ABSTRACT
abstraction is still the generic term for the tendency most characteristic of modern art, but the term must be redefined if we are to apply it to the only distinct movement that has arisen since the end of the Second World War. The new generation rejects the purism, the absolutism, that we associate with names like Mondrian, Ben Nicholson, or Victor Pasmore. Instead they present us with various forms of the formless—paintings that look like a scraped palette, arbitrary scribbles in colours that have the dramatic flourish of a signature, and do indeed signify a personality, and perhaps nothing but a personality. This type of art, which has not yet earned a generic name (unless we adopt tachisme from the French), is the only face that the atomic age presents to the world—a face of blank despair, of shame and confusion. But yet the features can be identified, are recognizable again once they have been seen.
