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Internal Necessity is the Mother…
Catalogue essay by Warren Feeney
Director
Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA)
Christchurch, New Zealand
Nov. 2005
When Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art was
first published in 1912, the artist's theories on painting, and on
the role of the artist in the creation of a unique art work, represented
the culmination of a European Romanticism that had dominated the nineteenth
century. Concerning the Spiritual in Art gave primacy to the
notion that the 'true' artist, whether painter, poet, musician, or
writer, brings to the work a subjectivity that is an expression of
his or her very being. Not surprisingly, Kandinsky's text praised
the art of the child and non-European cultures, for the 'intuitive'
psychology and identity of its makers that such work reveals, as well
as for its ultimate 'truths' about life and the universe.
In the 21st century, Kandinsky's theories about the role and the value
of the artist in society arguably have a lot to answer for. Since
his death in 1944, art movements such as Abstract Expressionism in
the 1950s, Neo-Expressionism in the 1980s, and the Young British Artists
in the 1990s have done far more than simply maintain the idea that
the artist's vision is paramount to the success of the work. Increasingly,
contemporary practice has celebrated and packaged subjectivity as
reason enough for the art work's existence, and a topic worthy of
its own consideration. When et al.'s The Fundamental Practice
was launched at the Venice Biennale this year, the project commissioner
from New Zealand, Greg Burke, went so far as to celebrate the subjectivity
of the art work and the associated controversy that accompanied it,
by drawing comparisons between et al.'s work and numerous conflicts
and political stands that New Zealand had assumed internationally.
He made note of the early enfranchisement of women in New Zealand,
and went on to observe the country's more recent stand on nuclear
weapons in the Pacific and the refusal to send combat troops to Iraq.
Burke's defence of the selection of The Fundamental Practice
for Venice centred upon the romanticism that truth and principles
reside in controversy. Does this mean that Kandinsky's grand belief
about 'true' art's spiritual essence, which affirms to the world something
of the artist's subjective inner being, has evolved into a media circus,
celebrating conflict and debate as ends in themselves?
And where does an artist such as Max Podstolski and his work fit into
such an environment, when his painting makes reference to modernist
movements such as Surrealism and CoBrA, and to notions of the artwork
as the outcome of a journey of exploration? Writing previously about
Podstolski's art, curator Wayne Lorimer drew attention to the fact
that Podstolski, occupying the territory that he does in the 21st
century, positions himself in the role of outsider.(1) However, a
more immediate way in which to address Podstolski's work is provided
by art critic and professor of art history and philosophy at the State
University of New York, Donald Kuspit. In a 2003 lecture, 'Reconsidering
the Spiritual in Art', he placed Kandinsky's ideas in a wider context
than that of the manner in which art talks and responds to the popular
media and negotiates a path through 'perceived' issues of controversy.
Kuspit addressed basic questions about all artists and why they continue
to create art works, and maintained that Concerning the Spiritual
in Art, shorn of its non-essential theosophical overtones, remains
as relevant for artists and the arts today: "Art faces the same
problem now that it did then: how to generate and articulate what
Kandinsky called 'the all-important spark of inner life... of inner
necessity.'"(2)
In Internal Necessity is the mother…, Max Podstolski equally
clarifies such a position on Kandinsky, most obviously through the
choice of the title for the exhibition, and also in his observations
that a belief in the primacy of the artist's vision is absolutely
vital to the realisation of the art work:
The spiritual in art is not a matter of religious belief but of
the freedom of the artist to be guided by internal subjectivity,
to go his or her own way in defiance of art world fashion or theory,
or any kind of externally-imposed social determinism.
Podstolski agrees with Kandinsky's maxim that theory should not precede
practice but follow it, that "everything is at first a matter
of feeling."(3)
The paintings in Internal Necessity is the mother… are
characterised, in the first instance, by rhythm and order. Grids,
squares, patterns and geometry are evident throughout. This may be
as seemingly structured and controlled as the geometry of Hide,
in which the patterns and grids appear to assume the role of the small
detail of a far larger world, beyond the picture plane. Alternatively,
a number of works such as Origin appear more organic, with
an elasticity realised through linear ebbs and flows that reply to
the forms and forces within. Both paintings reveal a fundamental commitment
to the realisation of an art work through the principles of order
and intuition, encompassing a sense that each work is secured in known
and comprehended truths and values. In addition however, the paintings
also imply that something yet to be realised exists within. Through
their shared iconography and structures, Podstolski's images inevitably
invite comparison with one another, and evoke and draw attention to
the idea that each work is informed by, and will in future serve to
inform, further images by the artist.
For those familiar with Podstolski's painting, the depiction of birds,
sense of colour and rhythm, and painted relief in a work such as Totemic
Figures ensures that it is immediately recognizable. The use of
symbols, the reduction of forms alluding to African and Aboriginal
art, and his admiration for the likes of Karel Appel, Joan Miró
and Paul Klee, are clearly evident and known quantities; but Podstolski's
capacity to take this familiar set of references to other places reveals
that an equally restless inventiveness informs his art. 'Totemic'
implies ritual and hierarchy, as well as ancient and mythological
entities. While Podstolski's painting references such notions, in
its cartoon-forms and high-key colours, it does so with an entire
lack of pretension. Totemic Figures is as joyful as it is profound.
Podstolski's bird imagery in Totemic Figures is shared in
Game of Attraction, Birdyard Suite, and Harbinger
- yet in each instance he seems to reinvent his method of description,
ranging from elegant black outline to white-relief and broad-flat
treatment of the figures and forms. Moreover, in Arch Desires,
the treatment of such creatures indicates that such processes are
being taken somewhere else, into territory arrived at, but yet to
be fully explored. Bent, bowed and curled, the imagery is evocative
and open in its reading, indicating it may be micro or macro in its
suggestion of form and space. Anchoring this however, and other works
in Inner Necessity is the mother…, are the artist's methods
and processes, and the underlying sense of each painting as the outcome
of a previous existence, implied and contained within the wider body
and life of the artist's work.
References
(1) Wayne Lorimer, Max Podstolski Strips, Christchurch,
2001.
(2) Donald Kuspit, 'Reconsidering the Spiritual in
Art', in: Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts,
Spring 2003, vol. 2 no. 1: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/gallery/kuspit_d/
(3) Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual
in Art, G. Wittenborn, New York, 1947, p. 53-54.
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