Page 47 - Studio International - January 1971

lodging the last ash of the canvas. It goes on or burnt-out aeroplanes. But this expression perty on an inflated level equates with art as
burning for a while, tin-tacks dropping out of had nothing to do with this particular picture, pollution. We know that the world at large
it. Parts of the picture now lie in the form of a but rather with the general image of 'a will have to 'abandon a style of economy
crust of calcined pigment on top of the bonfire, picture' given by the recognizable remains of marked by profligate production, consump-
some parts brightly coloured, others grey. As the stretcher and so on. tion and waste for something like a space-ship
the ashes settle, these coloured powders are The second law of thermodynamics says that economy marked by frugality, recycling . .
lost to the eye. all closed physical systems move in a direction (Medawar.) Paradoxically, it may be that
During the burning one had been able to of randomness; that is to say, there is a gradual behind the forces that are at present extended
follow the picture through various stages. At evening-out between one kind of organization against object-based art there are motives
first there had been the illusion that it was and another. The biologists tell us, however, that are genuinely conservative. q
moving—fleeting changes of tone and the that life moves in the opposite direction,
growth of new forms. It was possible to see becoming more differentiated.
these as modifications of the picture, as though There is always an ascetic ingredient in art,
it were being reworked in a more and more closely entwined with the aesthetic. It has
extreme way. For a long-drawn-out moment various faces. Literally conservative, it con- Fernand Leger, The Machine Aesthetic—The Manu-
it had been possible to keep the fire at bay, or serves, holding out against wastage and factured Object— The Artisan and the Artist, 1924. Re-
printed in Léger and Purist Paris, Tate Gallery, 1970.
rather, to incorporate it in the picture. It had uncaringness. Any structuring or setting 2 Barbara Rose, Claes Oldenburg, New York 1970.
even been possible, fleetingly, to see the apart in a contemplative context is an act of 3 Philip Rieff, 'Oscar Wilde and the impossible culture',
flames when they finally burst through as conservation. At times it takes on a more Encounter, September 1970.
ingredients in the picture. Then fire took over. roundhead expression, turning against luxury, 4 Daniel Buren, quoted in Art and Confrontation, London,
1970. This statement, along with everything else in this
Picture became fuel. Not enough remained of the delectation of the senses. It is pretty clear book, speaks from the pressure of a particular situation,
its organism to hold off the fire. As the fire that this ingredient is on the ascendancy, the events of May 1968. Buren is drawing a bead on
died back the remains took on a rather horrible gaining strength both from science and from Malraux, then still Minister of Culture in de Gaulle's
pathos, reminding one of pictures of corpses the political left. Art as commerce and pro- administration. But the mood persists.