Page 54 - Studio International - July August 1971

century. Vorticism remains his finest pleading, slurring over the deficiencies in examination, but we don't get this, and I feel
achievement, and the subsequent slow decline Rivers's art—those things which, within the that such an important historiographical/
amounts almost to a paradigm of England's context of American pictorial ambition, one critical point should not have been missed.
refusal to sustain a vital dialogue with the can only regard as, at the best, lackadaisical—by Much the same happens with straight visual
pioneering forces of modern art. q an insistence on a certain kind of historical art history. Hunter makes a point of the effect
RICHARD CORK placing, viz, that Rivers comes between of the Bonnard exhibition at the MOMA in
Abstract Expressionism and Pop. Two views of 1948 (just before which, interestingly enough
1 Lewis. Futurism, Magic and Life. From the 'Vorteces
and Notes' published in BLAST I, London 1914, history are involved here; first, that a person but not mentioned in this book, Clement
p 134. was important because he was around (which I Greenberg had hinted that Bonnard might
'Lewis. 'A Review of Contemporary Art'. BLAST II,
London 1915, p 44. believe to be true), secondly (which I also believe indicate a route for abstraction that made a
'Lewis. Rude Assignment: A Narrative of My Career to be true) that a person is important because he detour round Cubism)—which might be okay
Up to Date. London 195o, p 129. did things, made history happen. The art except that it's totally unsupported by the
4Lewis. Ibid., p 13o.
history of the twentieth century has plates; in them, quite on the contrary, one
consistently stressed the latter view, and with finds a different art history story. Picasso, fifty
Beached promise good reason, given the standard avant-garde years before, had been repelled by Bonnard's
aesthetic. But I object to the way that Hunter petit-bourgeois domesticity, and what comes
Larry Rivers by Sam Hunter. 236pp with 52 blurs his stances between historical approaches.
colour and 221 monochrome illustrations. Rivers did indeed brush against some inter- out of these pictures was that Rivers was
Harry N. Abrams, New York. Distributed in esting things in art culture, even if he didn't dependent not on Bonnard, and perhaps for
the same reasons, but on Pascin, whose
UK by New English Library. £10.50.
make much of them. One can't tell with this bohemianism, glamour, and trip to New
This book, like some other new monographs, book whether his involvement with jazz Orleans in the early jazz days, quite clearly had
reminds us that English artists' and critics' is an example of this, despite the fact that it's attractions to Rivers beyond the fact that his
relationships with America need a particular rather pushed, since Hunter is lax on the subject, washy and negligeed early portraits and
kind of sharpening—not necessarily based on in all ways. When he remarks that Braque's figure groups are technically and design-wise
chauvinistic claims for artistic status, certainly great 1912 Homage toj. S. Bach was 'appropriate very similar to that European wanderer's.
looking beyond the cold-war-period anti- to the jazzman Rivers because "an improvisa- One could go on at length like this, but the
Americanism current when Patrick Heron tion"', and influenced him, one just has to give holes in Hunter's account are so obvious that
was writing, certainly beyond the wide-eyed Pop a pshaw. Still, on a broader front, the relations one doesn't need to pick them any further. I
period which succeeded that phase. The between jazz and painting, the only two modern don't want to be churlish about the book, but
mood now is of an appalled interest in an art forms indigenous to America, should I think that an artist like that getting such
America whose art seems so less relevant than obviously be explored. Hunter won't mention accommodating treatment in such a prestige
its politics, but whose art, maybe for that same it, but Rivers is surely a test case here, given the format only indicates that something has gone
reason, strikes one as grappling with the fact that there is an almost total black/white badly wrong between Rivers's resolution on that
relevance of art in a way that is hardly seen split between the two arts (see Leroi Jones on Long Island beach and the promotion of some
in the rest of the world. The most important 'Jazz and the White Critic') and since Rivers kinds of American art since then. And less than
critical and historical problems facing any has had a deliberate involvement with black a decade separates Pollock's example and
interpreter of art today concern America's art, beginning with the African paintings and Rivers's uninspired progeny, Jim Dine and Ron
changes in the last twenty years. No English recently going into the co-operational and Kitaj —in which context Mr Hunter might have
person who ignores this is seriously concerned programmatic thing on the Black Experience. considered the real achievement of Robert
with art. This is a critical question not necessarily Rauschenberg as a corrective to his wholly
Of course, some Americans have lived because one doubts Rivers's personal and dubious claims for Rivers's artistic importance.
through these matters, and are nonetheless political sincerity in such a situation, but TIM HILTON
dilettanti. Here is an account of a visit two rather because one doubts, on all the evidence,
young painters made to Jackson Pollock; 'We whether his art can rise to a cruelly fragmented Underground and around
saw his large light studio; tremendous canvases situation in such a way as to remain viable as
piled on the floor, perhaps fifteen on top of each art or as social behaviour. These questions, so Experimental Cinema: A Fifty Year Evolution by
other... We had lunch in his house. The agonizing to white liberalism and to informed art David Curtis. 155 pp with 150 monochrome
amount of work combined with his serious talk criticism, are so precisely to the point that one illustrations. Studio Vista. £2.75.
and the monastic lack of housiness moved us. must blame Sam Hunter for so easily avoiding Underground Film by Parker Tyler. 23o pp with
About an hour after the visit Helen and I were them. 73 monochrome illustrations. Secker and
standing on a deserted beach with drawn faces Similarly, one must say that Hunter avoids Warburg. £2.75.
looking into the ocean which by now had questions of a more enclosed artistic type. His The Film Director as Superstar by Joseph
become an ancient abyss, promising to devote account of Rivers's experience as a pupil of Gelmis. 316 pp with 15 illustrations. Secker and
ourselves even more determinedly and Hans Hofmann is a dodger, and since there Warburg. £2 .75.
forever to ART.' have been searching accounts by Darby David Curtis's book is a historical account of
Deeply felt by succeeding generations of Bannard which are not considered in this text— film, as technical innovation, as experiment, as
American painters, the nobility and stringency and why not ?—one begins to feel that Hunter is art. He's done his homework and come up with
of Pollock's example might be adequately con- peeling his oranges in his pocket. Like he says a readable account. Unfortunately, he doesn't
veyed by this slightly overblown recollection, that Rivers 'won from Hofmann the concession clearly define the avant garde per se, nor does he
had it not come from the pen of Larry Rivers, that the artist's psychological insight did after explicate the ethic that separates many of the
whose career since that occasion (it was in all count', and then links this with some kind of underground film-makers of today from
1951) has consistently demonstrated the defence of the way that Rivers has made so innovative precursors who, nevertheless, were
fragility of whatever vows he made by those much use, if that is the word, of the fragment. content to tell stories (however abstract) and set
Atlantic vistas and breakers. Maybe this is why That the fragmentary mode is so totally at up elitist models of (film-) life. None of the films
Sam Hunter doesn't quote it in his lavish and variance with any major contemporary American are interpreted in any great detail; Curtis has
well-documented review of Rivers's work, a painting, Abstract Expressionist, Pop, or written an account, has written descriptive
book which is indeed an exercise in special otherwise, might therefore deserve paragraphs which often do, though, give a clear
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