Online Books by Questia Media America, Inc.
American Artists on Art from 1940 to 1980, Book by Ellen H. Johnson; Westview Press, 1982
PREFACE
The fact that so much of modern art has devoted itself to the exploration
and assertion of its own identity is reflected in, but does not explain, the
increasing amount of writing and talking on the part of contemporary
artists. Rather, the whole history of the changing role of art and artists in
a democratic, industrial, and technological society stands behind the spate
of artists' words and the public's hunger for them—even some of the
general public out there beyond art's little circle. Statements by artists
appeal somewhat the way drawings do: they bring us, or at least they hold
the promise of bringing us, closer to the artist's thoughts and feelings and
to an understanding of his or her modus operandi; they hold the keys to a
mysterious realm. And sometimes they offer us the sheer pleasure of good
reading. Such is the primary raison d'être of this book.
Its other motivation is educational, and stems from the frustrating lack,
in teaching contemporary art, of any single compilation of statements by
American artists from 1940 to the present. For courses in earlier modern
art, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, there are several use-
ful anthologies, such as the Sources and Documents series, which include
writings by artists together with those of their critics and associates. As a
teacher who cherishes the belief that, regardless of what explications and
interpretations we historians and critics might assign to an artist's work,
the person who created it should have first say, I have especially prized
Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, Artists on Art. This is acknowl-
edged in the title of my anthology, which can be seen as a latterday
extension of theirs, although theirs embraces more centuries than mine
does decades.
This anthology differs in several respects from those others that do in-
clude documents of American art since 1940 (such as Barbara Rose, ed.,
Readings in American Art 1900-1975, and Herschel B. Chipp, Theories
of Modern Art) and from those that present specific groups (e.g., Cindy
Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations with Twelve Women Artists) or indi-
vidual movements (e.g., Gregory Battcock's several "critical anthologies"
on minimal art, super-realism, video, etc.—the early ones apparently the
least hastily compiled). The selection I have made is devoted exclusively
to statements of artists; it is limited to the last four decades; it presents in
a single volume a representative and fairly comprehensive coverage of
major developments in American art beginning with Abstract Expression-
ism; and, whenever possible, it cites the first, or among the very earliest,
documents signalizing a shift in the definition, intent, or direction of art.
The categories are arranged chronologically to the extent that the over-
lapping or simultaneous emergence of multiple currents and the varied
activity of individual artists permit. Which, for example, should be cited
first—performance or site sculpture? (I chose site to keep it next to earth
art.) While some photo-realist painting and super-realist sculpture preced-
ed systemic and conceptual art, the latter is so directly related to minimal-
ism that absolute chronology had to give way to ideological and visual
continuity. In fact, the work of such artists as Sol LeWitt suggests that a
single rubric might embrace minimalism, systemic and conceptual art.
Other artists, especially Claes Oldenburg and Robert Morris, have made
important contributions in such widely different areas that it was impossi-
ble to limit selections of their writings to a single category. Such problems
in classifying demonstrate the inadequacy of labels—they also bear wit-
ness to the flexibility and range of the creative mind and to the steady
flow of continuity that courses through all the innovations of modern art.
The names of the sections into which the book has been ordered are those
most frequently accepted for the given movement or group by the art
public, which clamors for classification as ardently as the artist resists it.
However, these categories must be conceived of as elastic—if not alto-
gether dispensable. Certainly none of them is terminal; even now, when
there is a revival of Abstract Expressionism, such important original mem-
bers of that group as de Kooning and Motherwell continue to expand the
borders of its territory. I hold no special brief for the type of classification
I have chosen.