Page 54 - Studio International - December 1968

New Yori< commentary

Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China at
Asia House; Ellsworth Kelly at Janis
Gallery; Robert Murray at Betty Par­
sons Gallery; Painting and Sculpture of
the 1930s at the Whitney Museum of
American Art; Lucas Samaras at Pace
Gallery.

It is a human reAex to want to get lo the ongms He fu,·ther suggests that this artistic consciousness conscious, and very restless. His need to deal with
of things. Perhaps it is also a human delusion to is at work in the ornamental designs that so the language of his art in its most simple terms has
believe that if we could once get to the origin, to densely cover the walls of these vessels. He defies never led him into the arid territory of sheer
the simplest basic component, everything else the evolutionist anthropologists by unequivocally design. On the contrary, as I saw with pleasure in
would fall into place, explainable and explained. stating his belief that the ornaments came into his new exhibition at the JANIS GALLERY, Kelly
Much language scholarship, for instance, is pre­ being as sheer design, based on the formal urge finds his way back to his origins only in order
occupied with tracing the origin of language in alone. 'Quite possibly these ornaments were icono­ to find his way forward to new pictorial conceits.
evolutionary terms. Evolutionary theories of lan­ graphically meaningless, or meaningful only as In his last exhibition, he had presented what
guage, which are often based on comparative pure form-like musical forms and therefore unlike might be called a pre-history of his form w·ge. He
studies between animal and human signals, could literary definitions.' had cut back to the barest minimum of his lan­
not do without the premise that some primordial It is odd to encounter this modern view in a guage. He stated such simple paintings as red­
simple thing has gotten progressively complex. Yet, scholar dealing with millennial epochs. When Dr yellow-blue without complication by simply plac­
there are linguistics experts, among them Noam Loehr suggests that these vessels and their orna­ ing an equilateral square of each colour side by
Chomsky, who challenge that premise vigorously, ments can be seen as 'pure art', I'm sure he is side on the wall. Like Picasso, who talks continually
finding no reasonable basis for animal comparison, stepping into a scholarly hornet's nest. While in about 'naming' things, Kelly seeks an ethical
or even a reasonable progression from lower to the twentieth century, it is possible to admit the purity by means of naming. Only, what he was
higher forms of linguistic expression. The dis­ existence of what he calls 'an aesthetic urge fulfilled naming was nearly nameless.
continuities inherent in language development are through artistic consciousness', tending to the The nearly nameless is certainly closest to decora­
more eloquent than the continuities. statement of form for its own sake, it has always tive ornament in painting. But Kelly does not
The radical challenge to conventional views of been tacitly assumed, even by intelligent modern succumb. He starts again, in this exhibition, by
spoken language is paralleled in the work of certain critics, that ancient and primitive societies were discoursing pictorially about the margin between
scholars in the plastic arts. In his way, Dr Max 'evolving' form in purely ritualistic, cosmological that which is nameless, or in other words formless,
Loehr, a Harvard orientalist, matches Chomsky ways. Such forms had to be 'meaningful', and and that which can be clearly stated. He still works
for audacity. Writing the introduction for ASIA therefore, inaccessible to the uninitiated contem­ with simple colours, sometimes only one or two at
HOUSE'S exhibition 'Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age porary amateur. a time. And he still suggests that there is value in
China', Dr Loehr performs an inestimable service If we think in terms of millennial time, Dr Loehr their plain juxtaposition. But he also suggests that
in dispensing with the scholar's usual battery of is certainly getting back to the origin of things. the value is not so easily located, and thereby pro­
hesitant juxtapositions in order to propose an un­ But what message can we extract? I think it is duces a movement in his work which is incom­
abashedly aesthetic way of dealing with Shang and clear-happily-that the argument between form parable.
Chou bronzes. and content, between iconography and aesthetics, Sometimes he talks about the inequities in weights
He argues that the powerful lines of the archi­ never subsides. I also think that if we examine Dr and balances, and shows how perception tricks us,
tectonic bronzes cannot be explained in terms of Loehr's super·b examples, we will discover that and how complicated an issue seeing can become.
the function of the vessel, or the medium. Nothing artistic consciousness is a restless force, constantly One of his paintings, for instance, consists of two
required the Chinese master to build his tense shifting its ground and veering to unexpected equilateral triangles, one black and one white,
forms in so rigorous a manner. This being so, he poles. The instinct for pure form never seems to hung together to form a 96 in. square. The black
argues, what can be the force that engendered it? triumph completely, although it is al all times a is above and appears, of course, much the heavier
He answers: 'It was a force, we must conclude, most important force in the creation of admirable and denser member of the duo. When he
concerned with appearnnce or with form alone, an works. assays the same argument in colour, things arc
aesthetic urge, fulfilled through artistic conscious­ The purely formal urge has long been dominant even more complicated. A field of green may
ness.' in Ellsworth Kelly. Fortunately, he is supremely be equal in measured size to a field of red, but
266 the secrets of