Page 66 - Studio International - April 1970

New York Philip Pearlstein

commentary Seated Female Models with Camp Chair 1969
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 in.

There used to be a vaguely defined discipline have chosen to manufacture still more infor- go into an academic painting technique.
called connoisseurship. It has fallen into mation about information. He might suggest, Interestingly enough, the few accomplished
desuetude here with the result that we are as Monte does, that 'for most, the very act of artists—I would include Philip Pearlstein,
tendered all kinds of 'information', even in painting is inherently problematic and many, Jack Beal and Gabriel Laderman in their
museums, without even cursory attempts to if not all, view painting itself with irony....' ranks—are the most experienced. By dint of
justify the choice of information. A stunning Therefore, they find some area for action left long practice, they have managed to lift
example is the current exhibition at the over from the camera. Other reasons for the techniques to a level matching their realistic
WHITNEY MUSEUM called 'Twenty-two Real- wholesale adaptation of the photo image in- ambitions. Pearlstein is a better exponent of
ists'. The very idea of putting together an clude the bankruptcy of the academies (what the use of photography than any of those who
exhibition of such narrowly-defined informa- is there to teach?), the failure of abstract actually use the photograph as base. His
tion is alien to connoisseurship. The Whitney, romantic painting (its unwillingness to assume cropped compositions, in the context of this
apparently, has used its old theory that if it's a clear aesthetic position, and therefore, to show, clearly stand out.
there, it should be shown. I rather like the teach), and the appetite eternal for recog- In a country where the Sunday painter is the
idea when applied to the annuals which nizable imagery. basis of a flourishing and lucrative industry,
should be free-for-all in character like the Vox populi. and where there are myriad art associations
open salon. But when it is used to contrive yet We hear it always yearning. It is obvious that where diligent lovers of beauty strive to record
another 'theme' exhibition, this non-commit- the yearning to reproduce and mime that their own image of their image, it is perhaps
tal stance becomes absurd. which we know is always with us. What is not shocking that the professional counterpart
Apparently no one is willing to pose himself curiouser and curiouser is the will, increasingly of the Sunday painter finds himself honoured
the admittedly uncomfortable proposition : demonstrated, to spread the gospel of folk in a museum. But it is certainly not very en-
it's there, but is it good ? If this question were yearning in our museums. They do not ask couraging.
applied to the Whitney show, I think even that a genre of painting be seen in its highest At the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, the exhibition
the most generous critic would have to say manifestation, but only in its broadest. This `The Year 1200' provides an unusual oppor-
`no, absolutely not'. He would be in a privi- admits the fumbling academicism so sadly tunity to check ourselves against another
leged position to take that terrible chance of seen in this show as well as the more spritely period. This show addresses itself to a forty-
saying 'no' since the work presented is admit- variations on what used to be flatly called year period, 1180 to 1220. It grapples with
tedly traditional, and traditional modes have illustration. what should be called a situation rather than
a certain number of established values which It doesn't seem to me charitable to go down a style, and as such, it has some legitimate
can be applied. The fact that curator Jim the line scoring the painters who unhappily bases for comparison with our own period.
Monte opens his catalogue exposition pointing found favour in this show. They are victims of Despite the meticulous efforts on the part of
out that half the artists included 'are attempt- the laissez-faire attitudes prevailing in the many scholars to give those forty years a
ing to reinstate in their paintings a pictorial arts. If you think there are dusty paintings comfortable set of stylistic characteristics
illusionism fully in keeping with the tradition reviving the Munich academy of the 1880s; which could then be added to art history as a
of Western art' opens a host of critical possi- cheapened variations on 19th—century land- period, the evidence in this show is to the
bilities. Categorically, those traditionalists scape and still-life; eclectic and poor transla- contrary. Those artists in the couple of genera-
`retrieving' aspects of art history are inferior tions of Balthus and even Gruber; as well as tions covered fully reflect the rapid social
to the history they are retrieving. It's as incredibly naïve student renditions of the and political changes and the excitement of
simple as that. posed nude, you can draw your own con- their period. Not in motif, not even always in
As for the other half: they are, as Cleaver clusions. While I can admire the ambition of style, but in attitude. When you see the diver-
would say, a part of the problem. Only a certain of these painters (their longing to pro- sity and the amount of idiosyncratic initiative,
sociologist could effectively sort out the causes duce a grand machine) I can only reflect what emerges is not the definition of a style,
of their various aberrations from the modern sadly that the absence of long years of but the definition of a situation in which
tradition. If they paint from photographs and academy training is a great handicap for them. change itself was a value. The licence for
slides, he might point out that in this age of They draw without assurance, and they are experimentation was granted these artists for
unqualified information-production, they clearly ill at ease with the various rituals that the simple reason that the whole of the society