and wall paintings sometimes have an ambitiousness that can assume the form of allegorical cycles addressed directly to the Italian painters who worked on a grand scale, starting with Giotto. His most compelling works, however, are those having as their subject matter the artist's moods, fantasies, and appe­tites. Clemente is fearless in recording urges and memories that the rest of us repress. Art becomes for him an act of cathartic necessity that releases, but never resolves, the im­pulses that assault his acute self-awareness. His self-portraits suggest a soul bombarded by drives and sensa­tions that can never be truly enjoyed. Alternately fascinating and repellent, his pictures remain curiously unsensual, yet their expressiveness is riveting. Since his work responds to fleeting states of mind, Clemente utilizes whatever style or medium seems appropriate to capturing the transient phe­nomena of his inner world. He is unusual among Italians in being influenced heavily by Northern European Symbolism and Expressionism with an occasional reminiscence of Sur­realism. Here indeed is his vivid nightmare, having the masklike features of Ensor, the psychological terror of Munch, and the haunted vision of De Chirico.

KIEFER. The German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) is the direct heir to Northern Expressionism, but rather than investigating personal moods he confronts moral issues posed by Nazism that have been evaded by other post-war artists in his country. By exploring from a modern perspec­tive the major themes of German Romanticism, he has at­tempted to reweave the threads broken by history. That tradition, which began as a noble ideal based on a similar longing for the mythical past, ended as a perversion at the hands of Hitler and his followers because it lent itself readily to abuse.

To the Unknown Painter is a powerful state­ment of the human and cultural catastrophe presented by World War II. Conceptually as well as compositionally it was inspired by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, of which it is a worthy successor. To express the tragic proportions of the Holocaust, Kiefer works on an appropri­ately epic scale. Painted in jagged strokes of predominantly earth and black tones, the charred landscape is made tangi­ble by the inclusion of pieces of straw. Amid this destruction stands a sombre ruin: it is shown in woodcut to proclaim Kiefer's allegiance to the German Renaissance and to Expressionism. Recalling the tombs and temples of ancient civ­ilizations, the fortresslike structure is a suitable monument for heroes. But instead of being dedi­cated to soldiers who died in combat, it is a memorial to the painters whose art was equally a casualty of Fascism.

ROTHENBERG. Neo~Expressionism has found its most gifted American representative in Susan Rothenberg (born 1945). In the mid-1970s the contours of the horse seen in profile provided a thematic focus and personal emblem for her highly formal paintings, but toward the end of the decade she turned to more emotive subjects. The sheer beauty of the surface in Mondrian belies the intensity of her vision. The 'figure emerges from the welter of feathery brushstrokes like an apparition from a nightmare. The face, which bears Mondrian's unmistakable features, conjures up a vision of madness. We have seen its like before in Bacon's Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef. The picture, then, announces Rothenberg's allegiance to Expressionism and constitutes a highly charged commentary on Mondrian, whose rigorous discipline is so antithetical to her painterly freedom.

MURRAY. Neo-Expressionism has a counterpart in Neo-Ab­straction, which has yielded less impressive results thus far. The greatest success in the Neo-Abstractionist vein has been achieved by those artists seeking to infuse their formal con­cerns with the personal meaning of Neo- Expressionism. Elizabeth Murray (born 1940) has emerged since 1980 as the leader of this crossover style in America. More Than You Know makes a fascinating comparison with Au­drey Flack's Queen, for both are replete with au­tobiographical references. While it is at once simpler and more abstract than Flack's, Murray's composition seems about to fl y apart under the pressure of barely contained emotions. The table will remind us of the one in Picasso's Three Musicians, a painting she has referred to in other works from the same time. The contradiction be­tween the flattened collage perspective of the table and chair and the allusions to the distorted three-dimensionality of the surrounding room establishes a disquieting pictorial space. The more we look at the painting, the more we begin to re­alize how eerie it is. Indeed, it seems to radiate an almost unbearable tension. The table threatens to turn into a figure surmounted by a skull-like head that moves with the explo­sive force seen in Picasso's Three Dancers. What was Murray thinking of? She has said that the room reminds her of the place where she sat with her ill mother. At the same time, the demonic face was inspired by Munch's The Scream, while the sheet of paper recalls Vermeer's paintings of women reading letters, which to her express a combination of serenity and anxiety.