Page 62 - Studio International - October 1967

and tenor of a Cubist Braque. Surely Derain's
mask from the same part of the world mirrors the
shape of Derain. Which is partly direct cause and
effect and partly a retrospective mirage. As Jorge
Luis Borges has observed, 'Every artist creates his
own precursors'.
As for modern fetishes, Jean Tinguely's object,
le Rotozaza, is a machinating, gyrating, tintinabu-
lating conundrum with a name that has to be said
ten times fast to be appreciated. Tinguely describes
his electronic demon as prototype for a machine 'to
absorb the surplus of visitors in the museums', but
the visitors at GALERIE ALEXANDRE IOLAS have been
flirting with it happily.
The great complex of black metal wheels and
flanks extends a great, rakish maw. Multicoloured
beachballs are fed to the Rotozaza as it shakes and
growls spasmodically. The thing swallows the
balls, tumbles them about its quaking interior and
then disgorges them with like gusto. Then the
visitors dribble the balls back into the waiting
maw. The Rotozaza's plastic message is definitely
limited, but allegory lurks in all that teamplay.
Call the creature a non-objective Sphynx, one that
has the discretion to ask no questions.
Finally, the MUSÉE NATIONAL D'ART MODERNE has
come up with a retrospective homage to Gino
Severini who was born in 1883 (the year Gauguin
settled on painting), and who died only last year.
What a curious phenomenon. Severini is of course
best known as a Futurist along with Marinetti,
Boccioni, Carrà and the others. Yet, his most
lasting accomplishments as a painter now seem
to lie instead with Cubism.
Jean Dubuffet Strange twist of destiny. Italian Futurism made
Tasse de the II 1966 such a sabre-like clatter circa 1912 that Mussolini
polychrome and polyester
later claimed to have been enlightened by it. All
98 in. high
that anti-naturalism, all those boiler-plate poetics,
all that glorification of war, and most of it stem-
Facing page
ming from the fact that little save Verdi gripped
Gabon mask
Italy at the time. Whereas Severini seems to have
wood
12i in. high been a most gentle man and oddly less suited to
Formerly in the collection Futurism's plastic suggestions than was, say,
of Georges Braque Boccioni. In retrospect, most of Severini's
Coll.: C. Laurens Futurist output proves embarrasingly stylized and
limited, with the notable exception of his scintillat-
ing, pullulating nightclub panorama, Pam-Pam au
proceed in a skilful blend of affirmation and bubble-light material is itself a paradox. They are Monico. That one clicked, as a brilliant and
resignation. not sculptures but vehicles for the eye and sug- plastically complete reconstitution of La Dolce
His humans become cosmic, vertiginous geogra- gestions to the mind. 'I discovered the world of Vita, 1910. The version on exhibit was repainted
phies, and his textural surfaces take on the implica- objects,' Ghelderode stipulated, 'before the world in 1959-60, however, since the Futurist war mani-
tions of a darkling humanity. His sensibility does of ideas.' festo was eventually ratified, and the first version
not simply implicate; it explicates as well, but with For those who fashion the objects of primitive was last seen in Germany in 1927.
a sage ambiguity. Dubuffet treads a twilight region religion, however, the two are inseparable and the On the other hand, Severini made the most of
of psychological insight—the solar observation issue never arises. Which lends an added dimension Cubism, with definite emphasis on the papiers
obliquely inscribed, and the lunar dream percep- to the MUSÉE DE L'HOMME'S handsome effort, collés and collages. It would be difficult to imagine
tion keenly stated. `Primitive Art in the Artist's Studio'. The museum a more uneven painter. During a half century of
The recent Dubuffets at Jeanne Bucher are always does a conspicuously good job of mounting excursions into the various avatars of abstraction
extensions of the L'Hourloupe series with its conca- their exhibitions, and this one again overrides the and realism he managed to hit zeniths of great
tenating blue, white and red stripes and black line, institution's anthropological pretext. purity and clarity, and then impossible nadirs of
but which now takes on a specifically totemic In sum, they have managed to assemble some of affectation, operatic posture and stylistic triviality.
dimension. A coffee pot, a pair of scissors, a glass the masks and ritual objects which men such as But the collage procedure acted as a faithful guide.
of water, a teacup, are all transformed into mind Braque, Matisse, Derain, and later Ernst and It served as a technical restraint and it directed
via what the Belgian playwright Michel de Moore, owned when they revolutionized modern Severini into a channel where his gifts of sense and
Ghelderode used to celebrate as 'the life of objects'. art, and which such younger men as Dodeigne, sensibility were nicely evoked and blessedly
Those, and the pullulating staircases that perpetu- Roël d'Haese, Hartung, Cesar and Matta use and tailored. So that the best of the papiers collés and
ate their function without beginning or end. Some enjoy to their own present purposes. Surely collages take their place alongside Picasso, Braque
are paintings, others polyesterene fetishes whose Braque's mask from Gabon bespeaks the tempo and Gris as landmarks of an era.
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