Page 38 - Studio International - September 1969

terms and come to terms with as an artist ? close to a city park, that he first became aware metropolitan styles and centres, so he moved
This problem leads inevitably to the question of its possible relevance to his work. His move towards his mature style through what was
of national and international affiliations with- to Red Wing signified a wholehearted accept- tantamount to a rejection of Modernism. The
in that overall evolution. How does Bieder- ance of the natural world, which was to relief construction had originally come into
man stand as an American artist within the acquire an increasingly large place in his being, in the work of Tatlin, not as a new and
Western tradition ? work. superior genre of plastic expression but as a
Before I begin to answer these questions, it is Of course Biederman's rejection of the New challenge to traditional notions of the separa-
obviously necessary to provide the briefest York scene, where he had been favourably tion of form and content. The revolutionary
biographical details. Charles Biederman was received as a young painter, inevitably en- nature of Tatlin's reliefs lay not so much in the
born of Czech parents in Cleveland, Ohio, tailed a rejection of his work by the American fact that this was a hybrid form lying between
on 23 August 1906. From 1926 to 1929 he art world. The 1965 exhibition in Minneapolis, painting and sculpture as that the various
attended the Art Institute of Chicago School. organized by Jan van der Marck, was per- constituent materials were at once determin-
In 1936 he held his first one-man exhibition haps the first official sign of reacceptance, ants of content and form : the work was
at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, but Biederman is still very far from being a constituted by a 'material syntax'. Although
and in the same year moved across to Paris. well-known figure in the metropolitan art in the 1920s this particular notion was not
Returning to New York in 1937, he became centres of the United States. That his second developed, the currents of thought repre-
increasingly dissatisfied with the traditional large-scale exhibition should have been sented by De Stijl and the Bauhaus were
methods of painting and sculpture, and soon mounted in Britain is scarcely fortuitous, equally inimical to the notion of the relief as a
adopted the distinctive method of the relief since in recent years the interest in his work new genre superseding previous genres. Since,
construction. In 1941 he moved to Chicago, in Western Europe has grown considerably. in the case of Van Doesburg for example, the
and shortly afterwards to the rural community Joost Baljeu, the Dutch artist who edited the bases of expression in painting, sculpture and
of Red Wing, Minnesota, where he still lives, magazine Structure between 1958 and 1964, indeed architecture were all directly related,
having built a studio there in 1954. His first was initially inspired by Biederman's work there could be little point in claiming a
retrospective exhibition took place at the and published several articles by him: it was special status for the intermediate relief.
Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, in 1965. at the Stedelijk, Amsterdam, that one of his Biederman's `Constructionism', or 'Structur-
His second opens at the Hayward Gallery first collections of mature work was exhibited ism' as he later came to call it, was therefore
this month. in 1962. The link with Britain is of even in one sense a denial of the Modernist assump-
This bare summary of Biederman's career is longer standing. Victor Pasmore was greatly tion that the arts were fundamentally inter-
of more than circumstantial interest, since the impressed by Biederman's study, Art as the related, and a reversion to the stage where the
various geographical shifts in position corre- Evolution of Visual Knowledge, which appeared genres were believed to be essentially distinct.
spond closely to the stages of his work as an in 1948, shortly before Pasmore's own move to But it was also represented as a stage of evolu-
artist. Up to 1936 we have the conventional abstraction: he communicated his enthusiasm tion beyond the Modern Movement, since
pattern of the provincial artist who is drawn to other British artists such as Kenneth and the new genre did not simply take its place
to the capital of his own country, and finally Mary Martin, and Anthony Hill, who were with the traditional genres of painting and
to the capital of the art world. But although to share in the revival of constructive art in sculpture. The relief construction offered the
Biederman's stay in Paris enabled him to Britain. In recent years, the English magazine definitive solution to the problems of plastic
make contact with Arp, Mondrian, Vanton- Form has republished, on the initiative of art, and so rendered other types of art obsolete.
gerloo, Mire, and Brancusi, as well as with Michael Weaver, condensed versions of Although Mondrian's French pupil, Jean
Léger, whose work he found particularly Biederman's articles for Structure. Finally, Gorin, had been moving in the same direction,
congenial, he was struck immediately by the Biederman's Art Credo has been issued as a Biederman was the first artist to concentrate
lack of genuine vitality in the Parisian scene. number of Ian Hamilton Finlay's magazine his whole attention on the relief. And while
Instead of embracing the avant-garde tradition Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. Gorin himself, with the later Constructionists,
which had seemed so enticing from the other Biederman's role in the propagation of post- has continued to attempt various forms of free-
side of the Atlantic, he determined to emanci- war British Constructivism requires an addi- standing construction, Biederman has confined
pate himself from it. Though he returned to tional mention. In spite of the activity of the himself exclusively to the relief since 1937.
America eager to exploit the ideas of the De `Circle' group, culminating in the successful This decision cannot be explained simply as
Stijl group and the constructivist attitude to anthology of 1937, it would be wrong to the result of a choice between media. It was
materials, he had already rejected Europe in imagine that the 'constructive tendency' was closely bound up with Biederman's mature
principle. This rejection was to become com- strong in the Britain of the 1930s. Anthony realization of the function of plastic art.
plete over the next decade. In 1966 he wrote Hill has cast doubt on the usefulness of Mention has already been made of his dis-
to Michael Wilson, an English art student: regarding any British artist of this generation covery of the natural world, and his decision
`As I approached my own solution, I ceased as a Constructivist. What Biederman was able to establish himself at Red Wing. This con-
all Constructivist influence in 1945 and all De to pioneer in Art as the Evolution of Visual cern with his natural surroundings, which
Stijl and Mondrian influences in 1947.' Knowledge was in effect a new direction of began in the early 1940s, was matched by a
This rejection of Paris, and what Paris stood constructive activity: this bore the title of profound attention to the interpretation of
for, was later reflected in Biederman's move- `Constructionism' and the definition of 'an the natural world which he found in the
ment across America, from New York to Red art that is formally developed from painting, French masters of the late nineteenth century.
Wing. But just as the rejection of European but which shares some of its properties with Biederman began to articulate his thoughts
influences implied a gradual movement to- sculpture'. In accordance with Biederman's on this subject in Art as the Evolution of Visual
wards his 'own solution', so the departure evolutionary theory, the art of the relief con- Knowledge and continued to do so in The New
from the centres of American art was impelled struction ceased to be a hybrid and took on an Cézanne, published in 1958.
by the desire to create a new centre in the autonomy that it had never possessed during The three painters who supply the crucial
Middle West. In 1942 he published an article the period of the Modern Movement. stages in Biederman's analysis are Courbet,
entitled: 'Chicago: A Future Art Center?' Here is an excellent example of the strangely Monet and Cézanne. It was to Courbet, in
Most important of all, perhaps, this move- contradictory nature of Biederman's develop- his view, that 'the stable models of nature'
ment westwards was a gradual discovery of ment. Just as he had elaborated his own made their last appearance. After Courbet's
nature. It was in Chicago, where he lived solution through conscious rejection of the `reality of perception' had become irrecover-