Page 61 - Studio International - June 1970

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Eva Hesse Peter Stroud sanctum to discover some twenty rather young
Right After No. 47 1969 Untitled
Wash Courtesy Max Hutchinson Gallery, New York people, mostly working on the West Coast,
22 x 17⅞ in. who are experimenting with tremendous free-
Courtesy Fischbach Gallery, New York
dom. These young technologists from Canada
and the United States range from funky
Los Angelinos whose obsessions are character-
seems to be accurate. But describing in istically pornographic, to highly-romantic
psychological terms how we come to register Easterners who seem possessed with the
impressions (or as they would say, information) nostalgia distilled by an artist such as Joseph
and analysing the value of a work of art are Cornell. (Quite a few resort to the shadow-box
two very different transactions. All too often scheme.) There are experiments with topo-
the intellectuals of the arts find a theory of graphic structure, such as a photograph of a
perception and consider it a theory of art. By rutted field produced with great verisimilitude,
telling us how we see, Merleau-Ponty did not experiments with vacuum-formed plastics
tell us what we see, since, as he himself so nobly with the photographic image imprinted on
proved, what we see is mitigated by our com- their surfaces, and experiments with actually
plex personality structure: our imagina tion sculptural forms. The most moving, to my
with its store of transformational magic. His mind, was the most simple : a fugitive image on
view of Cezanne is a far cry from the way his a transparent negative with a light bulb
American interpreters view their favourites. behind it. Although this is one of the most
If the polemic accompanying a very forceful basic uses of the photograph, it remains one
exhibition such as Morris's is somehow over- `firsts' attributed to Stella by his adulator in of the most poetic and suggestive, and avoids
enthusiastic (what will the curator do next, the catalogue? Would he be able to read both the commercial and chi-chi connota-
after telling us that Morris's 'showing' is without smiling the following, for instance: tions that attach to some of the works in the
`infinitely more satisfactory' than the didactic- `Stella was the first to succeed in keeping an show.
ism of 'telling', which is what more conven- abstract picture on an irregular field from Speaking of things poetic and suggestive, there
tional artists do?), the polemic accompanying taking on the appearance of flat relief is Eva Hesse's small exhibition of recent
Frank Stella's exhibition at the MUSEUM OF sculpture.' ? drawings at the FISCHBACH GALLERY. MISS
MODERN ART is decidely over-emphasized. The That is something to be first at, I suppose, but Hesse's large works are almost always soft in
exhibition itself, quite aside from its copious I wonder if Stella, whose own pronounce- feeling, instigating a sensation of lightness and
explications, seems out of balance and padded ments on paintings are rather straightforward, delicately nuanced reflections, and these
with works that are not always the best of doesn't cringe a little at this kind of hyperbole. drawings are perfect counterparts. They are
Stella's large production. Rubin's catalogue is filled with elaborate mostly single, rectangular images, softly
How this came about is hard to account for since theory, and even with pedantic arguments washed on the page and fringed with ambigu-
William Rubin, the curator who prepared this aimed at the other critics who made so bold as ous reflections. The same sense for textural
exhibition, was one of Stella's early admirers to have their own theories. It is thoroughly variation, and the active power of light, in-
and is a collector himself. Yet, the fact excessive in every way. The footnotes are forms the drawings as informs the sculptures.
remains that I have seen many better paint- funnier than most funnybooks (`These pictures Downtown, the new gallery area is flourishing,
ings than those chosen for this show, cer- have been referred to as "magenta" (Fried) it seems. There is even an artists' bar remini-
tainly amongst those of the past three years. and "lavender" (Rosenblum), but they should scent of the Old Cedar, buzzing with art-
Stella's career has been thoroughly docu- be called purple, not simply because that was world talk. The only difference is that in the
mented in the art press, as have the various their hue, but because this hue was con- new situation, there are artists, artists' girls
stages of his work. The only surprises for most sciously chosen from the range of six primaries and would-be artists (as there used to be at the
viewers were probably the earliest works on and secondaries, the methodically limited Cedar in its purest days) with a new element:
view, done when Stella was just out of colour scheme Stella used at that date.') the dealers too check in regularly and are
Princeton. They are brushed rather loosely, Looking back on a decade's work, Stella looks seemingly welcome.
overpainted, and reflect his interest in the very much like a highly-educated (in painting At MAX HUTCHINSON'S new gallery, Peter
abstract expressionist largesse which, in 1958, mores) young painter of great facility who has Stroud has mounted his new paintings. As
was still the most powerful impulse around. developed several motifs successfully, is still always, Stroud finds exceptional hues which
Once past these early works, the periods fall en route, and is only a painter after all. That he lays in on smooth, velvety evenness. On
into place as series of paintings more or less should be enough and I think it is painful that these carefully prepared grounds Stroud
successful, and well-known in their sequence. he has accrued so knowing a bunch of mounts slender bars of wood, sometimes
If the unknowing visitor were not au courant rationalizers who pretend that painting painted in different colours. The wooden bars,
with the literature on Stella, he would walk problems can be entirely new, or entirely which are, in some lights, the lines of his
from the still-impressive early charcoal-black original. Like any other thirty-three year composition, in other lights suggest three-
paintings, their sequences welling outward old artist of talent, he has made some very dimensional extrusions. It is the play between
from an invisible central axis, to the paintings good paintings in his time, but this time has light and shadow that then animates the
of modified shape, still roughly symmetrical in not been long enough to support the exhaust- composition. In these new paintings, Stroud
organization, to the more occultly shaped ive critique this one-man show solicits. is more rigorous in his design: the sequence of
canvases, etc., etc., etc. He would notice that Concurrent with the Stella show is an linear progressions is rhythmic and appears
Stella always placed emphasis on how the adventurous attempt to document a new almost musically motivated. Such paintings
surface was organized in terms of echoed current in photography— the use of three- require great care in the way they are scan-
shapes (even if the shapes were not stripes, but dimensional accessories to the photographic ned, since their entire meaning lies in the
only interstices), and that the wild interlaces image. This is called by curator Peter Bunnell slight difference between that which is flatly
of recent work were implicit in his preferred `Photography into Sculpture' which, in many illusionistic and that which is virtually
emphasis on organization above all. But ways, is a misnomer. For all that, he is to be illusionistic. q
would he be able to confirm some of the many congratulated for having gone out of his DORE ASHTON