A Parallel in Problems:

Is there a space on another space or a space in another space? Has American abstract art - in order to complete its sense of space to the fullest and through its vigorous spontaneity - discovered a second space?

As a parallel to this idea we paraphrase the impressionist problem . . . if shade is more or less the absence of sunlight, is this additional space an absence of the main plastic space? If shade - as demonstrated by the impressionists  is but an indirect or reduced essence of sunlight, is this sub-space a reduced and only indirectly suggested space? Is shade over/or under sunlight? And is this auxiliary space over/or behind the main sense of space? . . .  Shade did increase certain tactile qualities of color, and it can also be said that this second space has made our experience of space more �real�. Though the impressionists were somewhat space-deaf, their problem of sunlight and shade nevertheless makes an interesting parallel with the American problem of space and sub-space.

Shade-on-sunlight and space-on-space� there are other parallels. For example, Freud, who was really an impressionist working on/or against consciousness, discovered adjacent to the conscious a powerful and delusive second mind. This sub-mind, indisputably recognized as real, completes the structure of our thinking process. Freud was honest: He admitted that he owed this discovery to his studies in the world of art�

A second space seems to be at work with/or against the space of American abstract painting. Like the subconscious, it has qualities of being �sprung�, of being indirect. Whatever powers or vigor moves one in today�s abstract art, it is this indirect or sub-space that is truly original and pure in experience.

The point of perspective stimulated the Italian Renaissance - kept it alive for 200 years� does this indirect sense of second space provide a similar source of vitality for our plastic problems? For almost a decade we have been playing hide-and-seek with the object in painting and sculpture. We now know so well that the presence of the object in a painting intimidates the space, making it more dead-pan than ever before. After all our experiments it is no surprise to discover an original element in our particular sense of space.

Pre- Eighth Street:

The problem of an auxiliary space or a second �depth� to space, hovered over the heads of the French cubists - who were unable to actualize it. Instead, cubism created a new relationship between the object, the space, and the onlooker, As Kahnweiler succinctly described the cubist problem: �the paintings and collages push the objects out into the room, to make the object, as it were, partake of the same space as the spectator�� truly a great idea and truly an original plastic experience - with the direction opening into new space. Only Picasso and Mondrian - and Kandinsky and Soutine by another approach - knew where they were going.

Picasso made drawing after drawing, excavating raw space around/on/and in the object, sharpening its tactile reality - but unable to solve its real secret. Mondrian, trying to isolate raw space, slowly but surely removed the object, rendering space more intense by the lateral pressure of the black tape. No matter what they did or how they distorted or how they shook it by the neck, they could not reduce this raw space beyond a certain point.

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