Page 54 - Studio International - March 1967

New York commentary All that's missing is some up-to-date apparatus care much about the environment when it comes
by Dore Ashton to make it possible to see such an exhibition. One of to an important exhibition. What counts is
these days the museum industry will advance numerical profusion and lively diversity, and the
beyond its present primitive stage, providing feeling that things are always on the move for
visitors with isolating machines. This would enable better or worse.
the viewer to mask out the surround and project For all that, with great effort, I was able to spot
each object into a pure, uncluttered seeing space. some arresting pieces, and respond with fervid
I'm not sure it would be such a good idea, on distaste to others. I won't bother enumerating
second thought. Much that passes for 'interesting' the generalizations to be made on such a show.
in the present exhibition, for instance, would They have all been amply advertised by the prolific
probably pale when isolated. Part of the excite- art press long before the show. (The prevalence
It's a ment such an exhibition generates derives from of architectonic approaches, for instance, the use
of colour, and the tendency to gigantism.)
the undeniable clutter and profusion which enables
One of the most domineering and least preposses-
big country the viewer to move easily through, forming general sing pieces in the show is a fourteen-foot ensemble
rather than specific impressions.
If a good sculpture casts itself in space beyond its of three metallic figures by Ernest Trova. Called
material presence, if its lines extend into free Large Landscape, this brassy reiteration of a
space and create an amplified image, the collisions Giacometti theme manages to take up a lot of
Well, it's a big country, as they say, so you can't such a close installation engineers are bound to be floor space and dazzle away less ostentatious
really blame the WHITNEY MUSEUM for trying to distressing. How can you contemplate the pure pieces flanking it. The three figures are Trova
cover a lot of territory. You can't really object to cubic armature of a Sol Lewitt, for instance, when clichés—nude-smooth mannikins with appended
their cramming 148 sculptors and 66 printmakers three other after-images are impinging on its mechanical devices overstressing his point—while
into the Annual. You can't even object to the niggardly space? What can the monumental, the so-called landscape is a cabbalistic pattern,
principle of the show, which is to present the mountainously geometrical piece by Tony Smith chessboard fashion, that suggests a meaning with-
welter of wares produced recently in a democrati- mean when wrenched out of its natural context— out being meaningful. Such shiny, overgrown and
cally non-hierarchical order. At best you can open spaces, preferably outdoors—and placed in a puerile thoughts must have wowed the ladies who,
commiserate with the harrassed curators, breath- context of unpleasantly subdivided spaces thronged blinded by its refulgent splendour, probably didn't
lessly running to keep up with the times, and with alien images? even see the reserved, beautiful and smallish
guiltily including a few token artists who have not It is surely paradoxical that with all the palaver marble by Isamu Noguchi just a few feet away. (A
bothered to change their idiom lately. about environmental sculpture, no one seems to brief inquiry among people who saw the Whitney