Page 55 - Studio International - March 1970

huge sums of money these undertakings sensations of movement and downright seen (his production is staggering) at the
require, somewhat ruefully. beauty. His own commentary (you just see LAWRENCE RUBIN GALLERY. These are prodi-
Much more modest, since it consists of gravity ... it's so clear you can dismiss it) gies of composition—the tensest, most com-
photographs, is the exhibition of Michael suits the wall, and seems to me to have little plicated and forceful paintings he has ever
Heizer's great adventure in the American pretension of conceptualism. done. No one can make a taut, complex
mythologyland out West. We follow our The idea of process is more apposite in composition as firmly as Stella using only
artist-pioneer in slides and photographs as he Robert Morris's project in which he set up a geometric forms and their leftovers, and
supervises the digging of a deepcut trench on revolving camera to photograph photographs intense deep-dyed colour. Ranging from the
the top of an isolated plateau out there where and their reflections in mirrors, and then, as bizarre to the classically equilibriated form,
there is nobody, but lots of nature. The the finale, sets up a revolving projector Stella manages to keep what are essentially
trench running through the top of a low which projects the filmings of the photo- stacatto rhythms in a kind of perpetual flow
mountain photographs well, looks a little graphs and their mirror images on the very through his compositions. Old Hans Hofmann
like some ancient ruin, Mayan or even walls which once held them. The multiple with his simple formula of push-and-pull
Mycenean, and really gives you that sense of steps Morris undertook to produce the final would have been gratified to see how much
isolation you all crave. The city dwellers at performance being documented in the per- pushing and pulling Stella can do with fairly
the DWAN GALLERY no doubt catch their formance itself qualify as process, and are, in limited means. The aestheticians used to talk
breaths to see the natural vastness sullied by fact, very stimulating. There is nothing so about pure visibility, which I never quite
one puny man. It would be better to be the intriguing as mirror images and moving understood. But Stella's paintings somehow
man, of course. Who could remain unmoved pictures. Morris leaves plenty of space for the seem to illustrate the concept.
by the magnificence of the landscape ? In fact imagination of the viewer. At LEO CASTELLI there are many Jasper Johns
you could be the man if you had the money, No thought exists without a sustaining sup- drawings covering a period of years. They are
since this mountain was bought by the acre, port, notes Mel Bochner in one of those wall good to see. Johns has an undeniable pen-
and the work of art it becomes has a price. label sketchbooks of ideas, or half-ideas. chant for the range of values possible on
Well, I have a weakness for people who want Whatever his thought may have been when paper and the best of his works have always
to make mountainous sculptures, and I like he constructed Measurement: Group C, it is reflected his sensitivity to the minor shifts in
the grandiose gesture, and I'm glad it's not a not the thought but the very startling com- light and value. This review of a large area of
miniature didactic space in the Museum of bination of different kinds of experiences that Johns' creative life is of great value. One
Modern Art. strikes me. (I just looked it up in the cata- wishes galleries would be more inclined to
Spaces manipulated on various scales are also logue, Bochner explains that Group C is show drawings as works of art.
an inherent part of the latest exhibition at comparative, and is 'any stable object, The great expenditure a show such as 'Spaces'
FINCH COLLEGE in the series called 'Art in materials, or place related to a pre-determined represents (the supplies were all donated by
Process'. Although I find the premise decidedly standard'.) interested businesses) would not seem so pain-
flimsy, and often contradicted in the exhibits, The sustaining support in this case is a crisp ful if the Museum were holding up its end of
the Finch College series is almost always black measuring line (black tape, I think), the struggle to keep the fine arts in the realm
interesting. The premise seems to be that on the white wall, telling us it is '108" and of human experience at its highest and most
there is something called conceptual art and a huge potted plant plunked in front of it. ethical. Once again it has shown the strangle-
that conceptual artists are interested mostly The wall reflects the rich foliage in lovely hold nature of trustee overseeing in refusing
in something they call ideas, and that occa- shadows, while the black lineament tricks us to go ahead with a poster scheme proposed
sionally they can be persuaded to try to into illusion. Green growing and picture by the Art Workers' Coalition. Apparently at
enact their ideas, but that if they do, it is only frames and light and shadow and organic one point the Museum had agreed to co-
because they enjoy the process of enactment, versus inorganic and real space and no space sponsor and distribute a poster against the
and the results are not important. and illusory space and measurement versus war in Vietnam. The poster, according to
The coyness of this approach is distasteful. infinity —Bochner's paradoxes are stimulating, Art Workers involved, was agreed upon.
Just as when one reads the intimate journals and they look good, too. His thoughts as such Even the photograph of atrocities was
of certain writers, one knows they were meant are only as good as the cues he supplies to accepted, it seems. The final poster showing
to be far from intimate, and on the contrary, them, and the cues are almost enough to the pathetic heap of women and children
as widely broadcast as possible, so one knows survive without the thoughts dangling after with only a few words of text (Above: 'Q.
that the sketchy wall labels and notes of them. And babies too ?' and below : 'A. And babies
certain conceptualists are the studied effect The thoughts in SIDNEY JANIS'S 'String' show too.') was subsequently rejected. Most prob-
of an attitude. Attitudinizing is all too often are all about string. This is an anthology—and ably, it was rejected by trustees and not by
the sum total of this genre. a very good one—of the role of string in museum staff. I hope so anyway. But it was
For all that, there are certain exhibits in this modern art, ranging from a photograph of rejected. When the range of business interests
show that I found more than conceptual in its Marcel Duchamp's famous installation of I and investments of those trustees is examined,
current sense. Or should I say less than ? When don't know how many miles of string in the it is hard to assume that they intervened for
Eva Hesse hangs eight sections of rubberized 1941 Surrealist exhibition in New York, to reasons of public trust. There are plenty of
cheesecloth and fibreglass from the ceiling, more recent rope tricks on large scale. The good arguments for their co-sponsoring this
and when those delicate surfaces and trans- old masters are legion (Schwitters, Arp, poster, not the least of which is the will of the
parencies have an enormous range of beauti- Picasso, Miró) who found the modest piece artists on whom they depend, and whose
ful light and shadow, the concept is the last of string an inspiration. The young masters existence permits such things as trustees in
thing I think of. What she does is work with are more interested in rope, which can be the first place. No matter how you look at it,
materials in the creative way painters and made to trail from one room to another, or artists are entitled to try to make their uneasy
sculptors have of working with materials, and be dealt with on the seaman's level, knotted relationship with the wealthy a bit more
it is because she produces works, not ideas, into nice ladder patterns. This is a show that palatable, and this would have been a good
that Hesse stands out. The same is true of hangs by a thread or a rope, as do so many beginning. The Museum in its pretence that
Richard Van Buren whose wall of irregularly shows these days, but one that has untold it is objective and must not meddle in public
shaped, transparent fibreglass forms is filled pleasures in its long list of inventive personages. affairs is only paving the way for its possible
with vivid reflections, glancing surfaces, There are more Frank Stella paintings to be destruction.
DORE ASHTON El