The Unifying Force of Nonobjective Painting

By Arlice W. Davenport

There is a loneliness at the heart of the abstract painter’s calling. As Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), the erudite patriarch of Abstract Expressionism, described it, the painter stands before his canvas seeking a unity between art and the darkening cosmos around him – our ever-expanding universe whose existential meanings have been shipwrecked, cut adrift from all but the most abstract scientific equations, bereft of any kind of vital emotion or spiritual urge. In its wake, humankind has lost its groundedness in authenticity.

Once we begin to look at this scenario from Motherwell’s vantage point, we see that abstract artwork provides what the weary world cannot: new ways of expressing an aesthetic or spiritual unity. And as we try to understand abstract painting’s uniquely unifying power, we find that it joins not only the painter and the viewer, but the viewer and the critic, the critic and the painter, and the painter with himself.

Variation with Color Fields by Norman Carr, 2020, oil on canvas - 14 x 11 inches

For Wichita painter Norman Carr, what is missing from the mute, cold cosmos speeding through space springs to life in the line, color, and geometric forms of his abstract, or more correctly, nonobjective painting – a fine-tuned subset of pure abstraction.

Put simply, the universe lacks a niche to house the yearnings that drive a painter like Carr to repeatedly renew his vocation, yearnings that fire his desire to express the contours of spirit in the vast expanse of nonobjectivity. One way to succeed at this quest is to excavate once dormant sources of creativity that still resonate down the long halls of the self. What is nonrepresentational in abstract painting is most forcefully expressed through the painter’s interiority – subjective and nonmaterial – defining his individuality and opening fresh avenues of authenticity.

The resulting unity is not between art and the cosmos, as Motherwell suggested, but between art and the self, emerging from a dialectic that builds and projects a personal stake in the abstract elements of the painting.

Thus, in abstraction, subject (the painter) and object (the painter’s intentional focus) – thought or felt but not empirically perceived – are made one on canvas. This type of union spurred Motherwell to further define abstract painting as “a type of mysticism.”

Like Becomes Like

How so? First, we have established that the unity of abstraction transcends the visual limitations of representational art. Such unity shows that like becomes like, as the disparate pieces of a painting blend, becoming one, each soaking up the essence of the others.

To his credit, Carr has long hit upon this winning formula, in masterful strokes. His painting Variation with Color Fields – one of three variations on the same compositional theme  – delineates a delicate dance between subject and intentional object. One is not given without the other, and both transform into what they are not, following the mystic way.

This leads us to conclude that the desired unity of artist and universe is an entirely philosophical ideal. But the unity in abstract painting – melding subject and (intentional) object – opens a gestalt of practical self-understanding. The artwork transports painter and viewer to a realm of harmony not only in which like becomes like – the foundation of mystical union – but from which an original realm of integrity and solidarity unfolds, nurturing the élan vital of personal renewal through existential meaning.

As such, nonobjective painting creates its own cosmos of dialectical growth from representation to abstraction to art in which spirit expands and matures, and the self encounters ever-rising levels of unity and grace.

Now, I am not suggesting that Carr’s approach to painting is formulaic or lacks spontaneity. On the contrary, his hard-edged, colorful, and energetic geometric forms blossom with an enthusiasm of spirit, caught in an inspired drive to render harmony and unity and the will to believe through a noumenal nexus of meaning, value, and beauty – ever growing, ever new.

Nowhere is such an arrangement as noticeable as in Color Fields, the third painting that Carr has produced for the covers of my books of poems. (See www.meadowlarkbookstore.com) What is projected to be the final of five volumes, Utter the Holy, will bear Carr’s magical color fields as its mantle. They make for the boldest of his book-cover paintings, the most vibrant and vivid, raising his geometric renditions to exciting, new heights.

A Daring Dialectic

What sets this painting apart from his previous works is the daring dialectic of contrasting – if not contrary – motifs. Look closely, and you will detect a hyper-visual strength in the choice, placement, and size of each element. Consider the brilliant image of what I designate as a vertical plank of flooring in the lower left portion of the painting. Its lustrous varnish of deep yellow and gold arrests the eye, holding it in place as it searches for correlates, for building blocks that complement yet isolate its saturation in light. Here, we are beyond geometry, edging into a variant of photo realism and collage. We are not viewing only a painterly symbol, but an imaginative piece of the (real) world wrenched out of place and laid down as a partial frame of the painting’s ambitious unity of identity.

Indeed, it is a rapturous piece of an elaborate puzzle, which, if we pull back from the details to an edge-to-edge view of the painting, we see an exquisite incorporation of forms that yearn to unite, sharing their seminal energy, yet declaring their independence from everything except color and form; titillating our desire for a universal coherence, for the image that bears the face of our humanity, minus the irregular features of the individual. Such a face belongs to no one and everyone in its openness to what surrounds it.

And so, we bump up against a visual guardrail that protects us from succumbing to the influence of Das Man (the They), as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger termed it: the nameless, featureless crowd whose opinions vie for control of all others. We do well to move beyond it.

And we do even better to garner the particles of nonobjectivity, paste them into place, and relish a new view of who we are, leaving the They behind.

What is the danger in all this? Mediocrity. Das Man cannot appreciate nonobjective painting because of the genre’s deep reliance on spirit. Thus, when we look at the sharp angles, pastel patterns, and softer edges of Color Fields, we come across obstacles to the They’s impoverished designs. At the root of the conflict is the They’s inability to think and imagine in a nonbinary way. The elements of Color Fields are distinct, as we have seen, but each is the same, to allude to the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. This means that like becomes like is not only a maxim, but also an ontological blending of beings.

The Antidote to Loneliness

As a result, we can say that in Color Fields, the singular individual – both painter and viewer – thrives in the subject-object dialectic of nonobjective art. In the color fields and geometric shapes of Norman Carr’s excellent book-cover paintings, we find not only an aesthetic unity, but also the antidote to the loneliness of the abstract painter: a map pointing to new life molded from line, color, and form, from an avant-garde geometry in which we see our face reflected in the unity of the painting, now turned into a speeding cosmos in search of an authentic self. We have no better choice than to get on board.

GLOSSARY

Dialectic A form of reasoning based on a dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments.

Existential iRelating to existence or the experience of existence.

Mysticism The experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality. Nonobjective Nonobjective art is a subset of abstract or non-representational art. It tends to be geometric and does not represent specific objects, people, or other subjects found in the natural world.

Ontological Relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.

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Arlice W. Davenport is the author of four full-length books of poetry and two chapbooks. All have been published by Meadowlark Press or Meadowlark Poetry Press in Emporia, Kansas. His academic background includes degrees in philosophy, literature, French, and religious studies, along with a concentration of work in art history. He and Norman Carr have been friends for more than 40 years, traveling internationally, along with Davenport’s wife, Laura. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.