Page 26 - Studio International - February 1972

(outside Frankfurt) team of Thomas Bayrle Whether any of these people really know
and Bernhard Jager, whose richly confused, what they are doing is another matter. They
sometimes visceral mixtures of letters, shapes have simply been following their nose, which
and colours, on a scale ranging from the book- organ has led them into the same borderline
page to the poster, made a spectacular exhibition territory from their various different directions
at the Klingspor museum in Offenbach some and angles. It may well lead them out of it
three years ago. again, and of course they don't spend all their
Their work is infinitely freer than concrete time in it by any means. Probably they would
poetry, and it verges on the kind of large scale hate to be classed together, even for that part of
calligraphic statement we associate with their activities which brings them on to common
Motherwell and Kline in the US, or Soulages ground. None the less they have combined over
and Hartung (another expatriate German) in the last decade and a half to set us a whole
Paris, though nothing like as slickly rhetorical variety of more or less entertaining exercises in
as these. There is also in Germany a school of complex seeing, where words, symbols,
glorified sign-painting that links with the work numbers, colour and space relationships have
of Robert Indiana and, more remotely, Jasper to be taken in all at once and be grasped,
Johns. The extreme case of such mock-semiotics however hazily and intuitively, in the mind so as
is that of the Frankfurt artist-cum-Happenings- to convey a total message. This is, of course,
monger Bazon Brock, who devises and markets something in a sense distinct from art, in that its
stove-enamelled signs of the kind normally ultimate relevance, once the laws of this kind of
associated with exhortations such as apprehension have been understood, refined and
`Lebensgefahr !' or 'Nicht hinauslehnen !' on put to conscious use, is as a shorthand means of
the Federal railways, but here carrying nonsense describing an increasingly complicated world.
inscriptions. There are also the large sign But it is one of art's characteristics that its half-
paintings of Winfred Gaul and Ferdinand conscious probings so often feel the way for
Kriwet, an artist who is marginal to the main later, more systematic researches. In Germany,
concrete movement but has none the less at least, the probing has been going on, more
experimented in literary-typographic directions. widely and with more backing from the rest of
His reportage Apollo-Amerika, for instance, on society than in other countries. The notion of an
the first moon landing, makes hay of the interdisciplinary, international verbal-cum-
traditional linear order of the book by having graphic art is accepted. It is open to anybody,
the chronological sequence run from front to anywhere, to take it further. q
back, with an alphabetical catalogue of relevant
items running from back to front on the opposite
7 Bayrle and Jager
pages. The title page then comes under I (for Double page opening from V. 0. Stomps's
relatively small editions for connoisseurs, often Impressum), and Kriwet's contract with the Artistisches ABC 1964
designed and illustrated by the extraordinarily publishers under S (for Suhrkamp-Verlag). 8 Bayrle and Jager
versatile Werner Klemke. All the same the Wolf Vostell too, who is best known as an Single page from
publications of the more avant-garde fringe exponent of Happenings—he has conducted Artistisches ABC 1964
have an authority quite unusual for this class of them in various German cities and also in New 9 Ferdinand Kriwet
work, and it is surprising that they are not more York—has practised a random form of reversed Page from
widely cited. Merz which he calls `décollage' (or unsticking), Apollo-Amerika 1969
Aside from the pure concrete movement there and which produces works like stripped-down to Wolf Vostell
are three (to me) outstanding cases, of which the poster hoardings with their intriguing scraps of Grosse Sitzung mit Da
first two develop from the specific German colour and torn-off words. Like Claes Decollage
tradition of writer-artist which produced Oldenburg he has an impressively individual Dieter Rot
Barlach and, more recently, Günter Grass. The method of graphic notation for his schemes, Diary page 1969
Rixdorfer Drucke, the first of these, were a even those that seem likely to be tedious enough
series of hand-printed broadsheets published in if put into effect. Quite the most interesting
Berlin using old wood-block letters and woodcut handler of the mixed medium however is Dieter
illustrations by Ali Schindehütte, Günter Bruno Rot, that astonishingly fertile man who uses his
Fuchs and similar artists, Fuchs being also a considerable gifts as poet, graphic designer,
good satirical poet. The second is a poet of the colourist, draughtsman and typographer with a
same generation, Christoph Meckel, whose work rare blend of fluency and originality. His
has become known here and in America through notebooks, once again, are beautiful, and if the
the advocacy of Christopher Middleton; like set-piece books which he also makes (out of bad
Fuchs's group, he has done illustrations for the typesetting, torn-up newspaper, combinations of
Neue Rabenpresse in Berlin and the printers' rules or, in Mundunculum, clusters of
Eremitenpresse north of Frankfurt, both of rubber stamps) are often disturbingly nihilistic,
which are associated with the old poet- they none the less give a unique impression of
publisher V. 0. Stomps, but his special gift is what he calls 'the OUTOFFOCUS feeling of a
for the production of picture stories in the genre rapid and indeterminate JOURNEYING and
established by Masereel, such as the free- SWIMMINGAROUND in life and round the
enterprise Babel of Der Turm, which Ellermann things in it'. Like Klee or Duchamp, though to
of Munich published in an edition designed by very different purposes, he seems to think
Rohse in 1961. The third instance, quite naturally in terms of mixed notations in which
different from the others, is the Bad Homburg words contribute their bit.
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