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But unlike many defenders of abstraction, Varnedoe was never besotted with academic theory. "Between the vague confusions of individual experience and the authority of big ideas," he writes, "sign me up for experience first" Pictures of Nothing is about looking closely at abstract art, something that very few culturally conservative critics, including Christian commentators, have done. Varnedoe takes very seriously Frank Stella's quip about his paintings: "What you see is what you see."
Varnedoe's lectures start with Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, then move to Frank Stella's strip paintings of the late Fifties and the Minimalists Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Carl Andre. He then looks at work influenced by the aesthetic vocabulary of Minimalism, such as Eva Hesse's organic constructions, the site-specific work of Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson, and the early Richard Serra. Exploring satire and irony in abstraction, which typically plays off resemblances between abstract art and representational art, Varnedoe discusses the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Gerhardt Richter, and Cy Twombly. He concludes with a look at contemporary abstraction: Brice Marden, Robert Ryman, and Richard Serra's recent work .
Infused with the urgency of imminent death, these lectures were a public demonstration of what Varnedoe believed to be one of the most important locations of creativity and human presence in modern culture. Pictures of Nothing is nothing if not a celebration of nuances, those small differences that become expressive, that reveal themselves to those who gaze intently and with empathy. The humanity of abstract art is often found not in what it depicts but in how it is made and how the artifact forces us as viewers to attend to details we might not otherwise consider, details that are the products of intention. The human presence embodied in the slightest of adjustments of line, form, and color reveals that art is first and foremost an object made by a human being, and that this making entails finer and finer distinctions.
Indeed, Varnedoe's lectures suggest that to experience a Jackson Pollock drip painting or a Richard Serra steel piece one has to actually see it in person, to experience its real presence. Authentic art does not merely rely on our knowledge—it adds to it. This is as true of abstract art as it is of representational art.
Much of what passes for criticism and commentary on modern and contemporary art from a Christian perspective is, quite frankly, boring and formulaic. It often consists of deploying a Christian worldview theory that sees art's only role as "affirming the goodness of Creation," which is often assumed to be identical with figurative art, and then applying the theory in Procrustean fashion to artists and works of art. Faced with the option of embracing such a theory or being confronted by particular works of art that challenge, enlarge, and deepen my experience of the world, I will side with Varnedoe and choose experience every time.
Daniel A. Siedell is Curator at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author most recently of Martinez Celaya: Early Work (Whale and Star, 2006) and is at work on a book on contemporary art and Christian faith for Baker Academic in their new series Cultural Exegesis, edited by Bill Dyrness and Robert Johnston. In January in this space, look for Siedell's review of the Brice Marden retrospective currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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