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Ed Clark and the Abstract Shaped Canvas Anita Feldman -3-

must have anticipated a response along the lines of Will Barnet's faintly derisive remarks on the extremism of some abstract expressionist painters. "The enthusiasm generated by it [abstract expressionism]," wrote Barnet in 1957, "outstripped regard for the plat plane, the borders of the canvas, the scale, scope and proportion" of the painting (The World of Abstract Art, N.T., 1957, p. 105). There was no precedent for Clark's disregard of "the borders of the canvas," and his violation of [[crossed-out]] this some of these [[/crossed-out]] this convention had a disruptive, almost heretical effect.* But the [crossed-out]] The [[/crossed-out]] response [[crossed-out]] by [[/crossed-out]] of the Brata artists [[crossed-out]] have very [[/crossed-out]] was positive, as their actions attested. They placed the work in the best possible location, in the first room of the gallery, facing the door. From there, as memory testifies, its space "opened up to us" as a psychic reality.

The painting did this, I think by letting material..reality-- the reality of movement suggested by torn paper and by that extended, brushed form--contrast with the virtual reality of color and space, the virtual reality of sensation and emotion. Modern writers, beginning with Proust, [[crossed-out]] found [[/crossed-out]] have discovered that sensation can lead us to involuntary memory and thence to an emotional or psychic or virtual reality that is neither a lie nor an illusion. Modern painters, beginning with Cezanne, found the same power in the materiality of the picture plane and the framing edge. In this situation, the distance from sensation to emotion is as small--and as vast--as the distance from paint or torn paper to canvas, and the power released [[strikethrough]] in [[/strikethrough]] as we negotiate that distance can cross all conventional boundaries, giving mere matter a life of its own. Ed Clark's shaped painting showed him--and can show us--how this happens, and thereby light up our minds as it commands our attention. It [[strikethrough]] [[?]][[/strikethrough]] is, then, one of those "crucial experiences of our past" that [crossed-out]] other [[/crossed-out]] painters and viewers continually recapture for us.