Page 43 - Studio International - January 1971

Fernand Léger
Architecture 1923
oil
25 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.
Private collection, France
2
Fernand Léger
Nature Morte 1927
oil 441 x 571 in.
Kunsthaus, Berne
(Both works were included in the recent exhibition,
'Léger and Purist Paris' at the Tate Gallery)

many reflections on the role that bourgeois
society wishes on to artists, licensed deviants
tolerated within a certain guaranteed frame-
work. Through Ray Gun, his Ubu, he pro-
posed a more intransigent part. Since then
`Ray Gun . . . has begun to see his prophesies
come true. The legs and knees, the miniskirt
costumes of the early happenings are standard
gear; Dallas, where the violent script of Injun
was performed in 1962, has since been the
scene of assasination.... The sexual libera-
tion of the erotic objects is upon us. The self-
expression preached by the happenings finds
its outlets in riots, which are not necessarily
regarded as directed at any specific enemy or
issue, but rather as expressive acts.. . .' This
link has been consecrated in Oldenburg's Tale
Monument, monument among other things to
his own 'I am for an art that is political-
erotical-mystical, that does something other
than sit on its ass in a museum' of nine years
ago, an anti-war memorial whose commission
by students was inspired by Marcuse himself.
If an Oldenburg monument were to be
erected, he had said, 'I would say . . . this
society has come to an end. Because then
people cannot take anything seriously: neither
their president, nor the cabinet, nor the cor-
poration executives....' Lipstick-rocket-tank,
it mocks the military erection and puts its pink background to his notorious claim to have by a childhood drive to omnipotence. What
finger on a culture that measures its virility in `made up' his art when he was a kid. It seems is particular to him is his relationship to that
missiles. But it is benign too. It has its own that for years as a child he had an imaginary drive and the way that he is at the same time
erotic claims. 'I wish the best for all things', land called Neubern for which he made maps, distanced from it (through humour, his con-
Oldenburg has said, and the giant lipstick, place names, transport systems, posters, a cept of style stemming from material, his
no less than his teddy bear or baked potato history, an economy, a government, a civic cool-headed division of energy between one
can be seen as a monumental claim for com- life, armed forces, industries, agriculture. The kind of activity and another) — and fluently,
fort and love. language was a mixture of English and intimately in touch with it. If any art were
It is Oldenburg's frankness that stamps him, Swedish. Later with the Street and the Store truly to be taken as an example of how we
the courage with which he relates both to his and his subsequent exhibitions 'conceived as should be, I wish that it were his.
own fantasies and the world outside. There is a unit' he has projected similar worlds for
tremendous solidity in his position, a loyalty which the individual works are, as it were, Writing recently on Oscar Wilde, Philip Rieff
to his own vision. Barbara Rose gives the props. He is not the only artist to be powered has argued that what is specific about the
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