Page 24 - Studio International - January 1968

Alexander Liberman Oddity might take the form of an undue preoccupation part connect significantly with the crucial issues then
Axletree 1967 with materials and techniques—the sort of interest that being debated. They were students or followers. The
painted steel can carry an artist right out of the mainstream. Saul issue for many of them was to find a personal approach,
Andre Emmerich Gallery
Baizerman, well thought of in the 1930s and 1940s, con- never mind that it was tangential, derivative, or reduc-
Facing demned himself to impressionistic bas relief, and to tive. In short, they brought their provincialism to Paris
Tony Smyth figuration, by the method he developed of directly as they had to Rome. The mature artist feels the need to
Snake 1967 hammering sheets of copper hung from the studio ceiling. get beyond the achievement of others, in the profoundest
wood mock-up
Gabriel Kohn's is another such limiting signature, this sense to push forward the art. And he is apt to regard his
to be made in steel
time in laminated wood. Claire Falkenstein's method of own accomplishments in the same way, as something to
Fishbach Gallery, New York
welding, soldering, fusing, and brazing a variety of get beyond. More often than not, the Americans in Paris
metals and glass produces a 'quality' that overrides any were content to be part of the scene, so long as they could
considerations of structure. express a bit of personality within it.
The rationale may be aesthetic. John Flannagan aimed Occasionally, somebody broke free of the merely
to make his carvings appear to be objects found in nature; personal. Mary Callery didn't; Calder did—or to put it
in short, he imitated rock formation, but as if rock forma- another way, he discovered a significant eccentricity.
tion aspired to be sculpture. Louise Nevelson has put Other sculptors had to wait to get home to discover what
Cubism in the cupboard; Joseph Cornell has built and they were about. Important experience outlasts the
boxed the rowdy unconscious into a tasteful world of moment, but to what degree it continues to shape the
dreams. The style of doing things is decisive here; artist is finally unknowable. Did Noguchi's powerful
structure and expression are determined by the package. eclecticism come alive in Paris or was it this disposition of
In the twentieth century, American sculptors shift their mind that brought him there in the first instance to study
interest from Rome to Paris. Until the Second World and to work with Brancusi and that would take him in the
War, Paris was the vital centre of modern art. But the next few years to New York, Peking, Kyoto, London,
American sculptors working there did not for the most and Mexico?