Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Painting

From Chapter 7 The Origin and Development of an art of Internal
Necessityou: Abstract Expressionism.

page 244 ff


The belief that the facture or handwriting of the artist is an
essential clue to his identity and quality had been the basis of the
methodical criticism of the arts from the beginning of such criticism
in the 'seventies of the nineteenth century (Morelli and
Cavalcaselle). Fenellosa and other exponents of Oriental art had
later drawn attention to the high aesthetic value assigned to
calligraphy in China and Japan. The present appreciation of such
artists as Sesshu (c. 1420-1506), with his 'flung-ink technique, no
doubt has come about as a result of the discovery of similar
techniques by modern artists; but the whole impact of Oriental art
was such as to create an appreciation of the abstract qualities in
works of art generally.

The priority of Kandinsky's discovery of 'pure composition' is not in
question, but Kandinsky approached the whole problem in a most
cautious way. He realized that 'the emancipation from dependence
on nature is just beginning':

`If until now (i.e. 1910-12) colour and form were used as inner
agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of
composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the
Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow
business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist
must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh
colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic
creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to
nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure
colour and indepen\pient form, we shall produce works that are
mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or
a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself,
despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists
obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is
still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved
by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve
vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art),
but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding
vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak'.19


If, in the next fifty years, these words of Kandinsky's had been
remembered, there would have been much less confusion of
thought and of practice. We are nowadays a little shy of using the
word 'soul', or phrases like 'vibrations of the spirit', but it is not
difficult to substitute the terminology of the psychology that has
developed since 1912, and then we see that the point Kandinsky is
making is obvious enough. It is not sufficient in an art of pure
composition to appeal to sensation: the work of art must evoke a
response at a deeper level, the level we now call unconscious; and
the 'vibrations of the spirit' that then take place are either
personal, in that they effect some kind of mental integration, or
perhaps supra-personal, in that they assume the archetypal
patterns into which mankind projects an explanation of its destiny.

Implicit in these premonitions of Kandinsky is a distinction which
was to separate his early experiments in pure composition from his
later abstractions, and these later abstractions from the abstract
expressionism that is our present concern. If one compares the
Compositions of 1910-14 with the work Kandinsky did after his
return from Russia in 1922, it might seem at first that he had
succumbed to the 'mere geometric decoration' of whose
superficiality he had been so fully aware in 1910. Kandinsky was
always conscious of the mathematical basis of aesthetic form.
`The final abstract expression of every art is number', he declared
with emphasis in his book, and for this reason if no other he could
not finally surrender himself to any form of automatism. The work
of art must have a 'hidden construction', not an obvious
geometrical construction, but nevertheless one with 'calculated'
effects. He ended his treatise of 1912, as I have already pointed
out, with the claim that we were approaching 'a time of reasoned
and conscious composition, in which the painter will be proud to
declare his work constructional' . The significance of the words I
have emphasized is inescapable, and nothing in the future work of
Kandinsky was to contradict them.

A comparable theorist of the opposing school of abstraction has
not yet arisen, though one may find psychological justifications of
it," and the surrealist theories of 'automatism' were perhaps an
inspiration to the movement. But here the distinction that has to
be made is between the spontaneous projection of unconscious
(more properly speaking, pre-conscious) imagery, and the
recognition, in chance effects or spontaneous gestures, of forms
that have an uncalculated and indeterminate significance. A
graphologist will find a person's handwriting significant, and will
generally prefer to look at it upside down in order not to be
distracted from a contemplation of its form as distinct from its
literal meaning. Abstract Expressionism, as a movement in art, is
but an extension and elaboration of this calligraphic expressionism,
and that is why it has a close relationship to the Oriental art of
calligraphy.


A direct influence of Oriental calligraphy is seen in the work of
Henri Michaux, who travelled in the Far East in 1933,21 and has
since become a somewhat esoteric master of calligraphic painting
in Europe; and in the work of Mark Tobey (b. 1890) an American
artist who visited the Far East in 1934, when he made a special
study of Chinese calligraphy. Another American artist associated
with Tobey who sometimes works in a calligraphic style (though
never with an abstract intention) is Morris Graves (b. 1910). He too
visited the Far East ( Japan) in 193o.

The calligraphic style of these Pacific Coast artists penetrated to
Europe and reinforced the `orientalism' of Michaux—the influence
of Tobey in Paris has been profound. Nevertheless one must point
out that even now Tobey is not strictly speaking an abstract
expressionist—his art does not spring spontaneously from `inner
necessity'. He is usually inspired by an external motif, an
atmospheric effect of nature or of cities, and though the final
picture surface (usually, as in Klee, of a miniature scale) may be
completely non-objective in effect, in origin such an art is still
analytical of nature rather than expressive of an inner necessity.
Tobey has said: 'Ourground today is not so much the national or
the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth.
. . . Ours is a universal time and the significances of such a time
allpoint to the need for the universalizing of the conscious- ness
and the conscience of man. It is in the awareness of this that...



American artist who visited the Far East in 1934, when he made a
special study of Chinese calligraphy. Another American artist
associated with Tobey who sometimes works in a calligraphic style
(though never with an abstract intention) is Morris Graves (b.
1910). He too visited the Far East ( Japan) in 193o.
The calligraphic style of these Pacific Coast artists penetrated to
Europe and reinforced the `orientalism' of Michaux—the influence
of Tobey in Paris has been profound. Nevertheless one must point
out that even now Tobey is not strictly speaking an abstract
expressionist—his art does not spring spontaneously from `inner
necessity'. He is usually inspired by an external motif, an
atmospheric effect of nature or of cities, and though the final
picture surface (usually, as in Klee, of a miniature scale) may be
completely non-objective in effect, in origin such an art is still
analytical of nature rather than expressive of an inner necessity.
Tobey has said: 'Ourground today is not so much the national or
the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth.
. . . Ours is a universal time and the significances of such a time
allpoint to the need for the universalizing of the conscious- ness
and the conscience of man. It is in the awareness of this that