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Extensionist Manifesto
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Extensionist Manifesto
May 1, 2007
We, a group of artists working in the year 2007, in the medium of visual thought known as painting, have banded together to advance the sum and substance of the creative philosophy that guides our collective spirit, a philosophy we call "Extensionism."
Why it is Necessary
In the pluralistic world we now live, a painting, object, performance, ect., becomes "art" by the mere will of its creator. The question is no longer whether something is or is not art, for everything has the potential to become art, it just depends on how it is contextualized: Duchamp's ready-mades and Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes being the popular examples. As a result of this 'anything can be art' concept we now have Video, Performance, and Installation Art; Junk, Conceptual and Cyber Art; Post Modern, Post Expressionist, and Post Human Art; transfiguring the common place into art.
In the process the definition of art has lost all objectivity and, as Clement Greenberg observed, it became purely subjective, wholly dependent upon the 'taste' of the viewer. With the end of objectivity, the question of what is or is not art became irrelevant - this is because it's all "art." The only qualifying factor left is the subjective question of whether it is good art or bad art. In such a world, where objectivity no longer exists, as Arthur Danto observed, the grand historical narrative - the written record of our visual philosophy - comes to an end, and in the process, curses us, as artists, to total freedom.
The Curse of Total Freedom
For us, this freedom from the objective question has meant an end to the age-old passion that has long been the catalyst for artistic creations. For we believe that creative passion longs for a forbidden destination, a quest, a purpose, a problem, a rebellion, or conflict to ignite its fervor. But the post-modern world's any and everything art attitude has stripped us of this passion. In such a world, the goal of the journey, to create art, is met at the inception, leaving us with only the bland taste of an easy victory. Why rebel if the rebellion is already won. Why embark on a quest if the grail has already been found.
Why bother to create art if it is already art before it is created.
The conflict driven passion to "make art" has been replaced with the babblings of directionless self-expression, catering to either the artist's narcissistic need to entertain his emotional self or to appease the subjective "taste" of the public. Artists no longer meet to discuss in heated debate the question of what is and isn't art. Instead they gather to beat each other up with petty jealousies, in vanity driven competition to reap the financial gain that comes with being anointed "artist du jour".
It is the mandate of the Extensionists to exercise their free will to redefine the 'question' so that it sets forth new boundaries, embraces pluralism, creates objectivity, revives the grand narrative, reawakens history and, in the end, advances the visual philosophy of art to new levels of enlightenment. By redefining the 'question' we hope to liberate ourselves from the insidious 'subjective' freedom that is destroying our artistic passion and enslaving us to the role of entertainers, pandering to popular taste, pathetically struggling for the applause of art critics and the riches offered by the merchants of popular culture.
Redefining "The Question"
As Extentionists we have redefined "the question of what is art" by dividing art into two different categories - with two separate values. The first category is the determination of the entertainment value that a work of art has. The second category is to determine whether or not the art in question objectively advances the visual philosophy.
A single work of art has the potential of accomplishing one or the other or has the potential of doing both. Thus, a man standing alone in a field makes a mark on the ground and calls it art. We accept that it is art. The questioning process asks only on what level does the mark on the ground entertain us and to what degree does it advance the visual philosophy of art.
The man's art may or may not readily entertain us visually at some level. For the entertainment question is purely subjective in nature in that it is dependant upon the viewer's "taste." We feel that questions of taste "entertainment value" are for the populace at large and reviewers that specialize in critiquing the entertainment component of art. As Extensionists we are not concerned with the subjective "entertainment question" of art.
The question that Extensionism addresses is whether or not the man's mark on the ground, based on the history of art, objectively advances the visual philosophy of art. This question is answered by contrasting the man's mark against the whole of art history and then drawing a conclusion that is supported by historical based argument. This line of inquiry is the natural intellectual realm of educated artists, museum curators and art historians.
Thus, an artist may work with the intention to either entertain or advance the visual philosophy of art, or he may seek to do both. It is possible that the artist may have a brilliant career as an entertainer, but never objectively advance the visual philosophy of art. Just as an artist may have enormous success in advancing the visual philosophy of art, but never taste commercial success. It is also possible that an artist may be successful at doing both, or at doing neither.
As Extensionists, we are only concerned with the objective question of advancing the visual philosophy of art through the medium of painting, but this does not preclude the theories contained herein from being applied to other mediums of expression.
Extensionism
Our goal is to advance the visual philosophy of art/painting through an intellectual process we call "Extensionism." Ours is not a stylistic based philosophy, nor is it dogmatic, or sequential in its application. It is based on the premise that any period, process, idea, stylistic movement or philosophy in art history can be used as a departure point for inspiration to further illuminate, and thus, advance, the visual philosophy. Ours is a dialog between the modern and the past, with our eyes keenly fixed on the future.
We are not sequential in our approach, which is to say that we reject the idea that each new movement is birthed from the movement that directly preceded it. We believe that any period in art history may be fertile soil for creative ideas and has the potential to advance the visual philosophy of art. Thus, we are free to leap back and forth through time in our search for a departure point of inspiration. Like Rodin, who was inspired not by the sculptors of his time, but by Michelangelo, who lived 300 years before him; and like Frank Gehry, who's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was inspired, in part, by the work of 1920's Expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn and the ancient Hindu dancing Goddess Shiva; we look to all of art history for inspiration and direction.
The Soul As Guiding Light
We use the soul as a vehicle to test the truth of our passion, to tell us whether or not our quest is pure. For us it is essential that the chosen historical work, period, concept, or idea, that one uses, speaks deeply to the artist's soul. This is the "departure point of inspiration" and it is where the artist's spirit and the tools of his craft begin their dance with history. We believe the soul gleans history in order to extend our collective consciousness, and that the past and present, in a dialog, are the source of all creation.
We feel that this position is supported historically by Piet Mondrian's statement that "Art comes into being through the soul, for all true life is lived through the soul. The soul animates the work of art, but art originates in the spirit, as does the soul. Spirit is the universal; the determinate expression of the universal springs from it; but it becomes real, it becomes living reality, it becomes art, through the soul."
Opening History Up
While it is redundant or derivative to copy an existing period or thought, we feel there are infinite amounts of visual information between layers of time that have been abandoned prematurely or not thoroughly explored, displaced by the latest trend or cut short by war (as when Hitler closed the Bauhaus). We feel that by infusing insight from the present the past can be extended to become the future. By letting our soul guide us to the departure point and then using modern materials and conceptual tools, we believe that it is possible to open history up and use it to propel art forward to new philosophical levels.
Our philosophy is poly-applicable; we believe that Extensionism can be applied to multiple histories, on multiple fronts, in a single frame of time. As an example you can have a Gnostic based abstractionist departing from 12th century orthodox Christian icon painting, using 12th and 20th century materials and techniques to harmonize two opposing views of spirituality to solve age old problem philosophical problem and create a new moment in "Spiritual Abstraction." Or a modern figure painter extending the use of Surrealist Automatism to solve the impossible problem of capturing the "gestalt of human movement through a space and time continuum." You can have a neo-photo realist making Surrealist/Warhol conceptual additions to his painter's palette to explore elements of the subconscious that eluded Rothko in what is called "Stark American Realism." Or a painter of Monster Mono-Chromatics that uses the fluorescent paint and black light to intensify the visual theories of color field painting in a collision course with historic Viristic and Automatistic Surrealism.
Each of the above painters is involved in an inspired dialog with historical creative principles, each painter attempting to extend the historical into the future by way of modern visual and/or conceptual ideas and techniques.
Importance of That Which Falls
Beyond the Pale of History
In the world that existed before pluralism, that which was not within the grand narrative fell beyond the pale of art history and was considered of no consequence. As an example grand narrative contributor Clement Greenberg thought that Surrealism fell outside the pale and thus was of little importance to art history. He also thought that art that fell outside the western world, like African art, was also outside the pale. We reject this point of view.
It is our position that art that falls outside the pale of history can be of great importance in the Extensionist's search for departure points of inspiration, and thus should be given great consideration. We feel that this position is supported by art history and can be seen in the creative process of Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso.
Jackson Pollock developed action painting using a technique developed by the Surrealists called automatism. Motherwell, in an interview with art historian Sidney Simon, tells us that it was the Surrealist Matta that introduced the technique of automatism to him, and that he, in turn, introduced it to Pollock. "I asked Baziotes who he thought to be the most talented of his friends. Baziotes thought probably Pollock. He gives the impression of being very tough, and Baziotes didn't know how receptive he would be to the idea. I remember that Baziotes called up Pollock and we made a date to go and spend a whole afternoon with him. I talked, I guess, for four or five hours explaining the whole surrealist thing in general and the theory of automatism in particular, which nowadays we would call a technique of free association. I showed Pollock how Klee and Masson made their things, ect. And Pollock, to my astonishment, listen intently; in fact, he invited me to come back another afternoon, which I did. This would be in the winter of 1942."
Motherwell, in the same interview, reflecting on the origins of abstract expressionism, goes on to say: "My conviction is that, more than any other single thing, the introduction and acceptance of the theory of automatism brought about a different look into our painting. We worked more directly and violently, and ultimately on a much larger scale physically than the surrealists ever had. It was the germ, historically, of what later came to be called abstract expressionism."
Thus, Pollock, whom Greenberg declared as the most important artist of the twentieth century, and Abstract Expressionism, the style of painting that Greenberg made a career of championing, both owe their genesis to "automatism" a creative technique developed by the Surrealists, a group of artists that Greenberg considered to fall outside the pale of history.
The influence of art that falls outside the western world, and beyond the Greenbergian pale of history, can be seen in Picasso's work. Picasso tells us, in his own words, that his inspiration for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon came from a group of primitive African masks he saw in a market in Trocadero: "When I went to the Trocadero it was disgusting. The flea market. The smell. I was all alone, I wanted to get away. But I couldn't leave. I stayed. I understood something very important was happening to me, right? The masks weren't like other kinds of sculpture. Not at all. They were magical things. And why weren't the Egyptian pieces or the Chaldean? We hadn't realized it: those were primitive, not magical things. The Negro's sculptures were intercessors. I've known the French word ever since. Against everything, against unknown, threatening spirits. I understood; I too am against everything. I too think that everything is unknown, is the enemy . . . . All the fetiches were used for the same thing. They were weapons. To help people stop being dominated by spirits . . . . Les Demoiselles d'Avignon must have come to me that day."
We, as Extensionists, in the search for points of inspiration in which to depart from, believe that art which has historically fallen outside the pale of history, is as equally important as art that falls within the pale of history. Thus, we make free and liberal use of both in our search for inspiration that will lead us to the next extension of the visual philosophy.
Montage
At the heart of the integration of the past with the present is a creative process called montage. When we speak of montage we mean the phenomenon that occurs when two or more colors, concepts, lines, real objects, depicted objects, words, images, things, of any kind, when juxtaposed to each other, combine to form a new concept or quality. This unity resembles not so much the sum of all the different parts, but rather creation in that the result is qualitatively distinguishable from each component element when viewed separately.
Basically there are three types of montage that occur in the creation of a painting. The first is conceptual montage. This is where two or more concepts are brought together to drive forward a creative idea. The second is where we montage the conceptual idea with something tangible like paint, which results in a painting being made. The third is the pictorial montage. This is where two or more depicted colors, images, objects, are brought together on the pictorial plane to create the subject or essence of the work. Essentially we are montaging concepts, and we are montaging concepts with tangibles, which results in visual montages being created on canvas.
How does Extensionism interplay with montage? Through the Extensionist process the artist goes back in history and picks up a concept like 12th century icon painting, or automatism, or color field painting. He then extends it forward to the present, and then montages it with modern materials and ideas, which results in a visual montage we call the painting.
It is through the process of montage that we integrate the past with the present, in both conceptual and tangible terms, to get to the future. To get a better idea of the immense creative potential contained in this process, let's take a look at some examples.
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Extensions of Color Montage
In 1870, James Maxwell explained to us that light is a vibrating electromagnetic field, with each color being distinguished from the others by the number of vibrations they radiate. Like learning to control the strings on a violin that vibrate with musical notes, we have learned to manipulate these different "visual vibrations" and label them with various "color" names.
At first we used these color vibrations with the intention of helping create forms that replicated the nature that surrounded us. The sun was yellow, so we painted it yellow; the sky was blue, so we painted it blue. Trying to match the color in the paintings to as near as to the color the form had in nature.
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Then, as time progressed, we extended the use these color vibrations to give the forms in the paintings more intensity and psychological meaning than the forms had in nature. An example of using color vibrations to "intensify the form" would be Vincent van Gogh's intense coloration in his painting The Night Cafe where, he tells us, he "tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green."
Then came Piet Mondrian and his revolutionary idea that you could strip away the color vibrations from the form and use the color's emotional and psychological vibrations alone as material for composition. To compose paintings without the presence of any form, whose only content was the psychological content that the color vibration contained.
Kandinsky was convinced that color acts as a universal language of the soul. He believed that there are concrete, objective color associations, so that an abstract composition can, through the calculated use of color, invoke a very particular emotional response. He wrote in Concerning the Spiritual in Art "Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the piano, with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching key after another purposely, to cause vibrations in the soul."
Mondrian and Kandinsky's revelation that a vibration within the soul could be obtained by removing the form and composing with just color gave birth to a kind of color based emotional montage, in which the conflict between the painting's different colors created a visual dialectic, which synthesized into a spiritual element unique to the painting. Thus, the color red with its emotional elements, when conflicted against the color blue and its emotional elements, produce a very different emotional content than the individual colors do standing alone. Thus, changing the form of the color montage/conflict changes the emotional elements of the painting.
Mark Rothko combined the discoveries of Mondrian and Kandinsky with the surrealist technique of automatism and became a master using color montage to tap into our spiritual subconscious.
You can see a similar process occurring with Sean Scully who uses large stripes - each a stand-alone color field - to create emotional color montages. The interaction of the different color stripes within the painting creates a conflict that synthesizes into a new emotional element that is completely different from what the individual stripes would convey if they were left standing alone.
All this is made possible because nature is constantly teaching to us the base psychological characteristics that we associate with the color vibrations. If nature changes then the colors psychological elements will change as well. This creates a constant variable that serves the Extensionist in his search to advance the visual philosophy of painting.
Additionally, as our ability to appreciate montage in all the arts increases, the number of avenues available to use it will increase as well. It is interesting to note that the development and advancement of film montage corresponds directly with the advancement of montage in painting and the audience's ability to appreciate it. Compare Sergei Eisenstein's use of montage in his film Ivan the Terrible, Part I and the modern TV commercial with twenty scene changes in a single minute and you will get whiplash. Eisenstein's use of montage almost seems primitive when compared to the modern TV commercial. Compare Mondrian's montages with Scully's and you get the same contrast. As our appreciation of montage becomes more sophisticated, so will our ability to comprehend its hidden possibilities for more complexity and oddity in its use. Thus, we feel that color based emotional montage is fertile ground for further extension.
Conceptual Extensions of the Palette
We embrace conceptual extensions of the artist's palette. An historical example of this would be when Warhol added the new color of 'celebrity' to the artist's palette. Just as Wassily Kandinsky stated that when concerning the spiritual in art "The starting point is the study of colour and its effects on men." Warhol might have said, "The starting point is the study of celebrity and its effect on men."
We see the Abstract Expressionists as freeing us from the power of the mimic image from nature and delivering us on to the threshold of the raw emotional power of color montage - a process that was started with the impressionists. Warhol saw the power of celebrity as something that rivaled the power of raw color. He often used images of celebrities that the media had already fed us, either through the news or in movies. Images of Jackie Kennedy, in mourning, veiled in black, at Jacks funeral taken from a Life Magazine; or the stolen movie image of Elvis Presley, dressed as a gun toting cowboy, tight jeaned, legs spread and ready to draw; these popular images, already imprinted in our psyche, carry with them emotional "colors" that Warhol used to paint with. Like Rothko using raw color to unlock our spiritual subconscious, Warhol made us aware that many different objects and images have an "emotional color" that can be used as medium akin to paint. To drive home the point that he wasn't just mimicking, he often created a montage out of a single image by making repetitive use of it in different colors.
It is also possible to take the Warholian conceptual extension of the palette in an object direction as when Jasper Johns incorporated found real objects into his paintings. Or when Julian Schnabel added broken plates. Still another example of extending the palette would be when Yves Klien, a monochromatic painter, collaborated in 1954 with a Paris merchant of paint to create a vivid new hue of blue paint which Klien then used to launch a manifesto and exhibition of eleven blue paintings entitled "Proclamation of the Blue Epoch." Or when Dadaist, Kurt Schwitters put found objects on to artist's palette we see continual possibilities for expansion of the palette, in both real and conceptual terms.
The Montage of Established Styles
The montage of established styles is the conceptual process of "extending" different historical painting styles onto the artist's palette. Imagine an artist's palette that not only contained colors or images of celebrities, but also different painting styles - Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Realism, Surrealism - and that these different styles can be brought together in a single work of art work through the process of montage.
For there to be a montage of styles here needs to be as least two different styles evident in the work of art. The dialectic between styles can synthesize into a new visual energy. Thus, a painting may contain a montage of colors and a montage of different styles, both of which interplay with each other to produce the total image that is the painting.
A perfect example of stylistic montage can be found on the cover of Danto's book After the End of Art. It is a photo of a work of art by the artist David Reed who took a film clip from the movie Vertigo with the image of movie star Grace Kelly - ala Warhol - and inserted into it an abstract painting that he had created, and then made a film clip out of it. The montage of styles occurs between Warholian celebrity "paint" of Grace Kelly, and the abstract expressionist style painting. Reed combined the two to create a visual montage. This work also includes a montage of mediums - the painting and film clip.
We feel that extending different styles conceptually onto the artist's palette offers the artist a myriad of potential "montage" opportunities for advancing the visual philosophy.
The Painting As Object Montage
Before abstract expressionism, paintings were seen as things that contained images of real or abstract objects within the pictorial frame. With Abstract Expressionism the depicted images of objects - both real and abstract - were removed from the picture, turning the canvas into nonobjective paintings. As a result of this removal of objects the paintings themselves became objects.
We argue that when paintings went from containing objects to becoming objects, that it was then possible to extend the creative principle of montage to these new "paintings as objects." Thus, individual paintings could be created, then bolted together to create a kind of real object montage. Through this process, real objects - the paintings that are used to create the montage - are conceptually added to the painter's palette.
You see this in Sean Scully's work where he takes a painting and inserts a separate painting directly into it. He will also take several individual odd sized paintings and assemble them to create a single painting/montage. Thus, multiple "painting" objects are brought together to create a new object, whose visual energy in this unity is uniquely different from the individual paintings standing alone.
Scully's real object montage paintings would not be possible if the transformation of the painting into object had not occurred. It was the extension of the Surrealist technique of Automatism that gave birth to Abstract Expressionism, which removed the focus on the external world, and gave birth to the painting as object. It was Sean Scully's extension of the color montage principle and the painting as real object principle that gave birth to real object montage.
Reawakening The Emotional Power
Of The Depiction of Real Objects
Before the leap to pure abstraction and an exploration of the emotional power of pure color through the use of automatism, artists used the depiction of objects, in both real and abstract form, to tell a story or reflect the external world. For all depicted objects - just like colors and Warholian celebrities - contain an emotional value (which changes depending on the depiction), which the artist can assemble, in montage form, to create a pictorial image.
People who saw the movement from the depiction of real objects - to the depiction of abstract objects - to the shift to pure abstraction - misinterpreted it to mean that there was a kind of evolutionary process occurring that was leading to the negation of the emotional value of depicted real or abstract objects. This belief was found predominately in the essays of writers like Greenberg, who were so caught up in the legitimization of pure abstraction that they were blind to see that depicted objects, like colors, have an emotional value that could be used to extend the use of automatism into a completely new dimension.
Greenberg couldn[t see this because his primary concern was the extension of the use of the traditional color palette. It was inconceivable to him that the actual palette could be conceptually extended to include the emotional value of the Warholian celebrity (he in fact saw Warhol as an aberration who had no place in art history). To him the conceptual palette didn't exist, he intellectually couldn't comprehend that the Surrealists had conceptually shifted onto the palette the raw emotional value of depicted objects. Which made it possible for the assembly of montages of seemingly unrelated depicted objects, which expressed tonally an overall emotion or idea.
Artists, up through the 19th century, had used the depiction of real and abstract objects to tell stories or to reflect the real world that surrounded them. To do so they used the traditional color palette. The Abstract Expressionists, who in their early careers painted the external world using the depiction of real or abstract objects, shifted to being painters of the internal subconscious world by adopting the Surrealist technique of Automatism. But what they didn't adopt from the Surrealists was the conceptual shift of the depiction of real and abstract objects onto the palette. This, of course, was to be expected given the magnitude of their own conceptual shift to pure abstraction.
But in the process of making paintings real objects, and the creation of montages using these paintings as real objects, the artist was awakened to the possibility of using the images of real objects to create montages of more specific internal emotional value than was possible with the pure abstraction.
Though pure abstraction is very good at saying that which is impossible to say, it does a very poor job of saying that which can be said. A painting like Picassos Guernica could never have been painted using pure abstraction. Picasso needed to montage depicted real objects in abstract form to achieve the cathartic emotional power he was after.
The Extensionist leap we see taking place is the conceptual placement of depicted real and abstract objects onto the palette - ala the Surrealists - and a shift from using them to articulate the external world - ala Picasso - to using them to further explore the internal world - ala Rothko. We believe that this conceptual shift is one solution to the problem that Rothko confronted at the end of his life, for it gives the artist the power to explore inner emotions in greater depth than was capable with just the traditional color palette and the tools of pure abstraction.
Extensions of Veristic Surrealism
The Gnostic movement and its emphasis on discovering the God within and self-enlightenment was the foundation of early Jungian psychoanalysis. Carl Jung's extension of the Gnostic concept of self-enlightenment, in-turn, became the foundation of the Surrealist movement, who studied and incorporated into their work Jung's theories on the subconscious. Out of the Surrealist movement grew two kinds of Surrealism one known as Automatism and the other known as Veristic Surrealism.
Surrealistic Autotmatism favored the suppression of the conscious mind in favor of Jungian subconscious. This group of Surrealists focused on "feeling" and letting the subconscious take control, they understood Automatism to be the automatic way in which the images of the subconscious reached the conscience mind. They believed these images should not be burdened with contemplation.
As art historian and curator Michael S. Bell wrote, "Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the academic discipline of art as intolerant of the free expression of feeling, and felt form (depicted object), which had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance. They believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to life the images of the subconscious."
As already discussed, it was the Automatism's freedom from the form/depicted object and it's exploration of subconscious free will that led to the development of Abstract Expressionism.
For the Veristic Surrealists the form/depicted object was a metaphor for what was going on in the subconscious. Through the depicted object metaphor the concrete world could be understood, not by looking at the objects per se, but by looking at them through the parallel stories they call to mind within the realm of the subconscious.
From Bell's perspective, "Veristic Surrealists, saw academic discipline and form as the means to represent the images of the subconscious with veracity; as a way to freeze images that, if unrecorded, would easily dissolve once again into the unknown. They hoped to find a way to follow the images of the subconscious until the conscience could understand their meaning. The language of the subconscious is the image, and the consciousness had to learn to decode that language so it could translate it into its own language of words."
In current psychology terms the depicted image/object possesses the power of Jung's "symbolism" therefore setting off parallel stories in the painter's and viewer's subconscious. Which gives the artist the power to paint very refined focal points of subconscious imagery via depicted images/objects, which are montaged to create a gestalt of subconscious meaning. Specific emotions such as rage, lust, anger, love, can be brought into sharp focus and explored in great depth - opening up the nether regions of the subconscious for conscious contemplation via the image. A nude is no longer just a nude; it is now has the ability to become a mono-emotional image, which sets off a parallel story in the viewer's subconscious. The artist's self-portrait becomes more than just an image of the external self - it now has the power to become a refined articulation of artist's subconscious struggles told through an emotional-montage of depicted images/objects.
We believe that the great advancement of Abstract Expressionism that was birthed by Surrealist Automatism smothered the intellectual promise of Veristic Surrealism through a kind of reactionism that led to a complete rejection of any painting that wasn't abstract. If the painting had depicted images/objects in it, it was intellectually shunned as "Realism" and instantly proclaimed unimportant. Though the Surrealist road forked into two new directions most of the "art establishment" was only willing to go in one of the directions. We argue that this "blinded view of the world" occurred as a result of focusing on the visual aspects of a painting to the point of denying its conceptual foundation. As we discussed earlier, this is one of the reasons that Greenberg wasn't able to grasp the conceptual aspects of Warhol. Greenberg was too consumed with the fact that that paintings weren't "pure abstraction" to recognize the conceptual move Warhol was making. This happened even though the work was created within the same conceptual "subconscious" realm that had birthed Abstract Expressionism. By the mid 20th century the Philosophy of Painting had advanced into a vehicle for subconscious exploration - in both abstract and depicted terms - but many critics remained locked into a 19th century mode of analysis that favored aestheticism. Art had changed course, but many of the established critics of the time lacked the analytical tools to explain what was happening.
The "Realist" label, and the intellectual stigma that attached to it, was slapped onto other noted 20th Century artists, including Edward Hopper. Hopper, who was educated in part in Europe, used depicted objects/images to explore the inner loneliness and isolation of 1920s and 1930s America. As art critic Robert Hughes observed, "Hopper) saw that the old frontier had moved inward and now lay within the self . . ." Hopper was a hit with the public at large, but "art intellectuals" of the day wrote him off as a Realist - completely failing to see the conceptual leap inward he had made. It was as if the deep subconscious realm of loneliness and desolation that permeated the human experience had always been appropriate subject matter for an entire body of work.
We argue that Hopper's work was an extension of the basic ideals of Veristic Surrealism, in that he used depicted objects/images of people and places symbolic of stark loneliness to articulate the inner feelings of desolation that haunted the collective unconscious of industrial and rural America. Through Hopper, as with Rothko, we learned more about our Jungian unconscious - and in the process expanded our conscious horizon with a new kind of "image" that added to our visual language and extended our philosophy.
We, as Extensionists, believe that both Automatism and Veristic Surrealism have great potential for further development. We also believe that there is much fertile ground to be explored in the montaging of these concepts in either positions of conflict or harmony.
Limitations and Constraints
In advancing the visual philosophy of painting we are limited to the moment in time in which we create. The past limits us in that what has already been created cannot be recreated with the intention of advancing the visual philosophy. Thus, we cannot repeat history. We may be inspired by history, enlightened by history, we may even steal from history, but we cannot repeat history.
Nor can we venture too far into the future. For if we do we will end up as Jackson Pollock would have ended up if he painted action/drip paintings in 1850 instead of 1950. It is true that the artist may create a body of work that someday in the future may be declared visionary, but that is not the goal of the Extensionist. The goal of the Extensionist is too advance the visual philosophy of painting in the time that they live.
We are not free to make whatever we wish, we have boundaries and those boundaries are what gives us direction and frees us from the black hole of subjectivity.
The Artist Must Articulate How His Work Extends
The Visual Philosophy of Painting
We rebel against the artist as the idiot ("Bete comme un peintre") and thus demand that the painter articulate how his creation adds to, advances, or extends the visual philosophy of art. We do not accept that an artist can simply create and then leave it to others to articulate the intention of what he has done. Who knows the context in which the work was created better than the artist; who better to make the argument than the artist.
It is the uneducated mind that will rebel against this demand - the uninformed love to wallow in subjectivity because it requires only the primitive response of taste. Objectivity requires education and argument, thus we demand that the artist defend his work with an objective argument, an argument rooted in history, justifying and defending the visual product of the "extension."
We feel that the education of the Extensionist begins by viewing actual paintings and studying the underlying creative and technical principles that were the source of inspiration. Paintings have a kind of gestalt that can only be experienced by viewing. Pictures in books or slide shows are inadequate. It would be like reading Shakespeares Hamlet with whole paragraphs missing. You might get an idea that the play is about an angry prince, but much of the beauty and poetry would be missing.
We believe that museum curators and art historians are the "keepers" of the visual philosophy. Their job is to assemble this knowledge and present it to the public. Balthus said, "The Louvre was the most instructive place for me and chiefly because I looked at Poussin." Elizabeth Murray departed from Cezanne and was inspired by Vermeer. Francis Bacon liked to be described as an artist in dialogue with masters like Michelangelo and Picasso; in fact it was Picasso's paintings of the bathers that first inspired him. Giacometti was famous for prowling museums and liking "all the wrong paintings." Richard Serra was inspired by the way that Pollock allowed the form to evolve out of the process and still can be found walking the halls of the Met searching for inspiration.
Since we are more than mere art spectators, we need to study and master the creative principles and techniques that historically have driven artistic creation. You can watch a 1000 football games and not know how to play the game - to know how to play the game, you have to study and master the principles behind it. The same can be said of painting. To have the capacity to shift the depicted real object onto the palette you first need to know how to use paint to depict a real object. To do that there needs to be a period of study to learn the skills and history of the technique. Failing to obtain this education will limit a painter in his philosophical pursuits.
The chances of an uneducated artist discovering the next extension, is the same as some person uneducated in philosophy becoming the next Plato. It just isn't going to happen. If we hope to be successful in our Extensionist explorations we need first to be educated in our craft, its history, its techniques, traditions and revolutions.
The Origin of the Word "Extensionism"
The word and concept of extensionism comes to us from our own observations on the creative process; from Einstein's statement that his theory of relativity was an extension of the Newtonian hypothesis; and from Stephanie Terenzio's introduction to The Complete Writings of Robert Motherwell where she writes: "It was up to Motherwell to translate Matta's poetically expressed ideas into a cogent artistic theory that plastically extended psychic automatism beyond the limits of the surrealists more literary application."
In Summary
The Extensionist is involved in a dialogue with history, with the purpose of opening it up to further extension through the process of conceptual and visual montage, for the end purpose of objectively advancing the visual philosophy of painting.
Written by David Clark in extended dialogue with Steve Joy, Terry Rosenberg and Kent Bellows in the years 2001 through 2007.
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