Formalism with Chris Taylor, USA
The following is excerpted from a conversation between HAF member Chris Taylor and HAF founder Ron Shelton. In it, the two artists discuss the meaning of Formalism and where Formalist interests might fit in with HAF’s global artistic mission.
Chris: You’ve said many times that you’d like to see HAF focus on social and political commentary in art. I’ve described myself to you as primarily a formalist, and we’ve discussed ways in which formalism might relate to HAF’s mission. I’d like begin this conversation by saying a bit about what I think formalism is. A formalist artist or art critic is one who engages with the medium(s) or the language(s) of an art work. Formalism has had a bad reputation since the 1960s, when it came to be associated with an essentialism that ignored context. It has been seen as concerned only with design and craft, and therefore as a largely superficial approach to art making and art criticism. As a painter and as a writer, this has not been my experience. First of all, nobody is ever exclusively a formalist. It is, I think, more of a tendency that some people have. Secondly, I’ve found that engaging with the medium(s) or language(s) of a work of art is never a simple, superficial matter—not if one takes it seriously, at least. If one is careful about it, it’s actually a very complex philosophical practice.
Ron: I’ve thought about the concept a bit to realize that I really don’t see the necessity to embrace it. Art comes from a variety of sources, inspirations that often carry with it associations to ideologies. HAF is an eclectic blend of ideologies, most embracing a non-linear/abstract approach. But, art has the ability to communicate important issues of social, political and historical information. It has always done that. Not sure when the concept of formalism originated. Why place boundaries on how one expresses art medium? In our current society, how can art “not” communicate a response to certain issues? How does an art formalist address issues of social, historical, political importance? Formalism is definitely grounded in a western thought/ideology.
Chris: You raise an important point when you mention abstraction. Many people conflate abstraction and formalism, as though form as such is the primary—if not the only—concern of the abstract artist. But this is not always the case today, and it hasn’t been the case historically. Malevich’s black squares were part of his vision of a utopian society. Kandinsky wrote at length about spirituality in abstraction. Barnett Newman spoke of his work in terms of what he saw as elemental human conditions, and both he and Rothko adamantly rejected readings of their work in “mere formalist” terms. I understand formalism differently than they did, but I appreciate that they were resisting what they thought of as simple visual appeal.
Ron: How does the works presented on HAF address this issue of formalism?
Chris: There’s a lot of different ideas being communicated through the work on HAF, but all of the work you represent exhibits a great deal of formal interest and experimentation. The works we’ve selected to accompany this conversation demonstrate this nicely. My own painting, as well as Andrew Reach’s and Nathan Pendlebury’s appear to be primarily formal investigations. Ron Shelton’s, Salifou Lindou’s, Heather Wilcoxon’s and Akira Miyamoto’s works present narratives that are both private and social, but they also challenge and play with the visual language through which they communicate. We are taught in art school to distinguish form from content, but in practice, it’s not really possible to separate the two. Nonetheless, it’s a distinction that sticks for a lot of people; it becomes a thinking habit. Then you have people saying they’re more interested in form (and eschew meaning), or they’re more interested in content (and dismiss formal issues). You’ve said you want the HAF focus to be on social and political issues, so I’d say what’s important about this conversation you and I are having right now is that it might highlight the inseparability of the form of a work of art from its social/political/spiritual/psychological meaning. We might focus more on one than the other, but we can’t fully discount either.
Chris Taylor, USA
Chris Taylor is an Ohio-based artist and a Senior Lecturer in the Dept of Art at the Ohio State University
featured work: Ron Shelton’s “surgery causeway” chalk on slate 54 x 41″
