Page 55 - Studio International - June 1970

UK WHEELER RECENTLY AT THE TATE; JOHN
LARRY BELL, ROBERT IRWIN AND DOUG

commentary FURNIVAL AT BEAR LANE, OXFORD, TILL JUNE
20; TREVOR BELL AT RICHARD DEMARCO,
EDINBURGH, TILL JUNE 27; EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
AT MARLBOROUGH FINE ART. TILL TUNE 19
One of the issues raised by the exhibition of
three Los Angeles artists at the TATE in May
was one that has often been discussed in this
journal with unusual urgency in the last two
years or so. It is the value and relevance of art
criticism.
It is now common-place for artists to resent
favourable as well as unfavourable reviews,
correct as well as incorrect assertions about
their aims, techniques, achievements, role in
art history, etc., indeed any external informa-
tion, because they can feel pinned down by it.
Nevertheless no artist is able to avoid the fact
that whatever he does is subject to uncon-
trollable physical revision due to ageing and
attitudinal and semantic revision due to
changing social and cultural conditions—by
what other artists do as well as by what
critics say. In short, as Charles Harrison
wrote here recently 'the mud sticks'.
However, there are and have been certain
strategies for making this situation less critical.
One is simply to accept it and declare it to be
part of the work of art and another is for the
artist to supply either in words or by implica-
tion a pre-emptive criticism of his own. Yet
another is the reduction of elements which
are, at a given time, talking points and taste
or art signals. In the nineteenth century such
elements may have been subject matter, in the
twentieth, 'composition'. One tactic, perhaps
the most common, has been to eliminate the Wheeler installation: working shot
unwanted elements by the technique of 2
Wheeler installation: Herb Enns working
banalisation, for example by using symmetry
or centrality as a mode of composition or by
employing what are called geometric literal
or specific shapes or relationships. In fact, no
shape, relationship or material is any more
geometric, specific or literal than any other.
These terms really mean nothing much more
than that there are unambiguous words in
common parlance for what is being described
so that, for example, a cube is more geometric
and 'specific' than a more irregular form be-
cause of the readiness with which its name is The problem that may give rise to new the process should be long enough to let him
available. developments in art is that any such move live for a while in his eyes.
Now certain artists may make use of this fact only makes it easier for the viewer and par- In Irwin's room the level of illumination was
so that once a form is identified as a cube (and ticularly the critic to classify, abstract from low. The light, directed on the discs hovering
it need be only quite approximate to be so and, in effect, possess the work without really in front of the walls was the only source of
identified) then it continues to be identified seeing it. illumination in the room making visible the
as a cube no matter what shape it projects on Each of the artists in this show is aware of this people and architecture and creating a simple
the retina; it therefore is perceived as having situation (although I should not want to put pattern of shadows and levels of illumination
a slightly stronger reality which cannot be these words into their mouths) and their that were a part of the art work inseparable
affected by, for example, lighting. At the same works involve the opposite strategy: they are from the hardware element of it. The room
time certain ways of dealing with it are pre- presented in such a way as to delay to prevent was largely stripped of incident and sym-
empted by the artist. Exactly the same tactic conceptualisation so that at first, the viewer metrically arranged so that all three pieces
of controlling by instant readability may of may have, as far as possible, a purely sensory were first perceived frontally. Prolonged con-
course be applied in terms of the identifica- experience. Eventually he will deal with it in templation of the disc could produce very
tion of materials, images, incorporated ob- a way that will depend on what he has in his different sensation from a shorter look: nota-
jects, commercial values, social or historical head, the length of time he is prepared to stay bly an even more complete dematerialization
stances, etc. there and what may happen in this time. But of the objects including the wall surfaces.