Duo
1972
Julian Stanczak
An article introducing an exhibit of 'op art' gives an interesting interview with one of the artists represented, Julian Stanczak. Op art was one of those interesting phenomenons of the sixities, when it went mainstream into everything from posters and ads to ladies scarves. In some ways, it followed abstract's emphasis to the extreme with a reduction into the effects of color and pattern, quite apart fom representation life's objects.
When Christians, especially the more conservative, discuss art it is often to bemoan the flight from realistic representation. As a group we tend to elevate the type of art that speaks more didactically to us, and attribute the abstractions of the modern art age to the general chaos which attends the breakdown of a society. After reading some of Stanczak's comments... I took another look at this worldview idea.
I'm a great fan of Francis Schaeffer and he uses concepts of modern art to illustrate the decline of modern man in his quest for a universal in life, at once losing the idea of universals while becoming more disjointed in ability to communicate. In this, I think we ought to see the works of modern artists, who are pushing boundaries and really trying to say something with their art, as manifestations of philosophical problems we all face. It has its parallel in religion, too (the universals of the Eastern religions end up swallowing the individual details, the West's determined individualism fractures the sense of there being any whole). We seek a universal- the cohesion of the whole and how we, and all of the creation we see, holds together in meaning and relationship. But we are constantly finding ourselves fragmented and our attempts at universal truths laying shattered upon the foundations where we start. I think this explains the swing of the pendelum to minimalism and extremes of simplification. It is a tension that seeks relief in spurts of complexity and focus on detail, only to try again in the discovery of the universals. Each time this desire for wholeness on the part of man demands more ascetism of reduction. I think we see that in such types of art as "Op Art"... and Julian Stanczak gave what I thought was an important piece of the explanation of this process not only in the artist, but in all of us.
I'm glad the interviewer, Bill Mayr, chose this particular artist to highlight for the exhibition which opens this week at the Columbus Museum of Art under the title "Optic Nerve: The Perceptual Art of the 1960's". Stanczak's life shaped him in such a way that arrests our attention. At the onset of World War 2 his family was deported from Poland to Siberia. He overcame physical setback. He was a refugee - in Iran and then in Africa. His statements within the interview he is quoted as saying that his "style is an imperative, a quest for "artistic clarity"" and in related comments that he has grown weary of recounting the childhood difficulties of life with the confession that ends the article:
"The past will catch me one day- the atrocities of life. It's terrible, the past hounds me. One cannot shake it off.
Partially this answers the question of why I paint the way I paint.
I don't want to illustrate life. I want to paint the perfect abstraction of life"
So often the realism of the the art of the past is held up as an ideal, and I empathize with that: when a budding art student I scupted figures rather than the abstract shapes of my peers- the only one with an actual human figure! The general ideal of realism is part of a process and attempt to find that universal from which man creates his unified environment. As Francis Schaeffer puts it, "He [man] has tried to build a system out from himself, but this system has come to a place where there is not room in the universe for man." [The God Who Is There, chapter 3] The end of realism in art can also come to such an estate.
This is exactly where we find the words of Stanczak, our seeking after universals through an expression that comes from ourselves leads us to seek a perfection. We are trying to escape the harsh realities we find in our existance as fallen human beings. Abstracts, set free from trying to portray life as it is, gives expression to something within us... a stripped down, visually heightened pureness of statement. Until we hunger for something that expresses the complexities we find within ourselves and in human existance.... to go further in the circle.
Again I find the answer is not in harking back to some "simpler" time or traditional expression of another place in the process, but in understanding the despair that man finds with only himself and his many mistakes... sometimes atrocities. Then, not staying there, but looking to return to the upper level of hopes and aspirations that one finds only in the One Immortal God. This is the end of that search for perfection, and until one recognizes that.... the whole endeavor for perfection will always edit us out of the universe.
Modern artists and God agree on one thing, at least. In some ways you have to go outside the rationales of man to express some of the most basic things within a man's heart. Sometimes it is not what the eye thinks it sees...but what is really there.
