Contributed by David Carrier / What comes after Abstract Expressionism? A couple of generations ago, American art writers were intent on addressing that question. The American color field art of Morris Louis, Kenneth Nolan and Jules Olitski was one plausible answer. Then, of course, came Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and much more. The French had a different answer. They were interested in the abstraction of Hungarian-born Simon Hantaï (1922–2008), who moved to France in 1948 and whose work seemed in line with the post-structuralist theory that had taken hold there. His inspirations were Marxism, Catholic tradition, Matisse, Picasso, and Jackson Pollock as seen in Paris exhibitions, and his bête noire was Surrealism. Given these rich and disparate interests and impulses, it goes almost without saying that Hantaï developed a highly distinctive aesthetic. Long famous in France, his paintings recently have been shown in several ambitious Manhattan galleries, notably Timothy Taylor.
With eleven large canvases, “Unfolding” provides a cogent account of Hantaï’s development. In Meun (1968), painted in oil, we see floating organic body parts, abstracted versions of the forms in Matisse’s late cut-outs. Then Bourgeons (1972) presents smaller blue forms set in an all-over composition. The later works are acrylic. On Tabula (1980) and Tabula (1981), Hantaï sets rows of painted forms on a grid. Whereas Louis soaked his canvas, Hantaï knotted, folded, or crumpled it before unfolding and then stretching it. Using diverse techniques, both artists thus sought a radically impersonal way of using color. Both also chose to set their color in backgrounds of unpainted or underpainted canvas.
Understood in that way, Hantaï’s and Louis’s respective bodies of work are complementary. Molly Warnock, curator of the show, sees Hantaï’s oeuvre a bit differently. She connects it to the writings of Jacques Derrida and the deconstructionists, according it a complicated interpretation akin to the one Michael Fried extended to Louis’s. Whatever its merits, that critique should not occlude either the visual affinities between the two artists’ paintings or the independent merit of Hantaï’s. Both were abstract painters concerned with de-skilling, as it became known in America. There is no reason both Hantaï’s and Louis’s ways of making abstractions shouldn’t be embraced equally. And the delayed American appreciation of Hantaï – in part the product of a broader reaction against French modernism – should not now be held against him.
One complicating but undeniable factor is that Hantaï’s style of abstraction is an alternative to the work of Johns, Rauschenberg, Pop Art in general, and indeed everything since. But we art writers are familiar with the compulsion to edit art history, and we’re obliged to stay alert to under-appreciated art that belatedly calls for the canon to be revised. On this score, Hantaï’s work qualifies simply because it is obviously visually convincing. His paintings deserve to stand alongside the works of the American color field painters. How, then, can we rethink our analysis and acknowledge Hantaï’s legitimate importance? Answering that important question may be demanding. But we will need to alter our historical framework at least a little. And that is worth doing, I believe, because, wholly apart from any historicist theorizing, Hantaï has a unique and convincing place in the development of late modernism.
“Simon Hantaï: Unfolding,” Timothy Taylor, 74 Leonard Street, New York, NY. Through March 2, 2024.
About the author: David Carrier is a former professor at Carnegie Mellon University; Getty Scholar; and Clark Fellow. He has published catalogue essays for many museums and art criticism for Apollo, artcritical, Artforum, Artus, and Burlington Magazine. He has also been a guest editor for The Brooklyn Rail and is a regular contributor to Two Coats of Paint.
There’s an art synapse that’s blocked in Hantai’s work that’s not convincing. Too regular too uninteresting? Who knows? I once ate a deconstructed carrot cake that was tasty but didn’t convince me it was carrot cake. Hanna Wilke’s vagina’s are convincing but I’m not so sure about Klein’s body paintings any more. I do know Artforum keeps sending me issues that become harder to read and even harder to throw out.
I sympathize with David Carrier’s effort to situate Simon Hantaï’s painting in the context of the post-war American critical story. However, a note of caution is necessary. Though Hantaï did show sporadically in New York (Pierre Matisse, 1970,1975; Andre Emmerich, 1982) his work did not fit in, and the critics did not take him up, until more recently. I would mention Hantaï in America by Carter Ratcliff, Paul Rodgers/9W, 2006 (re-published in Artpress, 2013).
Carrier makes some very substantive points. First is that surrealism was Hantaï’s bête noire. Like the great mid-century American generation, Hantaï was deeply influenced by surrealism, through the technique of automatism and, just as surely, like them, he rejected it. Secondly, he states that Hantaï offers an alternative to Johns, Rauschenberg and Pop. This, I think, is the first time a critic has put forward the thought, as such, and it is striking. Much in the post-war period hangs upon it.
However, I query the connection to Louis. Hantaï always presents a contrast with his contemporaries. He cannot be associated or aligned with greenbergian formalist abstraction, with labels such as color field, modernism or any other. Moreover, though Hantaï was deeply interested in the issues of modern philosophy, he cannot be aligned with a school of deconstructionism, which I have always thought to be more an invention of American university departments. Hantaï was a painter and he thought in pictorial terms.
Carrier is aware that Hantaï presents something of a conundrum in America and he seeks to address the issue. The truth is quite simple. Simon Hantaï situated his work in the context of modern art. His influences were the great mid-century generation of American artists, with Pollock prominently cited, and the early modern artists Picasso, Matisse, among others, looking back to Cezanne and all that went before. Out of this, we may at last be discovering that he achieved his own specific understanding of international post-war contemporary art.
Perhaps Carrier’s most provocative and challenging thought comes in his title’s question: Simon Hantaï: Canonical at Last?
This is great to read. I would take exception at the Louis comparison, for these reasons. Louis was using a highly developed series of wooden channels over which to place canvas and skillfully and consciously control the results. The opposite methodologically to Hantaï. Louis also worked with multi colored compositions, usually with either repeated, transparent overlays of color or adjacent bleeding color lines.
Again the opposite of Hantaï. This matters. The content of Louis’ painting, Jewish theology, does however connect to Hantaï’s relation to Catholocism. Again, great to read your appreciation of Hantaï. I don’t know about cannonical, here in the U.S.? Interesting to read this!
I forgot to say, “underpainted ” or “not painted” I think all the paintings are on primed, white linen, none use canvas. Canvas was introduced during the Second World War because of the unavailability of primed linen. Totally different materials, only one, canvas was a color field stain choice, and crucial to Louis’ technical approach..
Good to read another piece on Hantai, but this comes accross as a bizarre attempt to insert Hantai into an American narrative. No one in Europe would ever dream of connecting Hantai to Louis. What is lacking, as too often with readings of Hantai in the US, is historial/intellectual context. Invoking post-structuralism in passing wont do the job, unless the argument is thoroughly examined and developped. But how about placing Hantai in context with Martin Barre and Supports/Surfaces, for example, since all three are finally becoming more visible in NY galleries, and since they were all engaged in articulating a critical response to “American Painting” ?
Well, both Gwen and David come down hard on the connection to Louis. I think that is right, as I said in my comment above. However, I repeat, Hantaï has a strong connection to the great mid-century generation of American painters.
It seems to me that if one wants to emphasize the French art context, one needs to do more than pitch the idea of a relationship. If one mentions Martin Barré or Supports/Surfaces, one surely has to show how they are related. From my experience, there was never much connection with Barré, but maybe I’m missing something? There is little doubt that Hantaï had a massive influence on Supports/Surfaces and certainly it would be possible to consider how artists such as Marc Devade and Daniel Dezeuze share Hantaï’s philosophical and art historical outlook. However, again, placing Hantaï in the context of Supports/Surfaces seems misleading to me. The same can be said of BMPT, although Buren was an early interlocutor, who has written about the impact Hantaï had on the group, and Hantaï felt close to Parmentier’s anarchic stance, especially in the later years. However, again, Hantai’s position was worked out in the 1960’s in relation to surrealism and the American painting of the 1950’s. He always emphasized his feeling of separation from a French identity. The identity he sought was not bound to nationality.
One can, of course, mention other major figures on the French scene, such as Joan Mitchell (a close friend early on) and James Bishop, and Judit Reigl, like Hantaï of Hungarian origin and another early close friend.
Yet it is worth emphasizing, a perennial problem is to think of Hantaï as attached to either a ‘European’ identity, suggesting the Ecole de Paris, or an ‘American’ context, which implies color field, post-painterly abstraction, or what have you. Hantaï always stood in contrast with these identities.
Hantaï’s context, the one he tirelessly spoke about, as I stated above, was that of the modern art tradition, of Pollock, of Picasso (although he did not speak about him in the later years), of Matisse, looking back to Cezanne and the whole struggle of art in the nineteenth century to create aesthetic value independent of the Academy.
I should add that Gwen’s mention of the ‘historical/intellectual’ context is key to understanding Hantaï. This was the subject of my long exchange with the artist for the last three decades of his life. Gwen is right that the notion of ‘post-structuralism’, so dear to American professors, does not cover the topic. I think I have been addressing this issue in my recent books: The Modern Aesthetic (2017) and Pablo Picasso | Simon Hantaï: Drama Shared, Cubism and the Fold (2020). I am now engaged in a third volume where my treatment of the issue will be considerably expanded (to appear in 2024).
I’d just like to add that Morris Louis is a great painter, as is Hantaï.
See also my https://artcritical.com/2014/06/18/shaped-c
I would like to come back to one detail of David Carrier’s review. He remarks that in Meun (1968) “we see floating organic body parts”. Actually, it is impossible to reconcile the forms of the Meun paintings with human limbs, heads or torsos. This is because they were created through the technique of automatism, which is anchored in Hantaï’s ‘folding method’. There is a distinct difference here between Hantaï and Yves Klein whose Anthropométries are imprints of the human body. Yet Carrier sees human forms. How do we account for this?With Hantaï’s Meuns we have, for the first time in the history of art, I have suggested, the invention of abstract human form. What this might mean would require a longer discussion. However, throughout the twentieth century artists struggled with and against representation of the human figure: take Picasso, Bacon, de Kooning, or even Nauman or Basquiat. Rothko addressed this issue when he suggested that these artists had felt compelled to mutilate the figure, which he refused to do. Hantaï too addresses this situation and it led him, like Rothko, to a dissolution of representation. As such the Meuns occupy an extraordinary place in the development of 20th century art. It is the reason why they have established themselves as the second great series, on the same level with the Mariales, of Hantaï’s oeuvre. Carrier recognizes this when he adds that the Meuns are: “abstracted versions of the forms in Matisse’s late cut-outs”, which of course do still represent the various elements of the human body.