Page 59 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

process-oriented, spontaneous video-art. His eternal order, Youngblood doesn't sufficiently
concepts are necessary for creatively, visually justify his own terms for using nature as a model
dealing with and understanding technological for anything. His major weakness is in attempting
possibilities, in a nonreactionary manner. to fit specific examples into preconceived
Youngblood wants a `synergetic art' where the concepts. This conflict prevents him from
whole is always more than the sum of the parts. utilizing his own definitions consistently and
His concept is of `synaesthetic cinema' as extra- among other things condemning Kubrick's
objective, as the harmony of opposing impulses lamentable film 2001.
(not either/or but both/and). As he says, `it's not a At moments the juxtapositions, syntheses,
matter of Yes/No, but Yes/No/Maybe' (and, I explorations, are brilliant. Unfortunately such
would add, Maybe-not.) Synaesthetic cinema is literariness appeals to those who either probably
an 'art of relations'. He sees process as the art of never can experience visually the way
today, rather than the infinitely outworn Youngblood does anyway, or else already do so.
concept of 'content'. He feels all content has Of those who don't and could learn to, few will
been explored and is now in our genetic make- have the precocious verbal education the book
up, functioning purely restrictively. demands. Expanded Cinema should be rewritten,
Youngblood's book is important for concepts, repictorialized, and fed to five-year-olds, or
but also for personal insight into art of the `past', deverbalized adults with the open-ended interest
such as Michael Snow's 1967 film, Wavelength. of five-year-olds. Expanded people. Do they
The four-page analysis is a clear exposition of exist ? Can they ? Undying technological
the film's reality. 'Like all truly modern art, utopianism certainly doesn't give the answer. q
Wavelength is pure drama of confrontation. It PETER GIDAL
has no "meaning" in the conventional sense. Its
meaning is the relationship between film and Heroic Americans
viewer. We are interested more in what it does
than what it is as an icon. The confrontation of Abstract Expressionism; The Triumph of American
art and spectator, and the spectator's resultant Painting by Irving Sandler. 301 pp, with 200
self-perception, is an experience rather than a monochrome and 24 colour illustrations. Pall
meaning.' This kind of writing is analytic, while Mall Press. £8.
not intellectualized to the point of preventing the The New York School; Abstract Expressionism in
reader from wanting to experience the film the 40s and 50s edited by Maurice Tuchman.
him(her)self. Sometimes Youngblood is just 228 pp, with III monochrome and 20 colour
plain wrong. Still referring to Wavelength, he illustrations. Thames and Hudson. £2.10
states, 'It is post-Warhol because it confronts hardback, £2.25 paper.
the illusory nature of cinematic reality; it
presents not only "pure" time and space, but That there was some sort of art-historical
also filmic time (fragmented) and space (two- `movement' in the decade after the conclusion of
dimensional, nonperspectival).' Films such as World War II can hardly be denied. After all,
Warhol's Sleep and the out-of-focus Poor Little the creative centre of Western European culture
Rich Girl are evidence enough to negate this seems to have either emigrated to rich America
assertion. or become devastated by war effort; and the
Fuller, in his introduction, says 'Gene pictorial language of previous European star-
Youngblood's book is the most brilliant painters did little to assist 'reading' the
conceptualizing of the objectively positive use of significance of the mind-blowing paintings
the Scenario-Universe principle, which must be exhibited throughout Europe in 1958-59 as 'The
employed by humanity to synchronize its senses New American Painting'. The painters
and its knowledge in time to insure the themselves were not unaware of their pivotal art-
continuance of... humanity...' He and historical position; in 195o they had argued at a
Youngblood forget that the medium is the tape-recorded discussion about how did they
message, and the medium is capitalism. constitute a 'movement', if it should be named,
Youngblood thinks it's the dawn of man; sees a and if so, what name ? There seems to be no
`buckskinned, barefooted atomic scientist consensus even yet, for the first two widely
working out the heuristics of computer- published books purporting to document this
generated holograms. We'll soon be free enough movement are titled 'Abstract Expressionism' by
to discover who we are.' The notion of power is Irving Sandler and 'The New York School' by
not dealt with. Maurice Tuchman; and someday there will be
The overall tenure of Youngblood's William Rubin's book-catalogue emerging from
assertions should be used as information and/or the Museum of Modern Art's grand 1969
impulse, rather than authoritativeness or exhibition titled 'The New American Painting
polemics. 'All language is but substitute vision' and Sculpture: The First Generation'.
is conceptually a revolutionary idea if understood The publication of Irving Sandler's book is of
and acted upon consequently; on the other hand, the greatest general importance so far. It looks
Youngblood's pronouncements can be sloppy: like a cocktail-table book, but it is a serious
... chaos is order on another level ...the new attempt to provide concrete information about
artist sets to find the rules of structure by which what the painters were saying and thinking and
nature has achieved this.' Apart from the doing at the time—as well as Sandler's
incorrectness of seing nature as some sort of descriptions of the socio-economic context and
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