Page 42 - Studio International - January 1971

In the debate between those who want to interest, excite passion, consume people's lives, a really wonderful renaissance', Leger wrote,
scrap art based on objects and those who don't, make fortunes, ruin marriages, are stared at `a world of creative artisans who will gladden
the forces at work seem to be psychological hungrily, clutter basements, change attitudes, our eyes and transform the street into a per-
and political before they are aesthetic. Not console, provoke, disappoint, inspire. manent and infinitely variable spectacle.'1
that the arguments necessarily say so.... Question from a layman to a painter: 'What The difference between them is one of direc-
For example, a commitment to paintings or are you trying to do ?' Answer : 'How can I tion: Duchamp netting the objects in the
sculpture means an interest in a place to make tell until I've done it?' Liberal to dissident: world, pulling them into himself, subjugating
them or look at them, hence a need for a 'But what do you want? What is your pro- them—and then not—turning art into a reflec-
rather stable environment, and a future and gramme?' Dissident to liberal: 'The answer tion until the outward material doesn't have
a past as well as a present. But a concept is in the action.' By far the most important to be changed, or even there at all... and
artist can work out of his briefcase and an fact concerning art at the moment is that Leger, thrusting outwards from the fixed
event man is no more tied than a pop musi- there are assumptions, attitudes, ways of point of his own work. 'There is no hierachy in
cian. If objects imply property, then the left is thinking which have been special to it in the art. A work's value is in its own worth and it
correct when it says that the traditional posi- past and which are now not special to it but is not possible to establish a sole criterion. ...'
tions are staked to the status quo. Art's citadel are operating out in the open. Revelation in From his stake in his work he was able to
from that point of view, its Fort Knox, its action is a studio commonplace. It has not grant the aesthetic existence of more and
Winter Palace, is the Museum. been so in politics, at least not in this country. more—of aeroplanes, spark plugs, dance hall
Where then is the citadel of the art of the left? An obvious case— the McLuhanist idea of the toughs, guns, waistcoats, shopwindows.
In the street, somewhere between London primacy of the medium. This is central to any
University and the British Museum? In some art. What else have all the corny arguments In her marvellous book on Oldenburg, in my
instant city with amplifiers hanging in the about literary painting, or formalism, or art's view a model of what a monograph on an
trees? The air of the Weimar State Theatre as autonomy been about if not the fact that there artist in mid-career should be,2 Barbara Rose
it filled with Baader's leaflets and loony cries? are modes of thinking and apprehending picks up the lines of connection between Dada
The roof tops of Zero de Conduit? which are special to painting—or sculpture— and the radical left. She quotes Huelsenbeck:
Museums look like banks. Banks mean secu- or literature—and that you can't change 'Instead of continuing to produce art, Dada,
rity, overdrafts, something to pass on to the horses without having to repack your luggage. in direct contrast to abstract art, went out
future—also privilege, oppression and war. Generations of painters have beaten their and found an adversary. Emphasis was laid
Whether you see them just one way or just the brains out trying to explain this to writers, on the movement, on struggle.' This affirma-
other will be a matter of your temperament patrons and puzzled aunts. Suddenly every- tion of action over product, she argues, was an
and your politics. It is not impossible to see body knows. What is extraordinary is the way ingredient in Abstract Expressionism and
them both ways—nor to remind yourself that that a lot of people have reacted. Because it particularly in Harold Rosenberg's action-
a museum is not a bank. Any extreme evokes came from some swinging sociologist instead painting interpretation of it. Motherwell's
extremes. Accusation evokes guilt—guilt evokes of from the studio, this doesn't make it a new anthology The Dada Painters and Poets appeared
accusation. Nobody is innocent on all counts. thought. What is new is its currency, its in 1951 and profoundly impressed the
Lies are told and believed. The claim that application to other areas than art. Kaprow- Oldenburg circle from which the
there is no longer a place for art as an auto- One way of describing the drama is to choose Happenings of the late fifties and early sixties
nomous area in life is met by the counter- prototypes. I think of Leger and Duchamp. emerged. The Happening was, among other
claim that-the autonomy of art is so unassail- If Duchamp's Fountain is like an essential things, action painting literalized'. Since then,
able that it has no need to show itself—to be— parable of one line of thought, another is the where Happening has ended and confronta-
at all. Attack and counter-attack confirm each hour spent by Leger and Maurice Raynal tion has begun has been a matter for history.
other. Meanwhile painting and sculpture watching a shopkeeper arranging waistcoats From the outset Oldenburg has resisted isola-
exist, are being made, gather dust, evoke and ties in his window. 'We are on the edge of tion. Among the notes for Store Days there are

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