Page 47 - Studio International - May 1966

canvases. In others, they are firmly anchored as though on Any number of combinations are possible in studio ex-
a pane of glass. Reminiscences of Leger occur, but a Leger perimentation—in fact, anything is possible, and I would
altered by an elusive fantasy that is not content to object- be the last to demand a closed ideology. But the cheerful
ify the parts of the body, but must exaggerate to a point of insouciance of most of these artists becomes irritating.
hallucination. They take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and hope
The fun and games let loose by Oldenburg's generation to come out all right. When, for instance, Marc Morrel
are still appealing to the youth, as a group exhibition at the stuffs a snaking figure and winds it about a plastic I-beam,
GRAHAM GALLERY attests. The exhibition was publicized he hits all fronts but makes no point other than the rather
with a slightly humorous title: Abstract Inflationism and obvious point that there is no point. Except for Eva Hesse,
Stuffed Expressionism. This descriptive title covers the ex- who seems to establish a limit within each work, these
hibition nicely. The inflationism is embodied in Philip young adventurers in new materials have yet to make the
Orenstein's inflated vinyl pillows and the expressionism necessary sacrifices to provide their work with lasting
is blatant in Jean Linder's and Marc Morrel's turgid impact. q
and elaborate stuffed canvas compositions.
These industrious artists have made the most of the new
plastic materials. They stray all over the gallery with con-
structions that would not have been possible before the era Turner at the Museum of Modern Art
of plastics. But where Oldenburg can say at least that he is In the rampant confusion besetting the world of art, the
a 'technological liar', thereby hinting at a certain wry para- Turner exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art proved
dox inherent in his methods, these artists (Paul Harris, to be the source of still more confusion. It loosed a deluge of
Eva Hesse, Frank Viner, in addition to those already speculative commentary which alternated between a
mentioned) do not seem to worry about ideology. Making beard-stroking pontificating about Turner's revolutionary
things is what matters. role in the history of modern art and frantic appeals for
`re-evaluation'. Of course, Americans have always vacil-
lated, now rejecting the past with fervour, now annexing
it indiscriminately to justify the present. But the Turner
show seems to have roused them beyond all previous ex-
hibitions of so-called precursors, and they have filled the
press with resounding essays.
Hidden behind almost all the commentary is a secret
belief in progress. Even those who tried to see Turner in
terms of his own eccentric genius did not quite succeed in
laying the ghost of nineteenth-century progressivism. One
of the critics for the New York Times, John Canaday, pro-
tested at what he called 'latching on to Turner', but with
his usual intemperate bias did not find the right argu-
ments. He writes that it would be easy to 'string along with
the thesis of the museum's show, which seems to be that
Turner could not have been such a bad painter after all,
if in his grandeur more than a hundred years ago he
could anticipate the anemia of experimental painting in
the 1960's.'
Canaday then goes on, forgetting all about Turner, to
indulge in his favourite baiting techniques. 'I am weary of
the parasitism by which avant-garde abstract painters in
this country today... I am weary of the parasitism by
which these painters, busily elaborating the ABC's of art
under a camouflage of aesthetic gibberish, suck support
from artists of the past for whom these ABC's were merely
ABC's.'
The other Times critic, however, takes an opposite posi-
tion. In a long Sunday magazine article, Hilton Kramer
expatiates on Turner's role as precursor and goes to ex-
travagant lengths to support his argument. After stating
that the qualities that confer the mark of contemporaneity
on Turner's late paintings may be summed up in two
Marc Morrel
Red Streak 1966 words, colour and light, Kramer explains :
Plastic on canvas `It is precisely this priority of colour upon which an in-
3 x 3 x 6ft
Graham Gallery creasing number of contemporary American painters (in-
cluding two of the four who will represent the United
States in Venice next summer: Helen Frankenthaler and
Julius Olitski) have lately been concerned to build their
207