The Responsive Eye Revisited: Then, Now, and In-Between

THE RESPONSIVE EYE REVISITED: THEN, NOW, AND IN-BETWEEN

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

THE RESPONSIVE EYE REVISITED: THEN, NOW, AND IN-BETWEEN

By David Pagel

All kinds of things distinguish “The Responsive Eye Revisited: Then, Now, and In-Between” from the legendary exhibition it riffs off of.

First is size: “The Responsive Eye,” organized by William C. Seitz for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965, included 123 works by 97 artists (and two collaborative groups) from 20 countries. It filled more than a half dozen galleries. In contrast, “The Responsive Eye Revisited” consists of 24 works by 12 artists, all but two of whom were born in the United States. It’s installed in two spaces in a single gallery.

Second is scope: After a critically acclaimed and buzz-generating debut in New York, the original exhibition traveled to the City Art Museum of St. Louis, the Seattle Art Museum, the Pasadena Art Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. In each of those places, it captured the attention of the general public and generated passionate debates about contemporary art’s role and function, as well as heated discussions about art’s relationship to design and science, particularly in terms of how it works, physiologically and psychologically, on viewers. In contrast, “The Responsive Eye Revisited” will open at Art Basel Miami Beach and then travel to the Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea. The responses it generates remain to be seen. But, like the exhibition to which it pays homage, it leaves us free to respond—with our eyes, bodies, and minds—however we see fit, and however we are able: absorbing the physical facts of the works we interact with without being told what to feel, believe, or think—much less how to behave.

3

4

The third difference between the original exhibition and its cover version involves the types of works presented. “The Responsive Eye” featured paintings (both two- and three-dimensional; rectangular and shaped) as well as low-relief sculptures (that hung on the wall), tabletop sculptures (that rested on shelves and pedestals), and large sculptures (that stood on the floor and low platforms). Drawings (in ink and pencil) were also included, along with prints (engravings, etchings, and serigraphs). Both the drawings and the prints, which are typically presented as works on paper, were integrated into mixed-media assemblages and other hybrid constructions, forming a materially diverse—but image-free—kind of collage. Never comprised of any images, nor the piecemeal cutting and pasting, tearing and juxtaposing typical of conventional collages, the works in “The Responsive Eye” steered clear of every vestige of Surrealism—whether in Surrealism’s disruptive imagery or its affective dissonance. The artists did not want their works to be used as springboards for stories, especially stories that took viewers away from the perceptual and cognitive experiences the abstractions generated.

And, rather than bringing together different media to emphasize the gaps between those media— and thus invite viewers to fill in the blanks with imaginative leaps and stream-of-consciousness associations—the artists in the groundbreaking exhibition brought together different art forms, such as painting and sculpture, or printing and drawing, by fusing them, seamlessly and smoothly, into streamlined hybrids. As a group—and on the whole—they were more interested in fusion than in patchwork. Integration, not irresolution or dissolution, was their goal and modus operandi.

Coherence and focus, not conflict or anything-goes, all-over-the-place opportunism, was the point and the purpose of what they did in their studios.

Minimalism was animated by a similar drive toward singularity and definitiveness. Its principles were articulated in an article published by Donald Judd the same year “The Responsive Eye” opened. In “Specific Objects” (1965), Judd described and defended the art he was most interested in as consisting of “specific objects,” works which were neither paintings nor sculptures, in any

traditional sense of those terms, but, instead, new-and-improved entities that broke free of the stodgy solemnity and sanctimonious pretense that had grown around—and into—supposedly radical art. But, unlike Judd, the artists in “The Responsive Eye” were not convinced that visual experience was a part of the problem, nor did they feel it had to be banished so that the mechanics of sculptural installations—mass, volume, and the relentless tug of gravity—would be the basis out of which a work’s truthfulness emerged, its no-nonsense integrity and down-to-earth authenticity unencumbered by artifice, free of illusionism, and devoid of any lingering trace of sentimentality, all of which Minimalism sought to banish to the dustbin of history. In contrast, the artists in “The Responsive Eye” believed that optical phenomena were neither illusions that had to be purged nor tricks that had to be demystified, but, instead, essential elements of an individual’s experience of art. In a nutshell, they wanted to make works whose content was form.

The works in “The Responsive Eye Revisited” do something similar, but without the sprawling range of formats. Rather than including works in a variety of media—and all manner of streamlined hybrids—this year’s model focuses, singularly and simply, on painting. In a sense, “The Responsive Eye Revisited” cuts to the chase: Its works zero in on vision—taking, as their focus, the bodily mechanics of visual perception and linking those mechanics, on one end, to works of art that explore and reward such complex processes, and, on the other end, to a viewer’s cognitive capacities, which are always colored by emotions, memories, and the impossible-to-disentangle web of experiences, expectations, and proclivities that make up our individual subjectivities. The streamlining that took place within the individual mixed-media works in the original exhibition—as they fused sculptural and painterly attributes—takes place, in its updated version, across the show as a whole.

All of its works are paintings. All are made by painters who have applied powdery pigments dissolved in liquids of various viscosities to flat surfaces of various dimensions. All but two of the works in the exhibition are presented singularly, as squares or rectangles. The artist who is the

5

rule-proving exception has fabricated shaped paintings, rounding the corners—and cutting out the centers—of her rectangular panels and including polygons and shapes with gently curved perimeters, all of which have been snugly abutted with other panels to form abstract triptychs, double-diptychs, and more.

6

Most important, all of the surfaces of all of the works in “The Responsive Eye Revisited” are covered, completely and neatly and cleanly, with shapes, stripes, and lines. Most of these basic geometric elements are made up of supersaturated expanses of solid, unmodulated colors, including black and white. The primaries—red, yellow, and blue—appear more frequently than the secondaries—green, purple, and orange. But even together, these two groups of colors do not match the number and variety of tertiaries. Such idiosyncratic, impossible-to-name colors cover the majority of the works’ surfaces, their tints and tones and juxtapositions creating a rainbow too sophisticated for words. The subtle gradations, unlikely combinations, and mongrel mixtures create a spectrum both organic and synthetic, and so lively and labile that they can neither be described as natural nor as unnatural. There is an all-encompassing fusion of divide-and-conquer binaries, as well as a commingling of differences that complement one another while colliding with expectations to suggest a mind-bending, potentially infinite expansiveness that is downright sublime.

The fourth difference between the works in the two exhibitions revolves around the raw materials that went into their construction. The media that painters have used for centuries—oil, enamel, tempera, pencil, and ink, along with canvas, linen, and wood—were abundant in “The Responsive Eye,” along with such newfangled inventions as acrylic paint, composition board, various emulsions, compound emulsions, and polyester resins. Beyond such typically and experimentally artistic media, the inventory of material found in the 1965 exhibition reads like a supply list for a light-industrial manufacturing facility: metal, steel, aluminum, cast bronze, welded iron, plywood, wire, nails, plaster, plastic, plexiglass, polyethylene, polyvinyl, acetate, and three varieties of glass: common window glass, glass treated with polarization, and glass enhanced with birefringence sheets.

The wide range of materials the artists used to make their works reflected the great sense of optimism they felt about art’s capacity to do something new, to break free of the past and the historical strictures that went with it, and reach a larger audience, people who would see that art was not something that stood apart from—supposedly above and beyond—everyday reality, but an element intrinsic to it, woven into its fabric, sharing its textures, intensifying its pleasures, and delivering insights. The artists in “The Responsive Eye” experimented with industrial materials, construction techniques, and design principles because they believed that those elements were more welcoming to viewers who had, in the past, been put off by art’s exclusivity, by the sense that contemporary art was an insider’s game, played by specialists and experts, scholars and historians, none of whom was all that interested in the needs and desires of the general public, or the possible ways that art might engage the world beyond the confines of museums and galleries.

Plastics figured prominently. That was partially because, as a range of materials, they were new and exciting and exceptionally malleable, but it was also because their myriad forms were unencumbered by the idea that art’s job was to express an artist’s inner sentiments. Thanks to the manner in which Abstract Expressionism had made its way into popular consciousness, art— especially abstract art—was still mostly seen autobiographically, as evidence of its maker’s subconscious or unconscious, and all of the unresolved traumas buried there, waiting to be dug up by psychologists, whether professional or amateur. That is where many viewers still believed that authenticity resided, deep in the undisclosed souls of artists. And that old-fashioned but still lingering notion was what the artists in “The Responsive Eye” sought to move beyond. Their goal was to show that art’s power resided not in the hidden recesses of emotionally scarred individuals, but in the shared public space of the visible world, where people from all walks of life interacted; where unpredictable, ungovernable exchanges took place; and where consequential conversations unfolded—after having gotten started in intimate, face-to-face interactions with individual works of art.

7

8

The works in “The Responsive Eye” were made by artists whose understanding of plastics was the opposite of that articulated in The Graduate (1967), when Dustin Hoffman’s character is told, by a friend of his father’s, that his future success can be summed up in one word: “plastics.” The disbelief—and despair—that appear on the young man’s face reveal that he is horrified by the advice, both because it is passé and anodyne and because it suggests a career too bland, too faceless, too corporate—i.e., inauthentic, alienating, soul-crushing—to satisfy his youthful yet deep-rooted desire for a life filled with more adventure, danger, and romance than that suggested by a career in manufacturing and distributing plastics, which he sees as cheap, tawdry, and fake. In contrast, the artists in “The Responsive Eye” treated plastics and other untraditional materials as if they embodied more possibilities than could be imagined by that particular college graduate and those for whom Abstract Expressionism still defined painting’s relationship to authenticity. For the artists in the original exhibition, plastics were not the future; they were the present.

In contrast, plastics, for the artists in “The Responsive Eye Revisited,” are neither the future nor the present. They are the past. Fifty-four years ago, plastics were new. The artists who turned to them wanted them to do what painting had done in the past, but by other means: stimulate visual

Installation view of the exhibition, “The Responsive Eye.” February 25–April 25, 1965.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photographer: George Cserna

experiences, create elusive, ambiguous spaces, and lure viewers into mysterious situations both pleasurable and puzzling, ones that made us rethink expectations, assumptions, and perspectives—via materials new to us. The artists in this year’s exhibition have little interest in exploiting the surprise factor of untraditional materials, both because they feel that such gambits are detours, even distractions, and because painting, today, is in a place where it need not be something else to do what it does best. So, they take what the original artists did with other materials and formats and processes and return them to painting. In a sense, “The Responsive Eye Revisited” is a homecoming, a bringing back home of elements and experiences that had emigrated—or been expelled—from painting. Its works cleave to the tried and true: oil, acrylic, enamel, urethane, or epoxy resin; brushed, knifed, poured, or dripped; over flat expanses of canvas, linen, wood, or Masonite. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Although their materials are conventional, what they do with them is anything but. They make paint sing—silently and like nothing else out there. At a time when digital info is transmitted more swiftly and abundantly than ever before, these artists make works that turn away from the overwhelming onslaught of eye-grabbing, attention-dissipating messaging and create tiny islands of respite: modest moments of stillness within the confusing, cacophonous chaos. Rather than using abstract painting as a springboard into other disciplines and fields, they use it as a way to dive more deeply into painting’s most basic features—powers and pleasures that have not been exhausted so much as they have been overlooked and ignored.

Back in 1965, “The Responsive Eye” danced around that sort of formalism because its organizer and artists wanted to avoid being associated with the ideas of Clement Greenberg, which had gotten pretty shrill, not to mention formulaic and closed off, especially as they were interpreted by a handful of acolytes and a far larger group of people who opposed them, often with great vitriol. Today, Greenberg’s influence is nonexistent. And the works in “The Responsive Eye Revisited” can be looked at formally without being painted with the brush of Greenbergian

9

formalism. That is how they begin: asking viewers to pay attention to what they do with color, line, shape, and texture, to create situations or events that we viewers are a part of because they move us emotionally while stimulating our intellects and inviting us to reorient ourselves to our surroundings. In “The Responsive Eye Revisited,” the social nature of abstraction takes shape within the art of painting. Its works are calm, cool, and collected. Neither the result of hotblooded traumas nor appeals to headline-grabbing spectacles, they bring user-friendly interaction and open-ended possibility back to painting, where a sense of hard-won optimism emerges.

10

The fifth and final feature that distinguishes the two exhibitions is time. “The Responsive Eye” was organized with an eye toward the future. Although it was originally meant to be a historical survey of works since Impressionism that examine optical phenomena, Seitz acknowledged, in the catalog, that the sheer number of new works exploring such perceptual dynamics made a retrospective view impossible. Of the 123 works he selected, 97 were made in 1963 and 1964.

Fourteen were made from 1960 to 1962. Only 12 dated from the 1950s. A similar sort of concentration can be seen among the artists included. All but two were represented by one or two works. The exceptions were Josef Albers, with eight works, and Victor Vasarely, with six. Albers and Vasarely formed the poles around which the rest of the works orbited: Albers’s concise paintings of concentric, off-center squares and black-and-white etchings of ambiguous planes distilled painting (and the act of looking) down to the basics; and Vasarely’s brightly colored and idiosyncratically patterned extravaganzas amped abstraction into a frenzy, often abuzz with so much pulsing and throbbing razzle-dazzle that his artwork made popular graphics look bleary and listless, even deadening.

In contrast, “The Responsive Eye Revisited” was organized with an eye toward the past. Although it is not a historical survey in any way, shape, or form, it dips its toes into two moments: the 1960s and the present. Just over half of its artists—Josef Albers, Karl Benjamin, Gene Davis, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, John McLaughlin, and Kenneth Noland—participated in the

original exhibition. The others—Beverly Fishman, Al Held, Warren Isensee, Markus Linnenbrink, and Patrick Wilson—did not. But their paintings make sense in the context of “The Responsive Eye,” fleshing out its principles and building on its look, feel, and spirit—and, in so doing, shifting the reputation of the legendary exhibition, just an inch or two, away from being Op Art’s coming out party—its moment in the spotlight—and toward a more inclusive, complex, and bodily understanding of abstract painting, particularly in terms of its perceptual effects and affects. “The Responsive Eye Revisited” leans a bit more toward Albers than Vasarely, favoring concentration, simplicity, and quasi-tactile sensuality to the optical buzz and visual whiplash of busy patterns and high-keyed contrasts.

But how far it goes in that direction is open to debate, especially in the works of the artists, who were too young to know about the original exhibition. (In 1965, Isensee and Fishman were, respectively, nine and ten years old. Wilson had not even born. The paintings by the five artists new to the mix add spatial complexity (Held), atmospheric expansiveness (Wilson), billboard-scale boldness (Fishman), architectural stability and its undoing (Isensee), and an embrace of process, particularly the ways paints of various viscosities flow and congeal (Linnenbrink). In all of their works, as well as those of the seven artists in both exhibitions, sensuality comes to the forefront. Where the 1965 exhibition sometimes treated optics as if they belonged to eyeballs, and eyeballs alone, the 2019 version insists that eyeballs are, like every other sense organ, part of a complex body—embedded in networks without which they could not function. In that sense, “The Responsive Eye Revisited” brings eyeballs home, back to the bodies they inhabit, where they do their thing in concert with hearts and minds—and the imagination.

David Pagel is an art critic who writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times. He is a Professor of Art Theory at Claremont Graduate University and an adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum. An avid cyclist, he is a six time winner of the California Triple Crown.

11

12

JOSEF ALBERS (1888–1976) Homage to the Square, 1961

Oil on masonite 18 x 18 inches 45.7 x 45.7 cm

14

JOSEF ALBERS (1888–1976) Homage to the Square, 1964

Oil on masonite 18 x 18 inches 45.7 x 45.7 cm

16

KARL BENJAMIN (1925–2012) #46, 1965

Oil on canvas 25 x 25 inches 63.5 x 63.5 cm

18

KARL BENJAMIN (1925–2012) #1, 1965 Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches 76.2 x 76.2 cm

20

GENE DAVIS (1920–1985) Wigwam, 1969

Acrylic on canvas 107 x 226 inches 271.8 x 574 cm

22

GENE DAVIS (1920–1985) Yellow Jacket, 1969 Acrylic on canvas 107 x 220 inches 272.4 x 558.8 cm

24

LORSER FEITELSON (1898–1978) Untitled, 1964 Oil and enamel on canvas 60 x 40 inches 152.4 x 101.6 cm

26

LORSER FEITELSON, (1898–1978) Untitled (February 10), 1965

Oil on canvas 60 x 50 inches 152.4 x 127 cm

28

BEVERLY FISHMAN (B. 1955) Untitled (Depression, Insomnia, Pain, Diabetes), 2019

Urethane paint on wood 44 x 79 1/2 inches 111.8 x 201.9 cm

30

BEVERLY FISHMAN (B. 1955) Untitled (Digestive Problems, Asthma, Depression, Depression), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 51 x 116 inches 129.5 x 294.6 cm

32

FREDERICK HAMMERSLEY (1919–2009) Half of Half #6, 1960 Oil on linen 34 x 30 inches 86.4 x 76.2 cm

34

FREDERICK HAMMERSLEY (1919–2009) Flex, 1984–92 Oil on linen on panel 7 x 7 inches 17.8 x 17.8 cm

36

AL HELD (1928–2005) South-Southeast, 1973

Acrylic on canvas 84 x 96 inches 213.4 x 243.8 cm

38

AL HELD (1928–2005) Giza Gate III, 1976 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

40

WARREN ISENSEE (B. 1956) Djanga, 2017

Oil on canvas 40 x 32 inches 101.6 x 81.3 cm

42

WARREN ISENSEE (B. 1956) Old Gods, 2018

Oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches 50.8 x 50.8 cm

44

MARKUS LINNENBRINK (B. 1961) CRAPPYTACTICSCRYINGCONSUMERS, 2019

Epoxy resin and pigments on wood 60 x 60 inches 152.4 x 152.4 cm

46

MARKUS LINNENBRINK (B. 1961) DELETEVOICEMEMOS, 2019 Epoxy resin and pigments on wood 60 x 60 inches 152.4 x 152.4 cm

48

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN (1898–1976) Untitled Composition, 1953

Oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches 121.9 x 91.4 cm

50

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN (1898–1976) #17, 1961

Oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches 121.9 x 152.4 cm

52

KENNETH NOLAND (1924–2010) Blue Painted Blue, 1959 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 34 inches 86.4 x 86.4 cm

54

KENNETH NOLAND (1924–2010) Interlinear, 1973

Acrylic on canvas 85 1/2 inches diagonally 60 x 60 inches 152.4 x 152.4 cm

56

PATRICK WILSON (B. 1970) Hot Stack, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 86 x 70 inches 218.4 x 177.8 cm

58

PATRICK WILSON (B. 1970) Ascension, 2019

Acrylic on canvas 86 x 70 inches 218.4 x 177.8 cm

Miles McEnery Gallery

THE RESPONSIVE EYE REVISITED: THEN, NOW, AND IN-BETWEEN 520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2019 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2019 David Pagel Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Robert Wedemeyer, Los Angeles, CA Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-23-6 Cover: Yellow Jacket (detail), 1969

p. 8 © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY p. 13 © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 15 © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 17 © Benjamin Living Trust, courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts p. 19 © Benjamin Living Trust, courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts p. 25 © The Feitelson / Lundeberg Art Foundation, courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts p. 27 © The Feitelson / Lundeberg Art Foundation, courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts p. 33 © Frederick Hammersley Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 35 © Frederick Hammersley Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 37 Courtesy of the Al Held Foundation, Inc. / Licensed

by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 39 Courtesy of the Al Held Foundation, Inc. / Licensed

by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 49 © Estate of John McLaughlin p. 51 © Estate of John McLaughlin p. 53 © 2019 The Kenneth Noland Foundation / Licensed

by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY p. 55 © 2019 The Kenneth Noland Foundation / Licensed

by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY