HOWARD NEUFELD, artist

Abstraction in Modernity and Post-modernity:

The most visible change brought about with the onset of Modernism was between academic realism and abstraction. Much has been said and written as if these two branches of painting were and are completely antithetical - some of us disagree with this assumption. The painting of "real"" images, whether on the walls of caves, imbedded in plaster high above the viewer, or on the surface of fabric, has always been about things beyond mere depiction, whether presented as an accurate reflection of the outside world, some interpretation of that world, or reflection upon the "inner" world of the artist; no matter if being completely void of any material reference via image or not. The primary reason why Kandinsky and his paintings have been such an influence on me is because he stood out from all the other abstract pioneers and in a very substantial way. To me he favored "insight" over "innovation" in his theory of abstraction.

Innovation vs. Insight:

Since the beginning of Modernism, "innovation" itself seems to be the primary goal - becoming the endgame of painting. For the artist, experimentation, thought, and usually some influence of a predecessor's work, all contributed to the idea of "new and revolutionary" inventions replacing the status quo; paintings (abstraction) we see along a time-line beginning in the early 20th century. These lines of development can be traced from artist-to-artist and the ideas and philosophies that have formed their work. One of the primary criticisms of Modernism has been its system of the Avant Garde. This system was based on innovation, where a current innovation was replaced with a "new" one, which then became "current" only to be replaced with another, repeating the cycle over and over. Part of the response we see today has been to replace the "visual-conceptual via aesthetic" with the "idea-conceptual via the anti-aesthetic, in turn removing all sensual experience from the viewer. This has shifted a "visual art" into a "conceptual art," I believe one better suited to what Kandinsky referred to as "materialism."

To many, abstraction has been seen as a negation or purification process, that is, it has been defined by what it is not - relative to Realism. This is why a lot of effort (experimentation and theorizing) has been directed toward the elimination of what was understood as essential to realism, beyond the absence of a visual description of material objects and spaces. I believe that in the process of eliminating these "subject matter" there was along with it, the elimination of the qualitative elements of descriptive work - those things that the description may not have been dependent upon, yet have enhanced description - that have strengthened the dynamic and pictorial aspects of painting, such as illusionism. This has led to the flattening out of object-space as well as context space. Malevich's "Suprematist Composition: White on White" of 1918 being one of the first and best examples of this tendency. In turn, this has had a profound affect on abstraction as a whole in another extremely important way. It has directed the efforts of abstraction more toward the conceptual over the perceptual. This could be why Post-modernism is founded in this bias (intellectual over sensual). It seems like the general effort was to eliminate anything and everything related in any way to the tradition of realism, making a complete break with it. The reduction of things down to "surface" (physical paint) and the elimination of pictorial and dynamic space resulted in what's called "literalism" in Post-modern abstraction. One recalls the comment made by Frank Stella; "What you see is what you see."

Reflections on Painting:

We need to stop and reflect on this human ability and passion we call painting. This is something we have done for millennia and as of now, nothing has changed. We still create (not only in art); we still make paintings and we still connect with them using our inner Selves. This is an intrinsic part of what it is to be Human; not something that changes with technical advancement or even cultural shifts and self-definitions. Artists will continue to paint with a passion and intelligence we can see, feel, and share when we look back at those 30,000 year-old paintings on the walls of caves.

Note: If one follows the general time-line of those movements or -isms we assign to Modernism or abstraction, we can better understand what looks like the evolution of painting in the 20th century. One can begin to see some different tendencies emerge as some innovations lean toward the "intellectual" while others the "expressive;" some drawing parallels with scientific discoveries in physics while others with discoveries in psychology. There is, in fact, one glaring exception, that of the artist Marcel Duchamp. He is the rationale for Post-modernism in justifying its style of the "anti-aesthetic." All of the other pioneer artists of this time we can assign to Abstraction.

Kandinsky's Inner Necessity:

There is an artist who stands out from all of the other abstractionists and that is Wassily Kandinsky. He was the only one who worked from the "internal," invisible reality of the Self as opposed to the "external," visible reality of the world. This places his means of abstraction with the others, however, unlike the others, his content was also abstract. The other important note regarding Kandinsky's approach is that it is "timeless" and therefore, as in Einstein's Relativity, there is no fixed separation of past, present, and future as we understand the sequence of time. In Kandinsky's theory of abstraction, the key is the "inner necessity" that is subjectively unique to each person (and artist) and of each painting as well. This negates Modernism's concept of the Avant Garde; also the idea of a "progression" that moves forward, implying that a developmental "progress" in painting has and is still taking place and that painting has some ultimate goal that it is striving to reach. "Inner necessity" is time-less and non-sequential within the different "movements" we have already experienced and ones we will continue to experience, therefore, it is what it is. This is because "inner necessity" is totally and completely "subjective" with and for each individual artist and their work; so subjective, unique and timeless, they are like "personal taste;" something that is beyond dispute. Paintings cannot always be comparatively rated against each other nor automatically understood as "progressive"  in painting's history, which is where we got into problems in the first place. To me this places judgement squarely where it belongs, on the individual painting or work of art and the "inner necessity" of its creator.

When I was a young artist I heard the words "painting is dead" and that there were no more insights or innovations to be had. Inexperienced at the time, I wondered if that was true. I also felt that with Minimalism, one of the current styles at the time, maybe we had literally painted ourselves into a corner with no way out. And yet, something defiant deep inside compelled me to continue searching; trying to understand and experience what Kandinsky called "inner necessity" and its place in abstraction. When I look back after a lifetime of painting, I still feel that there will always be unfinished business in painting, especially those created from the "Inner necessity" of individual artists.

My paintings as I see them:

The combination of using Phi and non-Euclidean geometry as the Structure for my paintings, work together as a functional reality of "space-time." In contrast, Process creates images of Chaos representing "mass-energy" that are illusionistic in depicting volumes, densities, movements, forces, sequences, and vibrations. Together they are used to express the Four-dimensional Space-time Continuum that connects space and time, mass and energy, with light into a dynamic visual conception of Reality.

The Golden Section is intellectually rational geometrically

Yet irrational mathematically

and emotionally intuitive visually.