Page 39 - Studio International - February 1966

Art as something public

London Commentary by Edward Lucie-Smith
I seem to remember begging off from pronunciamenti at institutional one. A conversation which I had with
the end of my last article. True enough, I still have none Mr. Crabtree shortly before the opening tended to con-
of my own to offer. But I have been paying some atten- firm this—the Axiom is indeed a gallery which intends to
tion to other people's, or at least to their statements of address itself to improving our total environment, and
intent. An interesting one comes from the new Axiom which hopes to find such people as county architects
Gallery, which has just opened at 79 Duke Street, amongst its customers. Tyzack's serene, elegant pictures
Grosvenor Square. The second show is the first one- offer, perhaps, a fairly good guide to the kind of work
man exhibition of Michael Tyzack, the recent John which will in future be seen there. But we can also
Moore's prize-winner whom I interview on another expect to see things of a more definitely 'constructionist'
page. The Axiom, I think, intends to try and join that tendency — the sort of work which has already estab-
very select group of London galleries who impress us lished itself strongly in Switzerland and in Germany, and
with the consistency of their ideas, as much as with the which can also, as it happens, be sampled at the exhibi-
quality of the shows which they put on. One of the tion of work by Ken Turner which is currently at the
directors, James Crabtree, is a well-known architect, Lords Gallery.
and it looks as if it will be the policy of the gallery to Mr. Turner, too, has issued an interesting statement.
focus attention on that area where painting and sculp- I take the liberty of quoting some extracts from it. He
ture come closest to architecture. At any rate, a state- begins by talking about the kind of art which need
ment issued by the gallery says that 'it hopes to make hardly be noticed 'unless one is tuned into it'. He claims
some contribution towards filling the gap in the inte- that, with this kind of art, 'people would be walking
gration of the environmental arts'. And, among the plans through it, stubbing their toes or feeling it sensuously
for the future which the directors have in mind, is one to within a planned environmental design', and adds 'my
provide 'a library of information (and drawings and own aim is to work for greater participation of the viewer
maquettes) about work too large to be kept there in its by greater control over space relationships'. He claims,
final form'. furthermore, that 'this does not mean an art placed
All of this sounded a little like one or two of the things alongside or onto architecture but an art that grows up
which I have recently been saying in print, about the within a bigger superstructure that is architecture'.
inevitable changes which are taking place in the rela- All of this is, I suppose, acceptable within its own
tionship between dealer and customer, now that the terms; and Turner's work is itself quite consistent with
private patron has been so largely replaced by the what he has to say. It is when he reaches the climax of
his argument that I begin to feel very uneasy, just as I do
when faced with what I take to be the consequences of
the programme put forward by the Axiom Gallery. Mr.
Ken Turner
Relative space project 1965 Turner says boldly that 'there is no real difference
Aluminium, glass, plastic and wood between public and private art. The creative process and
Height 50 1/2 x 34 x 26 in. vision are the same. Public art is only physically more
Lords Gallery
difficult to make, and has to fit decisively into a specific
Below
Relative space project 1965 environment. Private art is more easily controlled and
Aluminium, glass and wood remains an individual artifact to be positioned or
Height 14 x 23 x 16 1/2 in.
arranged in any person's environment'.
Lords Gallery
I am driven to question this partly by my own per-
ceptions, and partly by arguments outside the scope of
what Mr. Turner intends. For example, I have been
reading Opera Aperta by Umberto Eco (in the French
translation recently published by Editions du Seuil
under the title L'Oeuvre Ouverte). Eco is a philosopher
with a medieval background — he has written previously
about Aquinas, and about medieval aesthetics. Here,
however, he is trying to get at the springs of twentieth
century art. As I understand it, from an only partial
perusal of his book, his argument is that, not only is
ambiguity inherent in the message brought us by any
work of art, but ambiguity has now become an end in
itself, so far as the artist is concerned. He points out,
that to realise this end, the creators have made recourse
to formlessness, disorder, chance and indeterminacy—
in fact, to all those things which a rational public art
would inevitably like to rule out. Very rarely, we see this
kind of conflict at work in the productions of a single
artist. As it happens, an example is to be seen in the
retrospective exhibition of the Venezuelan artist
Alejandro Otero which is now at the Signals Gallery in
Wigmore Street. Like many other artists, Otero seems to
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