9781405169226_4_00A.qxd 12/8/08 7:50 PM Page 107 A abstraction Artworks are abstract, we might accepts that the traditional definition of abstrac- think, when they do not represent: abstraction tion does apply to some paintings. The prob- is simply the absence of representation. After all, lem is that it does not apply to most of those we there is a natural contrast between abstract think of as abstract. and representational painting; and music, at We can flesh out the second difficulty by least in its “absolute” (i.e., abstract) form, does considering either abstract painting or music. not clearly represent at all. Absolute music, It is hardly plausible that these never make like abstract painting, expresses feelings and any reference to things beyond themselves. perhaps thoughts, but, we suppose, expression The idea that they express emotions and ideas and representation are different. is intended to concede as much, without rein- However, there are two difficulties with tak- troducing representation. But is it clear that ing this to capture the nature of abstraction. expression is not simply another form of repre- First, on closer inspection it excludes art that sentation? Of course, it differs from some kinds intuitively counts as abstract; and second, the of representing – from the depiction that con- definition is only as clear as the rather murky cerns Wollheim, for instance, or from describing notion of representation itself. things in language. But the notion of represen- To illustrate the first difficulty, consider tation is both highly general and resists easy Richard Wollheim’s argument (1987: ch. 2) analysis. Until we settle whether expression is that a good deal of abstract painting in fact itself representing, our definition of abstraction represents in the same way as painting of leaves us uncertain whether expressive absolute other kinds. In looking at a typical Kandinsky, music, for instance, counts as abstract or not. for instance, while I may not see in it everyday Of course, there is nothing in itself wrong objects such as men and buildings, I do see with a definition leaving boundaries vague. colored shapes arrayed in three-dimensional Many phenomena exhibit hinterlands where space. The red trapezium that breaks a long it is simply unclear whether they hold. The black line is seen as a red rectangle, tilted at problem is rather that defining abstraction as an angle to the viewer, and lying in front of a absence of representation leaves the limits of black strip. I am thus simultaneously aware of the latter unclear as those of the former, on our how marks are distributed on the canvas and intuitive understanding, are not. of rather different objects arranged in depth. The alternative is to see abstraction, not as Since for Wollheim pictorial representation the absence of representation, but as a mat- just is the deliberate generation of experiences ter of what is represented. Wollheim suggests with this twofold nature, he concludes that that what marks out the Kandinsky from more the Kandinsky represents shapes in three- traditional painting is that the latter is figur- dimensional space. And although the details of ative. Traditional works represent things of Wollheim’s argument invoke his views about readily identifiable kinds (dogs, houses, battles, pictorial representation, his conclusion has one-eyed giants), and individual members of independent appeal. Now, Wollheim does not those kinds (Louis XIV or Polyphemus). Much think every abstract painting can be treated abstract painting instead represents things in this way. Certain works of Mondrian and which themselves belong only to relatively Barnett Newman, he says, resist being seen as abstract kinds – red rectangles or black strips, other than simply marks on a canvas. Thus he for instance. In similar vein, Kendall L. Walton 107 9781405169226_4_00A.qxd 12/8/08 7:50 PM Page 108 abstraction (1988) explores the idea that what marks Never far behind questions about the nature out abstract works is that what is represented of abstraction are questions concerning its value. or conveyed is purely general. While a novel may Abstraction is sometimes itself a source of value describe a specific locale and specific events (and not a mere accompaniment to other qual- that occur within it, abstract works (Walton’s ities that are valuable). Where abstract art is focus is music) convey, for instance, only the profound – in the greatest works of absolute general notion of struggle, or the dynamics music, or the masterpieces of abstract painting of an emotion. In the context of painting, a – the abstractness of the works is surely central natural relative of Walton’s thought lies in the to their achieving what they do. Something idea that abstraction should be understood as like this thought no doubt underpins the per- the product of abstracting from the specifics sistent tendency to valorize absolute music of visual phenomena. While a nineteenth- as the purest form of that art, and the attempts century Realist painter might have sought to made during the heyday of Abstract Expres- capture all the detail of some scene, his more sionism to do the same for it in relation to abstract successors seek instead to extract painting (Greenberg 1971). Yet it can seem from it the bare essentials of form and structure. puzzling how abstraction can be of value. How This idea is familiar from the work of Cézanne, can eschewing representing altogether, or for instance, in which buildings and natural limiting oneself to representing only what is features are stripped down to their basic geo- general, help produce art worth caring about? metry. But it also runs through a good deal of Where art is abstract in our second sense, later work, such as the drawings of Picasso (in there is no real difficulty in understanding how almost any of his periods). Abstraction in this that promotes value. Less abstract art captures sense need not mean abandoning the repre- the details of particular things, or of specific sentation of particulars – Picasso’s own portrait types: the precise features of a sitter’s face, per- of Françoise Gilot as a flower shows that what haps, or the character of a typical Victorian can be preserved is the form of an individual’s pickpocket. But why, apart from historical or look, abstracted from the details of her appear- psychological curiosity, should we care about ance. What it does necessarily involve is representations that capture such features? abandoning detail in favor of the basic form, The sitter is available to be studied for herself, structure, or gestalt. and the pickpocket probably never existed. Although it is perhaps not entirely clear What are either to me, and what does the quite what any of these suggestions involves, and painting or novel make of either that I could thus whether there are one or several proposals not make for myself? Surely one of the things here, it is clear that they all tend in the same to want from art is something more universal, direction. The result is a definition of abstrac- something to take away that can be found in tion that, in contrast to its predecessor, treats other instances of the types, and in life more gen- it as a matter of degree. It also opens up the erally. For that, however, what matters is the prospect of making sense of abstraction in arts, more general content of the artworks. That such as literature, in which it is unclear what might be present in nonabstract works – they would be left if representation were absent. may represent the general by representing the A full account of abstraction will need specific. It is also, however, certainly present in to deploy both definitions now before us. As works that are abstract in our second sense. Wollheim notes, some, if not many, paintings That leaves untouched, of course, works are abstract in virtue of not representing at that are abstract in the other sense, those that all; and perhaps there can be musical art that do not represent at all. Since abstraction here neither represents in any more straightfor- is conceived purely negatively, the prospects ward way nor expresses anything. (Some for understanding how it contributes to value indeed, have considered this to be the true mis- are limited. We may instead ask a related sion of absolute music.) So the first notion can- question: how can the work have value at all, not be dispensed with entirely. But, equally, given that it does not represent anything? we have seen good reason not to rely on it But puzzlement over that is only in place to alone. the extent that we understand how in general 108 9781405169226_4_00A.qxd 12/8/08 7:50 PM Page 109 adorno, theodor w(iesengrund) representation contributes to art’s value. Since (1970). His aphoristic style reaches a high point I doubt our understanding of that issue goes in the wide-ranging Minima Moralia (1951), deep, we should not rush to find it mysterious one of the great books of the postwar period. how art can be successful in representation’s Adorno’s primary aesthetic interest is in the absence. “autonomous” art that emerged from earlier functional contexts at the end of the eigh- See also drawing, painting, and printmaking; teenth century. This autonomy “was a function music and song; cognitive value of art; ex- of the bourgeois consciousness of freedom that pression; picture perception; representation. was itself bound up with the social structure” (1997: 225); thus art expressed the autonomy bibliography of the individual subject vis-à-vis society. Art’s Greenberg, Clement. 1971. Art and Culture. Boston: autonomy means a development of its own Beacon.