Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham on the "current state of abstraction" (Dec. 2009)

“The state of abstraction” is so general, and vague, but I guess there should be something to say about it. We have had “abstraction” with us long enough that there is probably a consensus about what it is, although any definition would get very fuzzy at the edges. In the contemporary context, there appears to be a divergence between “sincere” abstraction and “ironic” or even “bitchy” abstraction, although frequently, and paradoxically, the latter feels emotionally deep and on target, and the former seems full of shit. This split is related to the question of whether there can still be “progress” or “discoveries,” and there have been particular and different approaches to exploring this issue, notably in Germany and America. It keeps coming back to definitions, and to the relationship between the personal and the public.

Abstraction presupposes itself to be either a private language or a shared one, with the first approach leading to works of “self-expression” and the second to embodiments of the manipulation of codes. These different categories share a self-referentiality which may be peculiar to abstraction; except in the extremely rare case (today) of a spiritually grounded investigation, abstract art relies on other art to provide its reference frame. While it is ultimately true that abstraction isn’t abstract and representation isn’t representational, it’s much easier to become confused about that with representational art. Subject matter and even chains of appropriation appear to offer levels of reading other than the formal/structural. Although one of the confusing things about the state we’re in (implicit in all of the above) is the extent to which abstraction has become a representation of itself.