Page 24 - Studio International - September 1970

fashion models and other girls, clothed and cope with the multiplicities that our values summed up by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the
nude. and technologies encourage. founder of general systems theory:
Caroline Tisdall comments on this work in `Accelerated transitions' and 'movement', yes. The mechanistic world view, taking the
The Guardian (19 June) that `Janz and But growth? Growth in the biological sense is play of physical particles as ultimate
McKinnon have broken new ground in certainly a principle which needs to be asserted reality, found its expression in a civilization
kinetics. ... Why, after all, should any art, today, if man is to survive as part of nature, which glorifies physical technology that has
least of all an art of movement and metamor- but it can hardly be taken for granted. Nor is led eventually to the catastrophes of our
phosis, be restricted to arrangements of colour there anything in the Continuum exhibition time. Possibly the model of the world as a
and shape ?' Of the three artists as a group she remotely analogous to biological growth. I great organization can help to reinforce the
writes, rather enigmatically, that they 'exploit feel they can only mean 'growth' in the sense sense of reverence for the living which we
the potential of technology without getting used by politicians and financial journalists, as have almost lost in the last sanguinary
trapped by it'. I think the artists have been in 'Micro-electronics is a platform for growth'. decades of human history.
trapped, not by their technology, where they The rest of the paragraph offers a mere col- I suggest that this emphasis on nature and
are well at ease, but by the introduction of lage of contemporary keywords. 'Conditioning biological organization should lead not to a
these human images, whose vacuity of spirit factor' is an impressively precise term, but `dropping-out' from technology and mach-
turned the whole exhibition for me into a what media and what values are in question? inery, but to a mature grasp on their reality.
chilly experience. How do we know when a medium becomes This will no doubt be expressed by artists who
The distortions of Jean Shrimpton and other obsolete? Who, or what, is redirecting habits use mechanical media.
beautiful girls are momentarily arresting but of thought? Were the makers of kinetic arti- The Continuum show reflects the alienation
remain confined within the limits of a Vogue facts in Alexandrian, Indian and other of man from nature by technology, but is
milieu. The piece would be perfect if presented cultures responding to the challenges of their enlivened by none of the sharpness and
at a cosmetics trade fair at Olympia, say, and ages? Values, technologies, media, change, intelligence of the best Pop Art. Its style is
in this context any criticisms such as I am challenges, all seem to be stirred into one likely to survive for years in the kind of 'foyer'
making now would be intolerably pompous. soup of ideas. The syntax is that of a bad environments I have mentioned, where it is
But in the context of a trade fair it would not sermon. expedient for the full human awareness to be
be subsidized by the Arts Council (as this Earlier in the statement the artists refer to the blocked off by some kind of hypnotic diver-
exhibition was), nor would it receive serious potential of their work for a 'public and sion. I see no justification for support by the
acclaim from art critics. architectural context'. Yes, but what public? Arts Council.
It is perhaps unfair for this piece to colour what architecture? A common feature of all
one's view of the whole exhibition. The the works in the show is their absence of SCULPTURE AND POLLUTION
reputations of many kinetic and abstract tension. This is art for the foyers of hotels, Ann Gattward, recently graduated from St
artists might have suffered if they had lapsed offices and airports—all those air-conditioned, Martin's, has made a Rain Sculpture consisting
thus unwarily into figuration. So let us turn to smoothly-running, well-lubricated spaces of several perspex tubes, each 6 ft. high and
the artists' joint statement in the catalogue where we congregate as privileged refugees 1 in. in diameter, containing different chemi-
and see if it would support a more generous from traffic-fumes, subways, slums, brawls, cals. Rain is allowed to fall into the tubes over
evaluation of the whole: drunks, junkies and beggars. Is there not a a period of time. Apparently there is a colour
Living in an age of accelerated transitions, a chilling, even sinister atmosphere in such reaction to acidity in the rain which is
time which more than any other asserts a spaces ? They represent, the kind of organiza- observed when the sculpture is set up in
principle of movement and growth, we must tion of resources which typifies sophisticated London but not in Suffolk (I have not seen
be conscious that values will alter as the Western societies, and especially America, the piece yet myself).
media that were their original conditioning where it is now a commonplace that un- Thus coldly described the sculpture means
factor become obsolete. Habits of thought precedently high organization of resources is little, and certainly says nothing about
and feelings are being redirected and [it] is menaced by a proportionately high corrosion `pollution' in London. There might, after all,
our responsibility to locate and clarify these or miasma from within. In the case of airports, be some extra ingredient in the Suffolk water
areas of greatest stress. It is a response to the a high degree of organization is accompanied which is lacking in London; or alternatively
challenges of our age to define structures by a high collective sense of personal risk, and there might be something healthy in London
that have multiple form by giving shape to here one of Leonelli's soothing neon sculptures rain denied to the people of Suffolk. To be of
change. In our time this means to creatively would be very suitable. In an airport the scientific interest it would be necessary to
passengers are reduced to units in an industrial propose some relationship between the chemi-
process with some unpleasant by-products, cal colour changes and certain ecological
such as fear and strain, which have to be equilibria.
softly and efficiently ducted away. But we But this is not science. And when we recall the
should come to art galleries as whole human significance of rainfall, both in ecology itself
beings. and in human symbolism, Gattward's piece
Another art critic, Richard Cork of the may be seen as a kind of oblation to nature.
Evening Standard (23 June), makes some acute Miss Gattward, who is an admirer of Hans
remarks about the Continuum artists' dandi- Haacke's work, is preparing a display cover-
fied form of taste that positively prevents an ing 62 acres in Suffolk, where artificial sheaves
emotional reaction', which I would have will be erected to demonstrate the artificiality
thought pretty damning; but he praises them of agricultural systems. Also the field will be
for moving into 'new art forms which keep dyed blue. There will be a harvest supper to
abreast with the dazzling progress of tech- celebrate.
nological advance'. This bedazzled attitude to Sympathetic as I feel to her work it could do
technology is disturbingly naive. It is not with the injection of some hard-edged science.
likely to remain for long a tenable view, as Unfortunately there are few art colleges that
more and more consciousness develops of the give the right backing to this kind of artist.
world ecological crisis. The position is well JONATHAN BENTHALL