Page 61 - Studio International - July August 1971

could be considered as the kind of verbal Burnham seems to try to study art and its those who borrow them. Douglas writes:
speculation which itself attains the status of art history like some ethnographer observing the `Given the materials for analysis (any
through its imaginative power. Art, I believe, social structure of a tribe. (` Works of art are limited cultural field), given the techniques
can take anything—including fallacious totems which systematically define themselves by of analysis (selection of pairs of contrasted
reasoning—and turn it into meaning; but to be their associations with other works.') His choice elements)—there is no possibility of an
exempt from the ordinary rules of rational of case-studies represents a 'cross-section of analyst going forth to display the structures
discourse it must claim some unusual significant art for the present American underlying symbolic behaviour and coming
spontaneous depth of insight. Burnham's work avant-garde' . I doubt if this 'cross-sectioning' home discountenanced. He will succeed,
is, as ever, studded with brilliant asides, for is meaningful, believing, after Leavis, that because he takes with him a tool designed for
instance: `Discrimination is life, indiscrimination is revealing structures and because the general
It is increasingly apparent that Formalism death'. A twentieth-century art history which hypothesis only requires him to reveal
consists of early twentieth-century Behaviorism has no room for the work of, say, Hine and them ... He will inevitably bring out of his
and Gestalt theory, fused to postclassical but Walker Evans seems to me so sectarian that a research a series of structured oppositions
neo-idealist esthetics, and applied to art as a truly ethnographic study is called for, one which are all finally resolvable into the
scholarly tool. (p. 37) which does not endorse the values of the system contrast of culture with nature.' (my italics)
If an artist were to design a monumental work observed. `Lévi-Strauss hopes to discover no less than
embodying the greatest possible union between Burnham concedes that his summations of the restrictive patterning inherent in the
man's position on Earth and the cyclical events Lévi-Strauss and the others are thin treatments nature of thought itself... Structural analysis
of the chief celestial bodies, the obvious choice of rather difficult subjects', but he is unfair to is about personal creativity. Best of all it is a
would be some variant of [Stonehenge]. (p. 178) his reader in not stressing the complications and do-it-yourself kit for being creative... When
But his case-studies use 'descriptive fragments doubts radiating from them. The arguments the laws of the human mind are unwrapped
culled from the popular writings of critics, against Lévi-Strauss are mentioned in passing, they amount to two alleged discoveries. One
historians, and artists', and he seems much more but we are asked to discount them (p. 6) on the turns out to be the process itself for reducing
interested in art history than in the fresh authority of Edmund Leach. Lévi-Strauss is information to binary contrasts ... The other
perception of art which is renewed in every clearly a great mind by any standards. But the is the conclusion that, since nature can be
generation. strictures of Mary Douglas —a British identified with continuity, and culture with
It is strange that the idea of art history is still anthropologist much influenced, like Leach, by discontinuity, the myths are "about" the
respected in the visual arts whereas in literary Lévi-Strauss, and whose own work on symbols contrast of nature with culture, the essence
studies 'literary history' has been virtually and rites would in fact substantiate Burnham's of the human condition. So that's what the
replaced by an idea of criticism where a general case—are to be reckoned with since myths are about!'
discriminating, and hence evaluative, creative they draw attention to an element of looseness These criticisms may or may not be fair to
response is not to be divorced from the in Lévi-Strauss's procedures which is likely to Lévi-Strauss's The Raw and the Cooked; I fear
historical mapping of styles and idioms. be indulged in, rather than tightened up, by they would be fair to Burnham's attempt to

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JULY/AUGUST Artists contributing are: Canadian Art Today Ben Nicholson
EXHIBITION Giovanni Anselmo
Eleanor Antin Editor William Townsend Editor Maurice de Sausmarez
BOOK Keith Arnatt This publication represents the most
Terry Atkinson comprehensive and definitive 92 pp., 34 pp. of illustrations, of
JUILLET/AOOT David Bainbridge study yet published outside Canada which 16 pp. in colour. Price:
EXPOSITION John Baldessari of post-war Canadian art. £1.37, $4 softback. Postage : UK
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LIVRE Robert Barry Contributors include such
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Harold Cohen 100 pp., 165 ill. (15 colour plates). Editor Jasia Reichardt
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Jan Dibbets Postage : UK 10p, overseas 20p Published in conjunction with the
Barry Flanagan Institute of Contemporary Arts,
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