Page 51 - Studio International - May 1966

Reproduced on these two but of their own all-too-solid material existence. Like a first step—`machine art' which exploits the machine (our
pages are four single pages delicate invalids, they lie trembling within the protective old friend the printing-press) instead of submitting to it.
and one double-page spread
from Hansjörg Mayer's walls of the museums, while colour-reproductions go to If anyone feels like uttering cries of horror about this
Typoems, catalogue to an the four corners of the world as their surrogates and emis- betrayal of the true nature of painting, they might per-
exhibition held in Stuttgart saries. And the colour-reproduction involves a kind of haps care to recall the sounds of outrage which went up
in December 1965; format
61 in. square, 24 pages, betrayal too. from the princely patrons of scribes and illuminators
including contributions by Mayer seems to have found a way round this. He, more when Gutenberg first put his printing-press to work. Now
Max Bense, Haroldo de than anyone else, is making works of art where the ad-
Campos, Mathias Goeritz, I think of it, it indeed seems appropriate that Mayer is a
Reinhard Dahl and Siegfried vantages of print are married to the advantages of a German—he hails from Stuttgart. Some of his publica-
Maser. universal language. I wouldn't like to suggest that this tions are available from Better Books in the Charing Cross
kind of art is going to replace all others—after all, where Road.
would my admiration for Adrian Heath's work be then ? The fact that two artists as different from one another as
But it does seem to me to offer a way out of the impasse the two I've been discussing can exist and work within
which has been imposed on art by modern technology. the same context says something for the puzzling diversity
Or, at any rate, if the problem isn't finally solved, here is of our culture. But it also says something for its fertility.