In Huffington Post G. Roger Denson critiques MoMA's Inventing Abstraction show, he contends that it "Denies Its Ancient Global Origins":
More hereThe true global context (not to be confused with the corporate, homogenizing globalism being imposed on world cultures today) defies the narrow view of the European formalists who tried vainly to root all specific events and behaviors in an universal ground that was unchanging and absolute. The relationship of form to content cannot be explained by universal principles because that relationship is different from case to case and thus requires a relativistic and practical approach to the interpretation and analysis of each case.
Image courtesy of G. Roger Denson
Reframing the form-content debate in the light of context, we see that the different ways that form and content recombine do not imply that they must reconcile with some guiding and universal standard of harmony, but rather in coming to terms with the contingent values and functions established for form and content by the general consensus of authorities that prevail in given societies--be those societies tribal, national, or comprised by civilization. For through artists' referencing of cultural models from around the world, viewers and readers get an immediate and direct idea of how much more liberating it is to capaciously represent and experience the world's heterogeneity.
