formal language and to overcome the fissure between surrealism and constructivism. The Unknown in Art continues this content-related development of constructivist ideas at the beginning of the 1940s. Here Baumeister not only reconsiders the art-theoretical and philosophical positions of constructivism but also takes the art-historical concept as his subject. He mentions the possibility that constructivist painting could lose its vitality and that its straightforward transfer to applied design could become decorative and a formalistic game. Drawing on Klee, he therefore advocates extending the formal canon through the metamorphosis and modulation of absolute forms. Baumeister’s argumentation clarifies, however, that in 1943 he still regarded constructivist art as the culmination and termination of artistic development. On the other hand he cannot clearly decide in The Unknown in Art whether he should retain the term “constructivism” for the extended formal vocabulary of painting or use a new term, “form art.” Here Baumeister disengages himself from his philosophical arguments and discusses his changed understanding of art vis-à-vis the pairs of terms “form”/“plane” and “composition”/“construction.” The actual content of these analyses, however, becomes intelligible only when they are juxtaposed with works of art since he does not discuss his own artistic work in his writing. According to Baumeister’s theory, form replaced the plane as the most important pictorial element. If in constructivism he still presumed organizational laws that were clear and obvious to everyone, he now rejected defined formal laws. For him, form art is a play of forms that mutually define one another. It can be controlled only to a certain degree, then becomes independent, and is guided by unconscious creation and objectified by its philosophical basis. In this way formal laws are visualized without having to make them intelligible. The interplay follows absolute laws that are unrecognizable to the artist in unconscious creation and that Baumeister does not explain more fully and—as he discovers—also cannot explain. The formal laws are fundamental and present in every era of art, which Baumeister demonstrates by means of a number of references in his text and especially by including a picture section. With his commentary on historical elemental forms Baumeister presents a virtual summary of his artistic and prehistoric studies of the 1930s and 1940s. With these text passages and the images, he clearly indicates the sources from which he derives the forms in his art, which, however, can be understood only if we compare his works of art with these statements. 31 The Unknown in Art 31
E ditor’s note: for an example of just this sort of comparison, see Chap. 3, “Kunst und Mythos,” in Hoffmann 20 07 (see note 11), 103 – 49.
284 From Constructivism to Form Art