Page 22 - Studio International - April 1970

Avant-garde confusion lies : namely, in his own mind. would be as unprecedented, still, as common
Artistic value is one, not many. The only opinion says it is. Unprecedented even if not
attitudes: artistic value anybody has yet been able to confused. The good and the bad might
differentiate themselves as clearly as ever, but
point to satisfactorily in words is simply the
goodness of good art. There are, of course, there would still be a novel confusion of
new art in degrees of artistic goodness, but these are not styles, schools, directions, tendencies. There
differing values or kinds of value. Now this one would still be phenomenal if not aesthetic dis-
the sixties and only value, in its varying degrees, is the and I have nothing else to rely on—that the
order. Well, even here experience tells me—
first and supreme principle of artistic order.
By the same token it is the most relevant such phenomenal situation of art in this time is not
Clement Greenberg principle. Of order established on its basis, art all that new or unprecedented. Experience
today shows as much as it ever has. Surface tells me that contemporary art, even when
[THIS LECTURE WAS DELIVERED AT THE appearances may obscure or hide this kind of approached in purely descriptive terms, makes
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, ON MAY 17 order, which is qualitative order, but they do not sense and falls into order in much the same
1968, AS THE FIRST OF AN ANNUAL LECTURE negate it, they do not render it any the less way that art did in the past. Again, it is a
SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY ART DELIVERED IN present. With the ability to tell the difference question of getting through superficial appear-
MEMORY OF JOHN JOSEPH WARDELL POWER between good and bad, and between better and ances.
WHOSE BENEFACTION TO THE UNIVERSITY worse, you can find your way quite well Approaching art in phenomenal and des-
ESTABLISHED THE POWER INSTITUTE OF FINE through the apparent confusion of contempo- criptive terms means approaching it, first of
ARTS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY. THE rary art. Taste, i.e., the exertions of taste, all, as style and as the history of style (neither
ANNUAL LECTURE IS TO BE KNOWN AS THE establish artistic order—now as before, now as of which, taken in itself, necessarily involves
JOHN POWER LECTURE IN CONTEMPORARY always. quality). Approached strictly as a matter of
ART.] Things that purport to be art do not function, style, new art in the 1960s surprises you—if it
do not exist, as art until they are experienced does surprise you—not by its variety, but by the
The prevalent notion is that latter-day art is in through taste. Until then they exist only as unity and even uniformity it betrays underneath
a state of confusion. Painting and sculpture empirical phenomena, as aesthetically arbi- all the appearances of variety. There are
appear to be changing and evolving faster than trary objects or facts. These, precisely, are Assemblage, Pop, and Op; there are Hard
ever before. Innovations follow closer and what a lot of contemporary art gets taken for, Edge, Colour Field, and Shaped Canvas; there
closer on one another and, because they don't and what many artists want their works to be are Neo-Figurative, Funky, and Environ-
make their exits as rapidly as their entrances, taken for—in the hope, periodically renewed mental; there are Minimal, Kinetic, and
they pile up in a welter of eccentric styles, since Marcel Duchamp first acted on it fifty- Luminous; there are Computer, Cybernetic,
trends, tendencies, schools. Everything con- odd years ago, that by dint of evading the Systems, Participatory— and so on. (One of
spires, it would seem, in the interests of con- reach of taste while yet remaining in the con- the really new things about art in the 60s
fusion. The different mediums are exploding: text of art, certain kinds of contrivances will is the rash of labels in which it has broken out,
painting turns into sculpture, sculpture into achieve unique existence and value. So far most of them devised by artists themselves—
architecture, engineering, theatre, environ- this hope has proved illusory. So far every- which is likewise new; art-labelling used to be
ment, 'participation'. Not only the boundaries thing that enters the context of art becomes the affair of journalists.) Well, there are all
between the different arts, but the boundaries subject, inexorably, to the jurisdiction of these manifestations in all their variegation,
between art and everything that is not art are taste—and to the ordering of taste. And so far yet from a steady and detached look at them
being obliterated. At the same time scientific almost all would-be non-art-in-the-context-of- through their whole range some markedly
technology is invading the visual arts and art has fallen rather neatly into place in the common stylistic features emerge. Design or
transforming them even as they transform one order of inferior art. This is the order where layout is almost always clear and explicit,
another. And to add to the confusion, high art the bulk of art production tends to find its drawing sharp and clean, shape or area
is on the way to becoming popular art, and place, in 1968 as in 1868—or 1768. Superior geometrically simplified or at least faired and
vice versa. art continues to be something more or less trued, colour flat and bright or at least un-
Is all this so? To judge from surface appearan- exceptional. And this, this rather stable differentiated in value and texture within a
ces, it might be so. A writer in the Times quantitative relation between the superior and given hue. Amid the pullulation of novelties,
Literary Supplement of 14 March 1968 refers to inferior, offers as fundamentally relevant a advanced art in the 60s subscribes almost
`. . . that total confusion of all artistic values kind of artistic order as you could wish. unanimously to these canons of style— canons
which prevails today'. But by his very words But even so, if this were the only kind of that Woelfflin would call linear.
this writer betrays where the real source of order obtaining in new art today, its situation Think by contrast of the canons to which

Contributors to JOHN ELDERFIELD read fine art at Leeds University and JOHN LATHAM calls himself 'a professor of nonentity',
is a painter, art historian and lecturer at Winchester and is known in Europe and America for his work made
this issue School of Art. He is researching abstract art between with books. inn7o is an exhibition in time for periods
the wars, and preparing a monograph on Schwitters. ending December 1971 at the Hayward Gallery, with
works facilitated with industrial commitments. inn7o is
WILLIAM TUCKER, the sculptor, is Gregory Fellow at to centre on the interrelationship between art and
CLEMENT GREENBERG, the distinguished American critic, Leeds University. His article is based on a lecture origi- economics.
visited Australia in 1968 to deliver the John Power nally given at the university.
Lecture at the University of Sydney. CHARLOTTE TOWNSEND went to Canada in 1967 and has
LAWRENCE ALLOWAY, the art historian and critic who been engaged in journalism there since then. She is now
ANDREW FORGE, painter and writer, is Head of the played a major role in Britain in the 50s and early 60s, art critic for the Vancouver Sun and has contributed to
Department of Painting at Goldsmith's College, is a visiting Professor at Stony Brook College, Long artscanada and Artforum. Her article is appearing in
London. Island. His recent publications include 'A History of the Canadian Art Today.
Venice Biennale'.
JONATHAN BENTHALL is acting as advisor to the Institute GENE YOUNGBLOOD is a member of the faculty of the
of Contemporary Arts for an exhibition of Dr Hans TONY TOWLE is a young New York poet who has worked California Institute of the Arts, School of Critical
Jenny's work on vibrations and periodicity, scheduled with Tatyana Grossman as her secretary since the early Studies. His book, Expanded Cinema, will be published in
for four weeks from June 10. 1960's. July by E. P. Dutton & Co. Its subject will be the art