oil on canvas
Stanton McDonald Wright
Statement On Synchromism 1960, as printed in the catalogue of the Forum exhibition of Modern American Painters, New York, Anderson Galleries March 1916
I strived to divest my art will anecdote an illustration, and to purify it to the point with the emotions of the spectator will be wholly aesthetic, as when listening to good music.
Since plastic forms the basis of all enduring art, and since the creation of intense form is impossible without colour, I first determined, by years of colour experimentation, the relative spatial relation of the entire colour gamut. By placing pure colours on recognisable forms (that is, by placing advancing colours and advancing objects, and recreating colours on retreating objects), I found that such colours destroyed the sense of reality, and were in turn destroyed by the illustrative contour. Thus, I came to the conclusion that colour, in order to function significantly, must be used as an abstract medium. Otherwise, the picture appeared to me merely as a light, lyrical decoration.
Having always been more profoundly moved by pure rhythmic form (as in music) than by associative process (such as poetry calls up), I cast aside as nugatory all natural representation in my heart, however, I still adhere to the fundamental laws of composition (placements and displacements of mass as in the human body and movement), and created my pictures by means of colour form which, by its organisation in three dimensions, resulted in rhythm.
Later, recognising the painting extend itself into time as well as the simultaneous presentation, I saw the necessity for a formal climax which, though being ever in mind is the final point of consumption, would serve as a point d’appui from HCI would make its excursions into the audit complexities of the pictures rhythms. Simultaneously my inspiration to create came from a visualisation of abstract forces interpreted, through coloured juxtapositions, to terms of the visual. In them was always in goal the finality which perfectly accorded with my felt need in picture construction.
By the above one can see that I strived to make my aunt bear the same relation to painting the policy and the best music. Illustrative music is a thing of the past: it has become abstract and purely aesthetic, dependent for its effect upon rhythm and form. Painting, certainly, need not lag behind music.
