Art Criticism and Perceptual ResearchAuthor(s): Cindy NemserSource: Art Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Spring, 1970), pp. 326-329Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775461 .Accessed: 29/09/2011 09:56

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Art Criticism and Perceptual Research

Cindy Nemser

Rebellion in the ranks of the perceptual psychologists of the 1950's is finally having its repercussions in the art world. New per- ceptual theories, based on Dewey's Transac- tionalism and the more recent experiments of Franklin Kilpatrick and F.H. Allport (see footnotes 10 and 11) have invaded the think- ing of artists and critics.

Until quite recently, few art critics or theo- rists were aware of the new developments in

perceptual research. The older gestalt ap- proach was (and still is) widely accepted by many artists and critics as the "correct" way of seeing. According to Douglas N. Morgan, the core idea of gestalt psychology is "the belief that perception (and perhaps other psycho- logical phenomena as well) can be explained in terms of neutral factors tending to pro- duce organized, though dynamically changing patterns or segregated groups of units, or 'wholes.' "1

Building on this basic gestalt approach, Rudolf Arnheim asserted that in "perception there is a tendency to the best possible equi- librium," and that "well organized visual form produces in the visual projection areas of the brain correspondingly balanced, orga- nization." Thus he supplied a physiological explanation for his aesthetic claim that well ordered form gives pleasure.2

This correlation of aesthetic pleasure with what appeared to be scientific fact, made ge- stalt thinking an important part of many crit- ical theories of art. It was only natural that the art of the last twenty years was viewed through eyes seeking the essential "whole" image. Clement Greenberg, in his "American

Type Painting," attributes Pollock's strength and originality to his "power to assert a

paint-strewn or paint-laden surface as a single 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'S second article to ap- pear in ART JOURNAL. See A.J. Fall '69. *

lieves that the originality of Morris Louis's veil paintings consists, above all, in the "re- markable rich and varied internal articula- tion of what is experienced as a single com- prehensive configuration."5 He finds the flor- als a step backward because the entities of color tend to disintegrate into a profusion of discrete shapes.6

Critics have ascribed this involvement with the immediately perceived pattern or single image to scores of contemporary artists. Rothko, Newman, Still, Reinhardt, and Gott- lieb were among the first to be put into this

category. The Responsive Eye exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1965, made the public more aware of the influence that

gestalt psychology had had on the arts. In his

catalogue, William Seitz wrote that "stripped of conceptual association, habits, and refer- ence to previous experience, perceptual re-

sponses would appear to follow innate laws. . . " In order to demonstrate these inherent laws, Seitz selected works that used rectangles, squares, and circles by themselves as an en- tire image, or in concentric or radial arrange- ments or all-over patterns of dots, stripes, or lines. Though his exhibition presented paint- ings and reliefs of artists as diverse as Brach, Cunningham, Le Pare. Vasarely, and Noland, they all could be viewed as practitioners of a

gestalt oriented art. Among the "minimal" artists, Donald Judd

and Robert Morris, in 1966, expressed their immediate concern with gestalt imagery as both artists and art theorists. In speaking of his sculpture in an interview with Bruce Glaser; Judd stated, "I just want it to exist as a whole thing. And that's not especially un- usual. Painting's been going towards that for a long time."8

For Robert Morris, gestalt theory has

played an essential role in the meaning he wished his works to convey. In his "Notes on Sculpture," Morris says that constancy of

shape is to be obtained by the use of polyhe- drons with "strong gestalt sensation." The viewer's acceptance that the pattern within one's mind corresponds to the "existential fact of the object, enables him to become more

intensely aware of other phenomena such as

light, space, and shape itself.9

Today the gestalt approach still dominates the thinking of many art critics and aestheti- cians. However, there are others who have be- come cognizant of the revolution that has taken place among the perceptual theorists.

They have discovered that "configurationism had achieved its success at the cost of practi- cally ignoring the motor side of the organism."'?

According to Franklin Kilpatrick, the ge- stalt approach appeared perfectly credible as

long as psychologists examined perception from object to subject. Using that method, the same object would always produce the same stimulus pattern on the retina. How- ever, when the operation was reversed, the ex-

perimenters discovered that "any given visual stimulus pattern can be produced by an in- finity of different external conditions.'l It was also observed, that though there were

many configurations for the same objects, only one was chosen by the receiving orga- nism. This implied that some form of pre- conceived selection was taking place, and that the method of choosing was the key problem in perceptual science.

Going back to Dewey's transactionalism and Whitehead's occasionalism, Kilpatrick and

Allport construed new theories for dealing

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Estate of Jackson Pollock, George A. Hearn Fund, 1957.

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Clyfford Still, Number 6, 1945-46, Whitney Museum of American Art, Promised aift of B. F. Friedman. Photo: Geoffrey Clements.

Adolph Gottlieb, The Crest, 1959, Whitney Museum of American Art, Gift of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Photo: Geoffrey Clements.

with perception. Though Kilpatrick conceded that some stimulus is necessary to produce a

configuration, the form in which it is pro- jected is a result of a "dynamic fusion involv-

ing cues from the environment, assumptions, and actions."'2 The concept of perception must include past experience as well as immediate mental and motor responses. To those accepting this line of reasoning, it is obvious that no person ever receives precisely the same message from the same environ- ment. Each individual develops his own way of reading each new situation. Perception is now viewed as an aggregate of behaviour. It can not be seen as separate from learning.

These new perception theories have

brought about a crisis in the field of behav- ioral psychology and in other academic areas as well. Aestheticians, however, have not made use of these recent findings. Only through the writings of Gombrich, has some of this

fascinating new material seeped into art

theory and criticism. In the past two years, however, criticism and writers on aesthetics have demonstrated their awareness of the new

developments in perceptual psychology." Works of art that have previously been inter-

preted from a gestalt viewpoint are now being examined in terms of these newer, more in- clusive theories. Toby Mussman has pointed out that if Pollock's paintings are only inter-

preted by the optical field theory, then the

nature of their production is bound to be ig- nored. "It is true that the optical nature of the work holds up at a distance," says Muss- man, "but, close to, the issue of opticality vanishes, and one is absorbed with how the

pools of paint have formed and how one color may have become mixed with another."'4 Max Kozloff, William Rubin, and Robert Rosenblum have all remarked on a similar phenomenon in the works of Morris Louis. In a critical analysis that could be cited as a superb example of the new percep- tual approach advocated by Kilpatrick and

Allport, Rosenblum responds to Louis's

paintings on many different levels. He under- stands that their formal construction is a combination of all-over design and natural

configurations of accident. He also sees them as "images of the intangible core of nature's energies-a vital, chromatic substance that

may alternately dissolve into thin air or crys- tallize into a geological stratum.""5

The perceptual discoveries of the experien- tial psychologists have also had effects on the latest work of Morris, Judd, and many youn- ger artists as well. Morris is now involved with

amorphous materials such as felt, rubber, mud, cotton threading, spattered paint, etc. Judging by the productions of his recent ex- hibitions, this writer would guess that Morris would be the first to attack his own premise of 1966 which states so positively that charac-

teristic of a gestalt is that once it is estab- lished, all the information about it, qua ges- talt, is exhausted."'' On the contrary, his new works indicate a realization that the act of

perceiving, even the simplest of forms, is an

on-going, dynamic process which provides each viewer with different choices and infor- mation. Indeed, in the April, 1968 issue of the Artforuim, Morris writes that the positive characteristic of his new work is a "disengage- ment with preconceived enduring forms and orders for things."17

His recent arrangements can be seen as the

perfect vehicles with which to demonstrate this conception and the new perceptual theor- ies to which it is related. On viewing the larg- est work at the Castelli warehouse, one is en-

veloped in a sea of objects, and perception changes drastically with even the slightest movement. Solid metal forms are juxtaposed with soft, undulating bands of rubber and felt. On entering this complex arena, which resembles a child's construction set many times magnified, one has the sensation of

being stranded in the midst of a rapidly rushing rivulet. However, instead of step- ping onto solid substances in order to ma- neuver about successfully, one must avoid all the concrete objects scrupulously. In the act of navigating through this maze, one realizes that perception depends on past experience and immediate kinetic and tactile responses

327

Mark Rothko, Four Darks in Red, 1958, Whitney Museum of American Art, Gift of the Friends of the Whitney M. of A. A. and Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Schwartz and Mrs. Samuel A. Seaver, Photo: Geoffrey Clements.

Kenneth Noland, Teton Noir, 1961. Collection of Carter Burden, New York.

as well as visually patterned data. Even from a vantage point outside the debris-strewn area, one must mentally practice the same kind of all-encompassing activity in order to make any sense out of the objects on view. To a lesser degree, all of Morris's construc- tions, be they of mud, cotton or felt demand the same kind of participation. He external- izes the dynamic quality of perception by using soft materials or flexible formations that are subject to reformation at any given moment. Other artists, employing similar

substances and techniques are Claus Olden- burg, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, David Paul, Keith Sonnier, and Stephen Kaltenbach.

Some artists reflect the new, more compre- hensive perceptual theories by using different means. In a recent exhibition, Donald Judd, with the aid of mirrors, constructed a box which unites the object, subject, and environ- ment into an indissoluble, but open struc- ture. His earlier discretely whole images have melted into ever-changing reflections of envi- ronmental activity. The end product is an in-

Larry Bell, Untitled, 1966, chrome plated metal and plated glass, Pace Gallery, New York. Photo: Ferdinand Boesch.

Morris Louis, Mem, 1957-60, Andr6 Emmerich Gallery. Photo: Geoffrey Clements.

328

termingling of internal and external forms in which illusion can not be disentangled from reality. This work is perfect metaphor for Allport's directive state theory of perception, which the psychologist describes as presenting the

very picture of a self delimited and self contained structuring of ongoings and events. . . It appears as a structure that is closely knit, yet not isolated from sur- rounding happenings that is built up of the events of ongoing and interacting ele- ments... .1

Larry Bell, Charles Ross, and Michael Kirby are among those who use transparent reflective surfaces to fuse environment, ob- ject, and subject into a total unit of percep- tion. Other artists work with chemical proper- ties that dissolve and change structure in the process of being activated in order to stimu- late perceptual awareness. David Medalla and Bernard Hoke use soap foam for this pur- pose; Zorio uses acid on copper.

Even those artists involved with conceptual art are reacting to the new perceptual theo- ries. They too have discovered that percep- tion is more than a patterned message flashed from a carefully organized visible object. Therefore, they believe that only a minimum number of visual clues (if any) are necessary to elicit perceptual experience. As Lucy Lip- pard and John Chandler so aptly put it, "vi- sual art is still visual art even when it is in- visible or visionary.''9

Since the concept of perception has been expanded to include past experience and en- vironmental influences, figuration, illustra- tion, and allusion are again becoming accept- able to critics and art theorists. If it is per- missible to view Olitski's color fields as sun- sets and Louis's configurations as organic im- ages, it is also possible to admit the validity of literal figurative paintings by such artists as Philip Pearlstein, Paul Georges, and Sid- ney Tillim.

With the realization that perception is a complex process combining sensual response with past experience, the unchallenged au- thority of the older formalist art doctrines is beginning to crumble. Perception is now being conceived of as a highly personal ex- perience influenced by a variety of factors. Artists are enthusiastically exploring the newly opened field of perceptual theory; crit- ics and aestheticians are beginning to con- cede that contemporary art can be perceived from more than one point of view. Today new theories and interpretations are su- perceding one another with breakneck speed. Confusion seems to reign. Yet out of all this seeming chaos, there may emerge a new, more inclusive order. In any case, this recent prob- ing into the many aspects of perception has injected a vitality and energy into an art scene that, only a few years ago, was in dan- ger of becoming rigid and sterile.

1 Douglas N. Morgan, "Psychology and Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 9, no. 2, Dec., 1950, p. 85. 2Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art, Berkely, 1966, p. 45. 3 Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture, Boston, 1961, p. 217. 4Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900, New York, 1967, p. 176. 5 Michael Fried, Morris Louis, Boston, 1967, p. 19. 6 Ibid. 7 William C. Seitz, The Responsive Eye, New York, 1965, p. 7. 8 Bruce Glaser, "Questions to Stella and Judd," Minimal Art, edited by Gregory Battcock, New York, 1968, p. 154. 9Robert Morris, "Notes on Sculpture," Ibid., pp. 226-7. 10F. H. Allport, Theories of Perception and the Concept of Structure, New York, 1955, pp. 438-39. 1 Franklin P. Kilpatrick, Exploration in Trans- actional Psychology, New York, 1961, pp. 2-5. 12 Ibid. 13 Morse Peckham discusses these theories exten- sively, as they are fundamental to his own ideas about the meaning and function of art. See Morse Peckham, Man's Rage for Chaos, New York, 1965, pp. 207-217. 14 Toby Mussman, "Literalness and the Infinite," Minimal Art, edited by Gregory Battcock, New York, 1968, p. 242. 1 Robert Rosenblum, "Morris Louis at the Gug- genheim," Art International, vol. 7, no. 9, 1963, p. 24 16 Robert Morris, op. cit., p. 228. 17Robert Morris, "Anti Form," Artforum, vol. 6, no. 8, Apr., 1968, p. 35. s Allport, op. cit., pp. 612-13.

19Lucy Lippard and John Chandler, "The De- materialization of Art," Art International, vol. 14, no. 2, 1968, p. 34.

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1965, painted steel, Leo Castelli Gallery. Photo: Rudolph Burckhardt.

Robert Morris, Untitled, 1967-68, grey felt, Leo Castelli Gallery.

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