Page 60 - Studio International - April 1971

on Art and Technology by Grace Glueck in the site. The fact that none of us could accurately styles presented in the Expo exhibition, certain
New York Times, Phyllis Montgomery of visualize the Expo show beforehand—even the singular characteristics were shared by the eight
Davis, Brody, Chermayeff, Geismar, DeHarak, artists did not know precisely what their works artists. In fact, many of these qualities now seem
Associates—the Exhibition Design Team for the would do in the unforeseen conditions —caused to apply to most of the other artists in the Art
United States Pavilion at Expo 70—called me to a certain amount of understandable anxiety, as and Technology programme, such as Robert
discuss the possibility of my organizing an well as excitement. Inside the exhibition space Rauschenberg and Jesse Reichek. Primary
exhibition including works made under Art the viewer first found himself in Boyd Mefferd's among these is an emphasis on transient images
and Technology for the Pavilion. Accordingly, room. One hundred and twenty wall-mounted and evanescent phenomena. At Expo, there was
we entered into extensive negotiations with the strobe units flashed in programme, causing no object which sat in a traditional relationship
USIA's Commissioner General (later intense, apparently hallucinatory retinal to a ground. Flicker and vibration were
Ambassador) Howard Chernoff and Deputy images (provided the viewer took at least fifteen omnipresent—but not in the pretentious manner
Commissioner General Jack Masey, and the seconds to allow this to happen: very few did). endemic to much mechanical art. Distinct and
Exhibition Design Team. In a formal contract, One next entered Tony Smith's cave, made tangible images presented themselves but they
signed on 3o May 1969, we consented to entirely of corrugated cardboard, and would become transformed or disappear. Much
postpone the Museum show for one year, and illuminated from above by shafts of light. depended on one's particular vantage point—
draw from it a smaller preview exhibition for Thousands of octahedra and tetrahedra, shipped your neighbour was never seeing what you were
Expo. to Japan in scored flat sheets, were individually seeing at the same time. This was true even
The commitment to deliver in time for assembled on site and mounted architecturally though certain of the works, which had
Expo 70 was a distinct gamble. Our original according to a complicated twelve-foot model potential for individual participation, were
deadline was tightened, since we had planned the artist had made. After the viewer traversed forced to relinquish this aspect because of the
to exhibit results of the collaborations in April ninety feet through the Smith tunnel, he came enormous crowds at Expo. There was a notable
197o, at the Museum, whereas all works for up against Robert Whitman's optical tour de absence of visible housing for each work,
Expo had to be installed—in Japan—by 15 March force: a twenty-three-foot semi-circular space allowing a purity and directness of
1970. Also, certain inherent conditions containing various illusionistic phenomena. confrontation with technique rather than
restricted the range of potential works for Placed against the semi-circular wall from floor mechanics. But no works were designed to
Expo: only American artists could be selected; to eye-level were one thousand corner-shaped parade technique; almost every artist in the
and a traffic flow of up to 10,000 persons per mirrors which reflected to each viewer, regardless programme displayed a certain reserve before
day was expected throughout the seven-day of where he stood or walked, only his own image, the tools of technology. As the artists
week, six-month long run at the Fair. (This repeated a thousand times. Mounted above de-emphasized the look of the machine, they
astonishing estimate proved to be correct: eye-level were five pairs of five-by-seven-foot, were able to maximize a sense of penetrating
10,800,000 visitors poured through the Art and pulsating mylar mirrors, in front of which psychological immediacy. One did not feel a
Technology Exhibition in the US Pavilion hovered ten eerily bright three-dimensional palpable sense of virtuosity in these works, but
before Expo closed in mid-September.) objects (a pear, drill, goldfish bowl with live rather a character of restraint and aesthetic
I felt that the risk was worth taking. A fish, a knife, a clock, ferns, etc.). From sureness.
fundamental belief in the necessity of giving Whitman's room one stepped into Newton After Expo opened, I reported to the
artists access to industry lay at the heart of Art Harrison's forest of five thirteen-foot high Museum's Board of Trustees on our experience
and Technology, and Expo 70 seemed to me a plexiglass columns, each filled with glowing gas with Art and Technology in Japan, and we
perfect occasion for demonstrating the validity plasmas, programmed to create varying colour- turned to the consideration of the Museum's
of this concern, to an international as well as an shapes of pure light. In Harrison's room, as in exhibition. Our budget, estimated in 1968, had
American audience. We had six months' time Whitman's area, the viewer was in the dark, been proving close to the mark. We had raised
in which to deliver eight 'rooms' of art, for that seeing mysterious shapes being formed out of over $40,00o more than expected from
was basically the way the art-exhibition space light. So too in Krebs's laser room, entered corporations and had therefore been able to
was designed in the Pavilion. Inevitably those from Harrison's, one perceived light patterns in place several more artists in residence than
six months were crisis-fraught. The complexity a dark environment: the piece formed a complex anticipated.
of the logistics involved may be indicated by the web of red and blue-green pencil-thin beams, Based on what we learned from the Expo
fact that when these eight remarkable works crossed, interlaced and in one place extended experience, a further, and even an
were shipped to Osaka, they comprised 15,000 (through two enormous parallel mirrors) 'into unprecedented commitment is now required by
separate components, occupying eighty crates infinity'. The sense of immateriality in Krebs's the Museum to mount the new exhibition.
and weighing forty tons. Installation in Japan sculpture was strengthened by the Virtually all the works produced through Art
took ten weeks and involved my continual fluctuation of the light patterns. Into a large and Technology are conglomerates of
presence, extended visits by five of the alcove at the far end of Krebs's room were component parts, dependent for their very
participating artists, several US engineers, a placed two 35mm rear projectors for Roy existence on elaborately constructed formal
team of designers and architects and hundreds of Lichenstein's two movie screens. Each screen matrices. The works shown at Expo will, with
workmen. measured seven by eleven feet; the projected the exception of Oldenburg's Icebag, be
The only 'object' in the Expo exhibition was film image on each screen was a 'moving fundamentally reworked due to the much
the first work encountered outside the main picture'. One image combined film footage of greater design flexibility of the Museum space.
entrance door of the New Arts Section : Claes ocean and sky; the other screen depicted ocean Moreover about twelve additional artists'
Oldenburg's Giant Icebag, which was in complex surface and a dot pattern above; both screens projects are expected to be resolved for the Los
motion for nineteen minutes and forty-five were split with a horizon-like black line, and the Angeles show. q
seconds and rested for fifteen seconds. This was images rocked. From this paradoxically 1The reader will note reference to 'Art and
the only work that actually existed before the anti-filmic evocation of 'nature' one turned to Technology' as a 'working title'. This nomenclature
Expo installation: it was tested, and performed Andy Warhol's work, which also dealt with was never comfortably accepted by us. Years later,
perfectly, in Los Angeles in January 197o. Each man's transformation of nature into artifice : it after lists of other titles were drawn up and discarded,
we could not improve on Art and Technology. Terms
of the other seven works arrived in Japan in the was a giant field of three-dimensional printed like 'synergy' and `interface' were considered, but
form of disconnected system components, flowers, seen through sparkling transparent abandoned for obvious reasons. We wanted to include
which were never entirely combined and put curtains of water, falling like rain. reference to industry, but this word invariably
summoned misleading evocations of industrial design,
into operation until their mounting at the Expo Even with the wide diversity of artistic and that was a confusion we were determined to avoid.
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