Page 20 - Studio International - June 1967

The future of art passing a gigantic factory, with acres and been the theory behind so much of the New
acres of low asbestos roofs. Between us and it York school of painting. So, if it used a lot of
from the other there are little sorts of feathery trees. The echo other inputs as well, presumably it could do
is therefore coming strong and weak, strong a lot more things to you.
side and weak. It's not an unfamiliar kind of But, confronted with a work of art, we still
environment to a lot of people, to drive go through the motions of turning off all the
around fairly fast in open-top cars on bright, other inputs. We make ourselves subhuman,
sunny, summer days. cretinize ourselves. And it happens in all art
But notice at the beginning I said 'picture situations. John Cage was complaining that
me'. And yet any number of the sensory he had a piece of music called 5.19 or 4.28 or
inputs were not visual at all. They were smell something like that, which means that the
inputs, they were sound inputs, they were pianist sits down at the piano, adjusts the
heat inputs because the leather was hot, the height of the piano stool, shoots his cuffs and
sun was hot. so on, and then doesn't play anything for four
Reyner Banham So it's not just a visual sensory input, though minutes and twenty-eight seconds. The aim
I said 'picture' and I'm prepared to bet no of this is, as he says, to give the audience more
one objected to the word 'picture' even when time to concentrate on and appreciate their
you heard the kind of thing that I was saying. environment. But do they Hell, says John.
We give an incredible primacy to the visual in- The silly bastards just sit there and glare at the
The opening address, slightly condensed;
puts because we are, in Marshall MacLuhan's pianist for four minutes and twenty-eight
to the session on 'Environments Total
terms, a print-reading culture, and we still give seconds and never become conscious of their
and Personal' at the Brighton Festival this automatic primacy to what comes in environment at all.
Conference on the Future of the Arts, through the eyes. But it is a pure cultural
April 1967. prejudice to do so. Visual experience does not Environmental Complexity
stand up on its own ever in real life, and yet we
Art is not predictable or, to put it the other insist on discussing the visual arts in isolation. The ritual of turning oneself off is, I think,
way round, what can be predicted is not art. Or maybe we don't; one of the things we can one of the things which will fade away—the
Art which does not surprise, does not enlarge, see now, and presumably is going to go on whole concept of `turn-on' or 'switch-on'
does not extend our knowledge, our con- happening, is that we don't put up with the means, in fact, increasing the inputs, letting
sciousness, our something, is not—by twentieth- visual arts in solitary isolation, as much as more information (or whatever it is) come in
century standards at least—worth the bother. we did. at once.
So we can't talk about its future profitably. It is very weird, this, because every one of us We don't know an awful lot about how this
We can only talk round it and across it or we knows that in real life the environment, in- works yet, but I can't think that this situation
can talk about it from the other side, which is cluding the acoustic and olfactory, of a work will remain untouched.
what I want to do. of visual art affects our attitude towards it. I We don't yet know very much, for instance,
I am not a professional producer of any form am sure our view of the Virgin of the Rocks about what one can take in or how one takes
of art whatsoever, I can only speak as a pro- was permanently altered by the peculiar smell it in when a number of senses are being con-
fessional consumer, as a person who is per- of the air conditioning in the National Gallery sciously worked upon at the same time. Yet
sistently, and usually on purpose, at the re- when it was first put in, more than by the fact many of us are experienced in some extremely
ceiving end of the 'art process'. But
going that the picture had been cleaned. Or maybe complex multi-sense psychosomatic situations
to start off not by talking about an `art the impression that the picture had been such as driving cars, sailing boats, piloting
process' but about something which is related cleaned was really due to this disinfective aeroplanes, even riding a bicycle. It's common
to what seems to be happening to the way in smell in the air conditioning. talk that you drive a car with the seat of your
which art is consumed. Or look at it this way. When I was a student pants, which is a way of symbolizing the fact
I want you to picture me moving forward at the Courtauld, we used to have a morning that you don't just trust your eyes. You drive
at a nominal 65 m.p.h., surrounded by scorch- Litany to restore our sanity. We spent all day with your ears, you drive with your nose (or
ing hot black leather upholstery. The view in looking at and discussing works of art in an you stop driving it when the nose-warnings
front is clear—no, not even clear at dead-level, extremely abstract way, but also, as if they get too awful, and get out and see what's
because I'm wearing sunglasses. Above that were the only important things in the world. cooking under the bonnet).
the view is progressively more obscured by And so, during the shaving process one looked I am sure that one of the reasons why rapid
the coloured windscreen, and the windscreen in the mirror and said, 'Remember, it's only a motoring, flying gliders, and so on, are such
colour is altered again by the fact that over- work of art'. rewarding experiences, is that you are getting
head there is a thin layer of hot summer smog. a bigger charge out of every sense because all
The view straight in front is that kind of hard Beyond the picture-frame the senses are functioning together. There
grey which hot sunlight often is, and the view appears to be some psychological evidence
then shades up through various colours of When you have been knocked out by a that this is so. Arguments on automobile
cold tea, to quite strong cold tea at the top of Jackson Pollock or gassed by a Picasso or safety turn very much on interference effects,
the windscreen where you are getting the full elevated by a Michelangelo or whatever, it is such as having the car radio on. There is
benefit of sunglasses, the windscreen tint and still only a work of art, only marks on a piece quite a big body of psychological opinion
the smog above. of canvas. The object on which you are con- which says that you drive better when the car
The smog you can smell... there's that faint centrating is only getting at you through one radio is on because there is a constant stimula-
itch in the corner of the eyes. And there's also of the senses, and over a very limited area of tion of some part of the brain which makes all
the smell of the hot concrete road and the hot the field of vision. I think this is one of the the sensory inputs function better. As I say,
tyre-rubber and the smell of the hot leather. reasons why there has been this twentieth- this is still arguable, but it teems fairly likely.
And there's the sound effects: they are not century preoccupation about getting beyond But we don't, for instance, know very much
just the sound effects of the car itself and the the picture-frame. If it wasn't just a work of about the ergonomics of concert-going. Do
tyres on the road, things like that, but the art, but a whole art wall, presumably it would you in fact attend better to the music if your
fuzzed echo caused by the fact that we are do that much more to you, which must have seat is very uncomfortable or if your seat is
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