Art and the Abstract
Sts,—Most artists who use abstract idioms do not much care how massive the ignorance is over their methods, or whether the public has a text-book on the subject or not. The communication in abstract art is not a physical restriction, as it is in Mr. Spencer's " realistic art." The artist who communicates by realistic methods is forced to be true to " common visual experience," and only by much hard physical work will he become proficient in such expression. Mr. Spencer thinks that abstract works of art are produced with a facile ease; certainly the result looks (physically) easy to do: it is, of course, the old question of academic v. poetic values.
It is fatal to appreciation to look for academic qualities in an abstract work; instead one should experience a reaction in the region of a spiritual solar plexus. Abstract art has a " mystique." It cannot be explained; witness the innumerable scholarly books attempting to do so, all different; witness the " statements " of many modern 'artists, all quite different from each other in their methods of working. The two art-forms are fundamentally opposed, because one expresses " common visual experience " and the other personal spiritual perception.
It is argued, then, that the experience is different, but no standards are lowered. The standard of one (the Leonardo type, say) is visually universal, of the other (the'Buffet type) personal and spiritual.—Yours
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