Page 20 - Studio International - February 1972

should be correctly reported even if the result artist in Africa and to promote his work. News and notes
does not read so sensationally. While on matters Apparently there is an increasing amount of
of fact, we must point out that the Ulster 'airport sales' which is killing the artist because
Museum is participating in ROSC by loans to it tempts him to churn out pot-boilers. The
the exhibitions at the Municipal Gallery, Council's aim seems to be to encourage the artist
Dublin, at Limerick, at Trinity College and the to develop a higher level of work for the more
J. B. Yeats exhibition at the National Gallery of noble market of discerning art collectors and art
Ireland, and that a number of the contributions museums.
to the 'Irish Imagination' catalogue come from This sounds very acceptable but I think that
writers in the North of Ireland. The Ulster a Council of Art in a developing country has
Museum is currently showing exhibitions of much wider opportunities. The Center for Advanced Visual Studies of
'Concrete Poetry' and J. B. Yeats as It is a common saying that Africa has the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has
contributions to ROSC. The former exhibition by-passed the wheelbarrow stage of received a $100,000 grant from the Samuel H.
continued until the end of January and is development. They find themselves suddenly Kress Foundation to be divided over a two-year
associated with the Guinness Concrete Poetry in the jet age. Logically she should also by-pass period. The first $50,000 has been matched by a
Award which has been designed to encourage that late Renaissance philosophy of grant from the National Endowment for the
artists throughout Ireland to prepare and exhibit art-for-art's-sake, an art intended for display Arts. The two grants will be used to further the
their own works in association with the main in discerning collections or in respectable innovative creative work that has taken place
exhibition. The number of entries received galleries. African art should truly reflect at the Center since it was established in 1967,
already, belies the suggestion that artists are Africa's pattern of development. Even more according to Institute Professor Gyorgy Kepes,
not interested in producing any work at present. than this, it should be an active factor in her Director of the Center. Professor Kepes sees
We wonder how Mr Hilton can be so development. the Center as a 'needed confluence between
dogmatic in his view that little art is being In other emergent cultures like those of Early scientific and technological knowledge and
produced in the North, as it would seem that Christian, Greek or Egyptian eras art was artistic creativity.' He has been encouraging
he did not visit the College of Art or any of the wholly integrated and played a vital part in the artists and scientists to collaborate on creative
other further education centres. We feel that his practice of social customs and industry of the projects since the 195os, when he conducted
comments are most unfair to the many artists times. At the present time the need for art is seminars at M.I.T. on themes relevant to both
who are working throughout Ireland. even more vital as a counter-balance to the art and science—such as structure, motion and
We hope that a magazine of your reputation powers of technology and economy which are module. Participants in the seminars included
will be prepared to pay rather more serious already making themselves felt in Africa. In our the late Norbert Wiener, Jerome B. Wiesner,
attention to what is going on in the Irish art own Western culture it is beginning to be now President of M.I.T., I.A. Richards,
world and will not subordinate the interests of recognized that art should be thought of in a biologist George Wald and and the late Sir
criticism to those of sensational journalism. We much more universal context than the ivory Herbert Read.
would welcome a critical assessment of the tower concept which we are just growing out In describing the Center, Kepes says : 'It is a
Ulster Museum and the art produced in the of. Art teachers recognize that art can help research center, or maybe more correctly a
North of Ireland. people be more perceptive of their environment "search" center, for new creative objectives,
ALAN WARHURST and therefore more able to avoid urban planning new formats in art. The aims of the Center are
Director disasters for example. Some recognize also that threefold. First, to investigate the possibilities
J. W. FORD SMITH visual organization can be applied to just about of creative work on a civic scale that could give
Keeper of Art every other human activity. In London recently new artistic dimensions to our urban
Ulster Museum Belfast we had an exhibition of Islamic art environment, and thus revitalize civic awareness
demonstrating how it integrated with to environmental values. Second, to develop
[Tim Hilton writes; The 'generalities mathematics to produce architectural decorations participatory artforms ; spectacles, events and
of a difficult situation' —what a emblematic of the philosophy of life of Islamic pageantry that might bring a new sense of
marvellously devious phrase—are precisely people. community to isolated individual lives. Third,
what cannot be ignored when thinking of the art Africa's primitive tribal artefacts and to learn to utilize new techniques of
situation in the Six Counties. Coverage was practices are dying very quickly to be replaced communications media to develop our
given to the new Ulster Museum and its modern by the more sophisticated equipment and way sensibilities as well as our consciousness of our
collection in this journal in September 1971. of life of our day. Africans must be made aware present ecological and social situation.'
The author of the article was one of the that art will help and guide this change. [Dr Kepes informs us that the Center welcomes
signatories of this letter. Perhaps he's forgotten (Incidentally, only this awareness will result in applications for fellowships from artists.]
about it. The Ulster Museum's programme is truly noble work—even of the art-for-art's-sake
worthy and dull. More important is the fact that kind.) The Gregory Fellows Exhibition 1972. The
the significant Rothenstein/Harrison Show had The right way to start would be to recruit fourth exhibition of work by the current holders
to be cancelled. I persist in my view that little imaginative tutors for the Colleges of Education of the Fellowships in Painting and Sculpture at
new art of interest is being produced in the (Teachers' Training) in Africa; tutors who can the University of Leeds will be held at Leeds
North. The man from the Ulster Museum's Art see beyond the Renaissance and inspire an City Art Gallery from 3 March to 4 April 1972.
department who acted as my guide did not see awareness of the uses of art. The Fellowships were established by the late
fit to take me to the three other commercial Therefore I think that the task of the African Peter Gregory in 195o, the current holders being
galleries mentioned, or to the College of Art, Council of Art is to make the Colleges the sculptor Richard Oginz and the painter Keith
and I don't suppose he was trying to conceal any understand the need and realize the opportunity Milow.
good art from me.] which exists at the present time. They could
learn, perhaps only just in time, a good lesson The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, held an
Art in Africa from the visual pollution evident in many parts exhibition to bring to public attention the work
The Africa Council of Art has recently been of the more sophisticated countries. it has been doing since its foundation seven
formed, according to Mr Walter Battiss's letter PHILIP LE BAS years ago. There have been io6 exhibitions in
in your November issue, to save the creative Winchester the various premises occupied by the gallery in

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