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William Perehudoff large 70s painting

Why abstract art is not valid

Luxury travel blog » Art » Why abstract art is not valid
January 25, 2012 by Carol Perehudoff

This post may contain affiliate links.

 

Some arguments never die. The question “Is abstract art valid” raised its head again some time ago while I was doing a bit of art travel, heading down to Windsor, Ontario, for the opening of my late father’s exhibition The Optimism of Colour: William Perehudoff, a retrospective.

Two other shows opened at the Art Gallery of Windsor on Friday night, John Kissick’s A Nervous Decade and an exhibition by Luanne Martineau. On Saturday there was a panel discussion with critics Roald Nasgaard and Karen Wilkin.

I’ve been caught in the middle of this conversation for years, as both the daughter of an abstract artist and as a former grad student studying visual art when conceptual artist Jenny Holzer ruled the art roost and my fellow masters students and I wanted truisms like ‘Nothing to Lose’ and ‘Good and Evil’ flashing over our studios in a lit up sign created from metal and light emitting diode units.

What I have learned, through the discussion after my father’s show, through my own stays at the Banff Centre of the Arts as a visual artist, and in my days at art school, is that abstract art is not valid.

Here’s why:

 

I’m a stripe!

 

1) Abstract art is too safe … just something to hang over the couch in a middle-class home.

Granted, it is safer to have an abstract painting hanging over the couch than having, say, a pickled calf with gold horns and hooves like The Golden Calf by superstar conceptual artist Damien Hirst over your sofa, but considering the calf sold for £10.3 million at auction, I wouldn’t say going the pickled calf route is any cheaper.

Of course by ‘safe’ – what is really meant is that abstract art doesn’t stretch the imagination, it doesn’t cause offence. It’s not going to shake up your perception of life, philosophy or creativity.

That’s the argument from one side. Let’s call them The Progressives, those who are more than ready to leave abstract art behind and move on to new art movements.

On the other side are the people who don’t think abstract art is valid at all, not because the world has moved on, but because it shouldn’t have left realism to start with.

Think of art as a linear series of movements, links in a chain if you will. (Of course, art is more like a tree, with roots, branches, nests and clambering squirrels, but for now we need to simplify.) Like every art movement, it seems, there is a struggle for dominance between what has been left behind and what comes after it.

Personally, as someone stuck in the middle of the pro/con abstract art argument since forever, I’ve never understood why there isn’t room for all art movements. I agree, however, that there are valid reasons to look at art with a critical eye.

2) Abstract art is too large and therefore unaccessible.

This is one of the stranger criticisms I’ve heard about Abstract Expressionist paintings. That abstract paintings are so monumental they cannot fit into an average home and so are out of reach to the average middle-class person.

Some are, some aren’t.

My father’s best work, in my opinion, is when he allowed himself – and had the space – to paint huge works on canvas.

Personally, I feel enriched by monumentality in many things: mountains; soaring Gothic cathedral – their ceilings so high they seem to defy gravity; and, yes, large works of art.

I’m happy to see monumental paintings in art galleries even though I can’t hang one in my home. I like the feeling of power they create, the sense they have swelled and taken on a life of their own.

In my father’s case, I think his urge to paint large has something to do with his prairie roots: big sky, big plains … and a big attitude towards creating.

I don’t believe William Perehudoff ever thought of himself as a regional painter. This is possibly because, coming off a farm from a Russian Doukhobor heritage, where poverty was ever present and formal eduction was scant, he didn’t know enough about elitist art attitudes to lock himself into that cage.

Then, when he dove into learning as much as he could about art – something that would become a lifelong passion – he simply gave that cage a glance and walked by it.

Art

 

3) Abstract art is not valid because it’s commercial.

You can buy  and sell abstract art, unlike say, a thought, a conception, and the taint of money is ugly.

This might have been true at one time, but now the idea of what is commercial and what is above commercialism has been tossed on its head. When NFTs – non fungible tokens – which only exist in the digital space sell for more than $69 million at Christies, you know that commercialism and art are seriously entwined.

4) Abstract art is associated with American cultural imperialism.

This is an argument that needs to be examined.

I found the following quote, interestingly enough, on the Maritime Union of Australia website, on a page dedicated to a Roy Dalgarno – a painter and socialist realist:

“During the Cold War social realism became associated with communism, while abstract expressionism (such as the works of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko) served as adjunct to American capitalism and its ideology.

“Abstract expressionism was a movement aligned with the rise of American cultural imperialism. It became allied with the right; social realism with the left. (Modern Art: A critical introduction by Pam Meecham and Julie Sheldon )”

I find this a fascinating topic, as well as a disturbing and complex one, so I’ll post the opposing point of view, which is that art was political long before abstract art came into view, and blatantly so. Kings, popes, emperors … they were the biggest patrons of art, and art was to a large extent designed with their public relations and branding in mind.

Abstract art, which stripped away identifiable objects from the canvas, sought, to some extent, to do away with politics in art. Or at least represent it on a more individual personal level.

 

View of Detroit from Windsor

 

5) Abstract art belongs to New York

After the war in the latter half of the 40s the hub of the Western art world shifted from Paris to New York, and Abstract Expressionism was the movement that planted the American flag on the great land known as Art.

It was the first time a major Western art movement was centered around North America rather than Europe. 

Artists like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman were the standard bearers, with art critic Clement Greenberg leading the charge.

So what about abstract artists not from New York? Is their work a pale imitation of the real thing? Are they not valid creators? Are artists from the periphery riding on the coattails of an art movement not their own? 

To answer it I’m going to talk about spas. Stay with me here.

It’s a big trend in the spa world, and a valid one, to have treatments related to the locale. We’re talking about things like massages that incorporate local healing traditions, and essential oils made with local ingredients like Quebec sage and Niagara lavender. 

Done right, the ‘go local’ movement is a fantastic addition to the spa culture. However (of course I have a however) if spas were only allowed to ‘go local’ we would have no Swedish massage (unless you were in Sweden).

We would have no Thai massage (you would have to go to Bangkok for that and I recommend Wat Po Temple if you do).

We wouldn’t even any yoga as that comes from India and going to the spa wouldn’t be any fun at all.

This tradition of borrowing is, in my mind, an essential fact of life marching on. Culture bleeds across borders.

And attitudes have changed. Today artists on the periphery are looked at with new interest. Sometimes with great interest.

Note: Someone asked me to mention the fact that the ‘culturally imperious’ American artists including Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski and art critic Greenberg took Saskatchewan artists like the Regina 5 and my father, William Perehudoff very seriously back in the 60s, while central Canada seemed happy to ignore them completely.

6) Finally, abstract art is a male dominated bastion. 

It has been. I wouldn’t deny it. Other than superstar artist Helen Frankenthaler, who travelled right alongside all the other (male) artists I’ve mentioned so far, no one else got a lot of play. Maybe Agnes Martin. (Who, was born in Saskatchewan!)

But I can say with great relief that female artists are being reexamined. New York galleries like Berry Campbell have been bringing to the fore female abstract artists who, because of their gender, were never given the same kind of press. 

 

Prove yourself!

 

Seriously though, in the end, the argument will go on (after all we’re still arguing over the validity of Impressionism, aren’t we? Oh, what? We’re not?) and so will the reactionary nature of art.

One movement is a springboard, or maybe acts as a pendulum, for another.

Early Canadian abstraction can be seen as a reaction against the Group of Seven landscapes. And Colour Field artists like my father, engaged in simplifying art down to essential elements, with their staining and flat planes of colour, can be seen as reacting to the more gestural work of earlier abstract expressionists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

And so Colour Field/abstract art is reacted against in turn.

As New York critic Karen Wilkin said at the panel discussion, “the son always kills the father.” Which brings me to my final conclusion, that my dad is just lucky he had daughters.

Hi Dad!

 

Read more about William Perehudoff 

Mourning in Saskatchewan

William Perehudoff obituary

The Optimism of Colour: William Perehudoff rides again

William Perehudoff at the Glenbow Art Gallery in Calgary

Category: ArtTag: William Perehudoff

About Carol Perehudoff

A former freelance travel columnist for the Toronto Star, Carol has won more than 30 writing awards and honours. A spa and luxury travel expert, she’s written for top travel publications around the globe.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lelde Miehlenbachs

    Also, à la Matisse’s comment about art being like a good armchair—art being an experience akin to going for a spa treatment!! Good one!

  2. Lelde Muehlenbachs

    Hysterical!!!!

  3. wenceslao ciuro

    Sure, abstract painting is garbage, love all art since Egypt until the second world war. But what passes nowadays as art is just a bad joke.

  4. Carol Perehudoff

    I’m not sure you’re catching the irony here, Mike, but admittedly, I’m often wrong.

  5. Mike Hunt

    Hey hun (I was going to use a colourful word but “there are children watching”)
    ding dong u r wrong

  6. Gaylene raben

    I am an artist that has to see a figure or a no object in my paintings I am exploring abstract with another artist and don’ t feel that completion? Doesn’t help my critics are 4 men ( sons and hubby)

  7. TONY R. WHINCUP

    A few people like my abstract art, or so they say. Check It out on my website if you like, or don’t,, it’s up to you.

  8. Carol Perehudoff

    @spenscergallery – there may be some irony here. I leave it to you to decide.

  9. spencerp2011

    I am assuming this article is joke, right? You can’t really believe that Abstract Art or Conceptual Art styles are invalid…really….so as artists our vision is only valid if we create works that can be recognized as “something or someone, or somewhere”? Am I reading you wrong? Creating art itself is valid. I understand if someone doesn’t like or respond to Abstract Art or Conceptual Art..but to say that a certain style is invalid screams a serious lack of knowledge regarding Art History, or acknowledgement of the sacrifice and hard work the great masters of this style suffered. De Kooning, Rothko, Pollok, etc. Have you actually tried to create an Abstract piece? A meaningful one? I am sure that the great masters of these styles had more in mind when the created their art than hoping it would fit over someone’s couch. I know I do.

  10. Carol Perehudoff

    Thanks, Allan. Yes, there is room in this world for all types of art!

  11. allan milton

    Art is in the eye of the beholder. If your into contemporary art or abstract who cares! If the art you like makes you feel good inside thats all that matters. Great article..

  12. Carol Perehudoff

    Sorry Rafiki – I had to edit the swear word. There are children watching this program! Haha.

  13. Rafiki Kwaku

    Rothko’s Color Field art reminds me of *&*%^ on canvas.

  14. Marilyn Lightstone

    What is art?
    A question that will be asked forever.
    What is GOOD art?
    A question that will be asked forever.
    Personally, I have read so much gobbledygook art speak ( not you, Carol) that it could put me off contemporary art forever, it’s so ridiculous, though my own feelings are probably simplistic.
    I think art is in the eye (mind, soul) of the viewer. I may love something that someone else thinks is utter crap, and vice versa. Enough with the labels! Let art be democratic! Personally, my feelings about Hirst’s diamond – studded skull and all the rest of his ‘ouvre’ arose feelings akin to what I feel looking at a Keane picture of a sad-eyed waif coupled with both rage and awe at his audacity, but if both work for someone as ‘art’ so be it.
    Personally, there was a time when I felt no connection to abstract art and now I do. Big time. My problem is that there is just so much bad examples of it out there (there’s that subjective thing again!) .
    Because art is representational doesn’t automatically make it good, and the same thing goes for abstract art.

  15. Tatiana L.Sougakova

    Carol,
    What you wrote would be mostly true about art that is shown in large galleries or museums. But we have to remember, that what is shown there represents only a small portion of all different kinds of abstract art out there. There is also plenty of abstract art that is not elitist, as you say “fits over ones’ couch”. One just has to look at places that do not target owners of urban million dollar lofts.
    Color blocks and color fields, as well as abstract expressionism are last century trends, respected, but a bit outdated trends in art. In my opinion, especially color field trend is over-represented in many museums. Why is this style of art still chosen by the museum and exhibit curators is a bit of mystery to me. Maybe because it is textbook safe, maybe because some curators may suffer from visual fatigue (from looking at too much art), and simply want to look at something simple. There are plenty of very interesting, fresh trends emerging under the radars of general population. Why they are not known, sold for millions of dollars is a different question all together.
    Huge abstract paintings are what seem to be popular, so galleries tend to cater to this trend. Also, it has been proven that female visual perception is different from male, the way information is processed in the brain. This difference in perception is transferred into art (not just quilts :)) both during creative process for an artist, and during viewing. This gap in perception of art is slowly closing, it just has not reached most exhibit and museum floors, and has not opened the wallets of those powerful males, who would be willing to buy it.

  16. sherel

    Art – it’s all good dude including this article;-)
    Thanks Carol

  17. catherine fowler

    I like Katherine Sicotte sculpture.

  18. Katherine Sicotte

    Personally, I love both of your parents art. Are there qualitative differences in great art? Thanks for the post.

  19. Molly

    I love the photos!

  20. Catherine Fowler

    Great article!

  21. Lesley

    Great stuff, Carol! The colour field show at the AGO a few years ago http://www.ago.net/the-shape-of-colour was excellent. I remember thinking how everyone there seemed to be emotionally enchanted by all the colour, no one wanted to leave. Chromophobia by David Batchelor is a very entertaining book on the bias against colour …

  22. Jacqueline

    Abstract art is not valid? Abstract art is imperialist? What lunatics are spouting this nonsense? I sometimes feel guilty for dimissing conceptual art because it often seems like a bunch of discarded metal that I wouldn’t want to messing up my living room. But the transcendent beauty that abstraction is capable of…..who could dismiss that? Who does? Also, renegades like Jackson Pollack were certainly not guilty of American imperialimst any more than the later beatniks were. Anyway, Carol, thanks for this fascinating post and good luck with your Dad’s show….
    Jacquie

  23. Annie - FootTracker

    XD I chuckled as I was reading this post. I use to not like abstract art, especially after I visited SF MOMA in 1997, I was not impressed.

    After some artsy influence from my mom (who is an artist in Taiwan), now I can accept some abstract art….just some.

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