Page 43 - Studio International - December 1972

attention) is entitled 'Things in the World', Abstract drawings, unconcerned by the
UKcommentary: and aims 'to map and document the brute greater materiality of paint and its consequent
facts/categories/scanning devices/simulation holding to the picture surface, can offer more
notes on three systems which make up the world'. use of perspectives, of recession, than do
Furthermore, 'this grandiose endeavour allows abstract paintings. They don't have the same
exhibitions work on almost any project as a subject. Just need to spread out the concerns of their making
now working on the great wall of China/ over the fact of the canvas. Because of this, they
American Indians/animals/portrait boxes/etc., can reserve their informational content in a
etc.' There is a fair amount of playfulness way which paintings cannot. At the same time,
PAMELA ZOLINE'S STUDIO SHOW AT 13a PRINCE in all this, and in the simple interests of when abstract drawings are two-dimensional
OF WALES CRESCENT, LONDON NW5; RITA DONAGH rationality one is glad that the artist is not (and not biomorphic) they can all too often
AT NIGEL GREENWOOD; JOHN WALKER AT THE quite sure that she wishes her work to be taken have the air of being designs for a painting,
IKON GALLERY, BIRMINGHAM. seriously. Nevertheless, there are some things or of being diagrams — and thus extra-artistic
to be said. Firstly, it is extremely dangerous to some extent, however nicely done. The
Three shows this month offer some interesting, to be a Rauschenbergian, and that's what this essence of the diagram is that it is not freely
though sometimes banal, variations on the activity basically is. Rauschenberg's particular made within art, with art's concerns, however
difference between work and working, the ability in his best paintings to be both 'abstract' it may appear, since it is referential
finished product and the activity of making it, all-inclusive and coherent was a position so to matters, generally mundane, outside art.
the impermanent and the sublime. Pamela precariously held — and held largely by Maps are rather like this. They are
Zoline is an American artist resident in technical skills of a very high order — that it exceptionally elusive diagrammatic abstract
England whose reputation in London has been cannot be reasonably followed, or recreated. drawings. They are both literal and
sufficiently high for one to feel a definite sense It seems plain that if you're a skilful enough descriptive in the highest degree while
of disappointment at her first solo exhibition, artist to be able to play that game you would denotative of natural features in a visually
held in her studio under the aegis of the prefer to do something different anyway. A abstract and purely semiotic way: if you
ANGELA FLOWERS GALLERY. The work was not loosely soldered interest in inventories is a comprehend the convention, you can deduce
particularly different in nature from that friendly sort of stance which makes no demands the look of terrain from the look of a map,
shown at the Arts Lab three years ago. There on the artist, and gives no tautness to the while they themselves do not at all look alike.
was more of it, however, and it's rather more presentation. The continuous, heterogeneous This quietly dramatizes totally different modes
confident; it is remotely possible that this and scattered nature of Zoline's work was of knowledge. Thus, maps are very practical
stems from the fact that she has a project. Her emphasized by the studio situation in which it and worldly things, yet quickly reach a high
enterprise (I don't think she feels that single was seen, and its deficiencies slurred over by the level of practical uselessness as soon as the
works should be given too much individual homely atmosphere. signifier/signified relationship is lost or
obscured. Maps also have quite the
Pamela Zoline, Installation view, 1972 opposite relationship, formally, to the
descriptive depiction of the world's look
employed by Western European landscape
(so we only have crossovers at the time when
perspective was starting and the world came
to be understood as round — get in there,
Mercator!) in that maps work by ground plan
rather than by view. They don't employ
perspective (except perhaps when in extreme
difficulty, and I suppose the Mercatorial
attitude to the polar regions could be regarded
as desperately perspectival) and their account
of the world is taken from a position which is
supra-human, i.e., from above. Let's keep
aeroplanes out of this. Broadly, what maps
show is never seen but is on the whole true,
while what landscape art attempts is what is
seen but is on the whole untrue. It follows
that the artistic use of cartography will occur
at a point where abstract methods within the
picture combine with a good deal of information
outside the picture, which is not comprehensible
without the key, the legende, however studded
with clues it may be. Furthermore, in such
pictures perspectival and ground-plan
attitudes will necessarily be juggled in the
interests of a resolution combining an abstract
aspect with a definite body of knowledge,
understood, and putative understanding
on the part of the spectator. Writing on
Rita Donagh's Reflections on three weeks
in June 1970 at the time of its first
appearance at the John Moores exhibition,
I remarked on its affinities with certain
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