Page 44 - Studio International - January 1968

GERMANY In recent years a comprehensive revision of the tion in the Mannheim Kunsthalle, Heinz Fuchs
concept of sculpture has been taking place, mainly spoke of an 'enthusiastic process' —and was right to
commentary by in the United States and England, which may well do so for in accordance with the basic meaning
be considered as the most interesting event in the 'en-thousiasmos', the artist's will is projected out-
Robert Kudielka contemporary art field. The re-orientation of prin- side himself. Thus Hauser's work offers the stron-
ciples involved is partly the result of a pressing gest possible contrast to the syntactic composition
need to catch up: painters were working in terms observed by Michael Fried in Caro's work. The
of 'scale' and 'environment' long before the form of Hauser's work is 'monadic' —sculpture as
sculptors. But the urgency of the intellectual moti- an imaginary alter ego, which reflects the artist's
vation should not obscure the fact that this develop- actions without being logically or casually deter-
ment would hardly have affected the bases of mined by them.
traditional sculpture so deeply, had it not been for To the English eye, such works are the embodi-
the parallel development and availability of syn- ment of the incomprehensible element in German
thetic materials. In an age of cybernetically and art, namely an aggressiveness towards material and
The New Sculpture in Germany sociologically conditioned attitudes it should sur- form as the necessary given factors of art, and at
prise nobody that an artist's ideas are promoted the same time a surrender of the artist to these
and guided by the resources of industrial society, factors, to such an extent that creative freedom
in so far as these resources are available to him. seems significantly restricted. This paradox is by
It seems therefore all the most astonishing that at no means confined to the spontaneous creative acts
a time when Anthony Caro was starting to produce of Prantl or Hauser, but is also revealed in the
the works which were to pave the way for a new much more reserved work of Ed Sommer (b. 1932).
style, an Austrian sculptor, Karl Prantl (b. 1923) Sommer is compelled by the nature of his medium,
should initiate a stone sculpture renaissance, and acrylic glass, to reflect the ambivalent process
one which in Germany at least, has been very exactly. He has time only to make a few decisions
successful. On Prantl's initiative, artists from all while the glass is in its thermoplastic state.
over Europe met at the quarry of St Margaret He writes, `I realize my aesthetic problem on the
(Burthenland) in the summer of 1959 for the first basis of the possibilities offered by the material:
Symposium of European Sculptors intended to the development of polarities from a uniform set
reflect and reappraise the original, inherent bases of given factors, and their translation into a more
of the artistic process. Since then this has become complex unity.' This reference to a uniform set of
an annual event and its professed aim has helped given factors betrays a relationship with Hauser's
to find their own way. A Symposium style has monadic creation hypothesis, while the concept of
gradually emerged: the nature of the materials `translation' is synonymous with the 'transforma-
and the choice of large sculptural formats com- tion' propagated by Prantl. The artist's paradoxical
bined to produce monolithic images, while the intention of preserving and at the same time
creative process as such took over a leading role, disturbing the given factors, thus constitutes a
although manifest only as surface articulation. metaphor of the way in which the principle of
Prantl defined his own aim, in contrast to that of freedom is involved in the objective world. This is
Fritz Wotruba, the mentor of Austrian sculpture, decidedly different from the English situation:
as being the 'transformation' and not the 'conquest' William Tucker, for example, calls for non-meta-
of his material. Does this then represent a restora- phorical sculpture in the sense of its being separate
tive, classical or even progressive conception ? The from human existence.
important consideration here is whether the ana- If, however, sculpture represents the behaviour
chronistic attractiveness of stone sculpture is of the artist under given circumstances, then the
symptomatic of a basic relationship of the artists positioning of the work in space must be considered,
to their medium, however varied the intentions. in addition to its material and formal components.
For Erich Hauser (b. 1930), the leading German From this consideration a principle may be seen to
sculptor in steel, the process takes a primary role. arise: that the dependence of a work of sculpture
To say that Hauser makes monumental columns on its specifically human environment increases in
and blocks is to describe his intentions inade- proportion to the degree to which its constituent
quately. He does not use his raw material sheet parts are synthetic; thus this dependence extends
steel to create geometrical patterns. The sculptural from the 'open space' (Prantl), via the 'court (or
outline seems just as prescribed and secondary as semi-enclosed) space' (Hauser) to the intimate
the medium chosen. The artist's main interest is in sphere of the 'habitable space' (Sommer). The
how he can maintain his own freedom between work of Ferdinand Spindel (b. 1913) is a border-
these two given factors (a complex set of machinery line case, where sculpture and the spatiality of the
both helps and inhibits this endeavour). The ten- human environment become finally interchange-
sions and the fissures in the sculptural object bear able. Spindel sews foam rubber, a material whose
witness to the violence with which this conflict amorphous character provides a kind of non-
imposes itself. On the occasion of Hauser's exhibi- substantial compliance, comparable to the stucco
of the Baroque architects. Swollen walls and pillars
bear witness to the Baroque delight in form which
Above left Erich Hauser Steel 1967
steel, 25½ x 25½ x 21¾ in. motivates the artist at work: organic associations,
Galerie Brusberg, Hanover enforced by the sweetish colouring of the material,
so obscure the richly detailed surface that the eye
Left Kari Prantl Stone to the honour of God 1962 is increasingly distracted from the articulation of
limestone, 87¾ x 59 x 51 in. the whole work and is forced to concentrate on
Galerie im Griechenbeisl, Vienna mere aspects. A mild, almost paralysing spatiality—