Page 55 - Studio International - December 1968

molecular or light-wave density enter into play, facing page left Ellsworth Kelly 3 panels: red space, offering yet another prospect. This piece
and the eye is never sure which is heavier, and why yellow blue 1968 which is so clear in its extension and articulation,
one may appear larger or smaller than another. oil on canvas 89 x 36 x 166 in. is basically abstract to a high degree in that its
This optical play is essential in Kelly's new paint­ Sidney Janis Gallery physical properties are indeed minimal, while its
ings, but is certainly not dominant. It is clear that virtual spaces are extensive and complicated.
he means each colour to be read for itself, especially facing page right Robert Murray Arroyo-Umber Murray does not state everything and works a
in those paintings which are composed of adjacent 1968 raw umber and aluminium epoxy good deal with a gestalt-like concept of completion
panels, or dovetailed panels. But he also challenges 1 3 ft 9 in. x 3 ft 1 0 in. by the perceptual act of the viewer.
the autonomy of each colour by using two other Betty Parsons Gallery It is clear in this and other pieces that Murray is
painterly devices: the natural vibrations colour concerned not only with the autonomous character
juxtapositions produce, and gestalt effects of below Burgoyne Diller Second theme 1938 of his sculpture as an object in space, but also with
fusion; and, the convention of vanishing-point per­ Whitney Museum of American Art its power to bespeak other spaces in the imagina­
spective. tion. Whether he is articulating a tall wall, or
Here is, I think, the remarkable difference be­ bottom Carl Hoity Recording angel 1938 cutting steel with the deftness of the origami
tween Kelly and the other so-called minimalist Whitney Museum of American Art master, or building a strange set of railroad-track
painters. Kelly clings to convention as a means of forms that bend widely on the floor, Murray is
heightening his abstract discourse. There are always finding a means to enlarge rather than
several paintings here which are extremely witty minimalize.
commentaries on the illusory nature of perspective. An editor at a large publishing house told me the
Three panels, for instance, diminishing in size on other day that there has been a rush of manu­
the wall, can be read either in perspective or not. scripts concerning themselves with the 1930s. He
Yet, a mysterious mirror-like effect occurs. The laughed somewhat ruefully at this symptom of
virtual impression of these solid panels restores cultural confusion, implying that these authors
traditional illusion. You have only to look at a mistakenly seek to explain the disturbing present
black and white reproduction in which you cannot by means of the disturbing past.
discern whether indeed the panels diminish in Yet, it is perfectly natural to want to locate one­
size, or whether it is merely a perspective by­ self in relation to one's youth, which is exactly what
product of the reproductive mechanics, to check the WHITNEY MUSEUM seemed to intend in their
this out. exhibition of painting and sculpture of the 1930s.
Even more baffling and impressive are those This large survey does not offer anything new by
dovetailed works of various outer shapes, in which way of a thesis, but it does remind the art appreci­
two colours speak out emphatically as themselves, ators of the diversity that existed in a period which
and in which their limits provide definite shapes is often conveniently homogenized into 'Depression'
within a whole which reveals itself only incidentally art-i.e. social realism. Its director, William Agee,
-and comes as a shock-as the ghost of a box has ferreted out some excellent examples of major
drawn in perspective. artists' work to support his contention that there
The kinds of questions Kelly poses are eternal and were many currents of value during the Depression
very sophisticated. Like Matisse he asks how red is decade.
red. Like more recent painters, he asks what, in A.gee's scholarship, which we have had the
fact, is red. And like painters of all time, he asks occasion to appreciate before, is of great assistance
what is the nature of painting as a distinct lan­ when it comes to discerning the various sources of
guage. His answers, as unorthodox and fesh as inspiration that spurred the more significant
r
they are on the wall, are traditional, for he con­ artists during the period. He properly includes
cludes in the work that a painting is at once an work by Helion, Leger and Matta whose sojourns
object and an illusion; that the means of a painter in America had broad consequences. And he shows
are constant (drawing and colour), and that the how certain painters-notably Burgoyne Diller and
so-called shaped canvas is only an incidental means Carl Hoity-were extremely accomplished abstract
of accenting certain painterly qualities. His clear painters in the early 1930s. He chooses a work by
superiority as a painter, as unfathomable as it Jackson Pollock that indicates the presence of yet
must finally be, may well be attributed to his other foreigners, the Mexicans, and he presents
genius for the renewal of a viable aesthetic lan­ American surrealism in its own queer light.
guage. Things are called by their correct names, and
I think that Kelly's achievement in painting can except for a certain dullness in selection when it
be compared to Robert Murray's achievement in comes to the socially-conscious work, Agee has put
sculpture. Murray also appears to fit comfortably together a nice archive.
into the vogue for simplicity and structural Lucas Samaras is an artist who has been cele­
austerity known as minimalism. He also periodi­ brated rather shrilly lately for his neuroses.
cally cuts back to the most simple possible state­ Scarcely a criticism that doesn't mention his war­
ment of solids and surfaces in space, the rudiments time childhood and the tragedies which may have
of the sculptor's language. Yet, like Kelly, Murray been responsible for his obsessions with knives,
is restless, and finally his aesthetic urge leads him scissors and boxes. All of this Freudian gamesman­
into complicated questions that can in a sense be ship threatens to obscure the genuinely brilliant
called constants in sculpture. inventiveness of this whimsical artist. For Samaras,
In his recent exhibition at the BETTY PARSONS as he proves in his show at the PACE GALLERY, is
GALLERY, Murray exhibited a group of extremely capable of jumping anywhere, even if Freud had
varied sculptures which, in themselves, bespeak no category for it. His witty extrapolations on the
his creative fertility. In some, he deals with contra­ idea of boxes-ranging from jewel coffers to traps­
diction (steel cut and bent as though it were paper) are always posed in terms that elude strict defini­
and in others he deals with unstated but suggested tures I have ever seen, Arroyo-Umber, Murray tion, and always, also, extremely well articulated
spatial continuities. The apparent bluntness of his organizes a composition of tilting and receding artistically. His vitrines full of invented objects are
lean forms is belied by the subtlety of their compo­ planes around the existence of a long horizontal not nearly as agressive and threatening in concept
sition and the judicious use of small detail. In this, wall of steel plate. This wall suggests very deep as they are authentically comic, and often poetic.
Murray excels. He has always used what appeared prospects both because of its length and depth (it Samaras likes visual puns, and he likes literary
to be extremely minor details (such as the bolts is two steel plates joined about ½ in. apart) and allusions, and he likes surrealist conjugation, but
which hold steel sheets together) to modulate the because of the qualifying terminal planes. One, he never sticks too close to a motif. The works of
rhythms in his sculptures and enliven surfaces. for instance, emerges from the wall with a curve his imagination deserve apprehension in wider con­
He, too, uses perspective to stake his claim to and a twist at the joint that immediately suggests texts than he has been afforded.
space. In one of the most elegant minimal sculp- another dimension. Another leans far out into Dore Ashton
267