21st Century Abstract Painting

and the Development of a New Working Space

Bill Gusky
2009
It’s hard to tell if abstract painting actually got worse, if it merely stagnated, or if it
simply looked bad in comparison to the hopes its own accomplishments had raised. It is
possible that all three observations are true, but for me the last description is the most
telling. What bothers me is not so much that efforts might have been bad but that the
hopes have been tarnished, essentially enervated by the failure to maintain the
momentum of the sixties.1 -- Frank Stella, Working Space

Frank Stella’s concerns as voiced in his sometimes derided, sometimes celebrated

book of lectures hinge largely on the failure of painting to overcome the accretions of an

art critical establishment that had become dominated by literary and philosophical

considerations originating wholly outside of painting and outside of visual art. Consider

if you will:

By 1970 abstract painting had lost its ability to create space. In a series of withdrawals,
it began to illustrate the space it had once been able to create. The space in abstract
painting, in a certain sense, became more advanced – more abstract, if that is possible.
It was no longer available to feeling, either emotional or literal. This fulfilled one of
modernism’s great dreams: the space in painting became available to eyesight alone, but
unfortunately not to eyesight in a pictorial sense, but to eyesight in a literary sense. In a
word, it became available to the eyesight of critics rather than that of artists, to the
critical, evaluative faculty rather than the pictorial, creative faculty.2

and

Similarly today, abstract painting in its efforts to be “advanced,” to be smart, to

anticipate critical accolades, has managed simply to accommodate itself to the neatness
of literary taste. It cannot see the space before Impressionism. Essentially, abstract art
has rendered itself space-blind in order to assure its visibility to an audience that can
only read.3

In seeking a cure for the problems he saw in abstract painting of the 1970’s, Stella

recommended looking to the work of much earlier artists – Renaissance and Mannerist

1
Frank Stella, Working Space (Cambridge: The Harvard University Press, 1986), 160.
2
ibid, 43.
3
ibid, 46.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 1
painters among them – as a means of moving forward toward abstraction that makes its

own space.

Keep in mind that by the time that Stella’s lectures were published as the book

Working Space, the art he decried had been supplanted by a mind-numbing profusion of

painting, as any given Saturday on West Broadway during the mid-1980’s would attest:

Schnabel, Kiefer, Salle, Borofsky, Jensen, Amenoff, Marden, Mangold and more, a

constant carnival of mediocrity with the occasional gleam of greatness, tap-dancing on

gallery walls and across the floors from Houston to Canal Street. The elements of this

head-spinning variety had little by way of the optical to link them together. And as for

Stella himself, his work during that time had become the stuff of great corporate trophy

art collections: painted sculptural reliefs, the gargantuan dimensions of which are

exceeded only by the derision they’ve garnered for lo these many years now.

Why is it that Stella seemed to have so much to say about what was wrong with

painting after the 1960’s, yet so little of substance to contribute as a solution – or perhaps

so little that would be received by the art-critical establishment, even to this very day?

What is it about his work after the 1970’s that seems to make him often critically

invisible until at least the dawn of the new century, if in fact he’s critically visible now?

These questions find answer in the direction abstract painting has taken since the

1980’s, in the reasons for this direction, and in the fact that Stella, for all his

unquestionable talent and perception, could never have predicted the dead-ending of that

very narrative that he so capably discussed, and within which he is so rightfully observed

to have played such a key part.

It seemed to me now that the philosophical problem of art had been clarified from within
the history of art, that history had come to an end. ... It came to an end when art came to

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 2
an end, when art, as it were, recognized that there was no special way a work of art had
to be. Slogans began to appear like “Everything is an artwork” or Beuys’s “Everyone is
an artist,” which would never have occurred to anyone under either of the great
narratives I have identified. The history of the art’s quest for philosophical identity was
over. And now that it was over, artists were liberated to do whatever they wanted to do. 4
-- Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art

Unlike Francis Fukuyama’s contentions about history’s end, Danto’s observations

regarding the end of the Western art historical narrative have, as of this moment at least,

stood the test of time. In his 1997 book After the End of Art, Danto identifies

characteristics of artists working within that which he contends to be the new art

historical narrative, and even fingers a few of these artists for our edification:

I would like to suggest that our situation at the end of art history resembles the
situation before the beginning of art history – before that is, a narrative was imposed on
art that made painting the hero of the story and cast whatever did not fit the narrative
outside the pale of history and hence of art altogether. ... There was no invidious
distinction before the beginning of art history between art and craft, ... no imperative that
an artist must specialize, and we find, in the artists who best exemplify the posthistorical
moment – Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Rosemarie Trockel, and others for whom all
media and all styles are equally legitimate ... The pluralism of the present art world
defines the ideal artist as a pluralist. Much has changed since the sixteenth century, but
we are in many ways closer to it than we are to any succeeding period in art. Painting,
as the vehicle of history, has had a long run, and it is not surprising that it has come
under attack.5

It’s interesting to consider that Danto discerned an art world in 1997 that bore

greater similarities to the 16th century than to any succeeding one, a mere thirteen years

(ten, if considering the publication date of Working Space) after Stella suggested that a

shift in that general temporal direction might be the remedy for what ailed painting, in his

estimation. Yet the Renaissance turn that was ultimately taken had little to do with the

problems Stella identified. The actual problems of art that were evident during the

4
Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 125.
5
ibid, 114.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 3
1970’s, Danto might have us believe, were not at all issues of space and literary bent.

Where Stella saw problems within the art itself and the way in which it was painted,

Danto identified problems within a shift of the relationship of art to its own history, a

shift unrecognized by artists such as Stella.

Danto goes on to discuss a difference in artists who have embraced to some extent

the new narrative. He cites artists who work through more than one format or style as

exemplars – Richter, Polke and Trockel among them. While this identification certainly

merits study, as a distinguisher of New Narrative artists it isn’t terribly strong. Consider

for example artists of the previous narrative who worked across a variety of mediums and

styles, in a variety of ways. Picasso, Klee, Dali, Calder and Duchamp come immediately

to mind as artists whose work could be considered pluralistic in ways similar to those

Danto identifies.

A more distinctive difference between artists working within the current narrative

and artists from the previous one may be found in the relationship of artist to narrative,

and of process to output.

Abstraction in the previous narrative became prominent with Cubism, which, in

its analytical form, can be read as a kind of 2D physics, a transmission of the 3-D world

into a rectangular 2-D realm whose boundaries and planarity distort and distill. While

Picasso and Braque displayed great freedom in these works it was the freedom of

discovering a new realm with new laws, a new ‘physics,’ if you will. And although this

physics all but evaporated in the shift to synthetic Cubism, what remained was still a kind

of distorted reflection of the ‘real’ world, a 2-dimensional world that was wholly reliant

upon that inaccessible third dimension.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 4
 Kandinsky sought a visual correspondent to music’s abstract power and

discovered a decidedly lyrical abstraction that leaned heavily upon formal properties and

an aesthetic that would both influence and be influenced by a variety of artistic and

cultural styles.

Delaunay, Dove, Arp, and many others influenced and were influenced, exposed

and denied rules, blazed trails and ran into dead ends. In considering them all, it becomes

clear that among the factors binding these abstract artists together is the close proximity

of artist to narrative, and the distance between the origin of each artist’s process and the

work that developed from it.

Regarding the relationship of artist to narrative, each of these artists was

conscious to a greater or lesser extent of a kind of uniqueness and daring of abstraction

that endured well into the middle of the twentieth century. Some were even awarded the

honor of inclusion in the Nazi Entarte Kunst exhibition of 1937. This sense of breaking

away from the established narrative of their day, or of furthering an already daring break-

away, had to have been salient to all of them. With this identity would have also come the

elevation of self-expression beyond the normal, to a level of sanctity that is often held in

religious circles by those who would be martyrs.

Artists painting in the new narrative ride a ticklish line between utterly

disregarding the venerable history of Western art and voraciously ransacking it, digesting

it and even reinterpreting it. They tend to take for granted that this narrative has been

conquered and lay claim to a kind of entitlement to be ascendant over it, even as they

venerate its great figures and achievements. So far as their own narrative is concerned,

few artists seem to have a consciousness of a working place within a new and developing

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 5
narrative. They rather appear to see themselves as island art worlds, influenced by and

influencing others, to be sure, but standing each apart in his or her own universe. There’s

barely a detectable consciousness of a new narrative at all in the studios, due perhaps to

its lack of academic entity, and perhaps more importantly to the ephemeral nature of the

credentials awarded to its most ostensibly successful practitioners.

Regarding the relationship of the origination of artistic process to completed

work, abstract artists of the early 20th century appear to have originated their processes at

some distance from the studio. The impetus and logic of these processes were tied very

closely to established and cutting-edge philosophies, politics, music, nature, religion – in

short, to realms that existed far outside the painted canvas. In this sense artists functioned

as translators, converting their observations and cogitations of life into the historically

established objects known as paintings, which in turn were delivered by institutional fiat

or incidental neglect into the flow of history.

Interestingly enough, this casts the Western art historical narrative, during the

early 20th century, anyway, as a kind of beast that required a continual feeding of life

experiences -- but only after they’d been processed and smeared onto two-dimensional

canvas crackers.

In the new narrative, abstract painters appear to conceive their processes in close

proximity to the painted surface, and in tight relation to the events that take place there. It

tends to be the case that no greater structure outside of art dictates or restricts what

happens within a piece. There is no detectable physics, for example, as seen in analytical

Cubism – unless, of course, an artist decides to take up the burden of analytical Cubism.

Yet were this to be done, the artist in question would likely be aware of the absurdity of

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 6
such a proposition and would perhaps engage it toward a purpose that, while perhaps not

tightly engaged with the painted surface, nonetheless hovers close by as satire or parody.

Abstract painters working in the new narrative sometimes elevate the problem of

each individual painting above their own process, and allow that process to give in to the

need for a solution to the painting. The success of each painting is often more important

than the philosophical underpinnings that drive its process.

Pluralism is indeed seen in abstract painters of the new narrative, but it’s less a

pluralism of distinctive styles that echo those of the previous narrative, as seen for

example in Richter’s career, and it’s more a pluralism of categories of result streaming

from a process rendered much more sensitive by its close proximity to the painted

surface.

Among the artists whose work fits these descriptions, two stand out as meeting to

some extent Danto’s criterion for pluralism, displaying evidence of a proximity of

process to painted surface, and suggesting an attitude toward their narrative that lies

counter to that of artists working in the previous narrative. Outside of these points, gender

and preferred medium are about all that Thomas Nozkowski and Chris Martin share, at

least superficially. Yet the relationship each bears to the current narrative, and the

relationship the process of each bears to his output, is similar.

Thomas Nozkowski’s process over the past thirty-plus years remains largely

unchanged. According to a talk he delivered at the Fine Arts Work Center in September of

2008, a visual experience of some sort initiates a painting. Very soon in the process, the

painting itself takes over, and as Stephen Mueller puts it in his review of Nozkowski’s 2008

show at PaceWildenstein, “It was as if Nozkowski were playing chess with himself,

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 7
introducing one move to change the tactic of the next. Checkmate and the painting was

finished.”6

Thomas Nozkowski: Untitled (8-24), 2001, oil on linen on panel, 22 by 28 inches – Photo: Larry Qualls / Artstor

Nozkowski’s process originates from no previously stated philosophy. His choices of

reading material have so far eluded investigation. According to the artist himself in the same talk

mentioned earlier, his paintings refer to nothing and encode nothing. They carry no message and

make no specific depiction, whether of visual or emotional experience.

In short, there is no basis for a painting by Nozkowski outside of the painting’s existence,

and perhaps the historicity of the materials. Every event relating to that painting takes place on its

6
Mueller, Stephen. “Thomas Nozkowski – Pace Wildenstein.” Art in America (November, 2008): 184.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 8
surface. And every referent within the painting to anything outside itself lies wholly within the

mind of the viewer.

At this point in his career, and probably for some decades into the past, the only thing

guiding Nozkowski’s paintings has been Nozkowski’s sensibilities. These works are blind to the

previous art historical narrative and blind even to their own narrative, which they presaged back

in the days when Frank Stella wondered at the bankruptcy of abstraction.

Thomas Nozkowski: Untitled, 1990, oil on canvas board, 16 by 20 inches – Photo: Larry Qualls / Artstor

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 9
 Chris Martin’s abstract paintings swing a

broader formal arc and perhaps evince greater risk-

taking than Nozkowski’s. Martin’s supports and

materials are often non-traditional. Each work

invites a variety of readings, but adheres to none.

The shapes and paths he paints appear to arise from

nothing and head toward nothing. He is often

content to work in gestures one might consider slap-

dash, in contrast to Nozkowski’s cool calculation.

Yet a refusal to attain any kind of gestural velocity

prevents Martin from evoking the Ab-Ex

antecedents he might otherwise have owned as

ancestors.

As Robert Berlind writes in his review of Chris Martin: Midnight 2002-2004, oil, enamel and spray
paint on plastic – Photo: Uta Scharf
Martin’s 2008 show at Mitchell-innes & Nash,

As an undergraduate at Yale, Chris Martin got to know (Al) Held, who was then teaching
in the graduate program, and, feeling he had gotten the essential lowdown on being an
artist, dropped out and moved to New York to pursue his calling. His work, like the
young Held’s, displays antithetical affinities: for the inspired loner Forrest Bess on the
one hand, and for Held himself on the other. Bess, as though unconcerned with historical
circumstances, drawing only from his deepest primordial resources, produced small,
astonishing abstract paintings. Held, to the contrary, was an ambitious and sophisticated
New York artist of the “second generation,” vying with the authority of art history and
the claims of his contemporaries, producing enormous, increasingly refined and complex
paintings.7

7
Berlind, Robert. “Chris Martin – Mitchell-Innes & Nash.” Art in America (September 2008): 167-168.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 10
 Martin’s connection to Al Held merits consideration. As an accepted power in

second-generation Abstract Expressionism, Held had earned a place within a highly

regarded apostolic succession of sorts. Yet by the end of the 1970’s he’d joined Frank

Stella in misreading the dead-ending of the narrative to which he had contributed so

much as a weakness in artists and a problem of working space.

Held’s paintings of the 1980’s are veritable bastions of forced space. These matte-

surfaced behemoths required highly skilled teams of assistants to create their depictions

of vast 3-dimensional geometry-scapes with perfect precision. In a sense they were

visionary, because they anticipated computer graphics software that would produce

similar works with a few mouse clicks and a call to the billboard printing company a

mere decade and a half later.

It was a younger, more purposeful Al Held who made an impression on the art

student Chris Martin. Yet the effect was not to inspire young Martin to position himself

for the next position in the pantheon as a third-generation artist to Held. By that time it

had become clear that the art world within which Held had been elevated was coming to

an end. There would likely be no laying-on of hands, no successors. Martin turned

instead to the hermit Forrest Bess, whose small, thickly impastoed, highly idiosyncratic

canvases lay far outside the Western art narrative proper. And in following Bess’s

example of “eschewing technical refinement and trusting instead in the work’s rough

facture to broadcast an ecstatic revelation,”8 Martin found himself standing firmly outside

that narrative as well, ready to influence whatever story might begin.

8
ibid.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 11
 As with Nozkowski, no outside

philosophy or ideal appears to guide Chris

Martin’s abstract paintings. Images, numbers,

shapes and symbols may appear, but their

precise meanings are dubious.

Unlike Nozkowski’s paintings, other

meanings may be seen in Martin’s work. The

sequence of numbered circles painted into the

surface of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7... (Ravine), for

example, suggests a climbing down and into

and climbing back out of the titular ravine.

Any number of narratives might stream forth

from this image.

As a contrast, Midnight may be read in Chris Martin: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7... (Ravine), 1987-2004, oil,
aluminum foil and collage on canvas, 25 x 15 inches –
Photo: Uta Scharf
any number of ways: black-paved streets

island-lit by streetlights in a snowy blue moonlight, the outline of a bizarre chicken-king

afflicted by smallpox, the metal frameworks of electrical towers at twilight. All could be

correct, yet the artist provides us with precious little to go on. And the painting is very

effective on its own. As Berlind puts it, “How these and other works manage to be so

convincing is an interesting question. Martin is neither slumming nor trafficking in

clichés; neither is he being coyly ironic. There is, however, much humor to be found

here...”9

9
ibid.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 12
 While Martin occasionally references the outside world in his abstract paintings,

their rough facture and material experimentation poise the lion’s share of his attentions

upon the painted surfaces. And even in the face of these narrative elements, Martin

approaches his artwork from no pre-conceived philosophies or biases. More than

Nozkowski, the success of each work – whatsoever Martin considers to be success –

trumps all else. And while he clearly continues to draw inspiration from the outsider

Forrest Bess, he otherwise displays no concern for the previous narrative, even in his

choice of supports. And, in spite of his occasional written contributions to The Brooklyn

Rail, I see little evidence of any interest he might harbor in his place within the current

narrative.

The failures seen during the 1970’s that Frank Stella bemoaned in Working Space

weren’t failures of individual artists. Like Stella himself, everyone with a studio and an

awareness of what had taken place over the previous fifty years was hard at work,

struggling to advance the narrative of painting, or positioning himself in some way vis-à-

vis that narrative. One might contend that there wasn’t even a failure to begin with. A

sprawling project, perhaps the largest continuing project in the Western world, had come

to an unexpected end. Admitting that the work he had devoted himself to with incredible

energy and zeal was likely beyond the capability of Stella and others.

As is sometimes the case during a difficult transition, a case was made for

fundamentalism, as seen in Working Space. But as is usually true in such situations, the

case for fundamentalism was flawed. The last thing anyone needed at the end of the

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 13
1970’s was the actualization of Stella’s call for a return to the Old Masters in order to

revive a centuries-old concept of space.

Thankfully, and in spite of critics who might have preferred otherwise, artists

found their own way. Through simple, dogged investigation, they gave birth to a new

story. But not without some labor pains.

Since the 80's, abstraction has shown the influence of media, the Internet,

Photoshop, Illustrator, comics and so on. It indicates directional development that is of

greater dimension than could even have been conceived in the previous, rather linear

narrative. Part of this difference lies in the fact that the hyperlinking of information, as

seen in web pages, has taught us to think in branching, multi-dimensional structures. This

thinking is reflected not just in our perceptions of what's happening in art as outsiders but

from the inside as well, in how we develop as artists. We tend to branch out. With no

over-arching philosophies to restrict us, we're more willing to develop in different

directions, sometimes simultaneously. The story of this new narrative is a story of a

profusion of artists, and of a profusion of branches of effort by each artist, many bearing

little or no relationship to the others. Danto’s observation of pluralism obtains, both at the

macro and micro scales.

As for the future, I would suggest that development will be seen, not as the

increasing refinement of an idea until it reaches an apex, followed by a reactive idea and

its development, and so on and so forth, as was largely the case with the Western art

historical narrative. Instead, I’d suggest that in this narrative, development is going to be

seen as the increasing refinement of the artist through self-extension, branching out in a

variety of ways. This branching development changes the person, and the person is the

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 14
content source for all that is art. Ultimately we may find that, in this narrative, the artist

is the working space. The artwork, in whatever form or format, is a reflection of that

which the artist has become.

21st Century Abstract Painting and the Development of a New Working Space Bill Gusky 15