Page 59 - Studio International - October 1970

of trained firemen or mileage of sanitary rectangular bases. The density of the spikes carries with it the proverbial associations of a
sewers. Of the climate we are told only that it ranged from a sparse 3 on the first and fourth light in the darkness, a guiding light, perhaps
is 'agreeable' —a lie —`and neither excessively to a very wicked looking bed of nails on the even the light of the world, and they are con-
relaxing nor excessively bracing... the winds second. At the entrance to the exhibition, stantly switched on providing just light with
are tempered and it has only an average rain- visitors were asked to sign a document absolv- an accumulated symbolism of at least two
fall during the year.' This is all lies too—in ing the management of responsibility for thousand years.
our bit of Horsforth, the winds blew the injuries. A critic,1 writing some months after In England, if I said I was going to London,
windows out and even while the windows the event in Art International, commented that he everybody knew what I meant and where I
lasted, the rain was so heavy it came in all had been unable to resist the impulse to stoop was going. Now it is not enough to say I am
round them—but this is by the way, what I and feel with his finger to confirm that the going to the London which you get to by go-
want to stress is the contrast in the manners of spikes really were sharp. He observed that ing through Middlesex, or to say I am going
self-description. other people did the same. Once one had to swinging London. Last year a lecture on
Figure 1 shows Walter de Maria drawing lines done this, he thought the exhibit lost further `Swinging London' given at the University
in the desert. The particular desert is in interest. Clearly he intended this as a pejora- of Guelph, referred to the London one can get
California, but the theme epitomizes the tive comment, and yet it may be precisely in to by going through the Middlesex which you
whole North American situation and estab- the clarity and directness with which it makes reach after the Delhi which comes after the
lishes the polarity of ambivalent implication its single statement that American art attains Preston which follows the former Berlin
along which its art oscillates. In the desert its most positive aspect. Most American art is which is closer to Paris than that other Berlin
there is freedom for instance to draw two like this. It invites description in terms like, which must be a bit further away from the
chalk lines a mile long; there is freedom to be just a hamburger four feet high, just a series other London. In that other London they
anything one wants and to do or say or think of coke bottles, just a piece of crushed auto- recently pulled down London Bridge, stone
anything one wants, to move in any direction mobile metal, just two chalk lines a mile by stone, with a view to re-assembling it in
one wants, in whatever way one wants, for long, just transparent washes of paint, just a another North American desert. This can
whatever reason one thinks proper, to make bare cube of metal, just a plaster cast from only complicate things. In desperation one
whatever one wants or to do whatever one life, just a gallery filled with soil if we think of might be reduced to using statistics. If the
wants. One can make it whatever colour, another exhibit by Walter de Maria, just a road sign that announces the approach to
texture, weight, temperature or size one wants row of wires that give the visitor electric London gives the population figure you can
of whatever material one wants. (For the shocks by Canadian Les Levine, just a room be sure it is the one in Ontario, and the road
purposes of this metaphor, the desert imposes made of mirrors or even just stripes. signs round every other town do the same—
no limitation on the availability of materials European art in its most tortuous strivings and with such precision that if one had a
whatsoever.) One can even make it a mile after simplicity rarely achieves this directness, mind one could date the various signs round
long in white chalk. Yet the implications of this distinctness of definition. The ambivalent Guelph by the figure given. The only com-
this freedom are equivocal. In the desert implications of the American ambient reveal parable sign I ever saw in England was not
if one walks a mile one is still effectively in the themselves throughout. The stripes provide intended to help identify the town, but as a
same place, if one turns round one is still the nearest equivalent to Walter de Maria's warning to drivers. This sign on one of the
effectively facing in the same direction, if one-dimensional measure that it is possible to roads into Leeds read 'Drive carefully, Half a
one walks in a straight line or a circle it makes hang on an Art Gallery wall. A lot of Ameri- million people ahead'. That sign has been
no matter, if one turns one's head the view is can artists paint stripes, particularly if they there for ten years to my knowledge and I
the same view. Without landmarks to be happen to live in Washington. Gene Davis's doubt if it was very accurate then. The guide
anywhere is to be nowhere, to make on any version is the most regular. Leon Berkowitz's to Horsforth did not need to give statistics.
scale is to make the same size as any other are more varied and more romantic, but Horsforth was mentioned in the Domesday
scale. Before one can make anything, one Berkowitz has attachments outside America. Book—the guide did say that—and after a
must first make something else by which one In the recent work of Kenneth Noland they thousand years people just took it for granted.
can know the thing one is about to make. run horizontally, formerly they described a That was why everything about it seemed so
Before one can look in any direction or move in concentric scan like a radar screen. In Frank normal and so average. If you call a bit of
any direction, one must create another direc- Stella's work, they move in more varied Canada by a name taken from India, because
tion to look away from or move away from. directions to articulate the complex forms of it sounds familiar, then that very familiarity
Before one can go anywhere, one must one- his shaped canvases. involves a loss of those qualities of unique
self create a somewhere else so that one will I can think of few American artists who have association which make names different from
know when one is not still there. worked in squares, but a system of reticula- nouns. The name becomes just another statis-
For the Greeks, or at least for one Greek, man tion underlies Andy Warhol's serial images, tic like population figures or numbers of street
was the measure of all things. For Walter de and Walter de Maria's beds of spikes. Les lights. In Europe there are always scholars
Maria two chalk lines are the measure of all Levine's electric shocks are painful in only who can tell you how names came about, but
things and particularly of himself. In the one dimension. to people who live there the name and the
photograph we see him not in fact drawing The light situations of Dan Flavin come very place are synonymous in a way that a Delhi
but prostrate between the two white lines of close to the spirit of Walter de Maria's line, in the snow never can be. Sometimes of course
his own creation which establish his position but there is a change of metaphor. Dan English names do duplicate. Street names
both literally and in metaphor. The caption Flavin's recent exhibition at Ottawa has duplicate endlessly in cities, Regent Streets,
at the bottom of the photograph says, de been hailed by a leading critic as the major Regent's Parks, Regent's Crescents and there
Maria —Danger—Dwan. This photograph is event of the Canadian year. Around Dan could be Avenues, Roads, Drives and Lanes.
taken from an advertisement for an exhibition Flavin there has grown up a whole school of For the newcomer, particularly in a car in
by Walter de Maria at the Dwan Gallery in light art, but whereas the others have gone to heavy traffic, it can be very difficult, but to
New York. The exhibition had nothing to do great trouble and expense to produce elabor- the residents there is as little danger of con-
with white lines in the desert, their sole func- ate contortions in neon tube and even more fusion as there would be between the bats in
tion in the advertisement was to identify elaborate schedules of illumination, Dan belfries with the bats on cricket fields. North
Walter de Maria. This exhibition consisted Flavin just arranges ordinary commercial Americans are all strangers, so the street
simply of spikes arranged regularly on five fittings. They are just lights and as a light each names in Guelph and Toronto do not dupli-