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            The German-American artist Hans Hoffman was a noted teacher in the United States after emigrating from Germany in early thirties. He has influenced several generations of artists worldwide as well as making a major impact on American abstract art in the forties, fifties, and sixties. Noted for his theory of “push and pull,” Hoffman suggested that the artist manipulated the picture plane by pushing colors and shapes into the picture surface and pulling them from that surface. This is similar to the idea that cool colors recede and warm colors advance to establish spatial relationships on a flat surface. Rather than being a rigid systematic approach to painting, however, he suggested that the painting process is more intuitive, but the push-pull idea is one of the artist’s main tools.

            Another way of thinking about this is to contrast the idea with linear perspective, which creates the illusion of space by lines and shapes angled into the distance (edges of a road that appear to converge at the horizon, for example). Hoffman’s idea can create dynamism and tension with blocks of color since the color and size variation of the blocks also powerfully suggest space. Rather than angles and diagonals creating movement, tension, and space as in most Renaissance paintings, color and shape serve similar purposes. The first-glance apparent static quality of Hoffman’s colored rectangular compositions, often stacked like bricks on a wall, is offset by the dynamic rhythm and tension created by juxtaposition of warm and cool colored shapes.

            One could also think of this idea as tension expressed in life and nature. Even though Hoffman worked abstractly and emphasized abstract or non-objective approach to painting, the visual ideas contained within compositions are largely derived from observation of nature and the world around us. Opposition or polarity underlies much life expression: life-death, soft-hard, warm-cool, light-dark, proximity-distance. Other art forms also draw on these contrasts. Tension and dramatic conflict fuel the literary arts or rhythm, intervals, and high-low pitch and volume in music. Contrasts can create conflict and discord, but they also can create interest and harmony.

            Artists often find themselves experiencing push-pull in their own lives. What they do is not always recognized or valued by society at large. They sometimes are seen as outsiders, at odds with the mainstream, or as shirkers of responsibility (practicality). Visual artists may be pushed to create work that sells fitted to a particular market niche. In a sense, the artist is urged to conform to something socially and economically acceptable. We can easily see this at work in popular culture with respect to art (commercial and Fine Art), music (pop and classical), cinema (movies and film), theater (Broadway and drama), and writing (pop fiction and literature).

            Sometimes there are successful crossovers – serious artists who become popular or popular ‘artists’ who do something serious – but more frequently we find artists misunderstood or unrecognized or outright vilified. There is always the possibility for this to change, which will largely be the result of better education. Major museums contribute with blockbuster exhibitions and community outreach. Public television produces spectacular educational, historical, and Fine art entertainment. Cable channels and streaming services like Netflix create original programming far superior to anything on network television. Hopefully this will be a continuing trend in spite of clueless and even repressive governmental interference. Push and pull is everyday drama.