Page 17 - Studio International - May 1971

of the underlying values of industrialization. Another wing of the art-world certainly adopts systems—and also people, who are themselves
I am not suggesting that such a critique a serious mien, but when I read such transformed by industrial life.
should be `anti-American'; for the problems of representative statements as Seth Siegelaub's One of the problems of APG has been in
the USA are ours. Industrialization has been `There are really two types of people: artists and communication to all the parties concerned; and
one of the central themes of social criticism everyone else', or Joseph Kosuth's 'Art's only the difficult idiolect used by John Latham has
since the early nineteenth century, when it was claim is for art. Art is the definition of art', I feel not always helped matters. However, its
Britain who led the world in technology. that they are prolonging the romantic subsidy by the Arts Council will surely be
Raymond Williams's Culture and Society 1780- nineteenth-century notion of art as a looked back on as one of the latter's most far-
1950 is an important document here, especially specialized activity, which emerged (in defiance sighted decisions. No-one can pretend that APG
the chapter on Ruskin and Morris. of the word's etymology) as a basis for the has set itself an easy job; but the interest of
According to Theodore Roszak, author of critique of industrialism, but which was industrialists, financiers and union leaders will
The Making of a Counter Culture, an alternative decisively rejected by William Morris at the end certainly not slacken, if only because it breaks
to the industrialized culture is emerging which of that century. The terms in which Morris did the monotony of their daily routine, but also for
rejects the 'prying curiosity' of the scientist and so amount to a prophecy of some conceptual art: the more serious reason that there is now fairly
the 'lust for power' of the technologist; which An art cultivated professedly by a few, and for a wide recognition of the vulnerability of
turns back to a wronged but charismatic nature, few, who would consider it necessary—a duty if industrial orthodoxies.
and redefines knowledge as love. In a recent they could admit duties— to despise the common The real fault is that of artists, for not taking
lecture at the Royal College, Roszak predicted a herd, to hold themselves aloof from all that the up the new challenges. The facile anti-
split in the ecology movement as one section of world has been struggling for from the first, to capitalist postures of Bond Street artists like Joe
its adherents realize that their feelings of guard carefully every approach to their palace of Tilson do not help. It may have been
religious or magical communion with nature art ... that art at last will seem too delicate a thing encouraging for the postmen to have their
have no scientific justification or support. for even the hands of the initiated to touch; and the strike fund augmented by the proceeds from a
Roszak is a poet or itinerant evangelist. A initiated must at last sit still and do nothing—to the special postage-stamp by Hockney depicting a
man who tells a commuter audience that they grief of no one. vase of tulips (published by Edizioni 0); but
should respect primitive peoples, or General Morris believed `The cause of Art is the cause this is not winning back art to the daily labour of
Electric executives that the best thing they can of the people. . . .One day we shall win back Art, the people—it is a favour tossed from Mayfair. A
do is go out of business, is clearly a valuable that is to say the pleasure of life: win back Art to more relevant recent event (though I cannot say
stimulus. But in so far as he offers solutions they our daily labour'. This is still a valid goal, and it it was well executed) was the exhibition at the
are implausibly simple. is what matters in Morris, the early Soviet artists Sigi Krauss Gallery focussing on the 'dirty jobs'
There will always be those who drop out of and the Bauhaus, much more than their detailed strike last year.
industrialization: some who would go insane if prescriptions. The lack of interest in industry from most
they did not, and some whose commitment to Artists today should accept that they are art schools is scandalous. There is much truth in
ideals peripheral to the major issues racking living not in a local economic recession only, but Sjoerd Hannema's Fads, Fakes and Fantasies:
society is a real inspiration. The nostalgic against a permanent worldwide background of The Crisis in the Art Schools and the Crisis in Art
painting of Peter Blake is an honourable economic crisis and political and social tension. (Macdonald, 1970). I see this book as a claim for
example; but it can only be taken seriously as Seen thus, the principles of the Artist Placement provincial values against the dominance of the
art by those for whom adult life is such a strain Group are well-founded, better so than those of metropolis. Hannema barely touches on the
that they can sustain sensitivity and tenderness the more opportunistic and pragmatic issues raised at Hornsey, and he identifies a
of feeling only by reverting to a childhood Experiments in Art and Technology in New tradition of 'anti-art' which somehow embraces
world. York. APG rejects as models the artist/technician Picasso, Pollock and Hockney. There is a lot to
There is little art practised today that is relationship, the sponsorship of one-off projects be said for the art schools against Hannema's
serious, and most of the major reputations are by companies, and the supply of materials. attack, and of course they should not be
over-inflated. The brilliant virtuosity and Artists, they argue, should not just use new swallowed up by polytechnics. But it should be
seeming freshness of Warhol or Richard techniques, but confront industry in a wider urged that, just as many of them were founded
Hamilton—celebrated with equal virtuosity by sense—studying the total resources of a given to serve industry in the nineteenth century by
Richard Morphet in his Tate catalogues— company or industry by which inputs are providing design skills, so they could now serve
values.
resembles the insidious glamour of cosmetics to transformed into outputs through industrial industry again by helping to revitalize its ailing
which, in Death in Venice, the dying von processes. 'Total resources' includes raw
Aschenbach resorts amid a plague-stricken city. materials, capital equipment, accounting JONATHAN BENTHALL

Art and industry
American fragmentation bombs, containing steel
splinters or arrows, are often coloured and shaped to
look like various fruits (oranges, pineapples, mangoes,
etc.) and named after the particular fruit. They are not
of the type that is left around as a bait, but are dropped
from aircraft, lending colour and harmony to a
monotonous routine. Thus their function, like that of
much of the art discussed in this article, may be classed
as purely aesthetic.
(photo by Professor and Mrs Steven Rose,
December 1970; most of the weaponry was picked up
after November noth bombing raid over Hanoi)
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