ABSTRACT
IT IS POSSIBLE TO VIEW THE HISTORY OF painting in the present century as a sequence of revolutionizing questions of increasing scope. Cubism was a narrower investigation than Abstractionism, since it assumed that painting would remain representational while asking why it must remain tethered to our optical experiences of the visible world. Abstractionism denied representation altogether, but assumed all the conventions of pictorial space. Abstract Expressionism broke the identification between painting and pictorialism by making the act of painting central, with the work itself but a record of fierce interaction between artist and pigment. But even this abrupt reduction of paintings to the energy of their execution assumed all the formal boundaries that segregated painting from sculpture, from dance, from poetry or music or drama. The final revolution sought to erase even those, not to speak of the deeper boundaries between art and philosophy on the one side, and art and life on the other.
