Page 63 - Studio International - November 1970

Supplement autumn 1970

New and-recent books

Heroic mono ra h by this; but the effort brings with it a recog­ ings. That we are also made to feel that the
g p
nizable satisfaction, as though the all-too­ second could hardly exist except as a result of
Robert Rauschenberg, by Andrew Forge. Design­ famil�ar lexical experience had been charged the first is an indication that this is art
ed by Robert Rauschenberg. 730 pp, with with that kind of energy one usually deploys criticism of the highest order. The concept of
47 colour and 171 monochrome plates. Harry only when examining art. style, to Forge, stands in the way of freedom;
Abrams, New York. $25. It is therefore something much more than it imprisons creation. He therefo;re would rid
book design, and can be thought, of as a us of the assumption 'that a picture looks the
Since it's often known in literary circles what characteristically Rauschenbergian move. For way it is intended to look, and that a kind of
critics, unlike artists, are up to, the arrival of it is in just such enlargements of our normal continuity exists between what we see and
a significant piece of writing is usually apperceptions that we realize a part of the some broader area of belief or feeling that in­
trumpeted. This one hasn� been, neither here power of his painting .. The enhanced object­ forms it', and argues that Rauschenberg's
nor in America, where the book was pub­ ne·ss of such a thing as a book is significant self-discovery as an artist occurred at the
lished. And there seem to be not more than a too, since_ Rauschenberg has so often con­ point where Abstract Expressionism, nomin­
dozen copies in England of Andrew Forge's verted the relatively simple and European­ ally a totally liberated art; had become a
artistically creative essay, whose underground culture-laden stance of ut pictura poesis into the closed system; 'Freedom had become no
reputation (together with extracts published far more demanding one-and liberating, more than a declaration of intent'. Rauschen­
in this journal and the Stedelijk show's some modernists around him believe-of a berg's first achievement, then; was to dislocate
catalogue)' has long tantalized interest in a non verbis sed rebus (which goes for his dance any one-to-one relationship between the
painter whose importance has been little activities too). This must be the reason why picture and its spectator that was based on
discussed-there are reasons for this-though the Dante drawings fit so uncomfortably in causality, and dependent on the active imposi­
widely and gladly felt. More copies of the his oeuvre, and it's why the painting whose tion of an artist's feelings on a viewer's
book will arrive, I suppose, and its sheer title specifically refers to the idea, Rebus, receptivity. Hence the importance of the
quality will tell; perhaps the more so by a therefore seems to hover betwee� its own white paintings, which have less to do with
process of osmosis rather than by publicized identity and a kind of explanatoriness that the adamic American urge toward� a tabula
revelation. One hopes so. might naturally invite a critic to see it as a key rasa than one might think. Their primary
This volume is itself physically impressive, work; as if there were a way in which it would function was to effect a shift in· the viewer­
heavy, like a stone, or a. tablet, grey, with reveal some secret about the manner in which picture relationship; and in this case the
colour hidden deep in a doubly-folded for­ one should approach a Rauschenberg. spectator supplied the content, not the artist.
mat. The text must be physically experienced, The overtly autobiographical nature of the All this is true, and has never before been said
since it's been darkly overprinted by Rausch­ picture might bolster the validity of such so clearly. It involves much ret�nking to get
enberg's own photographs. It's impossible to thinking. However, it would be wrong and sly at the spirit of Rauschenberg. Ready-made,
do the rapid scanning and flicking that norm­ to get at the painter this way round, or so it palpably-designing attitudes will not fit him,
ally goes on when reading a book. The page now appears to me when thinking of·the for most theories of art, like most theories of
is not a neutral white field for the print but a massive justice of Forge's approach to the life, are liable to find their ultimate rationale
shifting succession of images, of casts, moulds, discussion of Rauschenberg. For he opens ih conduct; if all art has been to educate the
walls, steps, of Rauschenberg himself, in his with a· frontal attack on the idea of artistic eye, it has done so, most critics find, through
Gilles posture. To decipher the text one has style that (while not totally new, of course) is normative and socially acceptable channels
to both peer into these images and fight felt as both an imaginative step of huge power (like styles) that will end, s�mewhere, as
against them. One expects to be maddened and as a really profound salute to the paint- behaviour. Rauschenberg's art is not purpo-

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