Page 36 - Studio International - September 1968

colour over form merely the self-deception of colour tation becomes an integral part of the work: soft When the observer has escaped from Megert's
painting? The most recent works in this direction lighting, please, lest Olitski's perfumed canvases vacant pandemonium, he realizes just how good
— particularly with reference to Morris Louis— lose their aroma! These works, with their associa- Documenta 4 is, what a compelling exhibition it is:
reveal an open bewilderment on this question. tive enumeration of artistic content, refer back to paradoxically, it is so good that it no longer seems
Finally there is the basic question of the objec- the nineteenth century. One step further, and we are good. The one hundred and fifty representatives of
tivity of art. Are works of art self-sufficient objects back in the boudoir: Robert Irwin presents circular seventeen nations screw up critical standards so
with their own self-identity? Or do they not rather disks which can be seen, under soft spot-light, to high that they themselves are threatened—the price
possess that inviting openness which is a character- have been painted very tenderly. The fatal ten- of extensive comparison has to be paid.
istic of subjectivity? The environments in the dency to get lost in the atmospheric shows that The longer one looks at it, the more does the level
Galerie Schöne Aussicht pose this question with colour painting can only survive if it can thematize of the exhibition seem to drop, especially as the
special urgency. the problem of form. John Hoyland's work repre- fascination of discovery is denied one by the con-
Only Ad Reinhardt seems to have solved the sents the most interesting innovation in this field, ception of the Documenta—the artists here dis-
problem of reduction to a minimum of gesture and not least because it grows out of a dialectic tension played have already made their mark with the art
of stimulating visual attraction—this because he between disposable formal elements and free public elsewhere. Documenta 4 provides the exact
achieved a maximum of painterly intensity. Carl colour language. antithesis of the Venice Biennale: there the British
André, Ronald Bladen, Donald Judd and Robert One of the merits of the first generation of colour Pavilion was so clearly superior to all the other
Morris, on the other hand, merely demonstrate as painters—Newman, Rothko, or Louis—was that work shown that one no longer had any standard
it were an extroversion of formal gesturing. they provided a new answer to the question of of critical comparison. In Kassel the elite are all so
Although the gesture is kept at a distance from the whether works of art were self-sufficient objects— close together in respect of their standard, that the
actual plastic body, the presentation of the work and the question was answered in favour of a critic raises his own standards in accordance,
itself—a gigantic understatement—is so rhetorical pictorial reality that was open to receive its sub- whether he will or not.
in nature that it can already be described as ject. The effects of this tendency are everywhere to This does not mean that one should refrain from
`geometrical expressionism'. Where the big gesture be met with in the rooms of the Fridericianum : criticizing what needs criticism. What the exhibi-
is lacking, as in the recent work of Ellsworth Kelly, Noland's and Stella's transitory forms and the tion offers on the artistic plane bears no relation
fascination disappears, and Minimal Art is seen as tabulae rasae of William Turnbull are clearly out to whatever to what it fails to offer on the organiza-
the American way of repeating Constructivism. A involve the observer. The most radical rejection of tional level. The chaos that peeps round every
form of art which is so fully reliant on presentation the self-sufficient object, however, is to be found in corner shows Documenta for what it is—a good
is naturally very susceptible indeed to influences the environments of the Galerie Schöne Aussicht. exhibition with a bad conscience: irresponsibility
from outside: its dictatorial arrogance is most Here the function of the observer takes the place of towards the artists, some of whose expectations
clearly revealed by the fact that it is automatically the objective reality of the work of art. Leaving were sadly disappointed, and unreadiness to
silenced when it has to share surroundings with aside the cabaret-like horror scenery of Edward account to the public, who can no longer get a clear
foreign objects. This is particularly true of Sol Kienholz, an outsider in this group, the total picture of where the subsidies are going, are both in
Lewitt: surrounded by the works of Barnett surrender of the work itself to subjective experience evidence. In such circumstances those responsible
Newman, Noland and Louis, his sculpture Three does seem unsatisfying. Dan Flavin's fluorescent will hardly be able to withstand the attacks being
part variation on three different kinds of tubes refuses to tubes may bring the observer's clothes to fluores- made on them, in particular by the radical Right.
develop. What remains is a sensitive obstacle, as it cence, and Gianni Colombo (Italy) may cause his (The National Democratic Party in the Hessen
were the graveyard of a concept. fluorescent strings to flicker through the darkness— district government have already applied for can-
The few representatives of colour painting seem we are obstinately uninvolved: the three-dimen- cellation of public subsidies for Documenta). On
at first glance to form an opposite pole to Minimal sionality of the room remains unaffected and stable, the morning after the official opening the local
Art, as they lay stress on the articulate nuances of as long as we are still standing firmly on the floor. press in Kassel announced that another attempt
their medium—the form is generally taken to be The observer is unsatisfied, left to his own devices would be made to get 'the world's largest work of
pre-existent in terms of the picture format. Jules —only the emptiness of subjectivity is in fact realized. sculpture'—Christo's '5450 cubic package' — off the
Olitski and Larry Poons, for example, concentrate In Christian Megert's mirror cabinet this experi- ground into the air. Good luck to Christo: whether
exclusively on the problem of a permeable area of ence is confirmed in symbolic form: wherever the what is perhaps the world's most important ex-
paint: the canvas becomes the basis for an illus- observer looks he sees only himself—a hydraulic wall hibition will get off the ground again in four year's
ionistic interplay of foreground and background. mirror suggests a disturbance of the sense of balance time seems, in view of the present situation, more
Nevertheless, these pictures are so reliant on the and female visitors hurry out on discovering the doubtful than ever.
atmosphere which they create that here, too, presen- active participation of the floor mirror. Robert Kudielka

centre Barnett Newman Voice of fire

left Kenneth Noland Open end
right Kenneth Noland Date line
foreground Sol Lewitt Three part variation on
three different kinds of tubes