Page 36 - Studio International - May 1965

Vision and sound Today's art at Buffalo

by Dore Ashton

The idea of a festival as a means of sustaining interest future he attempted to convey was grisly. Not so much
in the arts is gaining ground. A festival has the advan­ in the anticipated quantity of art appreciation (a term
tage of drawing the attention of the press, which is which must have occurred at least twenty times in the
normally indifferent to the higher manifestations of art, brief speech) but in its quality. As far as I could
and through the press. the public. Where an avant­ gather, what was going to happen was that automa­
garde concert would be censured by the regular sub­ tion would give us all dreaded leisure time with which
scription public. a festival concert is usually regarded we would not know how to cope. We would have to
indulgently. Where an unorthodox dance troupe would take up athletics to get rid of our natural American
normally draw meagre audiences, during a festival it exuberance. And then. since even athletics could not
may well fill the hall. fill the brave new world breach, we would have to go
The recent two-week Festival of the Arts Today in in for Art Appreciation.
Buffalo was probably the most extravagant festival yet (The President himself has a high regard for the arts,
staged in the United States. and was eminently success­ pointing out in a recent speech that ·even now men of
ful by festival standards. Setting out to survey 'what is affairs are struggling to catch up with the insights of
happening now in the arts', Buffalo brought, with great art'-this while he was preparing to send the
varying degrees of up-to-the-minuteness. concerts, Marines to Viet Nam.)
dance programs, lecturers, plays and exhibitions to the We have no Andre Malraux to speak for our opening
fore with great ceremonial eclat. As a measure of its festival ceremonies, and Mr. Stevens· role was only
success. the Albright-Knox Museum reports that on the minor, yet the sad misunderstandings his speech put
first open Sunday of the 'Art Today' exhibition­ forward seem to be widespread. The explicit image of
devoted exclusively to kinetic and optical art-more the arts as good escapist entertainment; the apparent
than 12,000 people attended. disjuncture between serious artistic thought and the
Garcia Rossi As a sociological footnote, it is worth speaking of the life of social man. was too obvious for comfort.
Boite Lumineuse 1964
The principal exhibition, a large and impressive survey
of both optical and kinetic art of recent vintage, could
not have been more timely. Practically nothing but
optical and kinetic art is to be seen these days.
Despite my automatic distaste for anything presented
as the dernier cri, I have to admit that the two special
attractions, Nicholas Schaffer and Len Lye and their
'motion sculptures·. were worth the trip to Buffalo.
Nicholas Schaffer is a visionary whose imaginative
excesses save him from pedestrian forays into science.
Although his major interest during the past fifteen
years has been the application of cybernetic principles
to sculpture, his fantasies about the results are extrava­
gant enough to distinguish him from the mediocre
troops of kinetic researchers.
It is always tempting to inquire about the elaborate
mechanical and electronic devices Schaffer uses to
animate his sculptures. In some ways, the theory of
kinetic art is more interesting than the practice.
Schaffer himself has discussed his theory extensively.
Works of art, he says, when based on new techniques,
blend intimately with man, 'they are his biological and
psychological extension·. By this he seems to mean
that the cybernetic process, being modelled on the
human process. can induce more subtle relationships
and analogies than the static work of art.
Schaffer joins the international move away from stasis
proclaiming that the opening of forms and their struc­
tures in modern art has led us beyond the stage of the
finished object to the stage of the ·event'. The event, as
he creates it, combines as many effects on as many
senses as possible.
Essentially though, Schaffer's events. as installed in
several galleries in Buffalo, depend on visual excitation.
His 'spatiodynamic' structures-usually elements of
elaborate opening ceremonies. The festival was steel and coloured filters composed asymmetrically on
ushered in under the genial unofficial auspices of the a vertical axis-spin and wheel, projecting coloured
government, via Roger L. Stevens, special assistant to forms on any surface that happens to catch them.
the President on the arts. Mr. Stevens, the press release Walls, ceilings, floor and adjacent galleries become
informed us, is a well-known producer of Broadway animate. Sounds-the whirring of motors and pro­
plays and musical comedies and has 'wide business grammed electronic music-are not localized. but seem
interests, primarily in real estate'. to emanate from whatever structure the viewer is con­
In his speech, Mr. Stevens proved himself to be a templating. The ensemble of movements surrounding
government man with his heart in the right place but his the viewer creates a sense of continuous event.
speech-writers in the wrong place. The image of the Not the least of Schaffer's inventions is the 'music-
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