Page 31 - Studio International - September 1969

Charles fluences and pressures, its increasing mobility
of effect and taste, its systems of presentation
Biederman: and communication, and its shifting network
of relationships. Biederman has made a firm
stand for a certain condition of art. Embodied
from the actual in this concept are specific prerequisites,
priorities and demands which have from time
to the sublime to time fleetingly been reciprocated, but more
usually have been at odds with developments
in recent American art, from which Bieder-
man has remained aloof. At a time when other
Robin Denny artists in America were attempting to realize a
sensibility independent of European roots,
Biederman was firmly declaring his debt to
analytical directions in European art. Whilst
art in America focused on the idea of 'object'
as an entity separated from the natural world,
Biederman was systemizing the Structurist
comprehension of nature as a source of art.
THE EXHIBITION 'CHARLES BIEDERMAN-
As American art became increasingly com-
STRUCTURIST RELIEFS' IS AT THE
munity-conscious and metropolitan, Bieder-
HAYWARD GALLERY FROM 18 SEPTEMBER
man remained separate and isolated in a rural
TO 23 OCTOBER
mid-west community for which he had opted
in the late Thirties where 'conditions were
precisely those which future art required'.3
Very few works by Charles Biederman have As painting and sculpture assumed an other artists of like or parallel determination
been seen in England. Two Structurist reliefs ascendant role in American culture, Bieder- has often been the subject of mistaken attri-
were shown in London in 1955, 1 and before that man declared that 'both had become obse- butions, speculation, assumption, and guess-
he exhibited here once only, in a mixed exhibi- lete'.4 work. Especially so in the case of artists in this
tion at the Mayor Gallery in 1935.2 In the Structurism as a theory and method of crea- country,6 some of whom were corresponding
thirty years which separate these two events, tion is uniquely Biederman's invention, and is with Biederman as early as 1952,7 but none of
Biederman carried through one of the most the term he introduced in 1962 to designate whom saw any of his work until ten years
radical and single-minded attempts in modern his work from the late Thirties onwards, indi- later, 8 and some not until 1966.9 Victor
art to formulate a new definition for art and cating his involvement with 'the structural Pasmore, for example, got hold of Bieder-
its relation to the organic world. This attempt process level of reality'. It marginally relates man's celebrated book, Art as the Evolution of
has been the subject of much misunderstand- to some current developments in Europe and Visual Knowledge," in 1951, and made his
ing, false interpretation, and neglect, many the United States, but in terms of its derivation first transparent relief in 1952. The relation-
people knowing of Biederman only as a and sources, its formal dialectic and execu- ship between the one event and the other is
theorist through his articles and books and his tion, it is in conflict with most of the major still somewhat unclear. The fact remains that
copious correspondence, but very few having developments in modern art and had never Pasmore's conversion to abstract art has
seen his work. This exhibition, covering as it reached more than a specialized audience. always been regarded as one of the more
does the full sweep of Biederman's Structurist This audience is composed mostly of other glamorous landmarks in British post-war art,
theory, its development, its roots, sources, and artists who have communicated through net- and Biederman's role in this particular, whilst
current practise, as well as including a repre- work contacts of a preceptive spirit, that has not being overstressed, at least should not be
sentative selection of his earlier paintings and usually occupied an inconspicuous role in the underestimated, and can with this exhibition
graphic work, is the most complete survey to modern art arena. What connects them and be put into proper perspective. Equally so in
have been shown anywhere. their activities is, on the one hand, an ideo- the case of those other artists here whose
The reasons for Biederman's neglect are mani- logy, and on the other a belief in the evolu- development, whilst not being so conspicuous
fold. To some extent he is the victim of his tionary process in art derived from certain as Pasmore's, has probably been more
own singular dedication, which is unyielding basic premises. As Jan van der Marck has said reasoned, coherent and disciplined. The fact
in its declaration for a precise historical and `their approach is programmatic. They are that none saw Biederman's work until com-
moral posture for the artist. This has been concerned with the technical and conceptual paratively recently is important, for it distin-
expressed consistently in his writings, and has issues in the making of their works. They have guishes the dialectical nature of their contacts
brought him a small but select following who a mathematical or natural science orientation. from the formal, and clarifies those areas
have accepted his beliefs either in toto or in Finally they have a social ethic that may strike which separate them from those which overlap.
part. But for many the theory is unacceptable, the critic as utopic.' 5 These contacts are inter- For all these artists, Art as the Evolution of
and since so little of Biederman's work has national, cutting across the boundaries that Visual Knowledge, which was their first
been seen, even by those who know his writ- are more usually regarded as the containers of contact with Biederman, was the most sub-
ings well, the gulf between the two has until a national sensibility. In its didactic orienta- stantial document of its kind ever to have
now never really been bridged, and the image tion, concurrent at some points of ideology appeared. It offered clarification, confirma-
of his practice as an artist remains blurred and and history, disputant at others, this network tion, and argument in depth in an area of
distorted by the quality of his commitment as represents in its widest aspect a substantial creation that related to ideas of overlapping
a theorist on the state of art, and propagandist area of sustained polemic and research for preoccupation in England at a time when the
for what it might become. which there is no obvious precedent in art, state of art was undergoing a profound and
Essentially the neglect of Biederman's achieve- and which has never been accurately docu- far-reaching critical re-examination, in terms
ments must be seen in the context of the mented. of its form and its function, its technology, its
developing pattern of post-war art, its in- The relationship between Biederman and future, and its historical antecedents. Many