Page 49 - Studio International - October 1969

Louw has yet worked with—while the artist's given space without disguising its surface. Like article 'Earthworks and the New Picturesque' in Artform,
inclinations are towards lucidity. The finished Louw's painted frame sculptures the ropes December 1968.
5 One of the Minimal sculptors' quarrels with English-
rope sculpture is a resolution between this appear discrete and 'visual' from outside
type constructed sculpture is that it relies too heavily on
dominant factor in the artist's intention and (there is always a danger that they will be the visual blandishments, divisiveness and illusionistic
the equally dominant and directly opposed over-composed), but once we enter the space devices associated with the 'discredited' art of painting:
character of the material. In the resolution they enclose their effect is dynamic and `Cubist fragmentation is basic to Caro's [work]' — Don
each partakes of the other : the artist reaps the physical: at the level of one's shoulder a Judd in Studio International, April 1968.
6 This is a problem which every sculptor has to resolve
benefit of a prolonged episode of more or less cluster of rope looks tight and heavy. The
once he uses more than one physically separate element.
unpredictable physical activity, equalising tension maintained between our sensing of See, for instance, Barry Flanagan's 'From notes '67/8'
lengths and weights with a certain balance in weight and stress and our comprehension of in Studio International, January 1969.
view (the sculptures are made of continuous the overall equilibrium is an equivalent for
lengths of 350 ft and more) , the rope is formed, the tension resolved in the process of for- 3
10 ft x 2 in. dia. iron poles placed around a hill
by the artist's will, into sculpture. mation between fluid material and will to Hampstead Heath 1968
Rope has no great elasticity and no rigidity. lucidity. These sculptures belong to that 4
2 in. dia. scaffolding poles, sand-blasted
It is one of the most formally casual of category of three-dimensional work in which, and zinc-sprayed
materials and for a sculptor like Louw, who among other concerns, possibilities are pur- Stockwell Depot 1968
has tended to work with rigid materials or sued which were first raised in the painting of 5
Copper tubing and cast-iron blocks
with structures, it offers a particular challenge : Pollock and Louis. Aesthetic roles appear to Stockwell Depot 1969
to articulate it, to give it unmistakeable form have been reversed in some recent sculpture. 6
through the use of those very qualities which The form has become the medium, the 200 3 ft x 1 in. x in. wooden slats
Holland Park October 1967
render it formless. The distinction between material the content. Only the will is constant.
7
shape and form is here made crucial. Louw's 21 in. dia. rope (dark brown)
15 ft x 38 ft
reluctance to shape materials appears to have NOTES Stockwell Depot 1969
led him into working with a material which 1 Phillip King has used colour to enhance form with
Photos : Ray Sack
has to be given form to be given anything. more effect than any other British sculptor and, in Blue
The weight (number of thicknesses) of any blaze, came very close to using colour undecoratively.
2 In contrast to a sculpture like Caro's Prairie, or After
one span is balanced against its depth and the
summer, where the coat of colour adds a deep visual
degree of its divergence from the directly sensuousness and evocativeness to the surface.
lateral into the diagonal. A sequence is estab- 3 For an articulate discussion of the aesthetics involved
lished by allowing each end of the rope to hang in work of this nature see Victor Burgin's article on
vertically. The 'first' span runs parallel and `Situational Aesthetics' in this issue.
4 Of course not all those who call themselves sculptors
comparatively close to a wall. The rope has a
and operate in landscape are in fact producing sculp-
ceiling of seven feet, which gives the work its
ture. Many of them are merely indulging a taste for
scale, and is sprayed with enough low-toned the egocentric picturesque, the grandiose or even the
colour to give it the maximum weight within a Gothick. See Sidney Tillim's irritating but provoking