Page 25 - Studio International - April 1970

radiates, explodes, or barely manages to be to reach the same levels of quality that the For mixed
visible (or audible or decipherable), exhibits, best of Abstract Expressionism had. The art
in other words, rightness of 'form'. journalism of the 60s accepted the 'easiness'
To this extent art remains unchangeable. Its of Pop art implicitly, as though it did not exhibitions
quality will always depend on inspiration, and matter, and as though such questions had
it will never be able to take effect as art except become old-fashioned and obsolete. Yet in the Andrew Forge
through quality. The notion that the issue of end Pop art has not succeeded in dodging
quality could be evaded is one that never qualitative comparisons, and it suffers from
entered the mind of any academic artist or them increasingly with every day that passes.
art person. It was left to what I call the Its vulnerability to qualitative comparisons— It is time that somebody took up the case for a
`popular' avant garde to be the first to con- not its 'easiness' or minor quality as such—is large biennial exhibition of painting and sculp-
ceive it. That kind of avant garde began with what is seen by many younger artists as ture in London. It should be at the Hayward
Marcel Duchamp and with Dada. Dada did constituting the real failure of Pop Art. This Gallery. It should be open to all corners; it
more than express a war-time despair of failure is what, in effect, 'novelty' art intends should be as free as possible from the habits of
traditional art and culture; it also tried to to remedy. (And this intention, along with the dealer/museum circuit. It should be a
repudiate the difference between high and other things, reveals how much 'novelty' art mixed, impure, multifarious, open-ended,
less than high art; and here it was a question derives from Pop art in spirit and outlook.) unprejudiced, eclectic shambles. It could be-
less of wartime despair than of a revulsion The retreat to the easy from the difficult is to come an absolutely vital event.
against the arduousness of high art as insisted be more knowingly, aggressively, extrava- It is, of course, an unfashionable idea—if it
upon by the 'unpopular' avant garde, which gantly masked by the guises of the difficult. weren't there would be no need to argue for it.
was the real and original one. Even before The idea of the difficult—but the mere idea, Our whole view of contemporary art is pre-
1914 Duchamp had begun his counter-attack not the reality or substance—is to be used judiced against the mixed show. But then our
on what he called 'physical' art by which he against itself. By dint of evoking that idea the view of contemporary art is formed for us by
meant what is today vulgarly termed look of the advanced is to be acheived and at the institution of the one-man show, the
`formalist' art. the same time the difference between good and retrospective show, and the monograph.
Duchamp apparently realized that his enter- bad overcome. The idea of the difficult is These forms exert the following pressures on
prise might look like a retreat from 'difficult' evoked by a row of boxes, by a mere rod, by a our perspective: they stress purity, singularity,
to 'easy' art, and his intention seems to have pile of litter, by projects for Cyclopean land- isolation. They put a premium on consistency
been to undercut this difference by 'trans- scape architecture, by the plan for a trench of performance and development. They deflect
cending' the difference between good and bad dug in a straight line for hundreds of miles, by attention from individual works and focus it
in general. (I don't think I'm over-interpreting a half-open door, by the cross-section of a on output, chronology and precedence,
him here.) Most of the Surrealist painters mountain, by stating imaginary relations creating the kind of time-hunger that is more
joined the 'popular' avant garde, but they did between real points in real places, by a blank appropriate to clothes or cars.
not try to hide their own retreat from the wall, and so forth. As though the difficulty of To give serious support to the idea put forward
difficult to the easy by claiming this trans- getting a thing into focus as art, or of gaining here means to assert the following : that if a
cendence; they apparently did not feel it was physical access to it, or of visualizing it, were particular time and place can claim to have
that necessary to be `advanced'; they believed the same as the difficulty that belonged to the an art of its own, it is not confined to a few
that their kind of art was simply better than first experience of a successfully new and dozen stars but exists in depth, layer upon
the difficult kind. And it was the same with deeply original work of art. And as if aestheti- layer; that there are many reasons why one
the Neo-Romantic painters of the 30s. Yet cally extrinsic, merely phenomenal or con- artist is 'taken up' and another is not, and they
Duchamp's dream of going 'beyond' the ceptual difficulty could reduce the difference may not be to do with excellence; that an art
issue of artistic quality continued to hover between good and bad in art to the point which does not have the fullest opportunity to
in the minds at least of art journalists. When where it became irrelevant. In this context show itself loses faith with itself; that every-
Abstract Expressionism and art informel the Milky Way might be offered as a work of thing is to be gained by looking at alternative
appeared they were widely taken to be a kind art too. positions and nothing lost; that recognition of
of art that had at last managed to make value The trouble with the Milky Way, however, is young artists can be blocked by their seniors
discriminations irrelevant. And that seemed that, as art, it is banal. Viewed strictly as art, and that older artists can be falsely eclipsed by
the most advanced, the furthest-out, the most the 'sublime' usually does reverse itself and their juniors.
avant-garde feat that art had yet been able to turn into the banal. The eighteenth century These have been some of the axioms that have
perform. saw the 'sublime' as transcending the dif- at various times inspired the semi-official
Not that Duchamp's ideas were particularly ference between the aesthetically good and galleries —Whitechapel, the Camden Centre,
invoked at the time. Nor did Abstract the aesthetically bad. But this is precisely the Greenwich Theatre Gallery, and so on.
Expressionism or art informel belong properly why the 'sublime' becomes aesthetically, Also, they have been the more precise in-
with the 'popular' avant garde. Yet in their artistically banal. And this is why the new spiration of the various artists' organizations
decline they did create a situation favourable versions of the 'sublime' offered by 'novelty' from the London Group and the AIA to
to the return or revival of that kind of avant- art in its latest phase, to the extent that they Pavilions in the Parks. The problem is
gardism. And return and revive it did in New do 'transcend' aesthetic valuation, remain selectivity. Any gallery must choose its pro-
York, notably with Jasper Johns in the later banal and trivial instead of simply unsuc- gramme. Any society must have membership.
50s. Johns is—rather was—a gifted and origi- cessful, or minor. (In any case 'sublime' The beauty of the Pavilions in the Parks idea
nal artist, but the best of his paintings and effects in art suffer from a genetic flaw: they is its scrupulous surrender to chance.
bas-reliefs remain 'easy' and certainly minor can be concocted—produced, that is, without Ideally a London Biennial would be run by
compared with the best of Abstract Expres- inspiration.) an ad hoc committee of artists working with
sionism. Yet in the context of their period, and Here again, the variety of nominally advanced an officially sponsored secretariat. Cliques
in idea, they looked equally 'advanced'. And art in the 60s shows itself to be largely super- would abound. There would have to be
under cover of John's idea Pop art was able ficial. Variety within the limits of the artisti- referees, or perhaps an elaborate combination
to enter and give itself out as perhaps even cally insignificant, of the aesthetically banal of lottery and selection. It is worth trying. If it
more `advanced'—without, however, claiming and trivial, is itself artistically insignificant. q floats let it float. Ifit sinks, forget it.
q