Page 33 - Studio International - November 1967

Left Kenneth Noland Grave light 1965 8½
x 17½ ft.
Coll. Robert Rowan
Kasmin Ltd, London
Below Roy Lichtenstein Cloud and sea 1964
30 x 60 in.
Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris

thesis (in apologia of abstract tendencies), now re- the individual moments of his experience, as it is mani-
upholstered to fit TV, films, etc. ? As such, McLuhan is fested in that enchanting farce which is the creative act
just as limited, and suggestive, as Bell himself was. In a itself. As for spectators, they would surely do well to heed
tour-de-force of irony and brilliance, Lichtenstein's Land- Walter Pater's words once again:
scape series recombines the McLuhan hypothesis about `We have an interval, and then our place knows us no
media, and the Clive Bell theory of art. The pictures more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in
isolate the process whereby not only is information high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children
disseminated, but sensuous matter routes attention to of this world", in art and song. For our one chance lies in
itself. The emphasis can be clearly seen in the enlarged expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as
`ben-day' or roto-gravure dots of the Lichtenstein, dis- possible into the given time. Great passions may give us
placed from their original context, which provide the this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love,
materials for, as well as become, the picture itself. In his the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or
re-interpretation of the scene around us, the painter iden- otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be
tifies means with ends, echoes with substance. It is the sure it is passion—that it does yield you this fruit of a
kind of imagination in which intelligence calculatedly quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom,
feeds on pleasure itself. Here, I think, are the real virtues the poetic passion, desire for beauty, the love of art for
of decadence, summarized, but by no means employed its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing
exclusively by Lichtenstein. And here, too, is the vitality frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your
in an avant garde that so often puzzles. I mean that the moments as they pass, and simply for those moments'
critical, even repressive faculties of the artist are signifi- sake.' q
cantly welded into the intention to make more pungent