Page 20 - Studio International - December 1970

me to publish in these pages a list of artists who What happened seems to have been that designers position. Certainly he will need to fill in rather
have participated, so that some record of the event and technicians took over and the artists fell by the carefully the steps of any argument hopefully
will exist. The fact that this will happen after the wayside (not to mention the art). An incredible designed to establish that my views entail self­
exhibition should prevent any pollution of the amount of time, correspondence, publicity, and contradiction or manifest absurdity. Had it been
concepts taking place. money was spent on this show; the money often so, I do believe that I should have noticed; and
L.J. Grobes spent prejudicially, some artists receiving travel or the mere assertion that it is so is unpersuasive.
3 Roseneath Terrace expense funds, others not; necessity of their pre­ As for name-calling: I have argued at some length
Edinburgh 9 sence for installing work was not the criterion. and in several ways for the conclusions that I
P.S. Having just returned from Wisconsin I have The issue here is not merely the mistreatment of one summarized briefly in the phrases that Mr Harring­
only now seen your October issue. I was surprised person and one person's art. It involves the lack of ton quotes. He has evidently not been persuaded
and aggrieved that you should have seen fit to respect shown all artists and their work by art by me, but if he is unable to distinguish between
publish anything by Seifadinov, who I see claims institutions in general, and it involves the reluctance an articulated theoretical position of moderate
some sort of dubious kinship with me. He was only of most artists to make their grievances public. The complexity and the mere expression of abuse, then
in U griach between 1948 and '50 and the Second reasons are understandable-distaste for publicity, he provides us with e':idence of a sort that argument
Manifesto was not of course published until 1953. fear of retribution from other institutions, the time is wasted in the arts.']
that must be spent in any sustained protest. It also
involves the broader issue of an artist's control over
Open letter to Jewish Museum his work, the point on which the Art Workers'
Open Letter to Karl Katz, Director, Coalition was founded in January 1969. This, and Post-Object Art
TheJewish Museum, New York City the above, combined with the absurd fact that the Donald Karshan's piece is a puzzler (Sept. 1970).
When Jack Burnham invited me to participate in show, in its almost totally inoperative state, is going Having been written to introduce an exhibition of
the 'Software' exhibition at the Jewish Museum I to travel to the Smithsonian, make it all the more 'conceptual art', it is quite unclear to the reader
happily accepted. I was to have my Dialectic necessary to make public now the inequities and what degree of relationship he sees between con­
Triangulation; a Visual Philosophy, programmed for iniquities suffered by Miss Denes.
3-dimensional computer display presentation. It Lucy R.Lippard (for the Art Workers' Coalition), ceptual art and the 'radical' art which he chooses
to write about under the term Post-Object Art.
was called Matrix of Knowledge. Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, His lack of clarity is prize-winning; a sort of tour de
Because of the nature of the presentation I had to Scott Bradner, Donald Burgy, Carl Fernbach­ force of that convoluted style which has made so
do extensive research and worked seven days a Flarsheim, John Giorno, Hans Haacke, Douglas much of artistic criticism a stale joke.
week through the summer. At first everyone was Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Lawrence His statement, for instance, that Post-Object Art is
very nice, assuring me that my program would be Weiner. marked by a 'complete break from formal aesthetic
finished in ample time for the opening. But as time
passed, assurances turned to evasions and finally Brook on Greenberg considerations' may be true, but he does not
wonder (as he should) whether any art is possible
just double talk. Ten days before the opening I under such circumstances, nor does he consider the
learned by sheer chance that my piece not only It seems quite clear that we will never conclusively possibility that the contemporary forms of concep­
was not finished but that it had hardly been begun. settle the dispute that is reflected in Donald tual art may be contributing new 'formal aesthetic
Again I was given excuses and told not to worry, Brook's comments on Mr Greenberg's lecture, but considerations' to those which we hold as traditions.
but the show opened without my program ever there may be some significance to the fact that Mr It is doubtful, also, whether in the past (pre-Manet)
coming near completion. Brook, in his summary, does slip into what could be painting and sculpture always and exclusively
Carl Fernbach-FlarsheiIQ and I had been told we characterized as 'name-calling'. The conceptual focused on 'a thought external to the work itself ',
had four computers for the six months of the show, and philosophical machinery is, he says, 'unrealisti­ because it can be argued that beyond the appear­
but onry one came through. We each wrote 3--4 cally primitive', and the particular judgements ance of an external thought there is in every great
programs, but onf,y one was used. My piece, to be tend, he adds, to be 'authoritarian'.
done in 3-dimensions, was reduced to two. We were If Mr Brook makes these judgements accorcling to work a conceptual awareness that sees the art
itself in an existence apart from the object it
told we could not see the work until a few days the principles which he supports, then we should portrays (or its 'external thought').
before the opening. The computer was placed in view them as, merely, expressions of the values
the hottest room of the museum where it constantly which have been given to him by the particular To confound the matter further, he derides the
'marriage' between the art forms of the preceding
overheated and kept breaking• down. What social context from. which he emerged, and of the
glimpses I could get, ·before the computer was particular feelings that he experienced as he was three centuries and the 'new consciousness of the
twentieth century' as a 'superficial and unharmoni­
removed from the show a few days later, proved exposed to the Greenberg lecture. He would not, ous one'. One wonders whether Picasso or Pollock
that most of my instructions had been ignored or by his own contentions, be making a judgement
never transmitted. I had assumed that I could that was reducible to any single common scale. would agree. His piece is studded with these very
large assumptions.
trust the technical advisor assigned to help the I have a 'feeling', however, that in making his Finally, as he moves in rapid succession over and
artists. But in the end, all concerned did their best judgements of Mr Greenberg's views, Mr Brook is around a dozen bits and fragments of ideas,
to conceal the facts from the public and press. My using Greenberg's principles rather than his own. Karshan makes the astounding statement that 'It
work and I were treated as a joke. It may be possible to test the relative adequacy of is the young artists, and the young artists alone,
Having to write a letter like this is distressing, but these two viewpoints by projecting them in a who define what art is, and will be'. I believe that
I must protest the overall incompetence that sur­ manner to make possible an estimate of the likely, every young artist who has achieved excellence
rounded this exhibition. I blame no one person. ultimate implications of each. would deny this; that those who will never achieve
I was caught in the gears of a system within which If we assume that Mr Greenberg is correct, then excellence will embrace it; and that the statement
shows of this type are financed and publicized with when two critics offered clearly contradictory is, after all, but an abortive effort to bridge the
complete cynicism, and the end always justifies the judgements about a certain work, the limits of generation gap.
means. The waves close over it and nobody gives a alternative possibilities could be stated as: He continues for several additional paragraphs
damn. 1. Both critics are wrong in their judgement; that have little obvious relevance, and even less to
Agnes C. Denes 2. One critic is right, and the other is wrong; the intellectual bouillabaisse which has gone
New York City 3. But both cannot be right.
If we assume that Mr Brook is correct, then when before.
two critics offered clearly contradictory judge­ Monroe Bush
The undersigned support Agnes Denes in her pro­ ments, we would have to allow the possibility Boulder, Colorado
test against the mistreatment of her work and herself that both are 'right'. USA
as an artist. She does not mention in her letter that a In this latter case we might also have to acknow­
Conde-Nast publication was to do a feature on her ledge that the judgement of any critic does not
work which had to be cancelled when photographer really 'mean' anything, and that it is, really, of no
and writer arrived at the museum and found no 'value'. 'Vacuum in Art Education'
piece."Nor that the technical advisor told her at one R. Ward Harrington Jonathan Benthall begins his article 'The Vacuum
point he would not do her work because he did not New York City Community College in Art Education' (October) with two grossly mis­
like her and did not like women. Nor that Jack Brooklyn, NY leading statements concerning the INSEA 70
Burnham, who organized the show, was so -dis­ [Donald-Brook writes: World Congress. In the first place, it should be
gusted at the way it turned out that he washed his 'I'm inclined to doubt that Mr Harrington has made quite clear that the one day he spent at the
hands of all curatorial responsibility to the artists or properly understood what it is that I argue for Congress, the Tom Hudson day, was not in any
to the way their work was installed. (and against) in my discussion of Mr Greenberg's way representative of the Congress as a whole.
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