Collection Publications: The Intent of Esteban Vicente

Why is it that interpreters and critics insist on treating works of art as if they were voiceless things that become meaningful or expressive only after they work on them with their methods? One reason may be that they accept a view of things in which all objects, including works of art made into objects by these methods, can have no significance in any sense unless they are read as signs or symbols according to some code or theory. Then they face the old problem of Meaning in Abstract Art: what, for example, to do with works like these of Vicente, completely lacking in subject matter, and very poor grounds for the hunter of sexual or social or religious symbols? There is a simple way to start. There is often a central image (rarely in the center) is it a geometrized cow's eye, or a softened circle, within a vague rhomboidal shape?-that keeps repeating itself. Lines, colors, and shapes often play-quietly-against this figure, surround it, withdraw from it, push it forward or backward, or stand over against it. And with all this movement, there is quiet restraint. This much can be said, and truly. But it's very superficial compared to other approaches that have been tried: Vicente is (inevitably) a Spaniard, therefore-despite the evidence-there are echoes of the Prado, even something Goyaesque about it. (This is usually accompanied by a mild complaint about a misplaced "French" elegance and taste.) Also, Vicente is an Abstract Expressionist, and as such must have been very unhappy with the socio-cultural situation of the early thirties. There is surely something of this discontent in the work. Further, it has been said that abstract works--and these are certainly abstract-- represent a kind of "noxavoidance reaction" to the painter's environment. Reality must be painful to the sensitive, not to mention the alienated Vicente, and so he engages in the pain-relieving ritual of creating abstract shapes, pleasing in themselves, and unrelated to reality. Nor must we forget the Marxist complaint: These works not only fail to depict the contradictions of social reality; they are symbolic rejections of social responsibility . . .!