occurs as a «progressive structuration and not as a simple reading» (p. 443).

Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959).

This theory of emotions is clearly borrowed from Dewey, as is the notion of a perfectly fulfilled cycle of stimuli and responses, of crises and solutions: it is the notion of experience (ibid., pp. 3237).

See H. Cantril, The «Why» of Man’s Experience (New York: Macmillan, 1950).

Leonard B. Meyer, «Meaning in Music and Information Theory,» Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (June 1957); idem, «Some Remarks on Value and Greatness in Music,» ibid. (June 1959). Quotation is from «Meaning in Music and Information Theory,» p. 418.

In the polemic with Pousseur (see Incontri musicali), Nicolas Ruwet (analyzing the notion of the musical group in light of linguistic methodology, and trying to identify distinctive units within a sonic group) notes that some systems of opposition recur in every language because they possess structural properties that make them particularly apt for that usage. This fact prompts him to wonder whether, in music, the tonal system does not also possess these same privileged characteristics. In this case, Webern stragedy might have originated in his awareness that he was evolving on structurally unstable ground without having either a solid basis of comparison or an adequate system of opposition.

See Henri Pousseur. «La nuova sensibility musicale,» in Incontri musicali (May 1958); and idem. «Forma e pratica musicale,» ibid. (August 1959).
42.Ombredane’s contribution to the symposium volume La Perception,
PP. 9598.
43.In answer to Ruwet’s criticism (see note 40 above), I shall say that a system of opposition can be considered stable only to the extent that it corresponds to fixed and privileged patterns of the nervous system. If, on the contrary. these processes can change and adjust according to the evolution of the entire anthropological situation, wouldn’t this cause a break in the ideal isomorphic chain that is supposed to join the structures of a language to those of perception and intelligence? And, in this case, wouldn’t there arise, between the structures of the language and the structures of the mind. a dialectic relationship in which it would be very difficult to determine what modifies and what is modified?

The Open Work in the Visual Arts
i. In his work Ultime tendenze dell’arte d’oggi (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961), Gillo Dorfles defines «informal art» as «a form of abstract art without any will to figurate and with no semantic intention» (p. 53). However, since in this essay I deal with those «open» forms of contemporary art whose organic parameters don’t always fit within the traditional notion of «form,»
I shall use the term «informal» in a much broader sense. This is, after all, the criterion used in the special issue of II 147ri (June 1961) which is entirely devoted to «informal art» and which contains contributions by numerous painters, philosophers, and critics, including G. C. Argan, R. Barilli, and E. Crispolti. This chapter, which appeared in that issue, was written before the end of the «season of the informal»—that is, before the various antithetic experiences it discusses (kinetic art and so on) assumed such labels as «op art.» This, however, in no way invalidates its analysis of «informal art.»

Apparently, Gabo’s poetics does not fully agree with the notion of the open work. In a letter to Herbert Read written in 1944 and quoted by Read in his book The Philosophy of Modern Art (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1954), Gabo refers to the absolute character and the exactitude of lines, to images of order rather than of chaos: «We all construct the image of the world as we wish it to be, and this spiritual world of ours will always be what and how we make it. It is Mankind alone that is shaping it in a certain order out of a mass of incoherent and inimical realities. This is what it means to me to be Constructive» (p. 273). We should, however, compare these statements to what Gabo had said in 1924 in the Constructiv: ist Manifesto: order and exactitude arc the parameters on the basis of which art reproduces the organicism of nature, its inner formativity, the dynamism of its growth. Though art is an achieved and defined image, through its kinetic elements it still can reproduce that continuous process which is natural growth. Like a landscape, a contour of the earth, or a stain on a wall, the work of art lends itself to various visualizations and reveals an everchanging profile. Thanks to its characteristics of order and exactitude, art can reflect the mobility of natural events. In other words, it is a defined work that represents an «open» nature. Despite his diffidence visavis other forms of plastic ambiguity, Read notes: «The particular vision of reality common to the constructivism of Pevsner and Gabo is derived not from the superficial aspects of a mechanized civilization, nor from a reduction of visual data to their ‘cubic planes’ or ‘plastic volumes’ . . . but from an insight into the structural processes of the physical universe as revealed by modem science. The best preparation for a true appreciation of constructive art is a study of Whitehead or SchrOdinger . . . Art—it is its main function—accepts this universal manifold which science investigates and reveals, but reduces it to the concreteness of a plastic symbol» (p.263).

Ezra Pound was similarly impressed by Brancusi’s work: «Brancusi had set out on the maddeningly difficult exploration toward getting all the forms into one form; this is as long as any Buddhist’s contemplation of the universe … Or putting it another way, every one of the thousand angles of approach to a statue ought to be interesting, it ought to have a life (Brancusi might perhaps permit me to say ‘divine’ life) of its own . . . But even the strictest worshiper of bad art will admit that it is infinitely easier to make a statue which can please from one side than to make one that gives satisfaction from no matter what angle of vision. It is also conceivably more difficult to give this ‘formal satisfaction’ by a single mass, or let us say to sustain the formalinterest by a single mass, than to excite transient visual interests by more monumental and melodramatic combinations.» «Brancusi,» Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (New York: New Directions, 1968), pp. 442443.
4.Besides Munari’s famous vetrini, one might also consider some experiments of the last generation: for example, the Miriorama of the Group T (Anceschi, Boriani, Colombo, Devecchi), Jacov Agam’s transformable structures, Pol Bury’s «mobile constellations,» Duchamp’s rotoreliefs («the artist is not alone in accomplishing his act of creation, since the spectator is the one who puts the work in contact with the exterior world by deo phering and interpreting its profound qualities, and thus he contributes to the creative process»), Enzo Mari’s tranformable objects, Munari’s articulated structures, Diter Rot’s mobile sheets. Jesus Soto’s kinetic structures («These structures are kinetic because they use the spectator as a motor. They reflect the movement of the spectator as well as that of his eyes. They foresee his capacity to move and solicit his activity without constraining it. They are kinetic structures because they do not contain the forces that animate them. they borrow their dynamism from the spectator,» as Claus Bremer notes). Jean Tinguely’s machines (which, manocuvered by the spectators, keep drawing different configurations), and Vasarely’s forms.

5.In L’Oeil (April 1959).

6. James Fitzsimmons, Jean Dubutlet (Brussels, 1958). p. 43. 7.A. BerneJoffroy, «Les Objets de J. Fautrier.» Nouvelle revue jianfaise
   (May 1955)
   8.G. C. Argan, «De Bergson i Fautrier,» Ant Aut (January 1960).
7. R. Barilli, J. Dubuffet: Materiologies (Milan: Galleria del Naviglio, 1960).
   to. Jacques Audiberti, L’Ouvreboite (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), pp. 2635.
   t. Henri Pousseur, «La nuova sensibilita musicale,» Thrown’ musicali 2 (1958).
   12.See Abraham Moles, Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (New York: PrenticeHall, 1953) p. 82, as well as the section «Information, Order. and Disorder,» in Chapter 3 above.
8. In Herbert Read, The Tenth Muse (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 297303.
9. «Jean Dubuffet ou le point extreme.» Cahiers du music de poche 2: 52.
10. See Renato Barilli, «La pittura di Dubuffet,» in Il Ferri (October 1959), in which he also refers to Dubuffet’s Prospectus aux amateurs de tout genre (Paris, 1946)in particular, to the section titled «Notes pour les finslettres.»
    16.See Palma Bucarelli, «Jean Fautrier: Pittura e materia,» 1l Saggiatore (Milan, 196o), for an analysis (p. 67) of the constant opposition between the effervescence of matter and the limits of the outline, as well as for the distinction between the suggested freedom of the infinite and the anguish caused by the absence of a limit, considered as negative to the work. P. 97: «In these Objects, the outline is quite independent from the blotch of color, which nonetheless exists: it is something that goes beyond matter, that indicates a space and a timein other words, something that frames matter in the dimension of consciousness.» These critical readings are limited to the works in question, and they do not provide a categorial system valid for every kind of «informal» experiment. In cases where there is no dialectics between outline and color (I am thinking of Matta, !mai, or Tobey), our investigation would have to follow a different course. In Dubuffet’s later work, the geometric subdivisions of the texturologies no longer exist, but we can still search the canvas for the suggestion of a direction and a choice.
11. An example of this relationship between iconographic meaning and aesthetic meaning already exists in classical figurative art. The iconographic convention is an element of redundancy: an old bearded man flanked by a ram and a child isaccording to medieval iconographyAbraham. The convention insists on both the character