Page 59 - Studio International - July August 1968

New York commentary

William Wiley at Allan Frumkin; Fred
Martin at Royal Marks; 'Destruction
Art' at Finch College Museum; Frank
Roth at Martha Jackson; Peter Agos-
tini at Stephen Radich; Morris Louis at
André Emmerich.

There have been many artists who have shown
marked interest in con games and swindles. Some
have documented variations—Bosch's depiction of
the ageless walnut shell game, for instance—and
others have waxed allegorical, describing the
human condition in terms of the ingenious tricks
passed back and forth among the passengers on the
Ship of Fools.
The artist who becomes a student of confidence
games is very often a secret admirer of the con
man's ingenuity. If he is a writer in Europe, he
tends to describe the jaunty rogue, roving the
capitals and preying on upper class ladies. If he is
an American, he takes the more democratic knave
who, as Edgar Allan Poe suggested, lives to 'diddle'.
no matter whom.
Poe's description of the American diddler is a rich
mine for the cultural historian. 'Diddling, rightly
considered, is a compound, of which the ingredients
are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity,
audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence,
and grin.' In his story on diddling, he carefully
analyses each of the ingredients, and especially the
two stressed ones. Of nonchalance: 'Your diddler
is nonchalant. He is not at all nervous. He never had
any nerves. ... He is never put out—unless put out
of doors. ... He is easy, as easy as an old glove. ...'
Of grin: 'Your true diddler winds up all with a
grin. But this nobody sees but himself. ...' Most of
the diddles Poe recounts are confined to the small
business class quickly spreading in the East during
his time, and he takes a special pleasure in grinning
at its gullibility. His man of business (con man)
rents an office 'in a reputable rather than a
fashionable quarter' because he despises pretence.
His 'lady of ton' is easily duped by 'your well-to-do,
sober-sided, exact and respectable "man of busi-
ness" ', and Poe grins with pleasure as he tells us
between the lines that they get what they deserve.
Even Melville's bleak and more universal tale,
`The Confidence Man' has an oddly American
flavour, recognizable even today. The types floating
on the river in his Ship of Fools, ironically named
The Fidile, are familiars on the American scene.
They hawk their fraudulent wares with the inno-
cence of the television minister and the sincerity of
a small-town politician. The quack doctor sells his
Samaritan Pain Dissuader guilelessly and the agent
of the Philosophical Intelligence Office is hardly
William Wiley Untitled floating sculpture painting plan 1967
more sophisticated. The corniness and bluff
watercolour Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
burlesque in the personal styles of these figures is
certainly peculiar to Americans.
In the telling, these stories reveal their authors' despises a stale trick, and he certainly winds up all It suggests to him ant colonies, window displays,
affinity for the diddling style, which has come to with a grin, even if it is sometimes a sardonic grin. garden decorations, hot-rod and bike decorations,
be called the put-on. Hosts of subsequent artists He takes kindly to the folk and their foibles, and he army boots, comic books and so on. Also sex and
have taken the tone to heart, donning the mask of mines their imagery. He is something of a con- funky blues (Holy Roller church, jug band music,
the con man in order to expose the con man. Or in fidence man himself, pretending more often than Sunday picnic, All-America music). Bruce Con-
order to reach that peculiar originality Poe ascribed not that he hates pretence. He is also a Socratic ner, of course, is a very sophisticated man.
to the diddler: 'Your diddler is original—con- creature, feigning ignorance in order to achieve
scientiously so. His thoughts are his own. He would irony. But being American, he can't quite sustain And so is William Wiley, the 31-year-old Cali-
scorn to employ those of another. A stale trick is the sober tone of irony, and edges over into fornian who shows mostly his funk side in his
his aversion. He would return a purse, I am sure, burlesque. exhibition at the ALLAN FRUMKIN GALLERY. I say
upon discovering that he had obtained it by an Funk Art, wrote Bruce Conner, one of its West that because Wiley is surely one of the most
unoriginal diddle.' Coast originators, is dumb. Down home it is a resourceful artists we have, and has other interests
The diddle has descended to us in the visual arts primitive urban art. It has balls. Its materials are in his art which emerge from time to time with
in a genre loosely called Funk Art. The funk artist unsophisticated. Homeytype. I t has low-brow ideals. shocking depth. But in the watercolours and con-