Page 32 - Studio International - June 1971

Some thoughts on Art and Technology has had as one of its first serious ideological limitation holds also for the
premises the assumption that it is possible, and Bauhaus precept regarding the relation of art to
`Art and perhaps valuable, to effect a practical technology, inasmuch as technology was
interchange between artists and members of the equated with craft; one might say that the
Technology' corporate-industrial society. The various Bauhaus theorists were aiming to reduce art to
cultural attitudes surrounding such a premise craft, in a sense, and reversing the proposition
Jane Livingston are deeply ambivalent. On virtually every level, that the role of organized technology would be
including the popularly shared ideas and fears to elevate craft to art. The impulse which
about the influence of 'advanced technology' on informed the Bauhaus rationale and its
the life of the masses, as well as the many subtle antecedents in European Constructivism
analyses of writers and critics evaluating the toward a socialization of art in a public context
relationships between art, or the humanities, and has developed to the present time, but in so far as
technology, qualities of emotionalism and it survives in its original spirit has to an extent
partisanship prevail. continued to remain identified with a European
Without delving extensively into recent sensibility. Victor Vasarely's conviction that a -t
historical antecedents to some contemporary should evolve out of its traditionally aristocratic
aspects of the art/technology issue, one or two `unique object' framework and be
skeletal observations are called for. The attempts mass-produced for public consumption is an
to embrace a socialist technology by the extension of a classically Bauhaus idea. (A
Russian Constructivists and by the Italian certain reaction to the 'precious-object
In the April issue of Studio International Futurists, during the early part of this century, syndrome' has certainly become a part of the
Maurice Tuchman, senior curator, Modern Art, were guided by a Utopian (if nominally American art scene in the 6os and early 7os, but
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern iconoclastic) view of progressive technology, is manifested in approaches which generally
Art, outlined the programme which led up to the but it did not fully succeed in transcending a differ in kind from that of Vasarely.)
massive 'Art and Technology' exhibition now at romantic and somewhat anachronistic level of To some extent, artists currently are
the Museum (until mid-September). Here, Jane awareness on the part of its exponents. The discouraged from engaging in 'collusive'
Livingston, associate curator, describes some of the Constructivist and Futurist artists seldom relationships with organized technological
factors that affected the relationships between achieved internal stylistic manifestations of new concerns by pressures from the
artists and the industries supporting and technology, but instead represented the intellectual/critical circles of which they are
fabricating their projects. appearances of industrial/mechanical things. A inescapably a part. The contemporary pressures,

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