Page 48 - Studio International - December 1969

New York

commentary

The rambunctious and often disappointing
character of American social-protest art makes
it difficult to mount a successful exhibition of
the kind the WHITNEY has undertaken. In
`Human Concern/Personal Torment' with its
subtitle, 'The grotesque in American art', Bruce Conner
Medusa 1960
Curator Robert C. Doty has set forth a Wax, nylon, hair, cardboard, wood
chronicle of varying responses to social out- 101 x 11 x 221 in.
rages, without bombast or pretension. He has 2 Lucas Samaras
done the best that can be done with an un- Untitled Box No. 3 1963
Wood, rope, pins, stuffed bird
wieldy, hard-to-define mass of material. 24½ x 11½ in.
I assume that the paucity of earlier examples is
3
attributable to the fact that on the whole, Barry Flanagan
Installation, Fischbach Gallery 1969
America has always averted its eyes from the Mixed media
less noble aspects of its life. The few strong
caricatures on exhibition from Harper's Weekly Jose de Rivera in his studio, 1969
by Thomas Nast (1874 to 1877) were isolated
events in a genteel world that even in its do-
good milieux was not given to aggressive so familiar that the ugly events he is condemn- curator of contemporary art, Henry Geld-
commentary. As Doty indicates via the exhibi- ing lose the power to move. The same is true zahler. By the time this review appears, the
tion, the Depression is the moment when of those collagists and pop artists whose refer- storm of commentary, most of it adverse, will
doubts were expressed in the visual arts, and ence to familiar plastic styles diminishes the have been well registered so I will limit myself
the late 1950s the epoch in which extreme impact of their art and their communication to just a few remarks.
personal irritation began to take the form of of anger. The notable exceptions to this Since many of the works and most of the
political or social commentary. The fact that general rule are Ed Kienholz, Bruce Conner artists have been amply discussed during the
he had to add 'personal torment' to the title and Lucas Samaras, all of whom plunge into past few years, the thing to be discussed is this
spells out quite clearly the oblique nature of the full abyss of the grotesque in thoroughly hybrid monster as a whole, 'the most monu-
most of the exhibits—the absence, in short, of quirky and original manners. (Is it accidental mental showing of contemporary American
any manifestation that could remotely be that all three work on the West Coast?) Of art ever brought together anywhere'. With
talked about in the same breath with the course, Doty's allowance for the 'grotesque' as Ringling Brothers' rhetoric, the Met has
usual precursors, Daumier, Delacroix, Goya a reflection of human concern or torment, in- described its creation proudly, glad to be able
and Grosz. cludes a number of artists whose playful (with the help of the Xerox Corporation) to
Not that there aren't plenty of sincerely angry, enunciation of horrors could hardly be con- glut no less than thirty-five of its huge galleries
even eloquent indictments of specific social sidered heavyweight. It also includes some with more than four hundred works. This out-
ills in the exhibition. It would be hard to younger assemblers whose memories of sur- rageously huge organism that is called an
remain indifferent to the waxwork fidelity of realist Guignol are too persistent (right down exhibition is thus faithful to two of the old
Duane Hansen whose life-sized and lifelike to a boxed version of the knife cutting into the American habits : self-aggrandizement and
tableau of California cops at work on their eyeball). innocent bragadoccio. Its very bigness makes
black victims, and whose contemporary Pieta The absence of real political caricature in the Met proud.
of a white woman holding the bleeding body American journals, and the absence of any When, after the Civil War, during what
of a black victim stop people short in the outstanding stylist comparable to Grosz or Mumford called the 'Brown Decades', it be-
show. This is good journalism, and like a good Heartfield, has been remarked often in socio- came important for the merchant classes to be
news photo probably says more than a thou- logical commentary. This exhibition now `genteel', they chose, characteristically, to
sand words, but is obviously remote from the provides further material for the cultural display their gentility conspicuously. The
qualities that give George Grosz his place in historian since, for all its energetic address to tremendous fear of being vulgar brought
art history. the ills of the world, it presents no single talent them constantly back to vulgarity of the
In many of the other paintings, drawings and capable of focusing intensely and with un- worst kind—the conspicuous consumption so
sculptures, the motifs are all there, and the mistakeable originality on the American neatly described by Veblen. Later, the
sincere indignation, but the final effect of awe- malaise. generations that learned to despise the preten-
some greatness is lacking. In thinking about In another exhibition, far more pretentious in sions and hypocrisy of the genteel middle
it, I realized that one of the reasons was that conception, and far less faithful to its inten- class turned with a vengeance to what was
many of our artists have taken over styles that tion, there are probably certain observations deemed vulgar, making vulgarity a virtue, or
are already familiar, unlike Grosz or Goya, in of a sociological nature that can be made. I at least throwing it in the face of the genteel
order to make their message more accessible. refer to the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S 'New patrons. The residue of these early revolts is
The result is for me just the opposite. The York Painting and Sculpture 1940-70', a still visible in Pop Art.
comic-strip manner of Peter Saul is already mammoth show put together by the Met's Since the genteel use the word vulgar with