Art of Another Kind at the Guggenheim Museum
Abstract art is a revolution against the status quo. It is a rejection of art as a method of
representing life in an exact, cardboard form, and a celebration of the idea
that the beliefs of the artist can be transferred to the canvas without a
model, without any set of rules, or, often, without a brush. And indeed, the pieces collectively making up
Art of Another Kind: International
Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949-1960, the new exhibition at said
museum, which runs through this September, originated in periods of national
strife in which more actualized revolution seemed imminent—dictatorial Spain,
or oppressive, vehemently anti-Marxist Italy, or France finding its shaky
footing post-World War II. In any of
these cases, restless artists coalesced into groups like the French Art Brut,
founded by Jean Dubuffet, or Scandinavia’s Cobra, and created and maintained (for as long a
period as they could coexist) a new form of expressionism, or what French art
critic Michel Tapié called, in his book discussing the movement, Un art autre, or art of another kind.
The work
displayed in the gently descending halls of the Guggenheim (located, incidentally, at 1071 5th Avenue) is certainly of
another kind, though of what kind it is difficult to pinpoint. The artists on each floor come from different
countries, different walks of life, and different philosophies on art. In fact, artworks on view in the exhibit
range from wide, bold paintings by Yves Klein (created by covering naked women
in blue paint and smearing them across the canvas) to small, unobtrusive
squares built by Jean Tinguely covered in tiny white strips of metal that just
happen to move, by clockwork, every half hour until they are noticeably
different than they were only a moment before.
But what links this art together, at least according to the museum, is
that it has no predestined form or meaning, that it was brought together to
convey little meaning without careful scrutiny, or perhaps no meaning at
all. In a way, the true meaning of
abstraction may be that we, the viewers, never find out.
The exhibit
is organized so subtly that, like an abstract painting, one might fail to
realize that it has any order at all.
Few paintings are described in detail, and one is given only a brief
overview as to the period and reasoning from which each set of paintings
spring. With the Guggenheim as one’s
only informer, the artists behind the works presented seem enigmatic and
mysterious, far back into the shadows in comparison with their works, which are
little analyzed and detailed blatantly, without pondering meaning or
motivation.
The real attraction at Art of Another Kind is, as the name
might (or should) reveal, the art itself, and the pure visual enjoyment derived
from it. Abstraction may seem to be a
form of art that invites further speculation and introspection as to the
precise reasoning behind each painting.
But with further study, or rather little of it, one can concur that an
artwork can mean nothing if one chooses it to—it can simply be visually
pleasing, or not. (Very little of the
artwork at the Guggenheim, thankfully, is not visually pleasing.) What it means or doesn’t mean is truly up to
the viewer, unless one is up against a particularly vocal artist who insists
upon the true significance of two circles and a square. That is the true beauty of abstract art—that the
inference of the aesthete is the only real validity. It may be the artist’s revolution, but it is
the common man’s art.
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