Page 50 - Studio International - June 1968

44 Fried's announcement of theatre's 'war' with
`modernist painting' and 'art as such' extends to a London commentaries
war 'with modernist sensibility as such'. This
claim, which he admits is impossible 'to prove or
substantiate' has a subjectivity which is only
superficially masked by his pseudo-scientific presen-
tation of three subsidiary 'propositions or theses'.
One of these is quoted above; the others are: 'The
success, even the survival, of the arts has come to
depend on their ability to defeat theatre', and 'The
concepts of quality and value—and to the extent
that these are central to art, the concept of art
itself—are meaningful, or wholly meaningful, only Royal Academy Summer Exhibition absurdity of attempting to determine the shape of
within the individual arts.' at Burlington House until August 14 an exhibition in advance of the receipt of works is
Much of the peculiar originality of Fried's un- self-evident. And equally self-evident is the fact
believable claims is probably influenced by that there can be selection only of what is submit-
Stanley Cavell, a young philosophy teacher at It has to be conceded, by even its most inveterate ted, and if the Royal Academy Summer exhibition
Harvard whose ideas on aesthetics have impressed critics, that there are changed features in this does not yet include certain aspects of the con-
Fried very much, and to whose writings on 'Music bicentenary year's Summer Exhibition of the temporary situation in the arts this is not attribut-
Discomposed' and 'Must We Mean What We ROYAL ACADEMY. The central galleries which run able to policies of exclusion but to the fact that no
Say?' Fried respectfully footnotes in this essay. the length of the exhibition are hung predomi- good representative submissions are yet available
That the influence parallel to Greenberg's on nantly with large non-representational works; a for inclusion.
Fried is philosophical does little to improve Fried's gallery presided over by a kapok teddy-bear- The changes in the character of this year's exhibi-
critical perspective on Greenberg's approach or his valentine to John Betjeman has been devoted to tion have been made possible by an increase in
own emotional openness in direct confrontations what twenty years ago would have been called support coming from serious younger artists. And
with artistic experiences transcending traditional `problem' works; the sculpture, instead of being what have they to lose? They will not easily find
aesthetic categories. concentrated to the point of indigestibility, has walls of comparable size to take the large works
45 Art forum, February, April and March, 1967: been dispersed throughout the show; and, overall, they habitually paint; they will not find a similar
excerpts from a book soon to be published by the works are hung less tightly with appreciable situation in which no commission is deducted from
Harry Abrams in New York. gain in the viewing of them. All these noticeable sales; a situation in the hands of fellow artists, many
46 London, Thames & Hudson, 1967. changes, which many have argued should have of them directly related to the younger generation
47 She speaks of styles as living realities in a history taken place long before this, have led inevitably to through connection with art schools and colleges
abstracted from artists' lives: thus, 'Abstract speculation about a rumoured change in the Royal (until his election the new President himself was on
Expressionism was born of two (historic) catastro- Academy's policy. Such rumours and such specu- the visiting staff of the Slade School) ; a perennial
phes' (p. 155) ; and 'the current of geometric lation are built on the misconception that there is situation in which fashion and commercial viabi-
abstraction' is described as a 'movement, which an established policy to change. In nothing is the lity are wholly subsidiary to more fundamental
had been active in the thirties, was to run sub- Royal Academy more flexible, to the extent of criteria. It is this latter feature which is particularly
merged in the forties and fifties, and become central vulnerability, than in its provision for selection and appreciated by many artists of maturity who have
once again in the sixties' (p. 158). hanging; year by year the Selection Committee, ceased to enjoy the attentions of the critics but have
More dangerous is her propagation of the Green- and the sub-section of this which forms the Hang- not ceased to produce good things. And this is
berg-slanted view that the 'colour-field' Abstract ing Committee, changes and the exhibition each equally true of the considerable number of artist/
Expressionism of Rothko, Newman, and Still year reflects the new mixture, and represents the teachers whose annual output may, through force
developed later than the 'gestural abstraction' of confluence of disparate criteria and opinions. It is of circumstance, be limited in amount but not
Pollock and De Kooning. She does this through hard to convince the confirmed sceptic of the fact necessarily in quality. Artists who have satisfactory
the structure and language of her presentation of that every work is put before the Selection Commit- opportunities for exhibiting with a dealer's gallery
historic facts. Pollock and De Kooning are dis- tee, and that the Hanging Committee is pre- are understandably indifferent but they represent
cussed in her chapters on the thirties, forties, and eminently concerned with exhibiting the widest a comparatively small fraction of the total creative
fifties, whereas the chronologically parallel pre- diversity of idioms consistent with a respectably situation in this country. The Academy's increasing
sence and development of Newman, Rothko, and high general standard. But this is so and would liberality may soon prove to be the main, perhaps
Still is mentioned only in her chapter on the 1950s; seem to me the only factor that might conceivably the only, factor protecting the interests of a
when she back-tracks (a bit awkwardly) to discuss represent a 'policy'. sizeable, and seemingly expanding, number of
their parallel development in the late 1940s, her Another factor in the situation is of course the British artists.
verb tenses subtly reinforce this misleading chrono- changing character of the submitted work, and the
logy: `...while De Kooning and Pollock explored
the possibilities of gestural abstraction, Clyfford
Still, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko were
working toward a more static, reductive abstraction
' (p. 192—italics mine). Sculpture by Camargo at Gimpel Fils function of light and light is seen as a function of
It is not irrelevant that acknowledgements of her until June 8 matter. Light becomes body, and body becomes
`special debt' include one to Greenberg's criticism. light. Camargo has reduced the material solidity
48 'The Value of Didactic Art', Artforum, April If you were to follow Camargo's work from its of volume by exploding it in a scale of anonymous
1967. beginning to the white reliefs he is making today, elements (which are nevertheless still volumes and
46 'Problems in Criticism IV: Art and Politics', you would see a process in which the static volume not graphic figures) and painting everything white.
Artforum, February 1968. She sees the intense, of traditional sculpture has been gradually By this opening process, the static, finite, corporeal
dogmatic bent of their writing as resulting from disintegrated. You would follow his exploration of density of matter is exchanged for the constantly
the re-channelling of their political frustrations the language of modern art in terms of his own and minutely varying densities of light—the
into art-criticism, where they are (ostensibly) experience, as he gradually evolved his own struc- ordinary light always around us. 'Exchanged' is
more safe. ture. He by-passed the possibilities of disintegrating really the wrong word because light doesn't
50 She suggests people like Leo Steinberg, William static volume in a mechanical sense, the articula- obliterate the volume, but fuses with it.
Rubin, and Robert Rosenblum, who have no tion of limbs or systems of stresses between inter- This too suggests the sense in which Camargo's
political reasons for avoiding questions of 'content'. related members, or anything that this approach reliefs are concerned with movement. Space is not
These people are art-historians with academic might have led to. Instead, for him, volume has marked out and divided; movement consists in a
bases, much like herself, and quite different from swelled and opened like a flower or a fruit, in a shifting of densities. And these are always seen in
some other less-academic and excellent critics un- sense drawing light into itself to accomplish this relation to a void, which is either the blank wall
afraid of 'content', like Nicolas Calas and Max growth. surrounding the relief or areas of white board with-
Kozloff. This process has brought the sculptor's material in the work. In a recent work, where you can slide
(wood) and light into a new relationship, a kind of open a panel in the relief, it's to reveal another
reciprocal relationship in which matter is seen as a light-sensitive surface at a deeper level.