Page 56 - Studio International - December 1968

Paris commentary

Anthology of Contemporary Art at
Musee des Arts Decoratifs; Jean
lpousteguy at Galerie Claude Bernard;
Damian at Galerie Stadler.

The Mead Corporation is an American paper pro­ is welcome relief. But there it is, anthologized and
ducts concern with legions in ten other countries edited, and the amalgam goes forth. Its impact in
and a yen for art that is beginning to seem inevit­ America will be the pale imprint of a carbon copy
able. 'As businessmen of a multi-national com­ spiced only with the very familiar.
pany,' say Mead, 'we feel art speaks an inter­ With the exception of Francis Bacon, there is
national language that helps to bind people and hardly a serious sniper in the lot whose truth
nations in mutual understanding of our time.' society might wish to disinherit, though such
The result of this corporate conclusion is an creatures exist. In fact, there are two in Paris at
anthology of contemporary European art at the the moment.
MUSEE DES ARTS DECORATIFS, later to be bounced Jean lpousteguy's performance at GALERIE CLAUDE
like a satellite message back to the Jewish Museum DERNARD is a remarkable foray, a magnificent in­
in New York and on to points west and south, unto discretion, not against the obvious targets upon
Atlanta. Since a survey of European painting since which cults thrive but precisely against the sacred
the war has been very much lacking in New York institutions of the minority, usually unshakeable in
the exhibition is likely to have something of an Paris. The exhibition is all of Carrara marble and
impact there. And this, as it turns out, is unfor­ induced in a Renaissance light at that-which is
tunate. strictly taboo, as lpousteguy knows full well. He
Speaking for the museum, Georges Mathey com­ jettisons the safe neo-primitive trick, resists the
ments that 'One can say, wrongly, that contem­ hermetic sign and even the austerities of abstract
porary painting has an American allure.' Rightly devotions, to accept the image in all its flesh. To
or wrongly, there is little in the exhibition to chal­ be sure, there are metaphorical transcriptions. A
lenge the idea, and Jess to support the contention black skull clasped in a matrix of white marble
that mutual understanding has not brimmed over ends as something of a death's eye view of the egg,
into a flood of consent. If the selection can be taken and it may be fair to assume that The Birth is
as a prediction as well, the international rapport rather a mirror image of this, two polished and
should be total by 1984. But perhaps the selection veined Michelangelesque arms thrust into the
is less crucial than the underlying premise that an ablated womb, clasped about the newborn. And
art of its time asserts itself by reflecting the passage finally, the immense Death of the Father in which the
of time's moods and trends, that it can be used by deathmask of Ipousteguy's own father is sur­
museum and corporation alike as proof of an rounded by a catacomb of mitred skulls in varying
existing stylistic status quo, and that it can be con­ states of decomposition and confronted by the
jured up with no trouble at all through the dubious figure of the son. In principle, what better em­
humility of writing contemporary history. There ployment for marble, the metaphor shifting be­
happens to be a superb and subversive Tapies in tween transience and permanence, less a return
the exhibition that belies this faith. A dark, reso­ to a Renaissance presence than to a Michel­
nant field of echoes, it refuses Our Time as well angelesque motive.
as any other. It penetrates beneath its moment and lpousteguy has always been a ball-and-socket,
so becomes ineluctably modern. It will emerge in post-and-lintel sculptor of finely articulated ener­
another avatar, in another century. And since it gies that meet in a skeletal, say, pelvic definition.
projects a greatly independent understanding, the During the past several years he proceeded from
chance exists that this particular comprehension the abstract to th•e image, even to the literary. The
will become mutual, somewhere, some place. conception is theatrical, but it is also so in the
Whereas, for example, Rancillac's half-crated magical sense, for the image of flesh which lpouste­
canvas cries out pointedly against the acquisitive guy carries to tense extremes has again become, in
society-the one Mead happens to represent, time, a revelation and a shock. And a challenge. It
stakes its claim unequivocally within a journalist's is there less to be liked than to be necessary. Since
eye view of the present, and fits in without a one cannot be indifferent to it, nor turn from it,
murmur. approval is dwarfed and condemnation irrelevant.
The context admits of a few strong notes, especi­ Admittedly, lpousteguy has made the most of his
ally in the case of the few determined materialists peril and engendered the most gaudy of risks. So
who are sufficiently attuned to their chosen fre­ that while the mitred death's heads are among the
quency to go the distance without recourse to finest sculpture out of Paris in many years, and the digious output representing one year's work, and
symbol or metaphor; Bury's magnetized surfaces, mask a fine tour de force, the central figure of the stone at that. Two pale divers, one specifically
for instance, tendrils that shiver and slide at the son, nude, kneeling and peering into the coun­ muscular, the other more specifically conceptual,
very edge of kinetic activity so as to create an tenance of death, is a massive faux pas. The head, slip into a region of white marble. Musically, say,
eerie species of twilight matter, or Bridget Riley's particularly, is the paradoxical rebirth of the the thing functions in the fine contrast of string
optical experiences which maintain a brave and Academy into the new unchallenged· world of the tones in a quartet; whereas, in what Ipousteguy
precise wavelength of sensation, uninterrupted and Demoiselles d'Avignon-which serves to push bitter calls les sandwichs sexuels, the inventive strain picks
never betrayed. Whereas the varying predictable, medicine deep into the gorge of sated sensibility, up again, so that the top and surface plateau be­
gestures, be it Messagier or Mack, Monory or far enough perhaps to produce a purge. I regret comes a still life of pure objects and Cezannesque
Raysse, engulf articulation. Almost all the con­ that Ipousteguy did this. I would have rather seen shapes, while the second, partially-concealed,
nections in sensibility that would have helped make him maintain the fequency of those superb skulls. 'tactile' layer is an ensemble of' sexual incunabula
r
the survey cogent are missing-Alechinsky, Sima, And yet, given present prerequisites, the one may more accessible to the hand than the eye.
Corneille, Saura, Noel, Cremonini, to name a very be inextricable from the other. In other words, the conceptual and the sculp­
various few. Even Matta, who has the courage to Elsewhere, the wavelength is maintained far tural meet at varying points of union and disunion
go J1ompier, a grand ham among the method actors, more consistently, and the total adds up to a pro- toward an extraordinary range of expression. 'Say
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