Page 27 - Studio International - April 1970

Technology validity.' Braque, particularly, wished to see Mark Tobey who seems to exemplify it most
the object as 'something interwoven in a net- forcefully—with his use of 'white or light-
work of spatial relations with everything else
and art 13 surrounding it. This is an endeavour which coloured meandering lines, which carry a
suggestion of rays of light penetrating into the
has been very characteristic of many later recesses of structure...' He quotes from
paintings... Though it did not last long at its Tobey: 'Scientists say that... there is no such
first appearance, it certainly played an im- thing as empty space. It's all loaded with life.
portant part in the earliest Cubist works, and We know it to be teeming with electrical
is, I think, the reason why these paintings, of energy, potential sights, and silent sounds,
the so-called Analytical Cubist phase, still spores, seeds, and God knows what all'.
seem so very modern and congruent With our Tobey's Messengers (illustrated in Wadding-
tastes nowadays, half a century after they ton's book) bears some resemblance to a holo-
were made.' Waddington believes that the gram viewed under a microscope by inco-
later developments of Cubism lost a profound, herent light.
if unconscious, scientific feeling for the mutual A very loose analogy might be made between
involvement of things, a feeling which he certain paintings by Pollock, Tobey or Du-
Glory be to God for dappled things— relates to ideas such as that of permeating buffet (their more evenly-filled compositions)
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; electromagnetic or other fields. and a hologram, one of whose characteristics
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that Later, discussing holography,2 Waddington is that each part of it contains all its informa-
swim; writes that a laser hologram observed in tion. If a holographic plate is subdivided by
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls ; finches' wings; ordinary (i.e. incoherent) light ' ... has the cutting, each piece still contains a complete
Landscape plotted and pieced fold, fallow, and characteristic modern all-overness which to image, though there is a loss of resolution and
plough; eyes not yet attuned to the modern idiom a point is eventually reached when the image
And all trades, their gear and tackle and often seems merely chaotic and meaningless. is no longer clear and distinct. This would
trim . . . This is a case in which such an over-all imply that conventional ideas of composition
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'Pied Beauty' 1877 pattern is certainly by no means meaningless— are irrelevant when we approach such
contains in fact more meaning than a con- paintings.
In reviewing C H Waddington's Beyond ventional photograph. It leaves one quite It would be most dangerous to press this holo-
Appearance in March, I mentioned his sug- ready to believe that there may be some graphic analogy too closely. But a general
gestive remarks on certain modern painters, meaning, though, of course, of quite a differ- conclusion seems to be valid: the apparent
and here I would like to probe more deeply ent kind, in the somewhat similar-looking lack of organization in these paintings does
into them. productions of many modern painters.' not mean that the principle of organization,
Professor Waddington speculates1 that the The Lisson Gallery was imaginative to repro- as the essence of artistic creativity, is irrele-
early Cubists may have absorbed, not neces- duce, in its cards advertising Margaret vant in such a context. Radical developments
sarily in any formulated way, some of the Benyon's recent show of holographic art in the arts have always seemed disorganizing,
concepts of the new 'soft-edged' physics : (covered in this column last February), a until their new style of organization is ab-
`that matter is less solid, more transparent as photograph of a holographic plate lit not by sorbed into people's consciousness. The radical
it were, than it had been thought to be; that laser but by ordinary light. To the naïve eye artist imposes his own coherent reference-
motion cannot really be frozen into a timeless it recalled the water-lilies of Monet. In fact, beam, so to speak, on perceptual experience,
instant; that a real body cannot be properly these radiating circular interference patterns and records the result. The common man
seen from any one perspective point, but that are the result of dust on the plate or optical lacks this coherent reference-structure and
there are many spatial frames which can be blemishes, rather than the holographic inter- can only experience the artist's output as we
applied to it, and that all of these are of equal ference patterns proper, which have to be view a hologram by incoherent light, that is
seen under a microscope and are without any by introducing a 'noise' factor into the co-
Robert Delaunay apparent patterning at all. herent information on the plate. At this point
Fenêtres Ouvertes Simultanement 1912
Oil on canvas Waddington takes up the theme again in dis- in the evolution of a radical art movement,
Coll: The Tate Gallery, London cussing post-war American painting.3 'De the people involved have the alternating
Kooning's paintings seem to me basically exhilaration and despair of communicating
concerned with the way things interpenetrate in a 'code' which only gradually gains a wider
one another ... ' He is especially expressive on currency. Dishonesty and distortion can then
Jackson Pollock: coexist with or even smother the authentic
`The close network of swirling lines seems to innovation, because everyone is struggling to
create depths of space between them, into constitute new reference-beams; and, as in a
which one could wander in many different war, it is a chance in a lifetime for the spivs.
directions... [The paintings] can be "taken" Eventually, the new reference-beams may
in many senses and in many scales; for become common property, and their new
instance, "Autumn rhythm" of 1950 is not style of organization becomes part of the wall-
only the winter twigs of a forest against the paper of our everyday living space. Unlike
sky, it is not only the veins of a heap of dead the laser beam in holography, the figurative
leaves whose substance has vanished; it could reference-beams I am speaking of are in a
be the electrons buzzing round the atomic continuous state of re-tuning.
nuclei of a complex molecule, or the stars I lack the knowledge and virtuosity to trace
slithering along their orbits in the galaxy... Waddington's tradition of 'interconnected-
You can explore it in a search for whatever ness' back through the Impressionists to
you may bring with you to find.' Turner, as perhaps it should be traced. An
Waddington applies his line of argument to artist whom Professor Waddington passes
Dubuffet, Philip Guston and others, but it is over lightly—probably because he attaches too