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ANNOTATING ART'S HISTORIES

Discrepant Abstraction

Kobena Mercer ed., Discrepant Abstraction, Cambridge, MA:MIT Press / 
London: inIVA, 2006, 224 pp., 29 illustrations, 
ISBN-10: 0-262-63337-X. ISBN-13:978-0-262-63337-6

Discrepant Abstraction is hybrid and partial, elusive and repetitive, obstinate and strange. It includes almost everything that does not neatly fit into the institutional narrative of abstract art as a monolithic quest for artistic purity. Drawing on the concept of ‘discrepant engagement’ in the literary model of cross-cultural studies proposed by Nathaniel Mackey, this second volume in the Annotating Art’s Histories series alters our understanding of abstract art as a signifier of modernity by revealing the multiple directions it has taken in wide-ranging international contexts.

Impure, imperfect, and incomplete, the version of abstraction that emerges from this global journey shows how the formal ingenuity of abstract art has been cross-fertilized, from abstract expressionism onwards, by creative discrepancies that arise when disparate visual languages are brought into dialogue. Contributions span from Malevich’s monochromes, through Yves Klien and Robert Rauschenberg to in-depth studies of materials originating in Hong Kong, Sudan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran as well as in Asian American, Canadian, Australian and Caribbean contexts. Mercer’s chapter follows on from his essay, ‘Frank Bowling’s Map Painting’ in Gilane Tawadros and Sarah Campbell eds. Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, Venice and London: Forum for African Arts, Prince Claus Fund, inIVA, 2003, 139-149; here, the use of abstraction to address trauma in the diasporic formation of Caribbean subjectivity is explored by way of the concept of ‘fossil identities’ proposed by novelist Wilson Harris, who was also the subject of a commissioned interview in the book’s closing chapter by Nathaniel Mackey.

Contents:

  • ‘Introduction’, Kobena Mercer, pp.6-29
  • ‘Abstract Expressionism and Third World Art: A Post-colonial Approach to “American” Art’, David Craven, pp.30-51
  • ‘To Avoid the Inscrutable: Abstract Expressionism and the “Oriental Mode”’, Stanley K. Abe, pp.52-73
  • ‘Abstraction and Modern Chinese Art’, David Clarke, pp.74-93
  • ‘Rethinking Calligraphic Modernism’, Iftikhar Dadi, pp.94-115
  • ‘Abstraction as Infection and Cure’, Mark A. Cheetham, pp.116-133
  • ‘Autobiography of an (Ex) Coloured Surface: Monochrome and Liminality’, Angeline Morrison, pp.134-153
  • ’’It’s Not Enough to Say “Black is Beautiful”’: Abstraction at the Whitney, 1969-1974’, Kellie Jones, pp.154-181
  • ‘Black Atlantic Abstraction: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling’, Kobena Mercer, pp.182-205
  • ‘Quantum Ghosts: An Interview with Wilson Harris’, Nathaniel Mackey, pp.206-221

Kobena Mercer (series editor) / Projects / Contact