Book Review: "Abstract Painting: Fifty Years of Accomplishment from Kandinsky to Pollock" by Michel Seuphor (1964)
Abstract Painting: Fifty Years of Accomplishment from Kandinsky to Jackson Pollock (1964) is one of the first texts to construct a comprehensive history of abstract painting. Written by the Belgian abstract painter and art historian Michel Seuphor (1901 - 1999), the book’s trajectory is strictly demarcated to the years preceding the First World War all the way through the peak of Abstract Expressionism in the late-1950s and early-1960s. Compared to much more recent books on the subject, Seuphor’s book stands out because it was written at a time when abstract painting was still in the midst of discovering itself and when many of the artists and events cited were considered recent memories.
Since he was an enthusiastic creator of abstract paintings, Seuphor’s emotionally-charged language automatically aids in supplying readers with the proper visual vocabulary to describe and understand nonrepresentational paintings; this need not be limited to readers contemporaneous with the book’s publication in 1964, for the language employed is just as relevant six decades later. Take one brief passage in which Seuphor explains Robert Delaunay’s paintings in the 1910s: “However, it is the circular rhythms, together with the effects of simultaneous contrast, that are strikingly important in Delaunay’s work. Beyond a doubt, for the first time in the history of art, color is displayed for its own sake; it sings for the sake of singing, and vibrates for the sake of vibrating, without the slightest natural context.” This is an important point that must be stressed as it is not often that one gets the opportunity to read an Art History book in which the author has both the conceptual accouterments of an academic and the deeply personal insights of an artist.
Seuphor occasionally inserts himself within the narrative in explaining how he witnessed the unfolding of abstract painting over the decades, from meeting De Stijl painter Piet Mondrian to founding the Cercle et Carré group in Paris. Not only does this function as an eyewitness account, it frames abstract painting’s maturation from the early to mid-20th Century as a form of living history. This particular aspect comes through on nearly every page such as Seuphor recounting the effervescence of the Parisian art scene as a hub for myriad forms of creative experimentation in the 1920s or the optimistic tone he takes in describing a then-emerging Pierre Soulages (a leading French artist who went on to enjoy decades of recognition up through his death at nearly 103 in 2022).
The range of artists cited in this book is, quite frankly, extraordinary. The usual suspects of 20th Century abstraction - Kandinsky, Picasso, Léger, Malevich, Mondrian, Klee, Pollock, De Kooning, et al. - are discussed at length. Many of these oft-described “Modern Masters” were recognized for their importance either within their lifetimes or soon after their deaths. However, a consequence of this form of modern mythmaking - a practice that has echoes in the present - is that entire bodies of artists contemporaneous with these figures are largely forgotten. Thankfully, Seuphor’s book truly takes a holistic approach in which he discusses the importance of artists whose names are long-overdue for renewed interest, including: Georges Vantongerloo, Victor Pasmore, Wols, Victor Servranckx, Aurelie Nemours, Ger Lataster, et al.
