Page 77 - Studio International - July August 1970

Supplement summer 1970

New and recent books

Art and dissent cussion to that rationally-orientated frame- yet when Roszak does mention the artistic
work? As R. D. Laing says, 'We do not need ramifications of present counter-cultural acti-
theories so much as the experience that is the vity he is pessimistic (and, I think, rightly so).
source of the theory'. The 'art' side of counter culture appears,
The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counter paradoxically, as potentially one of its major
Roszak. Faber & Faber. 45s. Art and Con- Culture is subtitled 'Reflections on the Techno- weaknesses. Roszak quotes Alan Watts on
frontation. Studio Vista. 21s. Posters of Protest cratic Society and its Youthful Opposition'; Kerouac, who he says ' ... confuses "anything
and Revolution selected by Maurice Rickards. and from the very start Roszak identifies goes" at the existential level with "anything
Adams & Dart. 63s. The Dream of Icarus by technology and technocracy, supporting Mar- goes" at the artistic and social level'. It's just
Kenneth Coutts-Smith. Hutchinson. 45s. cuse's insistence that technology is not a too easy to assume that radical art is an art of
neutral element, as Marx supposed, but exerts randomness (that randomness equals free-
`I'm very much worried about this. At the influence in its own right independent of dom) or that talking frankly is talking
same time it is a beautiful verification of my social forms—and this influence is seen as a crudely. What is more, art, like drugs, is very
philosophy, which is that in this society any- harmful depersonalization and antihumanism. readily commercialized: 'official' psychedelic
thing can be co-opted, everything can be His first two chapters are an impressive account art of little originality and less significance. As
digested.' This is Herbert Marcuse, quoted by of the currently observed shortcomings of this Roszak says, much counter-cultural display
Theodore Roszak, on our society's capacity `rationalized totalitarianism' and the princi- must seem 'decadent' to the really under-
for absorbing pretty well anything, including pal avenues of dissent from it. Roszak is privileged. The other danger is its 'vulner-
dissent itself; and this is a highly pertinent obviously both involved and yet critical and ability to exploitation as an amusing side show
theme when considering the recent media this makes him a good commentator; this of the swinging society'.
coverage of aspects of underground culture. comes out in the subsequent chapters dealing One fine example of the difficulties of a
Seminal works by Timothy Leary, Jeff with the principal influences on the tendencies revolutionary art is cited by Gerald Gassiot-
Nuttall and others have just appeared in he has observed (Marcuse, Brown, Ginsberg, Talabot in Art and Confrontation: a Peruvian
paperback form and an anthology of counter- Watts, Leary, Goodman, et al). He is harsh Indian, seeing every day scenes of brutality,
cultural documents has been recently pub- about the 'counterfeit infinity' of psychedelia, painted a picture of a landowner whipping
lished. The four books under discussion here about the trends towards violence; but equally peasants, took it to a gallery, only to discover
all relate in their different ways to this perceptive in dealing with his heroes—his it was bought by such a landowner who had
general trend. Perhaps their very publication chapter on Paul Goodman is outstanding— said, 'There's a picture that shows how
confirms Marcuse's apprehensions that cer- though personally I find myself not wanting to Indians should be treated'. Gassiot-Talabot
tain aspects of the counter culture too easily follow him on his final shamanistic journey. admits that this is one of the crudest difficul-
lend themselves to commercial verminization. The pertinence of Roszak's book for those ties, but in the various essays in this book (all
This isn't quite as unreasonable as it might concerned with the arts is that he is pointing prompted by the Paris risings of May 1968)
seem since the problem of communication is a straight at what he sees as the birth of a new we find again and again a pessimism about the
central concern here: do rationally con- culture concerned with personality not over- possibility of any kind of revolutionary 'art'.
structed theories fulfil any useful purpose rationality, beyond ideology to instinctiveness Michel Ragon reminds us that an art-society
other than co-opting the topic under dis- and about impulse as much as intellect; and collaboration can too easily become a trap for

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