Page 14 - Studio International - January 1968

COMMENT one, at least-than I can. The fact that I I found that the most exciting things in the
most exciting pavilions were the light
have never been too impressed with any
individual public display doesn't help displays, the movies, the slide projections.
either, since it was my own view of possi­ One or two of these, like the mosaic wall
bilities, and my inability to resolve my in the Czech pavilion, were quite breath­
own position relative to them, that taking in their beauty and originality.
bothered me. Why must a painter find (The wall was made up entirely of panels,
himself in so totally private a situation in each about one foot square. Each panel
a society abounding in the most sophisti­ was the screen for a separate slide pro­
cated techniques for public address and jector located behind it, and the computer­
public presentation ever known? (Is this controlled projectors caused a constantly
the question or the answer? How bloody­ changing pattern across the walls,
Harold Cohen minded can you get?) sometimes abstract, sometimes figurative,
My visit to EXPO, just before it ended, mostly neither: while the panels them­
was not made in the hope of finding a selves moved physically in and out from·
During the past few years I have had the suitable route by which to 'go public' the plane of the wall in their own
feeling of an increasing tendency in art to myself. I went, reluctantly if anything, rhythms.)
'go public', though I am not at all sure with the feeling that if I was going to get It would need, and will no doubt get, a
whether this has actually happened, or to grips with an enemy I might as well Mcluhan to spell out the general signifi­
whether certain sectors of the art com­ take a look at him in all his glory. And he cance of this audio-visual jamboree. That
munity have been that way all along and was all of that. He was, at his best, quite there was significance to myself I had no
I've only recently notic'ed. Whichever it is, gorgeous. The screen of the cinema in doubt, for I spent the first three days aware
I confess that my own reactions have been the Ontari-ari-ario pavilion must be about of a strange sense of kinship, though never
pretty cool, if not downright negative. I've sixty feet across, with sound track (Rogers quite able to pin down what the relation­
never much enjoyed happenings, events & Hammerstein smirking quietly not too ship was. On the fourth I walked into a
and the rest, and I've always had the far downwind) to match. If it's pure visual large tetrahedron-shaped room in the
feeling, obscure to say the least, that the impressiveness you're after, ladies and 'Man the Discoverer' pavilion. The room
'role of the artist'-whatever that might gentlemen, try a brilliant orange slab of was completely in darkness, except for a
mean-did not lie in this direction. Part of hot steel straight from the rolling-mill, constantly changing pattern of projected
me, recognizably puritanical, has always rolling right across the screen. Something images on the sloping walls. The placing
maintained that most of what was impor­ a little gentler? Have you ever seen a of the images appeared random, the
tant in art could be done in a notebook, maple leaf, just turning yellow with the juxtaposition of subject matter almost
with a pencil. I've often said so, particularly sun behind it, forty feet across and still equally so. I think it was in the random
to long-suffering students, who could waving in the breeze? With the camera placing, and, even more, in the blank
hardly have been expected to know exactly work incredible and the colour much too neutral space between the images, that I
what I meant by the remark, when I my­ good to be true? (Man, Ontario's got suddenly identified the cause of my sense
self don't possess a notebook, rarely draw everything!) The wild ducks in this movie of kinship. This was the way I had
at all, and never use a pencil. So I've were big enough to daunt Peter Scott organized my paintings four years ago.
usually added ' ... only with painting it's himself, and there was enough visual (As did many of us; Leo Steinberg
canvas and colour'. All of which is to say impressiveness to daunt anybody whose referred to this 'display-board' mode of
that I've never been too sure myself, involvement is with visual impressiveness. presentation at that time as 'the
beyond recognizing that the remark was The sudden proliferation of audio-visual characteristic mode of the sixties', and
directed towards the idea of purpose, not material-and it was quite spontaneous, I it was certainly a mode which satisfied a
of technique. gather-will surely be remembered as one wide range of individual requirements.)
All the same, the idea of purpose, of of the most remarkable things about So this (sudden insight: wow!) this was
function, can hardly be usefully considered EXPO. Not all of it was very exciting: what I had meant about the notebook and
other than in relation to society and its indeed the gap between the best and the pencil remark. The paintings themselves
needs, and from that point of view the worst, both in aesthetic terms and in are the notebook for further development,
'public' artist appears able to do a better terms of technological achievement, was less the objects of public use than the
job of self-justification-or a more obvious astonishing. But almost without exception, pattern book upon which those objects

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Contributors to this issue Harold Cohen studied at Slade School of Art. He has Richard Hamilton was born in London in 1922. He
had many one-man shows and his work can be seen in studied at the Royal Academy Schools and the Slade
the Tate Gallery, London, the British Council collec­ School. Between 1953 and 1967 he lectured In the Fine
tion, London and the Art Gallery of Toronto. He was Art Department, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne;
Dore Ashton, American writer and critic, and George one of the artists chosen to represent Britain at the he has also taught at the Royal College of Art. He has
Savage, member of the council of the British Antique XXXIII Venice Biennale in 1966. been a seminal force in the British pop art movement.
Dealers' Association, are regular contributors to In 1966 he arranged the Marcel Duchamp retrospect­
Studio International. Gene Baro, a frequent contributor to Studio Inter­ ive at the Tate Gallery.
national, also contributes to Art International and other
Theo Crosby, architect and designer, is the author of periodicals and is London correspondent of Art in Daniela Palazzoli is editor of the Italian art magazine
Architecture: City Sense (Studio Vista, 1965). America. bt, which is published in Milan.
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