Page 64 - Studio International - April 1967

on all your houses'—is sustained in the details of and the Far East. The East is expressed not only thinker in some lights, and his a priori decision to
Fahlström's work. in specific notations such as Communist and anti- break pictorial conventions such as composition,
In his sketches, by far the most impressive work Communist Indonesian fingers etc., but in Fahlström's highlighting, climax and so on, works against him.
in the show, there are hints of the surrealist esprit. adaptation of the Japanese woodcut line for his His confusion, candidly stated in one of his mani-
One could imagine Fahlström studiously applying caricatures. There are even quotations from festoes, is typical of the confusion of many younger
himself to the Petite Larousse in quest of associations, Japanese prints. The whole racist problem is artists attempting to follow the same principle. As
or, as he would prefer, `bisociations'. covered not only in terms of the war in Vietnam, he says, 'I deplore my incapacity to find out what
Catching up a host of contemporary fads, Fahl- which Fahlström obviously loathes, but also in his is going on. To find out what life, the world, is
ström succeeds in presenting them with enough allusions to American negroes. about, in the confusion of propaganda, communi-
idiosyncrasy to make them interesting. For in- Everywhere there are rats—the only form of wild- cations, language, times, etc.' A big etcetera....
stance, the current preoccupation with early life, we are told by Vietnamese wildlife conserva-
comic strips emerges in several of his teeming tors, that has survived the holocaust there. Fahl- At the opposite pole is the new work of George
drawings based on Krazy Kat. Grade B movies ström's rats are usually presented serially, and move Mueller at the WADDELL GALLERY. Eclecticism
and television schmaltz also come in for oblique from incident to incident unaltered. Although he and impurity are alien to Mueller's temperament.
criticism in his serialized sagas such as Eddie in the fights the notion of symbolism, he avails himself That was apparent even in his earlier work where
Desert. Eddie's adventures (and either Eddie or of symbols at a rudimentary level as the con- porches, houses, rooms and even landscapes were
one of his friends looks suspiciously like Mao Tse- tinuity factor in his work. For this reason, the subjected to severe rationalizations in terms of
tung) are linked with those of Ian Fleming, which compact sketches, with the intimate record of a perspective and colour. His stringent geometricity
in turn are linked with Fahlström's favourite brilliant imagination, seem more compelling to made of these representational paintings intricate
theme, the Cold War. me than the large experiments with segmented and intelligent commentaries on the art of con-
To some degree the monstrous daily news has imagery, or the enviromental monster show trolled illusion.
altered Fahlström's work. There seems to be a occupying one room of the gallery with its cut- In the new paintings, Mueller's discipline has
more insistent reference to identifiable situations: outs and hanging elements. led him to undertake a different but related experi-
white phosphorous, weapons, torture instruments, Fahlström appears to be a rather dogmatic ment in illusionism. He shows mainly horizontal
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