Page 34 - Studio International - September 1968

with so much at stake and so much opportunity that there was the almost tangible stench of scandal When the first Documenta was organized in 1955
would have done the same. The trouble was that in the air. There was more paranoia than proof in to restore the continuity of German art, to put it
a situation was allowed to develop in which there this; everything that went wrong at Kassel did so again in touch with the mainstream of modernism
was so much confusion that no one knew who were not because there were evil goings-on in the after a decade of isolation, its organizational form
dealers and who were members of the official hang- Baroque woodshed but because the organisation was probably ideal. Now that the Documenta has
ing committee. In any case it seems that even as was inept, inadequate and amateurish. grown to Leviathan proportions, has become of
late as the Press Day, the Committee had no The strength and weakness of the Documenta has vital international importance, now that Venice is
definite idea of an overall hanging plan. It was always been its organizational form. The Com- on its last legs, a fossilized formula, the organization
first come, first served, and the number of canvases mittee originally consisted of a group of friends at Kassel is painfully inadequate.
still stacked against the walls even at the end of the around the exhibition's prime mover, Arnold Bode. The question is whether Documenta will be able
first week showed that massive miscalculations had Although it exists today in a modified and enlarged to reform and reorganize during the next year, or
crept in. Nevertheless, those who went round mut- form, it is still largely the same. Its members are whether things will get worse until the whole edifice
tering 'American cultural Imperialism' under their for the most part provincial administrators and crumbles into ruin. At the time of writing the
breath, had enough fuel for the fire of their resent- university teachers. Professional critics, art his- Christo inflatable sculpture still lies along the grass
ment. The situation was the more unfortunate in torians and working artists are very much in the after three costly attempts to erect it. Ultimate
view of the virulent criticisms from many quarters minority. The local lobby is very strong. Only the failure seems inevitable. We must all hope that
that the Documenta had fallen into the hands of a secretary works full time. In spite of valuable ex- the Documenta Committee will itself take stock,
coterie of New York dealers. Not only the facts of perience gained during the last three Documentas, will learn from this year's mistakes and will
the re-hanging but also the selection of works the Committee consists, frankly, of amateurs who attempt to correct them at all costs. Then, perhaps,
seems to bear these criticisms out. cannot be expected to cope with the administrative Documenta 4 will have been worthwhile.
Those with sensitive noses even began to claim difficulties that an exhibition of this size throws up. Frank Whitford

above Robert Indiana The great love

right George Segal The restaurant window

There was at least one superlative to be recorded at The opening morning then provided the sorry tecturally-dominant pose of these works. On the
the beginning of Documenta 4: the press en- spectacle of leftist students protesting against the other hand we had a similarly clear demonstration
joyed what was probably the longest preview it has Documenta 'establishment', with incense and of the painful fact that many of the artists of the
ever known. Right up to midnight on the day chant, although the previous night had shown that early sixties have already forfeited something of
before the official opening, the band of critics was what was lacking was just such an 'establishment' their nimbus—which prompts a sobering reflection
hard at work looking for what the catalogue had of planned, fully-functioning organization. Meet- on the age problem of modern art. One can rely
promised. What they found was hardly what they ing with so little institutional resistance, the pro- as little on the stability and constancy of the artists
expected— mainly artists hanging their own pictures, testers had to give up, and the monster show that themselves as on the stability and constancy of
gallery owners looking after their fledglings, and a had been so hastily put together the previous day one's own judgements.
few workmen, confused by the Babylonian welter could go on. It soon became clear that Documenta 4 The gigantomania of American art is most
of tongues, drinking their beer. The mood of the was a revealing, perhaps even epoch-making clearly demonstrated in the wide field of figurative
artists themselves was similarly divided. In the exhibition. On the one hand we had a clear art, narrative painting and object fetishism—
main Documenta building, the Fridericianum, demonstration of the difficulty of documenting representative works in this field have suffered a
Robert Rauschenberg enthused about the atmos- modern art, by virtue of the way it has developed. most unjust relegation to the back rooms and
phere of an exhibition of artists, by artists and for The tendency—as seen in Minimal Art, Primary corridors of the exhibition. It is this tendency in
artists. In the Galerie Schöne Aussicht, however, Structures, etc.—to lay stress on presentation as particular that provides the least changes of level,
which houses objects, prints and environments, part of the work of art itself, means that the tradi- since it occupies a firmly established artistic terrain.
Cesar threw down the silver polish with the words tional picture-format in the Fridericianum has On the other hand the dangers inherent in the
If I don't get a pedestal, you won't get Cesar'. been elbowed into the background by the archi- corrupt tradition of figurative art are all the greater,
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