Page 50 - Studio International - January 1971

over an event staged by one of their own, the
artist Tosun Bayrak.
Bayrak, who used to be a very sensitive infor-
mal painter, and who is a respected authority
on Islamic calligraphy, is a restive, highly
conscientious citizen (of Turkish origin) who
could not bear the state of American affairs.
A few years ago he embarked on an agonizing
critique of American society which engen-
dered a great deal of hostility, even among
fellow artists. Last week, he drew down their
wrath by putting on an event which he called
`America, Love it or Live' right on Prince
Street. Because of the authentically nauseating
character of the enterprise, his fellows re-
garded him as a traitor to the cause of
harmony in the downtown art world, a kind
of chienlit that deserved only contempt.
However, the extravagant criticism of Bayrak's
event might be seen in sociological terms as
well. It was presented by an artist, but not as a
work of art. That in itself angered many. It
was designed to induce true horror, and it did.
Horror is never welcome, but that was his
point.
Bayrak had taken a block through, lined it
with pristine white paper. As the spectators
gathered, he flooded the paperlined street
with a sea of real blood, and in that already
smelly gutter he unloaded a mess of entrails.
Gradually, he let loose some large rats who
scrambled into the pile of entrails. Then there
was a cortege of mommas with their baby-
carriages who left the scene. Next (and this
scandalized the spectators more than the
blood and guts, I suspect), a nude running,
and a public love-making scene, followed by a
staged fight between a black and white, and
by a sound track in which American military
marches alternated with Hitler jugend songs
while confetti filtered to the bloody street.
This was a carefully-planned critique of
American society, in which Bayrak fed his
aghast viewers a homeopathic dose of the real
poisons infecting them: the debasement of
human relations in mechanical love-making;
the carnage so unreal because so distant; the
increasing divergence between the ideals
mouthed by us all, including the artists, and These artists, some of whom recently chal-
the practical affairs run by the Washington lenged the repressive conditions of our current
oligarchy. For most of the spectators, the life in a flag exhibition at the Judson Church,
hideous smell of death was totally unfamiliar, still like to see themselves as artists entering
as was the unabated series of gross tableaux. the political arena as artists. In the meeting
I'm sure Bayrak was not sorry that they were called to find means to fight the flag-desecra-
so outraged. Artists have nested peacefully in tion charges up to the Supreme Court, it was
the bosom of industrial New York, and are in clear that the majority thought of themselves
their way as insulated to the true horrors as as especially noble because they used art to
the uptown bourgeois. I heard many of them accuse the powers that be. Bayrak, on the
say, 'He should have done it on Park Avenue,' contrary, does not hide behind his status as an
but judging from their recoil, I should say it is artist. He expressed an opinion, whether
all the same. Within a few days of Bayrak's subtly or not, and a scathing denunciation.
event, and after a stern editorial in the New But such opinions, in the bosom of the art 3
York Times deploring it, and even a coarse world, were not welcome, which is a commen- John Salt
reportage in the allegedly progressive Village tary in itself on the conundrums besetting the Arrested Vehicle (Fat Seats) 1970
53 x 78 inches
Voice, Nixon started bombing North Vietnam, apparently successful artistic milieu down- Photo: Joel Peter Within
4 & 5
and the brave marauders adventured into the town. q Tosun Bayrak
empty prison camp. DORE ASHTON Love America or Live
Photo: Neal Spitzer
40