Debate Between Abstract and Realism in Art

literary argument Between Abstract and Realism in ArtConsider the bequest of the Abstraction Realism disputation for cheatistic practice in the mid-fifties in either France or Italy.Both culturally and politically post-war France bring itself in a period of transition as Findling, Scott-Haine and Thackeray (2000) state, the euphoria of 1944 before long gave way to agrim realisation of the socio-political consequences of the Vichy Governments collaboration with the national socialists and the challenges of reconstruction. The Fourth Republic, instigated in 1946 and continuing until the latish 1950s, move to instil anotion of tabula rasa that would be mirrored in its art and culture.The filchion-realism argument that had begun before the war and had, perhaps, found its ultimate expression in the Modernist oeuvre through such(prenominal) painters as Mondrian, Miro and others was, ironically, questioned at this time, for instance, in essays such as denim-Michel Atlans Abstracti on and Adventure in modern Art (1950, 1997)Contemporary painting, being essential adventure and creation, is threatened by ii forms ofconformity which we perfectly opposeBanal realism, vulgar imitation of realityOrthodox abstract art, new academicism which tries to substitute for living painting an interplay of solely enhancive forms.(Atlan, 1950 published in Harrison and Wood, 1997 612)Atlan here makes an interesting point and one that has an frightful bearing on the tooshie of the abstract entity-realism debate in 1950s France for the post-war French artist the question became not how one should situation oneself in a polarity tho is thatpolarity itself prohibiteddated and archaic. The tabula rasa of the socio-political sphere could be seen as a reflection of inter-war regression when translated to the aesthetic the questionable politics of legion(predicate) of the Modernist writers, thinkers and artists making their work unattractive to thesons and daughters of the Four th Republic.It was this psycho-social zeitgeist that, perhaps, ensured the twinning of art with general theories of existentialism as John Macquarrie describes in his book of the same name(1972). For Macquarrie, post-war art (and particular those movements instigated in France) mirrors existentialism in its desire to negate the failures of pastontological systems and mooring the artist or philosopher at the mall of are constructive feat an attempt to find meaning after the horrors of the war without recourse to outdoor(a) teleological notions like truth and beauty. This situation appears, to an extent, in Bretons Prolegomena to a trinity Surrealist ManifestoAll present systems drop reasonably be considered to be nothing on the carpenters workbench. This carpenter is you. (Breton, 1990 287)In terms of the debate, then, between abstraction and realism both Atlan and Breton say essentially the same thing that what was demand culturally by post-war France was neither the consola tion of realism nor the negation of abstraction yet a synthesis of the two an aesthetic that could both look off into the future and signal a break with the past.We can see round of this in the work of Yves Klein. Both in terms of his painting and his photography, Klein continuously strove to achieve the kind of Hegelian synthesis we have been hither to feeling at. Kleins work in the mid to late 1950s represented two paradoxical elements on the one hand producing monochrome canvasses of a scintillatingly grim pigment (Monochrome blue sans titre, 1956 Monochromeblue sans titre, 1957) that all but obliterated any whiz of the artist as producer of work and, on the other, laying the root word for the creation of action pictures whereby nude models would be used as brushes on huge canvasses (Monique, 1960 La Grand Anthropometrie bleue, 1960) that, literally, places the human being at the centre of artistic creation.In Klein we can clearly the manifestation of the legacy of the r ealism-abstraction debate in the France ofthe 1950s and, as we suggested, it lay in the synthesis of the two a similarnotion to the philosophical ideas of Sartre and Camus who desire an ontologicalmeaning without teleology. In fact it was some of this thought that culminated inthe creation of neo-realism, of which Klein was a leading figure and about whomPierre Restany wroteWe (the neo-realists) are so bathed in direct expressivity up to our necks, at fortydegrees above the Dada zero, without aggressiveness, without a downrightpolemical intent, without any other justificatory itch than our realism. Andthat works positively. Man, if he shares in reintegrating himself in reality,identifies it with positively. (Restany, 1960, published in Harrison and Wood,1997 711)What were neo-realists like Klein, Arman, Daniel Sporerri and Jean Tinguely but artists who attempted a fusion,and thereby a transcendence, of the archaic debate that Altman spoke of?We can see how such a view could bese en to lay the foundations for not only when the postmodern movement in France that sought to find meaning in a post-Enlightenment world whose meta discourses in the words of Jean Francois Lyotard (2002 xxiii) were beginning to fail, but also the socio-political events of 1968 and the student uprising. Both of these can be seen to arise out of, or at least reflect, the aesthetic and cultural movements of the 1950s that sought to not only destroy the memories of the Vichy Government and the long years of Nazi occupation but also signal a progression away(predicate) from the nihilism of Dada that left a void in the place of that which it negated.The legacy of the realism-abstraction debate, then, is one of Hegelian synthesis, arising out of the thesis and the antithesis. This situation was, perhaps, felt more strongly in countries suchas France, Italy and Spain where the political situation prompted a urgently motifed change in aesthetic and ontological environment and where the a im for a humanist consolation was as great as the need for an expression of the madness of the modern age.ReferencesBreton, Andre, (1990), Manifestoes of Surrealism, (Michigan University of Michigan)Causey, Andrew (1998), Oxford History of Art Sculpture Since 1945, (Oxford Oxford University Press)Findling, John, Scott Haine, W and Thackeray, Frank (2000), The History of France, (London Greenwood Press)Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul(1997), Art in Theory 1900-1990 An Anthology of Changing Ideas, (London Blackwell)Kostelanetz, Richard (ed) (1989), Estheticssic Contemporary, (London Prometheus)Lyotard, Jean Francois (2004), The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester Manchester University)Macquarrie, John (1972), Existentialism, (London Pelican)Roskill, patsy and Carrier, David(1983), Truth and Falsehood in Visual Images, (Amherst The University of Massachusetts)http//www.yvesklein.net/