Page 20 - Attila Konnyu

colors in relation to each other and the principle consideration are all the variations possible in red, yellow, orange in terms of value. To Rothko nuance is interesting and the relationship of the color to the over painted ground. And how amazing!
This means then, that at this time objectness is eliminated. Where the Fauves started with color that had no delity to the object, through the Color Field Painters such as Rothko, where the color is considered in itself in all its variations, we yet come to Klein and with him to its absolute autonomy. In ‘Monochromatic Blue’ 3’ by 6’. Klein paints absolute and ideal blue, painted for its own aesthetic effect, uninterrupted, solid, rectilinear, calm, yet exciting in its solidity, consistency, scale.
But the question arises why do we need to engage abstraction in order to show ideal characteristics?
Here I return to Plato’s argument about existence of the realm of ideas in which all forms are perfect and reality is an imperfect re ection of the realm of ideas. Therefore if you imitate reality you only get an imperfect copy of a copy. For this reason abstraction is engaged to show ideal characteristics, where abstraction is a form created on impulse. Self-referential art grows out of this notion. (Less ideal characteristics will be ignored in the picture of the ideal itself.)
By the 20th century modern aesthetics is heteronomous (this one grows from multiculturalism), styles evolve from individualism; autonomy of painting is recognized as well as autonomy of materials for aesthetic import they already carry. With works such as Christo’s wrapped objects, that so much remind me of “Whistler’s Mother”, “Art for Art’s Sake” has evolved into “Art in Order to Leave Art” a concept that if we learn how to look at things, aesthetic experiences will be happening to us in day to day reality. Jasper Johns can use as a reference a banal object and will be understood for the aesthetic import. At the same time Conceptualists run with Duchamp’s idea that art can be made out of anything, that it is a matter of decision what art is. They arrive at the notion that conception and meaning take precedence over plastic form, that intention prevails over plastic form as well as that thought presides over sensuous experience. They arrive at “Art As Idea”. They carry it as far as Rauschenberg who “Erased De Kooning’s Drawing” or Iris Clert who sent a telegram: “This is a portrait of I. C. if I say so.” In 1960, in Paris Arman unloads two trucks of rubbish in the gallery where Brown comments that every
shoe store in Amsterdam has Arman’s exposition - by which we arrive to the concept again that artworks are an intermediary step to a self re ective learned viewer.
In order to place Attila Konnyu’s work we need to look at the European parallel to American Abstract Expressionism – Art Informel. It includes all the abstract and gestural tendencies that developed in Europe during the World War II. It is a French term describing an approach to painting that had an improvisatory methodology and used a highly gestural technique. The French art critic Michel Tapie used the term “art autre” (other art). This movement has given way to New Informalism in the year 2000.
“Create your paintings with strong, wild gestures and do it with a pure heart! If you please, shout with the power of wild colors, but create your paintings with the honesty of the sleeping child in you!” These were the words of Karel Appel to Konnyu when they saw each other at the end of 1990’s in Europe.
Indeed, as one views Konnyu’s paintings, it becomes apparent that the works offer a systematic coordination of parts. Elements are organized throughout the canvas, affecting the structure. They t together harmoniously. One would expect chaos from so many elements and vivid colors and yet! Drawing upon Art Informel of 1950s that in fact refers to “a lack of form itself” rather than “informal” art, Konnyu himself states: “I paint the void.”
We may detect Richter’s manipulation of layers of paint in Konnyu’s canvases. “At the same time, there are fundamental differences in the method used for applying paint to the surface, in the use of rubber role,” says the art historian Endre T. Rozsa; while Gabor Pataki, the art historian at the Research Centre for the Humanities of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, adds: “Nor can we ignore the fact that, the consciously multicoloured oeuvre in the series of abstract works of the German artist consists of only one layer, even if this is not the most signi cant difference. The most crucial difference is that whilst Richter consciously refers back to the repertoire of methods used by the New York School and by Informel, Konnyu reaches the same destination by an instinctive, unconscious route.”
20