Page 62 - Studio International - May 1969

the artist to supply a production line for arti- 7 Patrick Procktor invitation to the voyage
facts, facilitating their wider distribution— No 2, Mirrors, 1969 Aquatint 45 x 75 cm.
from the artist's point of view precisely the 8
Patrick Procktor Fuji, 1969
same demand made on machine process as
27 x 41 in. watercolour
has been made on hand-manipulated etching
and lithography processes; with the same
demand on the artist to come to terms with
the nature of the process. The product there
is the object of contemplation created by the
individual, whether made by him or not, and
multiplied. Les Levine's is a far more radical
relationship with technology. He issues the
specifications for products that have the same
relation to industry, commerce and the
designer as mould-formed egg-boxes made to
be thrown out after service, not because they
are worn out but because they have served
and are in no sense designed for contempla-
tion or as property. They invite the creative
exercise of the purchaser; are to be consumed
by playing with. Through them the creative
function of the artist is handed over to the
consumer. In fact the consumer is the only
artist.
So it is a bit absurd to see Les Levine's
styrene units displayed in the dealer's arrange-
ment on the walls of a gallery, unless we wish
to experience the dealer as artist. They should
be available in packs like throwaway picnic
plates. This may accord to Levine the status
of general benefactor, therapist and educator
while he settles for anonymous activator
whose criterion of success is that he specifies
components that actually make people want
to play. He has argued his case elsewhere 1
and, elegant though the argument is, it pro-
poses the integration of the artist into the
technology of the consumer society to the
point where—if by an 'artist' we mean any
thing different from a person involved in free
play of any kind—the artist is submerged in
the technical process and at harmony with its
systems. He does not use it to transmit
experience, nor to change it; certainly not to
subvert it.
As for the non-objects themselves, I find my-
self regarding them as objects not without
appeal. They are works by Les Levine formu-
lating visually another of Les Levine's ideas.
He has a great many and is clear-headed and
his talents enable him to state them visually
with precision. Besides precision they all
arrive possessed of a curious sensuous provo-
cativeness. Though the images of the paintings Patrick Procktor's recent watercolours, show- formed a chance meeting into an imaginary
have disappeared and the referential elements ing at the REDFERN GALLERY, and the series event, he interpreted. He was not a fellow
of the shrouded furniture have been elimi- of five aquatints entitled Invitation to the Voyage traveller but the creator who sustained the
nated from the disposables, somehow, even in which emerged from them and are being event in his own imagination.
them, the 'touch', whatever that can mean in shown at ALECTO GALLERY, evoke with ex- `Procktor's pen drawings, out of which these
the circumstances, remains. Which is to say
treme subtlety and delicacy an afternoon in a etchings have evolved, are the record of the
that while I regard Les Levine, in his role as
New York apartment. They constitute, writes journey while it took place. These drawings
apostle of the disposable, as an artist on a Nikos Stangos : were later to provide the material for a series
slippery slope, from another slope I still watch `Procktor's interpretation/vision of one parti- of watercolour paintings. His aquatints
him with admiration as an agile man keeping cular event: the imaginary fantastic journey evolved out of the watercolour paintings, trans-
his balance. of three friends in a New York apartment one lated into a new medium. His interpretation of
fl
WILLIAM TOWNSEND afternoon a few days before Christmas 1968. the actual event, then, was triple: first, the
1 'The disposable transient environment', by Les Procktor imagined the journey; he did not drawings, then the paintings and finally the
Levine, artscanada, April 1968. merely record it or illustrate it. He trans- aquatints.'