The broader attributes of this process of stylistic change have been ignored by formalist writers on art, whose point of view came to dominate art criticism during the 1960's. These writers narrowed their interpretation to formal problems, avoiding any analysis of content. Their underlying premise was that advanced artists conceive new styles by rejecting recently established styles that have become outworn through overuse. The implication here is that the artistic vanguard is motivated primarily by formalist considerations. To be sure, the Abstract Expressionists schooled themselves in older styles, assimilating the traditions of modern art more thoroughly than artists of their generation elsewhere in the world. In so doing, they were able to avoid repeating visually exhausted ideas and to venture in fresh directions. However, their preoccupation was with investing forms with meanings that relate to the whole of human experience, and any critical approach that does not consider these meanings is misleading.

Philip Guston, in a seemingly paradoxical remark made during the 1950's, underscored the contrasting attitudes of formalist criticism and Abstract Expressionisim, stating that in the future some artists would be looked upon as great formalists but that those who set out to be formalists would be dismissed entirely.

A statement by Mark Rothko sums up the Abstract Expressionists' antipathy to formalist aesthetics: "I would sooner confer anthropomorphic attributes upon a stone than dehumanize the slightest possibility of consciousness." Formalists have countered by asserting that statements concerning content and artistic intentions are too subjective to be dealt with objectively. Nevertheless, poetic insights, no matter how private, can be true revelations and can be checked against the evidence on the picture surface, verified, as it were, or at least made comprehensible. The remarks of an artist, when they correspond to visual "facts," can also be valuable in suggesting ways of experiencing his work and understanding how it came into being. The ultimate test, however, is the work itself. It must convince one that it embodies the meanings that the artist (or anyone else) attributes to it, else any discourse concerning content is irrelevant.

The term "Abstract Expressionism" is used mainly for the sake of convenience. It has an advantage over such names as "New York School," "action painting," and "American-type painting" because it has remained in the public mind and because it has been favored by critics and historians. As early as 1929, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., applied the term to Kandinsky's early improvisations. In 1946, Robert Coates of the New Yorker used it to characterize the paintings of a number of American artists. The name was popularized in a series of panel discussions held in 1952 at the Club and organized by the Abstract Expressionists -- ironically, the artists it was supposed to refer to, many of whom participated in the symposia, repudiated it. Their reason was a valid one, for they believed that they did not constitute a movement. Moreover, as Rothko said, they feared that "to classify is to embalm. Real identity is incompatible with schools and categories except by mutilation." . . .

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