Book Review
Raphael Rubinstein
Polychrome Profusion: Selected
Art Criticism: 1990 - 2002
Lenox, MA: Hard Press Editions, 2004, $24.95
by DEBORAH
GARWOOD
read
the chapter in this book on the French art movement, Supports/Surface
Art critic and poet Raphael
Rubinstein began publishing art criticism in 1986, taking the position
that the well worn territory of Minimalism and its offshoots was not
his bailiwick. Instead, Rubinstein looked to postwar painting movements
in France and their living exponents for a key to his interest in new
modes of abstraction in contemporary art. His fervent investigation
of this issue, through his own writing and as a senior editor at Art
In America from the 1990s to the present, has significantly influenced
the critical landscape. Polychrome Profusion, Rubinstein's first collection
of essays on abstract painting and sculpture, gathers into one volume
articles previously published in Art In America, Arts Magazine and Art
Journal as well as symposium papers and catalog essays he wrote for
galleries in Europe, Canada, and Venezuela. Rubinstein notes in the
preface an early appreciation of Mexican culture, thanks to family background.
This detail suggests that his approach to art criticism was international
at heart from the get go. Indeed, it comes as no surprise that as a
young critic he sought out the company of Shirley Jaffe, Norman Bluhm,
and George Sugarman, American artists who came of age in postwar Paris,
and credits them with teaching him "how to look at art." (p.
9-10)
The shape that Polychrome
Profusion gives to latter 20th - early 21st abstraction unfolds through
five sections entitled: Complexity and Color; Expanding the Space of
Abstraction; Europa Resurgent; American Vistas, North and South; and
Visual Voices. Under these headings, 35 of Rubinstein's previously published
essays are lifted from their disparate sources and points in time in
order to be regrouped into fresh and unexpected, illuminating and logical
sets. These essays often interweave connections between the present
and the past through detailed discussions of artists and art movements.
Shifting between pieces that perform close visual analyses of specific
artists and articles of wider scope, Rubinstein argues for a sense of
stylistic history in support of stylistic change. He becomes particularly
animated in this regard during conversational assessments of significant
museum exhibitions held since the 1980s. The play Rubinstein discovers
between history, geography, and artistic continuity in contemporary
abstraction is perhaps the most compelling feature of his criticism.
"The Painting Undone: Supports/Surfaces" is truly original
and revelatory.
Stylistically, Rubinstein's critical approach is inspired by that of
New York School art critics, whose independence of thought and visual
analyses are legendary. The title essay on George Sugarman and the article
on Shirley Jaffe, in which Rubinstein performs intricate stylistic descriptions,
attest to this influence. Independence of thought can be found not only
in the overall course of his work but also at close range in the personal
style of his writing, which often brings free association and anecdote
to bear upon his arguments. Plainspoken critiques of freshness and clarity
are the result. There are 16 color plates at the back of the book, a
bonus for collections of this type. Let the curious scurry off to a
good art library with Polychrome Profusion in hand. They will soon confirm
for themselves how inventively Rubinstein has pursued the development
of contemporary abstraction through contact with living artists.
