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Art Criticism and Perceptual Research Author(S): Cindy Nemser Source: Art Journal, Vol Art Criticism and Perceptual Research Author(s): Cindy Nemser Source: Art Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Spring, 1970), pp. 326-329 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775461 . Accessed: 29/09/2011 09:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org Art Criticismand Perceptual Research Cindy Nemser Rebellion in the ranks of the perceptual lieves that the originality of Morris Louis's For Robert Morris, gestalt theory has psychologists of the 1950's is finally having veil paintings consists, above all, in the "re- played an essential role in the meaning he its repercussions in the art world. New per- markable rich and varied internal articula- wished his works to convey. In his "Notes on ceptual theories, based on Dewey's Transac- tion of what is experienced as a single com- Sculpture," Morris says that constancy of tionalism and the more recent experiments of prehensive configuration."5 He finds the flor- shape is to be obtained by the use of polyhe- Franklin Kilpatrick and F.H. Allport (see als a step backward because the entities of drons with "strong gestalt sensation." The footnotes 10 and 11) have invaded the think- color tend to disintegrate into a profusion of viewer's acceptance that the pattern within ing of artists and critics. discrete shapes.6 one's mind corresponds to the "existential fact Until quite recently, few art critics or theo- Critics have ascribed this involvement with of the object, enables him to become more rists were aware of the new developments in the immediately perceived pattern or single intensely aware of other phenomena such as perceptual research. The older gestalt ap- image to scores of contemporary artists. light, space, and shape itself.9 proach was (and still is) widely accepted by Rothko, Newman, Still, Reinhardt, and Gott- Today the gestalt approach still dominates many artists and critics as the "correct" way lieb were among the first to be put into this the thinking of many art critics and aestheti- of seeing. According to Douglas N. Morgan, category. The Responsive Eye exhibition at cians. However, there are others who have be- the core idea of gestalt psychology is "the belief the Museum of Modern Art, in 1965, made come cognizant of the revolution that has that perception (and perhaps other psycho- the public more aware of the influence that taken place among the perceptual theorists. logical phenomena as well) can be explained gestalt psychology had had on the arts. In his They have discovered that "configurationism in terms of neutral factors tending to pro- catalogue, William Seitz wrote that "stripped had achieved its success at the cost of practi- duce organized, though dynamically changing of conceptual association, habits, and refer- cally ignoring the motor side of the patterns or segregated groups of units, or ence to previous experience, perceptual re- organism."'? 'wholes.' "1 sponses would appear to follow innate laws. According to Franklin Kilpatrick, the ge- Building on this basic gestalt approach, . " In order to demonstrate these inherent stalt approach appeared perfectly credible as Rudolf Arnheim asserted that in "perception laws, Seitz selected works that used rectangles, long as psychologists examined perception there is a tendency to the best possible equi- squares, and circles by themselves as an en- from object to subject. Using that method, librium," and that "well organized visual tire image, or in concentric or radial arrange- the same object would always produce the form produces in the visual projection areas ments or all-over patterns of dots, stripes, or same stimulus pattern on the retina. How- of the brain correspondingly balanced, orga- lines. Though his exhibition presented paint- ever, when the operation was reversed, the ex- nization." Thus he supplied a physiological ings and reliefs of artists as diverse as Brach, perimenters discovered that "any given visual explanation for his aesthetic claim that well Cunningham, Le Pare. Vasarely, and Noland, stimulus pattern can be produced by an in- ordered form gives pleasure.2 they all could be viewed as practitioners of a finity of different external conditions.'l It This correlation of aesthetic pleasure with gestalt oriented art. was also observed, that though there were what appeared to be scientific fact, made ge- Among the "minimal" artists, Donald Judd many configurations for the same objects, stalt thinking an important part of many crit- and Robert Morris, in 1966, expressed their only one was chosen by the receiving orga- ical theories of art. It was only natural that immediate concern with gestalt imagery as nism. This implied that some form of pre- the art of the last twenty years was viewed both artists and art theorists. In speaking of conceived selection was taking place, and that through eyes seeking the essential "whole" his sculpture in an interview with Bruce the method of choosing was the key problem image. Clement Greenberg, in his "American Glaser; Judd stated, "I just want it to exist as in perceptual science. Type Painting," attributes Pollock's strength a whole thing. And that's not especially un- Going back to Dewey's transactionalism and and originality to his "power to assert a usual. Painting's been going towards that for Whitehead's occasionalism, Kilpatrick and paint-strewn or paint-laden surface as a single a long time."8 Allport construed new theories for dealing synoptic image."3 Barbara Rose, in interpret- ing Pollock's works also speaks of the "total unity and indissolubility" of the paintings."4 In almost any Pollock criticism of the last two decades, one finds a critical awareness of the artist's all-over pictorial image. Using these interpretations of Pollock's paintings as a point of departure, many crit- ics and historians have concerned themselves with finding similar gestalt patterns in the works of other painters and sculptors. The success or failure of "color field" paintings is often measured by the artist's ability to pro- duce configurations that project the most eas- ily read "universal" patterns on the receiving mechanisms of the viewer. Michael Fried be- This is MRS. NEMSER'Ssecond article to ap- Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Estate of Jackson Pollock, George A. pear in ART JOURNAL. See A.J. Fall '69. * Hearn Fund, 1957. 326 Adolph Gottlieb, The Crest, 1959, Whitney Museum of American Art, Gift of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Photo: Geoffrey Clements. Clyfford Still, Number 6, 1945-46, Whitney Museum of American Art, Promised aift of B. F. Friedman. Photo: Geoffrey Clements. with perception. Though Kilpatrick conceded nature of their production is bound to be ig- teristic of a gestalt is that once it is estab- that some stimulus is necessary to produce a nored. "It is true that the optical nature of lished, all the information about it, qua ges- configuration, the form in which it is pro- the work holds up at a distance," says Muss- talt, is exhausted."'' On the contrary, his new jected is a result of a "dynamic fusion involv- man, "but, close to, the issue of opticality works indicate a realization that the act of ing cues from the environment, assumptions, vanishes, and one is absorbed with how the perceiving, even the simplest of forms, is an and actions."'2 The concept of perception pools of paint have formed and how one on-going, dynamic process which provides must include past experience as well as color may have become mixed with each viewer with different choices and infor- immediate mental and motor responses. To another."'4 Max Kozloff, William Rubin, and mation. Indeed, in the April, 1968 issue of those accepting this line of reasoning, it is Robert Rosenblum have all remarked on a the Artforuim, Morris writes that the positive obvious that no person ever receives precisely similar phenomenon in the works of Morris characteristic of his new work is a "disengage- the same message from the same environ- Louis. In a critical analysis that could be ment with preconceived enduring forms and ment. Each individual develops his own way cited as a superb example of the new percep- orders for things."17 of reading each new situation. Perception is tual approach advocated by Kilpatrick and His recent arrangements can be seen as the now viewed as an aggregate of behaviour. It Allport, Rosenblum responds to Louis's perfect vehicles with which to demonstrate can not be seen as separate from learning. paintings on many different levels. He under- this conception and the new perceptual theor- These new perception theories have stands that their formal construction is a ies to which it is related. On viewing the larg- brought about a crisis in the field of behav- combination of all-over design and natural est work at the Castelli warehouse, one is en- ioral psychology and in other academic areas configurations of accident. He also sees them veloped in a sea of objects, and perception as well. Aestheticians, however, have not made as "images of the intangible core of nature's changes drastically with even the slightest use of these recent findings. Only through energies-a vital, chromatic substance that movement.
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