Page 46 - Studio International - December 1970

Aspects of- with the informal dripping of Pollock. Norm- composition, formal balance and the art of
ally presented in the form of photographs organizing surfaces and volumes. Now, on the
bourgeois art: which show the original canvas surface very contrary, the Funk Artists are beating a covert
exactly, these works resemble snow-bound
retreat back into aestheticism: a pile of coal
Delaunays or desert-bound Hartungs. Fields becomes fascinating while the play of fan-belts
the world as it is of corn are given a combed look. Aestheticized amazes with its beauty. An amalgam of
reality replaces real aesthetics. Aesthetics is Tachism is mated with the aesthetics of the
not the art of tidying up landscapes, but the art objet trouvé. It is in the move from wheel-
Jean Clay of revolutionizing vision, thought and society. barrow to museum that inert matter becomes
The Japanese zen garden is utilized as a peg art. Anti-Form, with its stress on inertia, its
upon which to hang a back-to-nature ideology, quietism, its exclusive interest in stating
this being a favourite neo-capitalist poison- reality, is part of the wide trend which takes
dart. the world as it is and shows it. They see reality
The 'return to primitivism', so castigated by as a showcase of dead substances from among
Mumford, is to be found in identical doses in which they select something to surprise and
those glossy magazines devoted to home and attract us. They are talented window-
country pursuits, to leisure and the week-end dressers who shift reality around in order to
cottage. It also flourishes among the neo- leave it as it is. Some of them borrow aspects
primitives who have set up home with their of working-class life and mix it with Pollock's
families far from 'civilization' in the Cali- grandeur. Richard Serra, dressed up as the
While the cultural round becomes increasingly fornian desert. Finally it appears in the driver of locomotive 1925, throws molten lead
sterile, there is an immense increase in the philosophy of the topologists who, with the at the wall. No doubt the apotheosis would be
spectacular. With elbows at the ready, curators financial assistance of some American magnate the emptying of a heap of junk on a deep-pile
in the fashion race up the back stairs to be the or other, dig their 'aesthetic' trenches in a carpet of the Rockefellers by someone decked
very first to knock upon the door of the little desolate landscape. These artists have escaped out in the cap and leather jacket of a Petrograd
closet where the next potential genius has from high-powered technology only to end up revolutionary.
secreted himself. Critics parallel these efforts on top of a stylistic pillar. The Establishment This crude servitude to matter is occasionally
by hurriedly scraping together a motley col- offers two solutions: either the artist sells his accompanied, particularly among the Arte
lection of photographs garnered as the result services to industry—the EAT solution—or he Povera fraternity, by one or two sweetmeats in
of circular letters. From these, they hastily flees to the desert far from the key centres order to stress the aesthetic purpose of the
conjure up a new book and a new school. where society's future is being decided. In exercise. Delving into Schwitters's dustbin,
Fashion, which simulates activity rather than either case, the main aim is to emasculate and picking up Rauschenberg's studio scraps, Arte
actually producing anything, throws the isolate the revolutionary potential of the Povera forms such ravishing little haute couture
young artist into a world of non-stop competi- imaginative minority and to keep them, at no assemblages as fancy neon knots in the middle
tion. Fifty appointments jostle for space in his matter what cost, away from the real battles. of fan belts made of old tyres, or melted-down
diary. He will be judged upon his facility at The only solution that the Establishment does lead on a banana leaf or lettuce mounted on a
changing styles in comparison with his twenty not put forward is the one which would marble socle.
or thirty competitors. Some of them will fall ultimately destroy the system itself. Such Italians living in Rome as Ceroli,
by the wayside, exhausted by their efforts to But aside from the topological artists—who Marotta and Kounellis have developed their
reconcile the irreconcilable, that is, to be have already disappeared or been re-vamped own elegant and soigné version of the usually
simultaneously in the middle of the current into landscape painters by the motor-way tough and virile American style. Pascali's
fashion while insinuating themselves in the industry—the so-called avant garde is oscil- imitation-earth cubes have given rise to a whole
next. The field is world-wide. The artist must lating between two extremes in its determina- range ofsnack-bar art whose luxury, decorative
astonish Toronto one week and Leverkusen tion to get around the basic problem of its qualities and sophistication owe much to the
the next. Points must be notched up in both place and role in contemporary society. These Piccolo Theatro. With picturesque touches
California and Antwerp. It is a Brown-type are (1) Reified Matterism (Funk Art, Arte (mice on a metal mattress), unorthodox ready-
movement, a programmed acceleration plus Povera, Anti-Form, etc.) and (2) Disembodied mades (a live bird in the gallery) and para-
harassing gestures to confuse les anciens once Idealism (Conceptual Art). phrases (seas of laminated wood or plastic
more. Considered finished, they are now (1) Matterism imitation gardens), they construct 'amusing'
frantically combing through their earlier works Pierre Francastel has stated in Art et Technique: environments, producing durable versions of
for proof that they were the prophets and are `The source of inspiration in the contemporary the gay and graceful works Martial Raysse
still very much on the scene. They seek a plan plastic arts is the abandonment of the inertia created in 1962.1 Their 'designed' spaces are
in a Rauschenberg Combine, a passage in principle.' Anti-Form takes the opposite point akin to the advertising displays mounted by
Judd's writings, a detritus in an Arman dust- of view and speculates interminably upon the the large manufacturing firms. Take away a
bin. inertia of matter. Taking from two elegant couple of machines here and add one or two
However, if we examine one by one the main propositions by Duchamp (the 'standard yard' there and it is difficult to distinguish between
trends to appear during the last two years—so and the 'raising of dust') without adding any- a new Olivetti stand and the so-sensitive
numerous and so fleeting that there is usually thing to them, Anti-Form lets physical gravity environments of Marotta or Ceroli.
hardly time to observe them—generally the make its own choice. Matter, such as barrow- Joe Colombo's aero-dynamic-style arm-chairs
most remarkable characteristic is their very loads of dung, abandoned rubbery heaps fit in marvellously with Pascali's. The dialectics
traditionalism. blanketing the ground, is placed higgledy- of frivolity, based completely upon looks and
Topological Art, which places its works in vast piggledy and itself decides upon its own form. immediate attraction, are taking over. Interior
natural open spaces (Oppenheim, Heizer, Half a century ago when Duchamp—Arp, too, decorators are absorbing art while art absorbs
etc.), has in no way abandoned those old con- with his crumpled and torn paper— 'left it to the characteristics of interior decoration. Con-
cepts of composition and subjective form chance', it was, in the prevailing situation, sumer society instructs its artists to improve its
which were demolished between 1930, with subversive. It amounted to an absolute rejec- brand image.
the Systematic Art of van Doesburg, and 1950, tion of the old aesthetic arguments over Ultimately, everything is design. A shape is