Page 50 - Studio International - September 1971

Multiples Defining the of Josiah Wedgwood and the Art Unions.
Nevertheless Morris remains the major
supplement public precursor—inspirer of Art Nouveau, the
Russian Constructivists, the Bauhaus.
Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in
1919 as a 'consulting centre for industry and the
trades'. The art schools, he found, were
preoccupied 'with the idea of individual genius
... the great mass of these individuals
(students) ... condemned to a life of fruitless
What one must now call the 'multiple artistic activity'. (He might come to the same
movement' is only some 12 years old —if conclusion on a tour of art schools today.) In
dated from Daniel Spoerri's first MAT building the new egalitarian Jerusalem, the
Editions in 1959. The most important effort Russian Constructivists and the artists of the
to annotate and study this history was John L. Bauhaus sought to by-pass the commercial art
Tannock's exhibition Multiples, The First system and obliterate the sentimental notion
Decade, recently at the Philadelphia Museum of the artist as a suffering god. Moholy-Nagy
of Art (5 March to 4 April 1971). The pre- (with Duchamp the most important twentieth-
history of the movement, however, is not only century influence on the multiple development)
longer, but in some senses more important. wished `to go beyond vanity into the realm of
One does not need to indulge in art history to objective validity, serving the public as an
acknowledge that Roman figurines, medieval anonymous agent'. 'The collector's naive
wood-cuts, Renaissance bronzes, were all desire for the unique can hardly be justified,'
multiples. If you must tackle the problem he added. 'It hampers the cultural potential of
historically the starting point, surely, is the mass consumption'. Moholy-Nagy experimented
Industrial Revolution. As Jeremy Fry once put with various multiple forms, notably
it in the literature of his multiple firm photograms, but it was the famous event in
Unlimited— 'This is not a revolution. The 1922 when he ordered paintings in porcelain
Industrial Revolution was a revolution. We're enamel by telephone, which must be regarded
merely cashing in on it and making a natural as the genesis. In Abstract of an Artist
revolution in the art world.' Richard Hamilton he explains : 'I had the factory's colour chart
pointed in the same direction, during a BBC in front of me and I sketched my paintings on
radio discussion: 'It isn't a particularly new graph paper. At the other end of the telephone
idea, in fact it's rather a Victorian idea. As the factory supervisor had the same kind of
soon as it became possible to cast iron, paper divided into squares. He took down the
sculptors began to work in cast iron and sell dictated shapes in the correct position.... True,
them in quite large quantities. Some of the these pictures did not have the virtue of the
best multiple works that exist are Art Nouveau "individual touch", but my action was directed
table lamps and the like.' exactly against this over-emphasis.'
The Industrial Revolution had more Vasarely, more than any other living artist,
profound repercussions than providing the developed Moholy-Nagy's philosophy:
means of mass-production; it created a ... the myth of the unique work of art will
depressed working-class, a moneyed middle- disappear and the multipliable work of art will
class, vast social and economic divisions of triumph at last through the benefit of the
society. Without this background the modern machine. Let us not fear the new tools which
art-gallery system could never have developed; technique has given us. We can only live
and in turn this commercialization of art authentically in our own time. Achieving large-
perpetuated the Renaissance 'deification' of the scale distribution is necessary to answer the
artist, the notion that the subject or the purpose vast demand which comes to us from the world.'
of art was not important, what mattered was `The masterpiece is no longer a concentration
that it was by a particular master. Uniqueness of all qualities in one final object, but the
became an aesthetic religion and a commercial creation of a prototype comprising specific
creed. There was bound to be a reaction; qualities transmittable in diverse methods ...
indeed one could write the whole history of Thanks to modern techniques, it is possible for
twentieth-century art as the analysis of the them to be multiplied and diffusible at the same
resultant guilt complex. It is not surprising to time, available to a vast community.' (1954.)
Diter Rot
Literaturwarste 1970 find one of the earliest expressions of it from Moholy-Nagy and Vasarely have had an
Edition 25 an English socialist (a particularly sensitive enormous influence; on Groupe de Recherche
Galerie René Block
breed). 'Have nothing in your houses', said d'art Visuel; on Spoerri, the first multiples
2 Alice Hutchins William Morris, 'that you do not know to be publisher; on Joe Tilson when he writes:
Petit Jeu
Magnet and ball-bearings 55 mm high useful, or believe to be beautiful'; to which he `It is difficult to decide whether it is the previous
Edition unlimited added the plea, 'What business have we with insularity of British artists or the perversion of
Editions Alecto art at all unless we can share it'. If only Morris, Art History by Paris or the simplism of art
3 Chris Rodgers like Ruskin before him, hadn't been terrified historians that has kept us until recently
Small 'Bible' Illuminated 5970 of the machine, Britain might well have been comparatively uninformed about earlier
Acrylic and wood
Edition 6 in the forefront of the modern 'multiple artists' ideas on the relationship of art to
Angela Flowers movement', following the important precedents technology and society' (Art and Artists June

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