Page 46 - Studio International - March 1966

'Art ... should change man'

Commentary from Stockholm by Jean Clay

Part of the Moderna Museet's
exhibition—The Inner and the
Outer Space
In the foreground sculptures by
Gabo, in the background paintings
by Malevich

Space, emptiness, silence, boredom, repose—these are tions were that the Malevich stream would not be long
the ideas around which the director of the Moderna in expanding. And in fact the artists in our exhibitions
Museet, K. G. Hulten, organized his latest Stockholm are, in their own way, heirs to the latter.
event in a deliberately solemn, rather cold and very 'How can they be defined ? They are not necessarily
elegant setting. He gave it the title The Inner and the constructivists. They have nothing in common with
Outer Space. the optimistic, concrete, extrovert qualities which per-
Three 'stars' opened the exhibition— Malevich, Gabo meated the Bauhaus in the twenties. Neither nre their
and Yves Klein, to whom entire rooms were devoted, pictures "compositions", nor do truly plastic problems
while some fifty artists shared the second part, including interest them as much as they did Mondrian, for
Tobey, Rothko, Newman, Soto, Noland, Robert Morris, example. Above all they project a certain moral attitude :
Francis, Fontana, Dorazio, Castellani, Max Bill, Albers, contemplation, purity—culminating in a total rejection
and Stella. At first thought such disparate artists would of the material, alienation from the world we live in,
not mix; what in fact strikes one is the mastery with withdrawal from the speed and noise of progress.
which Hulten has managed to find the underlying Withdrawal is their way of expressing themselves ; you
unity of works too long categorized into ready-made would think they wanted to drown themselves in "non-
compartments—suprematism, contructivism, kinetic art being", absence, anonymity. Often their works exist
and so on—which no one previously thought of hanging solely by virtue of a final sign vacillating on the verge
side by side. of disappearance. They are evanescent, scarcely vibrat-
'Five years ago we organized a fairly large exhibition ing, bathed in spirituality, and almost dead. Tedious?
on the theme of movement', he said. 'This time we No doubt about it. These artists want to escape their
asked ourselves: What is Malevich's line and where century. They want to be neither decorative nor
does it take us ? The years around 1913-16 gave rise amusing. They loathe "cocktailism" and gadgets. What,
to two main ideas in modern art to which we are still one way or another, they do want is to prevent their
indebted : Duchamp's "ready-mades" and Malevich's works from becoming consumer goods, status symbols
white square on white ground—which, in a way, is or just diversions. What they present is not "art" but,
itself a kind of "ready-made"—the application of light as I said, a moral attitude which, taken to its logical
on light with no figurative intermediary. Until now the conclusions, rejects the whole concept of art we have
Duchamp side has been predominant. All the indica- gradually built up ...'