POMO Package

I am hesitant to do this but I’ve had a few comments from folks that make me think that my critique against Postmodernism is not understood. I have decided then to show you as well and hope that the fog of misunderstanding will lift from your fevered brows. But let me also warn you that even though I show these works it doesn’t mean that I do not enjoy or respect these paintings or this style. Many of these artists are innovative, intelligent and strong. What I am saying is that it’s time for CHANGE.

Postmodernism has developed an official style for abstraction. It’s roots lie in Surrealism of the 1930s – usually traced back to Francis Picabia. But most artists won’t know this. Their reference point is POP – mainly Rauschenberg, Warhol and Rosenquist and its here that we see the visual ideas that drive lens based painting, reproduction and programming coming together. For Rosenquist it is the overlaying of media images across a bulletin board like space. For Warhol it is the space of print media and the skewed repetition of reproduction. For Rauschenberg it was the use of both of these strategies – mixed with an isolation of the painting technique. The play of space in these works is shallow and flat, mainly because of the physicality of the images themselves. Rosenquist plays with the idea of actual photo/painting reproduction – the outsized advertising image – Rauschenberg plays with the painted collaged reproduction itself. Painting is the textual underbelly for both of these artists – in Rauschenberg’s work through ABEX painting - Rosenquist takes the next step and deals with the primacy of the collaged images. Warhol is the final element. His work is about the breakdown of images into programmed components and flat color field/surface – exemplified by the missed registration/repetition – the flat color ground – the overhead projector tracing that circumvents the idea of physical 3d visual illusion. Warhol was designing a painting and he created the idea of anti-painting – and this idea remains strong in the POMO canon. Over the years these strategies have become the tools of the POMO academy and we are going to examine these through some of the practitioners of the prevalent style.

When collage space first started back in Cubist days it was an intimate space - one of physical touch. By that I mean we were encountering a figure in a room or a still life like set up – traditional spaces of intimacy. The pieces of the image were flattened and symbolized by the pieces of the collage. I believe that these artists were being highly influenced by cameras and movies - time compression – the way montages happen or one scene fades into another. IN later American painting that began to change. First with DeKooning creating a more physical cubist space by marrying the act of painting with the image - then Pollock who collapsed that space totally by eradicating the image through the ACT of painting itself. This is the end of the traditional space of intimate painting – begun in the previous century with the Impressionists. As we ended the 50s painting in the Western tradition was finished. Modernism was exhausted and painters looked to the burgeoning lens culture that was emerging. Pop painting began with the idea that we were becoming a society that was all about media and programming. And it is the beginning of the current style of abstraction. There are two camps the maximalists and the isolationists. Both remain distanced and public in their critique of painting. For our purposes here we’re dealing with the maximalists.

Abstract painting spun through many designed movements in the 60s all clinical or decorative then it died a horrible screaming death after the High Times Hard Times of the 1970s. It had become for all intents and purposes sculpture. All the physical elements of painting were thrown into question and the idea that painting anything was anathema to everyone with a recent MFA – and universities were starting to manufacture these degrees at an increasing rate at this point. Then came the Punk movement and with it an explosion of images and a need to express discontent with the stasis and boredom of American suburban existence -Voila – Neo Expressionism! Suddenly the Academy of Broken Stretcher bars didn’t matter and painters began to pick up their brushes. The problem for the academy was there wasn’t enough critique in the work – it was too retro – too DIY - and the revenge of the professional quickly took over. However, the problem was how to begin again - after being resurrected and the academies began to look about for precedent – finally finding it with the Europeans who all the while had continued down our pop pathway creating a body of visual work and true theory that boggled the American mind. How did we know we had all this was going on with POP? We’d been playing in the sandbox! Enter Sigmar Polke and the German painters par excellence.

This is the beginning of the current POMO Maximalist Academy. Polke had taken on Rauschenberg's strategies and used them in combination with Cubist collage traditions. Where Rauschenberg was dealing with the painterly physical spaces of ABEX painting - the Europeans - smartly - emptied the problem of painterly space from the dialog. The critique - anti-painterly in it's stance - was directed at images and the abstract nature of image culture. Images- particularly lens based images - became the focus of painters. David Salle adopted the same techniques as Sigmar Polke and ostensibly became one of the first Americans to engage the European critique.

For Salle the images are emptied of meaning except those provided by the viewer. Once again the meaning is that culture is over-saturated with meaning and the painter can no longer provide meaning to images. By overlaying the images the painter tries to provide depth without actually creating depth. The viewer must put it together themselves or provide further understanding through lived experience. Additionally the historical elements are connected to the idea of reproduction. Art history is an image bank along with every other reproduction. This has lead to a veritible storm of overlaid reproduction images in POMO abstraction and a huge increase in profits for overhead projector manufacturers.

In the 1990s the intent of abstract painters changed without the corresponding change to HOW the imagery was used or how it was presented. Painters began to hunger again for some kind of meaning or at least some control of the meaning of the images presented in addition to retaining the "critical" distance. Artists like Matthew Ritchie developed huge textual cosmologies of narrative regarding the meaning of their work - it was an attempt to reclaim the critique of imagery and meaning - and this was important to the reading of the work. Artists were beginning to try to infuse subjectivity into the overlays but failed to overcome the academic technique - continuing the collapsed media spaces and the look of critical distance that was so carefully formulated in the 80s. IN other words abstraction was using the technique of appropriation against itself. By the end of the 90s this was evident in a lot of painters work and there was a resurgence of this academic painterly enterprise with the overlaying of images. At this point it became really apparent to me that we had reached the tipping point and POMO abstraction was now a full blown mannerist enterprise.

It is ironic that there was a lot of critical writing by a number of artists stating that we had entered a Baroque age of abstraction - Frank Stella and David Reed among them. The problem was that unlike 17th Century Baroque painting there wasn't a corresponding shift in visual perspective. The changes in the uses of form and space between say Tintoretto - a Mannerist - and Caravaggio - a Baroque painter - are staggering. The Mannerists were using space in similar ways to the POMO painters - the use of appropriation - and the reliance on text for definition place these two forms in similar painting territory. The intentions of the artists today may be different, but the way the paintings work is not. We are yet to define a Baroque visual experience for abstract painting. Again I say that what did change was the intention of the artists rather than a corresponding change to the way a painting is made or experienced.

We will begin to define this new Baroque experience in another post. For now mix and match the imagery on the left and see how it falls into the same parts of POMO abstraction - appropriation, overlaying imagery, shallow billboard/collage space. My final point about this academic style is that it is now prevalent throughout our culture with the proliferation of computers, lens and programming. Right now in Times Square there is a Pepsi billboard that was designed by internet users playing with a primitive Photoshop program. At various times the program would screen capture and the image created by many hands would be saved and judged. The images used were randomly picked but related to the product. It is a POMO abstraction - the perfect fit of corporate advertising, academic styling and institutional acceptance.

I believe that a lot of today's artists are still trying to find a way past the conundrum that plagued Pollock after his great success. Once one has pushed into the physical painterly realm edging on the collapse of meaning in decoration - how does one find again meaning in imagery or attempt meaningful imagery? That is why Pollock's great triumph is posted on the left. Pollock strained it all out for contemporary painters and we've been going at it ever since - coming to Pollock's same space over and over. We must break this cycle and I believe that part of the solution is in the breaking point of Cubism and the American insistence on physicality. We need a different question and maybe a different answer will present itself. Abstraction is ripe for new ideas.

There are lots of artists following this POMO pathway. If you take the time and head over to some of the registries you'll see it. Most rely on the idea of computer technology without the corresponding critique of the underlying properties of computer programming. Another problem is the lens itself and the visual myopia it has caused. Finally there is a disconnect between the public and the private - objectivity and subjectivity. This is having a profound affect on how we process meaning and how we paint it. Abstraction is now at an exciting point of profound change and it is up to us to ask different questions about its future.

We'll discuss the isolationists in another post and we'll wind it up with some thoughts about the future. It should be interesting!