Page 22 - Studio International - June 1967

up. It may not be your idea of an art form, relationship to any other kind of structure I shifts, settles and then it pumps itself up
but it's all highly mobile and democratic know, even a tent. It's an extraordinary ex- again. It must be like being the nucleus of an
action. Not everyone will want to play it so perience. It takes a little time to realize fully amoeba. You've got yourself, the nucleus, and
far out, and yet this seems to be the kind of what is happening. then you've got your surrounding, active
situation to which we are now in one way or medium, the inflating air. And then you've
another adapting. I say adapting; we bring Raw material of a future art got the skin, which defines the amoeba or
with us a great load of cultural and social defines the dome that you're in. It may not
received ideas, even the most extreme and What happens is that a lightweight inflat- be your ambition, as a great work of art, to
far-out of us. Yet I think even the most timid able structure, such as a transparent plastic be an amoeba—awful to be squashed between
of us are conscious that they are restricting, that dome, lives with you. It makes a little noise all two microscope slides by Mark Boyle, for a
our supporting garments are now preventing the time because there's the fan running to start—but it's a kind of experience which we
growth, so to speak. We may need these social keep it inflated. It also makes little noises haven't had before, which is extremely total
and cultural supports but more and more because the thing itself is altering shape and because it's a temperature experience, it's a
people obviously feel that they are getting in adjusting to internal forces and external sound experience, it's a visual experience as
the way. forces. If you do something warm and re- well. In many ways the visual experience is
Now I can't begin to prescribe how this warding inside it and raise the internal air the most obviously rewarding because you
should result eventually in any kind of art temperature, it begins to push out to com- can see through this sheltering structure, but
form; that is to say this situation of the pensate, creaks along the seams, adjusts and it is all these things at once because as you
multiple input and free-form inter-action with settles down again. All the time you're con- live inside it, the dome lives, moves, jumps up
people and things around us. I cannot even scious of it mediating between you and the and down, breathes, twitters, mumbles as
begin to suggest what kind of form as a outside world. One is much less conscious of you move about inside it and more subtly and
recognizable work of art this will take. this in a conventional rigid structure; the eloquently if two or three are gathered in it.
Maybe it cannot be a recognizable work of windows may rattle, it simply sounds like a This is the kind of environment, personal or
art, because there may have to be limits, failure on the part of the building to do what total, which we shall be able to make more of
frames, proprieties, moralities, minor censor- it is supposed to do. But the plastic inflated in the future, out of which we might be able
ships, before you can separate a thing from dome creaks, moves, wrinkles—you see the to make some kind of work of art, and I think
life enough to know that it is art. pattern of wrinkles along the seams change. it's a situation to be approached circum-
But I will suggest at any rate this much, that You have the curious feeling that this thing spectly, not because of the risk of doing
one can begin to have this kind of experience is living with you and doing something for something silly with it, but with the other
already. For instance living, or just being, in you. You are inside there, warm and snug and kind of circumspection, to ensure that we
an inflatable structure. One's relationship to dry; outside it may snow, gales may blow, the don't miss the opportunity of doing something
lightweight inflatable structures is unlike the temperature drops; the dome creaks, groans, marvellous with it.

'Episodes in a witch-hunt' 'The situation regarding 'obscenity' in the arts is as 'Consider the situation where both Houses of Parlia-
obscuretoday as ever. What 'tends to corrupt' depends ment find time to discuss amending the homosexu-
A statement on a current theme by Merton on who reads or beholds the offending material. That ality law, virtually giving the moral nod to that pro-
person, alive today, is the subject of contemporary gressive sport; yet an Edinburgh firm is found guilty
Naydler, lawyer and trustee of the Ashgate
mores, which are entirely personal. They cannot be de- and fined for exhibiting copies of drawings by Aubrey
Gallery, Farnham, made at the opening of lineated or limited, they shift continuously, and today Beardsley, the originals of which have for years been
an exhibition of work by Dick Bixby. the speed of shift renders definition utterly impossible. on public display at that well-known sink of iniquity,
the Victoria and Albert Museum.
'Some people may find that some of Dick Bixby's
work tends to corrupt them. I believe it possesses out-
standing artistic quality and for myself I am not at all
unhappy that some of it is concerned with the female
body. Art is concerned with life, every aspect of which
is the legitimate province of the sincere artist. But
this exhibition does underline the dilemma confront-
ing those who publish what they consider to be
serious art forms—book publishers as well as art
galleries. And I believe that the Press, perhaps the
last powerful guardian in this country of human
liberties, should take a stand. As a family man I am as
anxious as anyone to ensure that the young are not
corrupted and as a lawyer I am anxious to see the law
respected. Being a living thing it too moves, or should
move, with the times. But in recent months we have
witnessed episodes in the witch-hunt that has been
going on for centuries, Instigated by those in whose
own minds prurience lies. We should oppose that
pseudo-puritanism which is part of the defence
mechanism, not of society, but of the culturally
ignorant and prejudiced.'