Page 64 - Studio International - November 1970

A Faber Cl:,ecklist o It becomes collaboration. lead to an unforgivable futurology. I wonder
si way. p he
about Johns, for a start. Are we not too used
de sensitivity to thinking of Rauschenberg and Johns as
his is expresse in twins, always mentioning them in the same
terms that are themselves creative and colla­ breath, making them as inseparable as
w h richness that Laurel and Hardy? Is it possible that future
expand that where refer­ years will pair Rauschenberg rather with
ential to the painting in question and yet does Oldenburg? Max Kozloff'sJohns book has a
not force a gap between the referent and the section in which he says that Rauschenberg's
of w i inspires association with Johns was comparable to
eloque si which. is that between Picasso and Braque, mentioning
managed consummately well, and couldn't be the motifs of the pendulum, the hanging brush
managed by anyone who is not, as they say, a and the introduction of the chair as being
0., a k of Rauschehberg's first, thenJohns's, and saying
free-w in o the that Studies for Skin are indebted to one of the
pictures, on an ambitious Dante illustrations. Studies for Skin is surely too
Visual Thinking but one of its neces­ individual a production-that, as Kozloff has
RUDOLF ARNHEIM sity. It seems that to write about Rauschenberg himself argued, is the horrific thing about it­
With 2 illustrations in colour and many on a lower level, in a flatter way, would only for such a point to be of much use. And the
in black-and-white £5 1 0s to o n to parallel with Cubism surely ignores the basic
celebrate it. This, surely, is why the Rauschen­ fact that Picasso and Braque did not have the
The Redemption of berg bibliography is so small; and could there same sort of completely open stylistic situa­
the Robot more damning condemnation forma­ tion. This is why there is, in comparison,
My Encounter with Education through Art that Rauschenberg's is something tense about them, why it's hard to
HERBERT READ 40s totally impervious i p Aridity use the word 'collaboration' about the
o side the on cubist years, why the history of Cubism
the other. sometimes feels as if it were a race. But the
Ordinariness and Light But seem to no fences Rauschen: New York years in question are marked
Urban theories 1952-60, and their (it might snidely be said that sometimes precisely by collaboration, by partnership, by
application in a building project 1963-70 Forge seems to think there is in him no East or a wonderful artistic generosity.
ALISON & PE-TER SMITHSON Wes e i a Indeed, we may come to think of the whole
With 186 illustrations and d why can fail). scene around those years, · including such
2 folding plates 80s
Forge argues that 'his aesthetic is generated by figures as Fahlstrom, Dine, Cage, and the
his. his sub is dancers, as a sort of collective artistic 'Store
Taddeo Zuccaro everywhere'. There is therefore no question of Days'. If this turns out to be so, it will surely
HiS' Development studied in his Drawings N rel rep­ appear as a high point in the whole history of
J.A.GERE resentation, or by that representational stance the modern American School. An art futur­
With 176 pages of plates £12 passag as ologist might argue as follows: The American
bed an of School magnificently succeeded the School of
African Primitive painting Be there Paris,' and had a not unusual span of life for a
w th g created s that
major artistic period, between two wars, be­
Function and Form separated 'Nature' and 'Art'. In the combines, tween the world war ending in 1945 and the
in Afric.an Masks and Figures so too, do dissolution of American society in the civil
G. W. SANNES
Translated by Margaret King human beings, not just in the dances or in all wars of 1975. Around the 'Store Days' (co­
With 40 pages of plates and a map 50s mi call inciding very roughly with the Kennedy
engag se a administration) the best American art assum­
like ed a precarious position whose novel beauty
Seven Hundred Years of Allegory i feel and quality of human involvement could not
O(iental Carpets weathe changes weather people, long be sustained. After this period, it be­
KURT ERDMANN a global involvement which Forge reads as a comes increasingly reasonable to think of a
Edited by Hanna Erdmann kind of omnipotent 'human struc­ pre-war art, characterized in one way by a
Translated by May H. Beattie turing, communication, interpenetration, pur­ total withdrawal into aestheticism, witnessed
and Hildegard Herzog eng the
With 299 plates, 20 of these in colour, in another way by desperation, as the adamic
and 7 line illustrations £15 world'. turned into the ecofogical, as Vir Heroicus
This book is in its own expression, Sublimis became involved with defilement.
but is not necessar-ily complete in other ways. I'm only guessing (besides pitching it strong).
Artist Potters in England truc th dia­ But might it not come to look this way? Forge
MURIEL ROSE chronic, inclusive, quasi-academic methods of began writing his book in 1964, towards the
A new and revised edition. With 130 mono ( Barbara end of the 'Store Days' period, when the
black-and-white plates, 65 of these new, book h in Rauschenberg exhibition came to London.
6 colour plates, 2 of these new, and m view), in which it might Could he have written the same boo� begin­
a chart of potters' marks including
·
8 new marks. 90s seem a bit short on art history, or, rather, on ning now? I raise these questions because the
shoul by this, publication of the book raises them. I. think
for Forge uses just as much historical method it's the most important piece of English art
FABER & FABER as nee On been criticism, in the sense of a deeply felt and finely
24 Russell Square London WC1 personally tempted to ask one or two questions expressed homage from a writer to a painter,
posi if does since Roger Fry wrote about Cezanne. I also

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