Page 56 - Studio International - July-August 1969

German artist who did not react to Cubism In Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in without the constraint of rigidly orthodox
and Futurism, and it is significant that the China, the point is made indirectly that we belief. In this way he is open to chance as well
word 'Expressionism' was originally coined to might have produced computers even before as order. Without succumbing to the cloudier
take in Picasso, Braque and Boccioni as well Babbage in 1832 (typically left for an Ameri- aspects of esotericism, his mind is as alert to
as the younger German artists There is no can, Aitken, to develop a century later) if the the ritual formalities of the Tibetan mantras
doubt that Heckel's Day of glass reflects an West had not embraced Cartesian-Newtonian in their visible signs and numerological series
enthusiasm for Futurism. Similarly, Kirch- scientific principles so exclusively but had in- as to the processes of formal analysis disclosed
ner's treatment of crowds on the street and of stead paid attention to those extensions of the by art since Cezanne.
the cityscape itself owed a great deal to the numerology embodied in the late Chou In describing Downing's work all I am really
Futurist use of splintered shapes, of sharp dynasty I Ching made by Leibnitz in binary doing is to state one of the inevitable condi-
diagonal lines and of a shallow space into arithmetic and subsequently related by tions of the creative act. In aiming at one
which highly complex forms are compressed. Wiener to the animal central nervous system. target, in isolation, another and unexpected
Although the styles of all the Brücke members The point I want to make here as a rough feature is automatically described. Art is
had become so individual by 1913 that the parallel is that it is possible to detect in recent discovery and a continuous question; how-
original group spirit was redundant, it was art in several countries an unconsciously shared ever strictly limited the working conditions
Kirchner's personality which ultimately for- attempt to discard a tradition and rediscover may be, however narrow the sight-line, fresh
ced the break-up. His version of the an alternative evolution, to locate a different perspectives open up. We are in the potent
Brücke-history was extremely one-sided. The others aesthetic impulse. With all the trivialization gap which divides mathematics from music,
objected and the group fell apart.4 After brief and fantasy surrounding attitudes in the West or at the stage in which two digits suddenly
military service and a serious mental and to Japanese and Indian religions and philo- total more than their logical sum.
physical breakdown Kirchner moved to Davos sophical precepts in the past two decades, Downing feels himself that he is still at the
in Switzerland in 1917. there is now, in compensation, a more general beginning of his work as a sculptor; or at least
It has been said that Kirchner reached the awareness among educated Western people that one phase is now over, leaving the ground
heights of his artistic powers during this final than ever before that Christianity is not the clear for new work. He stands by what is
period. The contrary seems true. Like all the sole receptacle of wisdom and enlightment or shown at Whitechapel but this work now
other Brücke-artists his work shows a steady the only model for conduct. Other principles, seems to belong to an almost remote past. I
decline after 1913 and is at its most unhappy other beliefs, bear scrutiny. In art, it is as if a have rarely met an artist who gives himself so
when outside influences are most obvious. few artists in widely separated parts of the wholly and obsessively to a particular phase
From 1928 onwards Kirchner seems to have world had decided simultaneously that the of work; utterly immersed in it whilst it lasts,
been obsessed by Picasso and turned out a tradition on which they were nurtured was in the later comparative alienation is under-
group of portraits and figure-compositions fact an irrelevance. standable. Downing has made some of the
which are nothing more than paraphrases of A good deal of the resultant exploration has following points about the work exhibited in
one aspect of Picasso's contemporary work been obscured by romantic but untalented London, or agreed to others drawn from him
marred by an imperfect understanding of the popularizers. There is everywhere a philistine by questioning and set down in the same list:
Spaniard's aims and methods. drive to reduce everything to the same level, 1. None of the projects are entirely concep-
MARLBOROUGH FINE ART has done more than complicated by escapism. But clearly there tualized.
anyone else in England to bring the achieve- are differences in the quality and indeed the 2. He works by seeing what the initial form
ments of German artists to the attention of the necessity of thought behind the antics of, say, `wants to do'.
British public. It is scarcely credible that the the amiable Allen Ginsberg and his followers 3. The cube excavations and dislocations are
present exhibition is the first entirely devoted and the original precepts of Zen Buddhism. early works; many considerations have exer-
to Kirchner to be staged in this country. Donovan's lyrics with their hallucinatory, cised his mind, in other directions, since their
Restricted by space and restricted to paintings passive infantilism do not stand up to the completion.
and drawings from private collections, the scrutiny one might give to Les chants de 4. The cube or any other geometrical form
exhibition nevertheless presents a representa- Maldoror or even Au pays de la Magie of only illuminates what is waiting inside one's
tive selection of Kirchner's work and I have Michaux. With much pretentiousness at mind, and not the reverse.
seen no better showing of his drawings any- issue, the connections are dimly tenable; the 5. The work could be seen as abstract carto-
where, including the enormous 1960 retro- vulgarization is immense. graphy or a referential analysis of specific
spective in the Dusseldorf Kunsthalle. q All this is an indirect but necessary lead-in to forms conditioned by Jung's Psychology and
FRANK WHITFORD the sculpture of Robert Downing, a Canadian Alchemy.
born in Ontario whose first exhibition in 6. Even so, like all artists, Downing is alarmed
Louis de Marsalle: Forword to the catalogue for the Europe is at the WHITECHAPEL GALLERY by projections of complexity into essentially
Kirchner exhibition in the Bern Kunsthalle, 1933. Downing is an averagely pragmatic artist simple propositions and formal enquiries.
2 'He thus discovered the Hieroglyph and enriched concerned like most sculptors with technology, 7. The cube is a volume . • . a series of planes . • .
modern art with one further important means of
expression, just as in their time Seurat discovered the with materials, and with realistic problems. a series of edges. Planes, surfaces, and edges
"touche", the division of colours, and Cezanne dis- But there is an underlying edge to his imagina- can sometimes refer to each other in unfore-
covered the system of cylinders, cones and spheres.' tion which, in dealing with concrete issues seeable ways as well as by planned relation-
From: Louis de Marsalle: Leber die plastischen Arbeiten
von E. L. Kirchner (1924-5), reprinted in: Lothar relevant to the exploration of the cube and, ship. The volume has an interior as well as an
Grisebach, E. L. Kirchners Davoser Tagebuch, Cologne, more recently, other simple structures, pushes exterior: it is a challenge to rearrange that
1968. further to discover the fantasy hovering just volume.
3 Even Schmidt-Rottluff and Heckel the two surviving
members of the Brücke, still strenuously deny any know- beyond logic. 8. The cube has infinite potential because it
ledge of Van Gogh and Seurat until after they moved to The flare-up of unforeseeable factors released can be any size: made up of numbers of
Berlin. by Downing delineates a new order of echo variations on a module as well as other,
Erich Heckel in a letter to Prof. Dr Alfred Hentzen
wrote, for example, of the Chronicle of the Brücke: and response as the constituent parts of a different modules.
Kirchner wrote the text. This did not correspond with rational whole are dislocated, set in reverse, or In the beautiful 6 ft high Revolving cube in
Schmidt-Rottluff's, Otto Mueller's or my view of the rearranged in inverted serial progression. transparent blue-green plexiglass, there are
facts, nor did it correspond with our idea of how it
should have been written ...so we determined not to Determinism makes its presence felt. Like three compartments rising up from the first
publish it.' most men in this age, Downing has faith (and base) section in a ratio of 6 to 5 to 4