Come and shake a leg with me!
A New Standard of Art Criticism and a Significant Artist
Huntley Carter
It has been clear to me for some time that a new standard of art criticism is needed to assist the present-day revaluation of Art. A constant examination of advanced pictures has shown me that the key to revaluation resides in the ultimate effect attained by the new “masters.” In studying this effect I have become aware of certain facts. (1) The effect is one of solid motion at a greater intensity than is found in actuality. It is solid motion actually exaggerated. (By solid motion, I mean motion expressed by actual forms.) (2) The greater the intensity the more it tends to obliterate actuality. (3) There is a fluid motion behind phenomena. This motion informs phenomena but loses its intensity when it becomes phenomenalized. It changes its character from fluid motion to solid motion, as though undergoing a process of conversion similar to that by which water is frozen into ice. (4) The meaning of the attainment of the said effect would therefore seem to be that solid motion, as expressed by artists, is being melted into fluid motion, as ice is melted into water, and water is, in turn, converted into steam. Moreover, the solid motion is being melted by the higher intensity of the fluid motion. In other words fluid motion is converting solid motion into its own flow, or that from whence solid motion came. The conclusion is that the quest for intensity is a sign that artists are awakening to a feeling for fluid motion behind solids.
Perhaps artists are becoming purer mediums. It is conceivable that the revolt against academic formulae and the consequent movement towards neo-primitivism, have had a refining influence. In ridding artists of certain forms of culture and convention, they have removed inner obstacles to the intense stream-line flow or fluid motion, and have made them accessible to the motion itself. Hence the present-day pursuit of abstraction in painting and the tendency of representative forms (i. e.: solids) to disappear from the canvas and to be replaced by non-representative forms (i. e.: fluids). As an example I may point to the shadowy forms pursued by Kandinsky. It is true that many of Kandinsky’s studies do not contain evidence of fluid motion working freely through the artist and tracing its own designs on his canvas. In his earlier studies he certainly expresses solids. He puts down forms which the conventional memory recognizes as having a relation to the known, and thereby defeats his own object. But his recent studies exhibit a refining away of solids and a larger feeling for fluidity, that leads one to believe the artist is striving for a true dream-like state in which the fluid motion is left to express itself at its own degree of intensity. Whether he will ever attain this state is uncertain as yet, especially in view of the intellectual attitude of his writings. In Spiritual Harmony, for instance, he is seen working out a scheme of color thus showing he hopes to produce an effect upon the spectator by the use of a mathematical formula. He has evidently conceived the theory that certain colors are equivalent to certain emotions and by adding or subtracting color he can add or subtract an emotion to or from the spectator. Thus yellow equals joy, but add red to the yellow and the effect will be joy tinged with passion. In this way the fluid motion actuating Kandinsky is bound to be subjected to theoretical treatment instead of being left free to do its own work. The emotion of joy in passing through the painter on its way to the spectator will be subjected to mental checks, with the result that it will be deprived of its greatest value in its original intensity.
The study of the aforementioned facts led me in turn to new views on Art, (a) as to the origin and nature of Art, (b) as to the order, intelligibility, and coherence that exist in the natural manifestations of Art, (c) as to the law of growth and progression to be applied to art forms, (d) as to the illumination of this law by a proper standard of criticism. Accordingly I came to see that Art is a potential creative movement in space. It first exists in the fluid motions of the universe and ultimately in a work of art only as the inevitable and efficient expression of itself through a specially adapted medium called the artist. In a metaphysical sense, Art may be said to be a spiritual experience capable of assuming visibility. But it becomes visible only by a process of debasement. Apparently, as I have said, the fluid motion in which Art expresses itself loses its intensity and becomes solid motion in the process of conversion into a work of art, as applied by all civilized artists (as far as we know) up to the present day. In fact, it is only recent years that have witnessed the discovery by the artist of the fluid motion potential in solid motion. Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh were among the first of the moderns to arrive at the point of realizing this potential character. All three were actively engaged in the refining of solids and suggesting their potential ultimate fluidity. What they actually did was this. They demonstrated that Art is a fluid motion seeking to produce an ultimate creative effect upon the spectator through efficient application, and that fluid motion can only produce its creative effect as fluid motion. Now, largely owing to blindness or wrong direction, artists, with rare exceptions, have hitherto concerned themselves with converting fluid motion into various forms of solid motion. They have in fact stopped at the expression of representative forms of nature and human life, apparently unconscious that in doing so they were not completing the expression of the art flow, but were stopping at a half-way house, so to speak, where of course the maximum creative effect could not be produced. Before this effect can be produced it is necessary to complete the journey by reconverting the solids into fluid motion. It cannot be said that either Cezanne, Van Gogh, or Gauguin completed the magic journey. But if they did not refine away the solids in their canvases and set them going as fluid motion, if they put down forms recognizable as houses, men, trees, and so on, they certainly exhibited such forms undergoing a process of melting. In Van Gogh’s canvases the forms are simply being melted by the fierce internal intensity to which the artist is subjecting them. Van Gogh, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, shows us known forms in the act of being converted into their original fluid motion. And it is for this reason, I think, Van Gogh’s pictures produce a greater creative effect upon the spectator than any merely representative forms of art. We experience in them a rush of liberated energy due to the change from solidity to fluidity.
So much for the new conception of the origin and nature of Art. With regard to the principles by which Art moves towards its ultimate effect, I believe they are analogous to those by which an unseen agency assumes visibility in natural forms. There is the same order, intelligibility, and coherence throughout. Corresponding to the invariable order of growth and progression in a plant as represented by the seed (enclosing the life and unifying principle) stem, branches, leaves and fruit, is the order of ascent, or perhaps it should be descent, by which Art takes concrete form. First there is the initial flow, then the root-point answering to the seed or unifying principle, then follow in turn, lines, planes, and solids. The fruit and the solids appear to be the culmination of the initial flow, but really they contain a potential power of growth in a realizable fluid motion. This abstract motion has ever since the start been descending and slackening into solid motion, and its forms have become more and more concrete as they attained actuality. Behind these actual forms, it is clear, there is the potentiality of further movement and growth which in our limited state of intelligence we conceive of as realisable only on the original lines. If there is an infinite growth and development inherent in actual forms very few persons are aware of it. Indeed most persons are aware only of particular growth. To them growth begins with the seed and stops with the fruit or its art expression as fruit, and the only form of continuation is to be found in repetition. The old process must be repeated from seed to fruit. According to this view the phenomena of growth as expressed by art-forms is manifested in a succession of parallel movements and not in one continuous and ever-expanding movement. Generally speaking, things are transferred to canvas as they appear, particular solids, not infinite fluids as they are. If they have a life principle in them it is carefully concealed, for they suggest no power of infinite growth. It would seem indeed as though art-expression, during civilized times, has reached a deadlock. For it is noticeable that throughout all the great periods of art-expression, artists have expressed the same things. In the canvases of the old masters a flow of solids manifests itself with depressing regularity. Time, one might think, would have lifted the soul of the artist out of solid space. But, as we know, the feverish desire to express a too solid world has not grown less till of recent years. It may be due to this deadlock that art criticism has seldom risen above mediocrity. How indeed could it reach the highest creative achievement of the critical mind if works of art lack the creative principle to be judged? The creative critic cannot possibly build his house of illumination without the essential fundamental materials. And these the artist must provide. He cannot illuminate the non-existent. And if there are no creative elements to work upon criticism is bound to fall and remain far below the creative standard. It will be uncertain and chaotic in its judgments. History says it is so, and not without proof. It shows us that the art judgment of one age has been sufficient to reverse the art judgment of a previous age. Yet Art itself does not change. If it is badly expressed at any time it is badly expressed for all time. Therefore the said fluctuating judgment has but one interpretation. It means that the judgment itself is at fault, and much of the art criticism to which art critics have given utterance is worthless. The reason is apparent. Art criticism is not based upon a fundamental principle. There is no established law of art criticism.
Of course I shall be told there is no such law to establish, because it does not exist and never will exist. The art critic has been and will continue to be guided by his conscious experience. And as such experience varies from age to age, so judgment founded upon it varies also. But a statement so independent of common sense is plainly nonsense. The law to which I refer is within the critic just as it is within the artist. It does not always operate because it is not allowed to do so. It is hindered by conscious experience. Actually the law is the artist, and if left to itself it would make an efficient application of itself to produce the highest creative effect of which fluid motion is capable. Such is the unconscious method of using the law. The artist uses it not because he can or will but because he must. His picture producing is a work that can only be done in one way, not by thought and reason, not by compulsions and restraints, but through the livingness of free energies left free to find their own expressions through their own channels. His starting point, representing the seed of unity, is sensibility, and feeling if left alone will do everything to unite all parts of his vision, to bind and cement them together. The result would remain as an example of organic growth not limited to solid space but extended to a higher space as far as the emotional impulse in the artist can be expressed by the limited means at his disposal. The question of how far the artist can use solid (that is, dead) materials, paint brushes, and canvas, to reach a transcendental effect (effect of livingness) is one that I must leave for future consideration.
In such a result would be found evidence not only that there is a great principle or law by which art operates and reaches its highest mark humanly possible, but that it remains constant and true in the sensible artist and can be traced running through all he does. If further evidence of the existence of the law is needed I can point to the conscious use of it today by painters who are seeking to give the facts of ordinary experience a non-representative character, as though belonging to a world of abstraction. We know that Picasso is busy converting everyday forms of his own contemporary surroundings into rhythmic shape from which all clichés have been carefully eliminated. We know too that other painters following the epoch-making example of John D. Fergusson are boldly rhythmising the people and affairs of everyday life as though convinced that the big unified rhythmic design is symbolic of the intense movement by which Art moves and expresses itself. We see in their canvases an obvious attempt to give the widest expansion to the fundamental rhythm of each subject treated. At first sight it appears to be a step in the right direction, one leading away from the fallacy or blindness, which led the old masters to turn out wonderful patchworks by giving each object in their canvases a structural unity of its own. Indeed it looks as though these painters have mastered the secret of binding a composition together by a unified design springing from a central note that expands by spontaneous motion till it not only fills the canvas but passes out of it on a very wide sweep, and having order, intelligibility, and coherence in all its parts. It looks as though they have discovered the great law of creative organic unity of which I speak. Closer examination of their work, however, reveals it is not so. For one thing their pictures are not growths from small beginnings to great ends, each the successive sweep of one curve expanding in oneness from a root-point. It is true that the starting point in them may be feeling, as with the work of the unconscious artist. But as soon as feeling has decided the start, knowledge and reason decide the rest. They decide what shapes and colors are to be selected and carefully related to the central shape and color. If the character of the subject is zigzag then the composition will take a zigzag course. If a sharp curve, then sharp curves will be gathered from objects surrounding the central one and related to it. In fact the law of association is called in and kept busy throughout. Everything in a picture is consciously associated just as a builder associates the materials of a house. Intuition is checked by reason.
So we find one principle being applied alike by conscious and unconscious methods. With this difference, that whereas the movement, growth and unity attained by the unconscious method is organic that reached by the conscious method is mechanical. It is the difference between the natural growth of a plant and the artificial manufacture of one. The first is a process whereby the life flow organizes itself. The second a process of eliminating the life flow. The one is mediumistic and spontaneous, the other is volitional and mechanical.