When I first looked at the Barr drawing of Cubism and Abstract Art, it appeared to me that the two items at the bottom were the historical results of the other items above them and not as a way to divide the items above into one of the two categories. The graphic is a timeline starting at 1890 at the top and proceeding downward to 1935. Non-Geometrical Abstract Art and Geometrical Abstract Art would seem to have come into existence in 1934 judging by the visual elements. Perhaps a better method would have been to use a color background on each half of the graphic image to show that each of the –isms was part of one category or the other and to label the background.
The author’s observation that time was moving downward in the chart and that this downward movement was a metaphor for abstract art heading to the ‘dead end’ of the art museum was interesting. Visuals can have meanings that are not consciously intended but are a result of our natural human preconceptions. Down is bad, up is good. His explanation of the one-way direction of the arrows further reinforced the inevitability of the decline. Once you establish an idea, other objects can be interpreted in such a way as to support it.
I think the key point of the article was the statement that the sameness of a visual element implies sameness of what the visual element represents. Barr used different size typefaces to indicate the importance of the various art movements. Reinhardt was more democratic when creating his parody: all of the artists’ names are written in the same type style. The artists got a larger leaf depending on the length of their last names. Only the names of Braque, Matisse and Picasso on the trunk of the tree show any attempt at valuation.
The opposite of the sameness maxim was well illustrated by the differentiated lines of the indices for the geographic maps. That lines should be light to avoid moiré vibrations and optical clutter is a point well taken.
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