International Style In Painting?

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29734, 30 January 1962, Page 8

International Style In Painting?

[Bv tile Art Critic of “'The Times’’]

Whenever there is talk nowadays of abstract painting there is likely to be mention of “the international style.”

It is a phrase which proves to be as difficult in precise application as terms like “realism" or "romanticism" yet its connotations appear to be generally accepted, and understood, by the same token, understood to be of a vaguely reprehensible nature Abstract painting in the inlernitional s’vle would seem to be, by definition, fashionable in tne worst sense

There would be more justification tor this if the term were not such a muddled compound of prejudiced misconceptions. It assumes, tor example, a uniformity of style, or at least the existence of a dominant style, in current abstract painting, and more particularly a urn? formity which makes a Japanese painting indistinguishable from one from Ecuador. It assumes that the phenomenon is something new as well as something bad. And it assumes, or fails to dis* tinguish’the identification between stylistic influences frdm country to country and the highly comereiaiised international exchange -of art which has made the spread of such influences tiiore rapid and more farreaching since the war than at any other time. False Standards The last is perhaps the easiest distinction to lose sight of. The commercialisation of modern art has been vast, setting up new pressures by no means altogether conducive to better painting It has led to all the ohauvinittic manoeuvrings and jockeying for prestige which accompany the growing number of big international exhibitions, of which the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale, the Pittsburgh International, and the Parisian “Biennale des Jeunes" are by now the most influential

The danger here is not so much that the big prizes carry with them even bigger commercial returns as that the awards can create false reputations and false standards of aesthetic merit. Only a fraction of the artistic output of any country at any time can be expected to be of original value, but pres-, tige and financial rewards on the scale that now obtains ean only encourage a massive amount of imitation, much of which may not even be based on the soundest or mr-'t of models To this extent there do exist manifestations of an international style which are to be deplored 't the same time there must exist an international style which is neither better nor worse than an expression of the Zeitgeist For die last seven years the Council of Europe has been holding, in various European capitals, exhibitions designed to show that at any one time there are currents of feeling particular modes of visual perception, that cut across all geographical and political boundaries

In the past they have been limited in their scope only by the ease and extent of existing means of communication between one country and another, and post-war art is only peculiar in belonging to a period when international communications for the first time effectively link the five continents. At the same time there la

likely to be only one pacesetter and centre of influence Today it is manifestly America, though the ascendency of American painting to such a position is comparatively so recent that the situation is complicated by the supplanted but by no means incapacitated authority of Paris, and complicated still further by the mutual influence of unerican and Parisian painting on each other at various times in the test SO years. The long reign of Pfiris as artistic capital of the world has possibly been more undermined by the rereadings .of the origins of modern art that have gained favour since the war than by any actual falling off of talent or aVant-garde activity. No city that could lay claim to De Stael, wols, Mathieu or Dubuffet can be denied its influence oh post-war painting..*, y, . 'C.-. '-I On the other hand, it has become increasingly customary,.io accepting, say. American abstract expresstonissn as the dominant move of -the last decade, to trace it* pedigree to .non-Parisian sources of modern apt (Kandinsky Klee, German Expression ism) ari<| so to diminish the impression of a Parisian exclusiveness in such matters Common Developments What characterises the post-war i development in painting common to both Paris and New York, as well as ail those countries that have taken a lead from them, can only be defined in the most general terms. That it has been abstract is merely a predictable continuation of the change from perceptual to conceptual habits of vision which was initiated in the first decade of the century. The major development since has been the emphasis laid on informal or “automatic” procedures; which is in essence no more than the periodic swing of the pendulum from a classical to a romantic conception of the function of art—from the pictorial disciplines that were understood to lead through Cubism back to Cezanne, to an aesthetic based on the primacy of the intuitive art and unconscious association; from the constraints of formal organisation to a limitless freedom of action. No Basis For Judgment

But beyond such generalisations it is hazardous to venture. and the supposed uniformity of an international style disappears the more it is experienced and the closer it is examined. In fact, the lesson of the biennales is nearly always that national characteristics of style remain discernible within the complex pattern of mutual exchange, of influences and imitations that link the painting of one country with that of another.

And if forms of academicism inevitably result, it is the number and variety of such forms which is more remarkable than their sameness; no provincial academic style exists today as uniformly dependent on one source as the derivatives of the school ot Paris before the war. Commercial pressures and over-production lead to mora mediocrity in current abstract art than does any inherent conformism.