Page 63 - Studio International - April 1967

whose public performances reflect their undivided One of the most challenging proponents of this or Wells fantasies, these accounts are calmly
attitudes. A sudden flurry of activity in the view is Oyvind Fahlström, whose main activity is digested by the many who feel safely protected by
Mayakovsky tradition, for instance, is a refreshing centred in New York but whose references are erudite modern scientists.
sign of youthful vitality. global. Fahlström's new work at the SIDNEY JANIS Fahlström's own remarks on games theory are
For several weeks, a truck supplied with an out- GALLERY bears down on themes already stated in somewhat obscure, probably deliberately. Games,
right political caricature by Allen d'Arcangelo several written articles and manifestoes. As a he writes, are 'seen either as realistic models (not
plied the streets of New York and Brooklyn, carry- sophisticated extension of the premises established descriptions) of a life-span, of the Cold War
ing a cargo of fervent poets and the very young in the early 1950's by such Americans as Robert balance, of the double-code mechanism to push
Pageant Players. They had no difficulty collecting Rauschenberg, Fahlström's credo nicely sums up the bomb button—or as freely invented rule-
audiences— often remarkably respectful—for their the current eclectic aesthetic. structure ... The necessity of repetition to show
readings and tableaux, all pointedly reminding the Fahlström considers art a way of experiencing a that a rule functions—thus the value of space-
man in the street of his duty to stop the incineration fusion of pleasure and insight. 'Reach this by temporal form and of variable form ...Rules derail
of children in Vietnam. One of the most successful impurity, or multiplicity of levels, rather than by and oppose subjectivity, loosen the imprinted
poems, read by Tennessee-bred David Gallatin, reduction', he instructs his readers. The fusion, for circuits of the individual.'
was John Milton's protest, On the Late Massacre in him, must be effected within a `bisociated' con- If you look for the rule in Fahlström's work, it
the Piedmont. text : factual images of erotic or political character can be found mainly in repetition. He repeats
Activities of this sort are multiplying with presented within a game framework. These, he certain characters over a page, or certain intervals
astounding rapidity, and forcing public acknow- says, 'do not exclude probing on everyday moral, on the canvas. To complicate matters, but just a
ledgment of the artist as a man of conscience, even social levels.' little, he claims that his paintings are 'variable'.
as the artist himself seems not quite so sure. The emphasis on games theory in Fahlström's Theoretically, applied parts can be moved. How-
system is used not only to combat a previous ever, in the context of the Janis Gallery, the works
Unquestionably the war in Vietnam has hastened aesthetic—that of free form 'where everything can are installed with protective faces, prohibiting the
an inevitable process which began in the 1950's and be related to anything' — but also, undoubtedly, as potential games of the spectator.
has been gaining momentum ever since. Banally an ironic commentary on politics, particularly There are echoes of previous experiments in
advertised as the assimilation of art and life, American politics. The Rand Corporation, that Fahlström's work, probably intentional. For
or the 'bridge between art and life', as Rauschen- mammoth haven for scientific and mathematical instance, in the way he uses photomontage he
burg's passing comment came out when it was savants subsidized by the government, is a games- recalls Heartfield, but with the difference that
turned into a slogan (no fault of his, of course), the theory proving ground. Accounts of pipe-smoking, Fahlström seems always to turn the earnest bitter-
process consists in turning away from modern art's tweedy professors sitting in arm chairs, working ness of the earlier social protester into ironic
tradition of formal introspection toward an eclectic out the next world war in terms of games theory derision. Nothing is seen quite straight. There is
view which admits any information-bearing mani- are published from time to time in the popular always a wry twist which prevents persuasion.
festation to appear within the context of art. press. Although they read like the wildest Huxley The contemporary stance of detachment—'a pox