Summary: Schapiro, "The Nature of Abstract Art"

Summary: Meyer Schapiro, "The Nature of Abstract Art"

There are two general arguments in Schapiro's essay.

1. Schapiro wants to show that changes in artistic styles can be explained only in terms of the larger historical changes in social conditions, values and ways of seeing. Thus, the history of society is an essential aspect of the history of art. This aspect of Schapiro's analysis functions as both a refutation of the thesis of autonomy and an argument for the social history of art.

2. To make that argument compelling, Schapiro must also address the formalist claim (going back to Bell) that aesthetic quality (significant form) is the only thing that matters in art. To do this, he must show that realism (or content) and abstraction (or form) are not entirely distinct from open another and, thus, that an abstract painting has meaning that goes beyond its purely aesthetic qualities. This is a thesis about the nature of representation.

The Argument for the Social History of Art

Schapiro's argument for the importance of social analysis in art history was written in response to an essay by Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York which accompanied a 1936 exhibition entitled Cubism and Abstract Art. The exhibition was designed to introduce and explain recent developments in European abstract art to Americans, many of whom had never actually seen works by artists such as Picasso, Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, and others. Abstract art was often presented both by its practitioners and by sympathetic critics as an expression of the human spirit which

a. excludes reference to natural forms, and

b. takes the principals of aesthetic form to be universal and, thus, present in all works of art, regardless of when and where they are produced.

Art was understood as analogous to mathematics, in the sense that it could be used to achieve practical results, but could also be studied in its "pure", or "abstract", form independent of its possible applications.

In Barr's essay, the development of abstract art was explained as a logical and inevitable result of the exhaustion of the possibilities inherent in realism. Shortly after the turn of the century, under the constant pressure to produce original works, but constrained by the realist tradition, a number of stylistic transformations took place:

a. Neo-impressionism gave way to Cubism, Futurism, and Fauvism;

b. Cubism gave birth to Suprematism, Constructivism and Neoplasticism;

c. Fauvism gave rise to Expressionism;

d. Expressionism spawned Non-geometric Abstract Art; and

e. Suprematism, Constructivism and Neoplasticism gave rise to Geometrical Abstract Art.

Each of these changes was supposed to have occurred because artists had grown tired of realistic or representational art; they felt as if they had exhausted the possibilities inherent in it, and in looking for something radically new, they were led, by the internal logic of art, to the production of abstract works. Ultimately, a purely nonobjective art was born.

This way of explaining changes in artistic styles is referred to by Schapiro as the "Theory of Exhaustion, Boredom and Reaction". It is a theory which assumes that one's artistic interests are separate from one's social relations, political interests and religious convictions, not to mention one's race, class and gender. Thus, Barr's theory is in direct opposition to Schapiro's view that social relations play an essential role in the history of art.

There are a number of problems confronting Barr's theory of exhaustion and reaction.

a. It reduces the history of art to that of fashion. This seems, at best, a superficial understanding of the complex factors underlying stylistic changes in art. [Does Schapiro offer any arguments against the notion that artistic styles change as a result of boredom and reaction on the part of artists? Can you think of any arguments to support Barr's interpretation?]

b. It ignores the "energies required for the reaction", i.e. the explanation of how a change in style is linked to a shift in values and perception due to the broader historical conditions. Since changes in philosophy and literature, for example, often reveal similar shifts in style and sensibility, there is good reason to think that such changes must be understood relative to a more encompassing framework, i.e. not autonomously.

c. Proponents of the theory have to smuggle in a false teleology to give a sense of unity to a large series of chronological changes in style. But what reason is there to think that such goal-directed behavior actually governs these changes? [Again, does Schapiro give reasons why it is wrong to think that such changes are driven by a larger tendency or movement toward a particular end? Can you think of any?]

d. The theory makes no attempt to explain why boredom and reaction occur when they do rather than at some other time. Thus, the theory operates retroactively and explains nothing. One simply looks for a change in style, assumes boredom and exhaustion, and constructs a story in terms of artistic problems and techniques to make the change seem logical and inevitable.

e. Finally, such explanations are too simplistic in that they reduce the description of human behavior to that of a single mechanism (as a "bouncing ball").

Schapiro supports his rejection of the theory of exhaustion by describing the reaction to Impressionism in terms of shifts in the social structure and urban life around Paris in the last half of the Nineteenth Century. "The reactions against Impressionism, far from being inherent in the nature of art, issued from the responses that artists as artists made to the broader situation in which they found themselves, but which they themselves had not produced." [194]

Realism, Abstraction and the Nature of Representation

According to Schapiro, Barr's interpretation depends upon the supposed opposition of realist art to abstract art. This opposition, in turn, rests on two common assumptions.

a. Representation is a passive mirroring of objects and is, therefore, non-artistic and non-aesthetic.

b. Abstraction is purely aesthetic and governed by its own laws, independent of the social and material world. (This is, of course, the thesis of autonomy making yet another appearance.)

The problem is that these assumptions are based on a misunderstanding of both the nature of representation and the nature of abstraction. With regard to the former, representation is not a passive mirroring but is dependent upon specific principles, methods, values, and points of view. The realist must use techniques of abstraction and design in creating effects of space and color on a two-dimensional surface. As for the latter, all form is shaped by experience and non-aesthetic concerns. The abstractionist, for example, creates new shapes corresponding to expressive states of mind.

Abstract elements of a representational image do not have the same character or emotional force apart from the representation. To abstract them is to change their effect. Representation is not equal to an abstract design clothed by a natural form. Thus, form and content are inseparable.