Page 30 - Studio International - February 1968

living in Paris. Unless the prize is American, he was told, Bell Telephone Company engineers, who include some
it's not worth having. This attitude is particularly of the most brilliant minds in electronics, co-operated
absurd given the many artists who move indifferently with a few well-known artists such as Rauschenberg and
between London, New York and Paris as local conditions Fahlström to present a nine-night happening at a very
lose their importance. The broad common basis of our high technological level. Although a few items misfired,
technological society differs little on either side of the as related in Studio International by Dore Ashton, the event
Atlantic and this is where an institution like the Whitney was of prime importance in that it enabled New York
Museum of American Art plays an unfortunate role in artists to appreciate the opportunities offered by elec-
that its statutes limit it to exclusively American works. tronics to extend their fantasies into new dimensions. The
Only American citizens or residents may show there performance cost a total of $125,000, a sum not easily to
and of its 2,800 pictures not one comes from the Old be found in Europe for so fleeting an effect.
World. The Ford Foundation recently made an annual But we also find art coupled with art. Increasingly
grant of $155,000 for the next five years, to be spent artists combine to produce joint works—the Cunningham
exclusively upon the 'discovery' of artists in the various Dance Company, for example, in which a choreographer,
American states who, somehow or other, have as yet a musician ( John Cage), and an artist (Rauschenberg)
eluded federal generosity. One finds this same attitude express themselves simultaneously. It is also no longer
among private collectors, particularly those who use unusual to see films at art exhibitions, so that the painter
paintings as rungs on the social ladder. thus presents his ideas on two levels. One of the greatest
In the last six years, Robert Scull, one of the collectors successes of the underground cinema is Andy Warhol's
who dictates New York art fashions, has acquired some Chelsea Girls which lasts four hours and is projected onto
400 works. There is virtually no foreign picture among two screens simultaneously. The underground cinema is
them. This is typical of a tendency which is having one of the most fascinating aspects of New York life. A
serious repercussions on the European art market. Up few hundred amateur film-makers (painters, poets,
until 1960, 80 per cent of all pictures painted in France beatniks) have begun making eight and 16 mm. films.
were bought by Americans. Today the general complaint Free of all professional, moral and financial restraint, they
is that the Americans are not buying. They make their have given themselves over to the joys of shooting film
purchases in New York and, increasingly, in California, with a freedom and independence which makes Godard
where 20 per cent of the country's art transactions now look like an old classic. Three cinemas show the results
take place. Because no local buyers have come forward to a devoted ten thousand strong following. Despite a
to replace wealthy foreign art-lovers (there are not above number of failures, these activites are perhaps responsible
a dozen collectors of advanced modern art in France), for weakening some of the most deeply embedded concepts
numerous American dealers have left Paris, while a of the realist cinema.
number of experimental galleries have closed down or Art is also being coupled with cabaret. In New York all
been converted into boutiques specializing in African attractive experiments in the plastic arts are at once
handicrafts. Another consequence of American indif- reinterpreted and adapted with fantastic speed to the
ference is the growing number of tourists settling in New needs of commerce. Often works are transferred straight
York who are determined to create their own market. from the pages of confidential surveys to Madison
For a good part of the year the Chelsea Hotel on W. Avenue shop windows. The same is true of night clubs.
23rd Street houses the more lively members of the Paris The Cheetah on Broadway, which comfortably seats
`New Realists'. They endeavour, by systematically two thousand, seems like a dream duet by Le Parc and
attending all possible cocktail parties, openings and Martial Raysse with its mobiles, its play of neon lights, its
soirees, to outlive their incriminating European pasts. projections of sometimes vaguely erotic films on to walls
What they are after is not a French gallery in New York— and dancers, and its spatial painting with discs of light
like, for example, Iolas—but a 100 per cent American which can be chopped up to the rhythm of the music.
gallery into which they can blend. Elsewhere artists themselves have taken over—and Andy
French artists are tempted to Americanize themselves Warhol has opened a place in East Village where he puts
or even to take American citizenship. This temptation is on what he calls 'the Exploding Velvet Inevitable'.
all the greater in that everything is done to keep them in Finally, art is coupled with drugs, and the preposterous
the States. There is a real 'brain drain' in the arts com- Timothy Leary, in order to spread his new cult, does not
parable to that of British scientists and technicians. Many hesitate to utilize light organs and other environmental
good artists are invited to teach for substantial fees in influences. (Incidentally he uses the same film-makers as
American universities, where their sole duties are to Warhol.) In a Village Gate basement famous for its jazz,
answer students' questions for a few hours a week. They I saw 'the Reincarnation of Jesus' as portrayed by this
are provided with a studio and a grant to cover materials. ex-Harvard professor, now dedicating his life to the
They can carry on with their private work undisturbed in active spreading of LSD. Bare-footed and clad in a
a manner which would only be possible in Europe at the white garb chosen for its careful balance of biblical
price of great material hardship. archaism and modern sportswear, the doctor explained —
What is unusual in America, apart from the conflicting between guitar effects— that his mission was no less than
schools and the incessant change for the sake of change, the creation of a new religion, the sacrement of which
is the growing association of art with all kinds of other would be the ingestion of LSD. An interminable abstract
activities, above all with technology. In October 1966, in film followed which was intended to send us on a sort of
the immense building where the Armory Show was held, drugless trip and to put us into a suitable mood for the