Page 52 - Studio International - July-August 1969

New York `possessing' the ground, as Olitski is fond of projections and suggestions. In the way the
saying, makes great allowances for the way it tent-like embodiment of space is articulated,
commentary is possessed. I see an intelligence which has successfully

Since formally Olitski seems to me to be found aspects of painting and aspects of sculp-
related to a host of sculptors who have liter- ture which can be eloquently combined.
ally staked out this ground, his vaunted There have been several exhibitions of accom-
originality must lie in his use of sprayed paint. plished painters recently, the largest being
The familiar mottled colours of his paintings— Robert Motherwell's MARLBOROUGH show of
so closely mixed that they read as neutrals— works from 1967 to 1969. These mostly very
appear on these sculptures, and the claim is large paintings are conceived of as a series
made that Olitski is demonstrating that colour which Motherwell calls 'Open'. Although he
can exist for itself in three dimensions. has pursued formal ideas in series before, this
My first objection to this extravagant claim is the first time Motherwell has limited him-
is that Olitski, far from dealing with colour as self to a single motif in many variations in a
a self-sufficient visual property, loses its basic single show. As can be expected with the vast
quality—light—when he sprays it on. The space of Marlborough to fill, too many paint-
Not to be out of the major league, the METRO- mixtures greyed to rather even neutral sur- ings are shown. The very impressive paintings
POLITAN MUSEUM has altered its policies in faces neither respond to natural light, nor are diminished in impact by those that verge
order to compete with the other three mu- emanate their own light. If absence of vivacity on grandiloquence.
seums dealing with modern art. They have is an objective, then he has accomplished it. Motherwell has always been interested in the
mounted a one-man exhibition, for the first My other objection is to the very idea of sup- quantitive effects of the greatly extended,
time ever, of Jules Olitski's sculpture seen for posing that colour can exist apart from its lateral picture plane. His early 'voyage' paint-
the first time ever (and done for the first time bearer in space when the bearer is a three- ings which could be read only horizontally,
ever), in a first time ever one-man show of a dimensional form. Light art may achieve dis- and in which he guided the eye of the viewer
living artist. embodied colour, but never three-dimensional from climate to climate with great skill, were
These sculptures by Olitski are not at all 'in- sculpture. In that case, sculpture is, as Olitski based on the cumulative effects of scanning
novative' as the Met claims, but are couched maintains, coloured surface, but surface in very large areas of colour from left to right. In
in the common language of the sixties, and which colour must be manipulated in its own these new paintings in which the rectangular
based on the assumptions of many sculptors terms in order to affect its bearing shape. The format is echoed by interior rectangles, there
working both in the United States and Britain. dullness and displeasing softness of sprayed are several versions of the long-voyage paint-
As is often the case, Olitski can handle the surfaces in these sculptures contributes to ing infinitely simplified. Motherwell regulates
ideas very well when offering explanations. In their not seeming to have 'grown' from any- the spaces with simple lines which either pend
his statement, for instance, that 'sculpture is to thing. They seem, rather, to have been willed. from the upper regions or form irregular,
the ground support what pictorial shape is to On the other hand, I found that Tim Scott's open rectangles over a monochrome ground.
the painting support' I find familiar principles premises, which in theory are much the same Where there are two colours, as in a raw sien-
felicitously enunciated. If he says that 'since as Olitski's, were satisfactorily elucidated in na and bluish grey painting, the groundplane
edge cannot be separated from shape, drawing his first New York show at the new LAWRENCE reads relatively flat, while the coloured rect-
is everywhere to be found in sculpture' I un- RUBIN GALLERY. Large bent tubular forms, angle (grey) is ever so slightly in relief because
derstand him well. There are many sculptors arrayed in a complex floor plan, gain coher- of the drawn lines. The ambiguity, without
exploiting the illusionistic possibilities of ence through the evenly matte surfaces which which no Motherwell painting can really
drawing, and lateral extension through it. play against the gloss of his base sheets. The function, lies in the way the foreplane slides
But if he tells me that 'sculpture ought to be right amount of reflection from outside sources over the ground, suggesting lateral movement.
conceived in its entirety as coming from and tends to make interrelationships between the There is no question of austerity or minimal-
out of and going into the ground,' then I must described linear forms and the reflective base ism in the best paintings here. Motherwell has
ask him why, then, does he exhibit his large plan both readable and exciting. In addition, washed on his raw siennas with the same
and sprawling forms in the static and in- Scott has obviously conceived the ensemble lyrical intention inherent in older works. The
appropriate rooms of the Metropolitan. Of as more than an explication of a contemporary light shifts constantly beneath the thin skin
course he doesn't mean 'ground' literally, but minimal text. There are old-fashioned sculp- of the surface. The rectangles, which are often
he should. These unconjugated forms, with tural relationships stated in fresh terms. For drawn freely in rich charcoal, dangle like airy
their sprayed surfaces and linear kite-tails, instance, the similarity in virtual volumes (if trapezes in a space that must be received as
feel distinctly out of place, and since place is those spaces described by the tubing can be translucent, poetic, expansive. The simplicity
part of the concept, one wonders whether the called virtual volumes) and the nuanced dif- of certain paintings, such as No. 33, derives not
compromise isn't too great. ferences, make for a complex, multiple im- so much from the reduced means (one sienna
The fact is that the basically shield-like forms, pression which can truly be gauged only by wash; five charcoal lines) as from the spatial
graded-off to look something like the contours traditional circulation around the piece. metaphor. The line which stretches like a
of gently-rolling landscape, lie very uncom- None the less, it is truly related to the hori- tight-rope across the surface, its softened edges
fortably on the Met's polished floors. Their zontality of ground plane, although the bleeding into the ground, establishes a prin-
linear edges do not seem to spring out of the yellowish floor of the gallery was an unhappy cipal metaphor for free and unencumbered,
ground, but rather, to be drawn awkwardly circumstance for its implication of extension. imagined space. The trapeze or window sus-
from the 'tubes, domes and sheets' that were The large piece, with its planes of yellow and pended from the top of the painting is an
his basic aluminium materials. Rather banal whitish plastic sheets affixed to steel tube added adjective for the swinging, constantly
half-moon shapes, or piled-up and tilted armature, is to me a most interesting exten- moving experience of the individual who can
shields, spread along the floor with consider- sion of the implications of Cubism. The use of image forth such spaces. I say they are poetic
able awkwardness. But that, I will be told, is tilting axes, and a kind of clattering pro- because they exist solely metaphorically.
all part of it. In this idiom, there is no re- gression of falling planes (especially those Those charcoal lines, as lines, are qualifiers
course to pleasing, rhyming form, but only to quasi-transparent planes of whitish plastic) of an imaginary experience as much as Baude-
faithfulness to the idea. And the idea of make the piece a dynamic composition of laire's more earthy adjectives are qualifiers