This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 29, 2008 - As a critic, I saw tantalizing possibilities in the proposition of Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976. Originating at the Jewish Museum in New York before coming to us in St. Louis, Action/Abstraction promised to re-evaluate mid-century American art against the backdrop of the art criticism of the day.
With any other art movement at any other time, this kind of art-and-criticism exposition might be an amusing exercise, resulting in a few jovial revelations, or some retrospective jokes at the expense of the artist, or the critic, or both. But in the case of American Abstract Expressionism, the critical stakes were much higher than ever before, or since. It can be (and has been) argued that critics made Abstract Expressionism -- they defined it, gave it its operating vocabulary and catapulted it to the dominant position in western art after World War II.
So, the Jewish Museum's Norman Kleeblatt, curator of Action/Abstraction, was setting the exhibit's own stakes fairly high. And it succeeds beyond expectation, particularly in what it reveals about the complicated dialectics of art and criticism, artist and critic, and even art and audience -- both at mid-century and now. (The St. Louis Art Museum's curator of 19th and 20th century art, Charlotte Eyerman, is curator of the exhibition in its showing here.)
The central critics in the story of American Abstract Expressionism are Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, who, for all they shared in terms of background and passion about modern art, couldn't be further apart in terms of philosophy.
Greenberg, the formalist, wrote wide-ranging, swaggering criticism over five decades, arguing for art's autonomy and downplaying the personal aspect of the artist (in his writing, if not in his everyday life).
Rosenberg, on the other hand, came to be defined by a single essay, "The American Action Painters," published in Art News in 1952. It valorized the act of painting and the existential nature of the artist's encounter with the canvas. "A painting that is an act," Rosenberg wrote, "is inseparable from the biography of the artist."
The critical terms Greenberg and Rosenberg generated defined the movement of Abstract Expressionism and ultimately circumscribed the careers of its major artists: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman. Just how well their critical assessments hold up today is another question, one that the exhibition allows us to ponder as we study vaunted works of Abstract Expressionism, including de Kooning's "Gotham News" (1955), Pollock's spectacular "Convergence" (1952), and Still's well-known "1950-A No. 2" (1950).
Also on view are wonderful canvases by women artists, who were initially ignored or slighted by mid-century critics but who have managed to creep into the canon, thanks to the work of pioneering feminist art critics and historians beginning in the 1970s. Looking at originals by Grace Hartigan ("New England, October," from 1957), Joan Mitchell ("Untitled," 1957) and Lee Krasner ("Blue and Black," 1951-53) in the context of their celebrated male contemporaries is a lesson in itself about the exclusive critical eye. For Greenberg and Rosenberg, among others, the Abstract Expressionist artist was male both by definition and default.
The critics' exclusiveness begs the question of critical objectivity and leads one to wonder also about the personal relationships between the writers and the painters. Action/Abstraction covers this ground admirably, providing interviews with the critics, and ephemera such as personal letters and photographs that tell their own tale. One photograph shows Pollock and Krasner on the beach, posing with Greenberg and the painter Helen Frankenthaler, whom Greenberg was dating at the time. A letter from Barnett Newman expresses extreme gratitude to Rosenberg for his assessment of the painter's work; letters from Still to the critic drip with sarcasm and measured vitriol.
The range of the material culture of mid-century modernism on display here is truly impressive. Of particular interest are the original issues of the journals -- Tiger's Eye, ArtForum, among others -- in which critical battle lines were drawn, and photographs and video attesting to the popular reception of abstract art. All of it fills out the socio-historical picture of the times, allowing for an ever richer assessment of Abstract Expressionism's significance. (It goes without saying that audiences should follow up with a visit to the Kemper's outstanding Birth of the Cool exhibit, which has its own mid-century story to tell. A Beacon review of that show is to come soon. )
Of course, Action/Abstraction goes beyond Abstract Expressionism. It follows its artistic legacy, and its critical legacy as well.
In this, Greenberg was a key component, coining the term "Post-Painterly Abstraction," which was applied to works he championed by artists such as Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland, who are also included in this show. Rosenberg's legacy is not quite as clear-cut. His emphasis on action and painting as a performance would seem to connect him to movements in the 1950s and 1960s that likewise emphasized performances and action in real time. For instance, read or listen to anything by Allan Kaprow, and you'll hear him zeroing in on the act of painting, particularly in the case of Jackson Pollock, as an inspiration for the loosely choreographed Happenings he produced starting in 1959.
But Rosenberg disavowed the connection. Perhaps Happenings and their ilk were too far afield for him conceptually. In any case, his attention remained rooted in conventional painting and sculpture. Thankfully, this didn't stop Kleeblatt from including Kaprow in the exhibit, in the form of a restaging of the artist's "Words" of 1962, a walk-in installation that encourages audiences to write their thoughts on paper, chalkboard or sticky note, and add to the verbal/visual cacophony of the environment. (The audience at the St. Louis Art Museum seems somewhat reluctant to participate in "Words," opting instead to pass through it, reading politely and not touching. What does this say about us?)
A final observation: It's been decades since the artists and critics of postmodernism worked so hard to expose the myth of artistic originality, and to reveal that the artwork's magical aura is in reality nothing more than an aesthetic version of the emperor's new clothes. No one has been more steeped in this strain of criticism than yours truly - writing it, teaching it, basically toeing the line. So, how to explain the utter giddiness bubbling up when laying eyes on actual originals such as Pollock's dazzling Number 3 (1950) and de Kooning's Woman (1949-50)? Or reveling in the minute, fragile color modulations of Ad Reinhardt's "Abstract Painting" (1962), which simply do not hold up in reproductions? Add these to the many critical and aesthetic questions, revelations and surprises on hand in Action/Abstraction.
Ivy Cooper is an artist and professor of art history at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.