Page 18 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

rather than central to Haacke's work. When he by Sonfist using natural mineral crystals within `alive but only in parenthesis', impotent and
moves into social—as opposed to non-human a hollow glass sphere sealed at its cylindrical without repercussion on reality. To me they
—systems, as in Visitors' Profile (1969), when base. The configurations formed within it are seem remarkably pregnant models of larger
visitors' replies to a questionnaire about never twice the same, following a environmental processes. Sonfist also
themselves are statistically processed and self-regenerating cycle: (1) the crystals fall to presented at his exhibition two 'nationwide'
tabulated by a computer, there is a danger of the base through gravity; (2) on application of works : a sign asking spectators to mail their
his becoming superficial (as Dore Ashton noted heat or light, the crystals are vaporized into a congressmen 'pieces of pollution' from their
last November). Haacke's true strength lies in purplish gas which migrates upwards area, and a wrapper reading 'Please recycle
his feeling for the mysteries of natural energies, throughout the spherical space; (3) the vapour this can' which, pasted on a tin, could be sent
change and rhythms. Sociologically he is naive, crystallizes and the crystals adhere to the inside to the president of the Continental Can Co. As
and 'systems thinking' when applied to human surface of the glass. with Haacke, these seem to me peripheral
beings can be a trap. Other pieces of Sonfist's use invisible gestures compared to the body of Sonfist's
I would like to test Jean Clay's analysis by micro-organisms which are attracted by food work—in fact rather more anaemic than
considering the work of a young American, and form an iridescent organic culture; or Haacke's since they are likely to meet with the
Alan Sonfist, who recently exhibited at the snails which eat their path into algae; or mucor approval of almost everyone, and the
Reese Palley Gallery in New York, and who growing on bread. In another piece, the Continental Can Co. might well feature the
seems to me to share the mainstream of Haacke' viewer's presence is picked up by a incident in its next advertisement in Scientific
inspiration. He is the most interesting new seismographic detector and causes patterns American.
artist I have met recently. (He is associated to appear on an oscilloscope. In another, beans If Clay believes that the more art upsets the
with the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at are grown in a vertical germination-box on a bourgeoisie, the better it is, then this is a
MIT.) wall, recalling Chinese landscape-painting — consistent position. But it is at variance with
My illustration shows a magnificent piece perhaps with an additional association of my own experience of art. The essential
Chinese cuisine. (The principle here is like that morality of Haacke's work or Sonfist's lies in
of a transparent bee-hive or 'ant-ranch'.) their 'modelling' of processes of growth,
Alan Sonfist Clay would presumably see these works as rhythm and renewal.
Glass and Natural Crystals 1968
Hollow glass sphere and mineral crystals 14 x 12 in. John Noel Chandler's article on Haacke
aptly quotes John Donne:
Change is the nursery
Of musicke, joy, life, and eternity.
Our perception today of the whole environment
as system would surely have appealed to Donne
and his 'metaphysical' contemporaries, with
their frequent allusions to consonance between
microcosm and macrocosm. Sonfist calls his
pieces 'ecological systems', and the system
illustrated in this article reminds me of one of
Donne's elaborate poetic conceits where a
geometer's sphere is reduced to a human eye
or tear-drop, then enlarged to a sun or planet.
According to one social anthropologist3, we
have hitherto tended to envisage our society as
a vertical tube consuming at one end and
excreting rubbish at the other; this image
becomes inappropriate now, as we become
conscious of recycling possibilities and of the
relativity of rubbish. The gap between mouth
and anus has been bridged. I know of no modern
poetry which conveys this changed feeling for
the environment in words. But visual works like
Haacke's and Sonfist's can express a powerful
symbolism. A seventeenth-century
metaphysical poet might have seen this
Sonfist piece as an hour-glass, perhaps, turned
in on itself and freed from timekeeping. q
JONATHAN BENTHALL

1 See also Studio International October 197o (Georg
Jappe) and November 197o (Dore Ashton); John
Noel Chandler, 'Hans Haacke: the Continuity of
Change', Artscanada June 1969; B. Vinklers, 'Hans
Haacke', Art International September 1969; and
Jack Burnham, Artforum September 1968 and
September 1969.
Haacke will have an exhibition at the Guggenheim for
six weeks from 3o April next.
2 See Times Literary Supplement 3o October 1970:
`Environments at Risk' by Mary Douglas; and
4 December 1970: 'Ideas of Nature' by Raymond
Williams.
3Michael Thompson, 'The death of rubbish', New
Society 28 May 197o.
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