Page 56 - Studio International - May 1968

New York commentary

The Book: Brian O'Doherty's Aspen
Magazine; William Copley's S.M.S.

Since Mallarmé's passionate espousal of The Duchamp reading his prescription for an anti- To the degree that he sternly postulates his inten-
Book, the book has sustained numerous assaults on Buvard and Pecuchet dictionary. And I had to tion, and is not making a work of art but a project,
its traditional form. In the twentieth century, the wrap up the essays and 'data' (as the work by or data, Lewitt falls into the category distinguished
dream has been re-written many times. It has been visual 'artists' in the box is called) and take them by Sontag of the artist who eventually falls into
writ large, on six-foot panels, it has been writ on a train to read, where I was disconcerted no pathos, since he verges on only two possible deci-
small, in microscopic folios, it has been singed, end by noticing no less than three people industri- sions: either utter self-negation as art, or heroically
rained upon (Duchamp), shredded, rolled and ously adding and subtracting figures, one on the inconsistent art. (He does, after all, make exhibi-
written in disappearing ink. The book or The back of an envelope, one on a legal pad, and the tions.)
Book is an El Dorado for the restless spirit. third on the margins of a true-confessions maga- Mel Bochner's 'Seven Translucent Tiers' is
Mallarmé's chief beneficiary, Paul Valéry, sug- zine. Where did those ciphers come from, and slightly more welcoming, and even borders on
gested that nothing is accomplished without arbi- what part of the brain stores them for use on a sensuousness. By printing series of plus and minus
trary decision, a suggestion I imagine Brian train ? signs on transparent paper, he arrives at a sensuous
O'Doherty grappled with when he compiled a Assimilating O'Doherty's creation in these dis- effect not unlike Mondrian's plus and minus paint-
remarkable Book, or no-book, issued as numbers 5 parate temporal circumstances, I nonetheless, per- ings, but more austere. Although these are, in his
and 6 of Aspen Magazine. haps through unshakeable habit, was reading— description, discrete, self-cancelling, isomorphic,
O'Doherty's offering, which occupies a swan- reading a pattern of modern art in its multiple serialized tiers on an orthogonal grid, they are
white box, proves that a throw of the dice will perspectives. also moveable, and therefore potentially mysterious
never abolish art, for in each selection, no matter Beckett, in his reading, asks: Was it always like and even beautiful. The abyss of silence is carefully
how divergent stylistically and thematically, there this? O'Doherty answers: Well yes and no and no skirted.
is a vital reflexive germ that somehow thrusts and yes, and we must navigate the interstices of Which is true in general of the whole issue, and
itself into a position that demands comparison. his thoughts. which finally is the result of the rumorous nature
It is as though O'Doherty had used a prestidigi- I took Susan Sontag's first sentence in 'The of O'Doherty's genius.
tator's art on a magnetic table. All the filings that Aesthetics of Silence' very much to heart. This
flew to its field had to have something in common. essay is literally brilliant. The rays of her thoughts Another publishing endeavour which also aims to
If the drunken exaltation of William Burroughs, reach out resplendently, illuminating what are the be an unconventional book of sorts has just
reciting on a record, seems polar to the studied basic motifs of the whole O'Doherty endeavour. appeared with the mysterious title of S.M.S. Al-
coolness of Robbe-Grillet on the other side, the Her first sentence states that 'every era has to re- though I have sifted through the cache of materials
polarities are neutralized in the philosophy pro- invent the project of "spirituality" for itself'. She offered in portfolio form, I have not been able to
fessed by Roland Barthes in his printed essay, 'The then patiently traces out the modes of spirituality find the clue to the title. Or even to the name of
Death of the Author'. Barthes (who also defers to in the modern era. Hers is inevitably an irritable the publishing house, which calls itself by the
Mallarmé) cancels out the two seemingly opposed (in the old sense) article, a story of glorified ruins, funereal name of The Letter Edged in Black Press,
temperaments by insisting that it is language that of exaltation without issue, of abnegation unto Inc.
speaks, not the man. To elucidate his principles of death. Or rather, unto silence. Her whole elegant I do know the publisher, however, since he is
structuralist analysis, Barthes uses one image that and finely wrought argument in which she vali- none other than the grand panjandrum William
works well with O'Doherty's approach: he says antly distinguishes and tries not to decipher inexor- Copley, an artist who has long been associated
that everything is to be distinguished but nothing ably suggests danger. The themes of reduction, with Surrealism, and also publishing, and whose
deciphered; 'structure can be "threaded" (like a renunciation and artistic suicide persistently rise to humour has always ranged from grim to whimsical.
stocking that has a run) in all its recurrences and the surface, casting their dread pall on her now Each portfolio, he writes in his blurb, will contain
all its stages...' optimistic, now dejected speculation. 'Through its personal manifestations by artists in all media,
This laddered stocking provides a nice figure to advocacy of silence, reduction, etc., art commits an liberated from restrictions in format. He also has
work with. The fact is that O'Doherty's choices, act of violence upon itself, turning art into a in mind a portable museum.
arbitrary or not, are replete with countless cross- species of auto-manipulation, of conjuring—trying In fact, I did not take S.M.S. on the train because
references. Several dozen structural systems could to help bring these new ways of thinking to birth.' (a) I had great difficulty getting it open and out of
be graphed from the materials he provides in his There is no assurance, finally, in Miss Sontag's its mailer, (b) when I finally did, I found a bunch
wheel of cultural probing. A tremendous unravel- essay, that this frequently-heralded birth has in- of capsules of the medical variety rolling around
ling and re-ravelling is required, and a bracing deed occurred. amongst the drawings, posters, cryptic messages
exercise of wheeling and shifting in time and space. The 'data' in the box are projects that do little to and luggage labels that the portfolio tried to, but
O'Doherty's objects are Janus-like, looking reassure a worried spirit in search of spirituality. did not quite, contain.
back-ward with nostalgia and forward with a mixture of Take, for instance, Sol Lewitt's serial project 1, Of which I am not complaining. I like S.M.S. if
hope and dejection. He is obviously concerned presented in a separate booklet of diagrams and only because it bestirs the child pack-rat in me,
with art history, and includes several important text. He starts by announcing that serial composi- and the child package-coveter. There is much
documents in his anthology ranging back to the tions are multipart pieces with regulated changes, here that must be unfolded, refolded, unwrapped,
early part of the century. He is also concerned and says that the aim of the artist would be not to and reassembled. And there is much that is swift,
with debunking history, and includes piqueing instruct the viewer but to give him information. sight-gaggy and surrealist in spirit. For instance,
essays by George Kubler and Susan Sontag which Then, in what Sontag would call an élitist way, he Nancy Reitkopf's offering of luggage labels in a
call upon time and space as witnesses to the silliness repels the viewer by stating that 'whether the plastic bag; one of the Titanic approaching its ice-
of much history-minded theory. Time, in fact, is one viewer understands this information is incidental berg, one of the Lusitania seen through a gun sight,
of his chief preoccupations. His nostalgia for to the artist.... The serial artist does not attempt to one of picturesque Hiroshima, and one of the
Mallarmé ? produce a beautiful or mysterious object but func- Calvary Motor Inn. Or Julien Levy's prescription
The Book O'Doherty creates must, in physical tions merely as a clerk cataloging the results of pad (to which I presume the pills belong) of
fact, be seen in irregular time masses. I, for his premise.' Metamedics for da Vinci (`Dream-A-Mean intro
instance, had to arrange a film showing in my As the processer of the data he provides, I sup- Venusly') and Michelangelo (Stop-It-Al with no
school in order to see the films of Richter, Robert pose I am short on understanding, and I seek no refill) and a few extra pages for the use of the
Morris and Robert Rauschenberg. I had to sympathy from the provider of the data. On the purchaser of this package.
borrow a phonograph with extra-slow time speed other hand, the moral rigour of his proposition is As packages go, Copley's is spritely, engaging,
in order to hear Gabo reading his manifesto and quite clear, and I shudder in its cold shadow. less than technologically perfect, and very far