Page 45 - Studio International - February 1972

movement in which one senses something of the heap of limp sacking. You have to separate liberation from cliché and the compulsions of
origin and nature of inspiration—a 'flash of them, slip into them, carry them on your experience, and a defeatist 'Back to Art'
insight' which lies beyond language. back or cover yourself with them, in order, movement is beginning to come to the fore. The
There is more to experience than can be put through concentration on the actual use of an avant garde relapses into the discussion of
into words. In a word-dominated, positivistic object, to cease to act as a mere receiver, problems of formulation, and political debate
world, the task of art, again and again, is to recapitulating mentally an action demonstrated revolves mainly about the catchword
falsify the linguistic equation 'thought = by an artist. 'Interest, yes—as long as 'democratization'. In other words, the topic is
language'. Two great outsiders need no something is on show. When they have to do not art so much as the distribution of art.
introduction here, as they were both something themselves, then they start asking A number of political artists of the
discovered, and made their reputations, in New questions. In daily life they are only allowed to middle generation, such as H. P.
York: Hanne Darboven and Franz Erhard react, not to take the initiative themselves. The Alvermann and especially Siegfried
Walther. Hanne Darboven, born in Munich in capacity to make real decisions has virtually Neuenhausen, have shown that socialist art need
1941, lived for a long time in New York and now disappeared. That must be a peculiar state to be not necessarily involve academic methods. But
lives in Hamburg. Since 1967 she has been in, because there is no solid awareness of the most young socialist artists, who tend to live in
represented in all the significant group effective range of the elements involved.... Berlin, produce nothing but Marxist
exhibitions; she was, for instance, the only People must become capable of moving while representations using the pictorial methods of
German artist in the Guggenheim International thinking. I can only give them a push.' The the nineteenth century. Others try their hand at
Exhibition. She started by noting down in objects do have titles and shapes, as an indication humour, like Thomas Bayrle, who builds up a
figures the geometrical relationships between
lengths, for future use; and that was how she 4
found her system. Numbers were released from
their all-governing function, and also from the
state of dependence in which they always have
to stand for something else. Number has been
degraded to the position of always denoting
time or money or merchandise—denoting
something else, like a name—and it has been
forgotten that it is primarily an autonomous,
abstract entity; it is because of this independence
of all content that the laws of number underlie
all natural processes. The two historic cultural
extremes, objective mathematics and subjective
art, meet at the point of non-directive
speculation; the circle is complete. For instance,
Darboven writes the sequence of numbers
1—3-5—7 out in words, the word 'three' three
times, the word 'five' five times, and so on. Or
she arranges the sums of the digits in the dates
of a whole year according to their frequency,
whether as diagonal columns of figures, as blank
squares, or as graphic wavy lines. Enthusiasts of the possible ways of using them; but, as portrait of Stalin out of prefabricated
have said that here time becomes visible, and the Walther's diary of the demonstration carried moustaches. Another optical wit is Klaus
aesthetic of mathematical tables is brought into out at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Staeck, who put up a poster all over Nuremberg,
art; but that is simply to reintroduce the social (December 1969—March 1970) shows, very few at the Dürer anniversary celebrations, which
interpretation of number. In this context people are yet capable of embarking, without showed Dürer's emaciated old mother with the
number is not simply an abbreviation for verbal instructions and without any imposed caption: 'Would you let a room to this woman ?'
concrete, tangible facts; it is concrete in itself. norms of conduct, on a 'meditation in the The dilemma involved in all political art is that
The greater the space available—and most company of matter'. Instead of tranquil of stating a theme which has been verbally
especially in the comprehensive survey show in self-discovery, many seek only exhibitionist formulated, and which is often highly complex,
Munster in October 1971—the clearer it self-display, which then, significantly enough, through a single optical situation, without
becomes that number, in the visual guise of a degenerates into mere fooling. descending to mere illustration. It has most
figure, a word or a box in a diagram, is a Shortly after the student revolution, Bazon successfully been resolved, in Germany, by
stylistic factor in the study of proportion; it is Brock, Germany's number one art theorist, K. P. Brehmer, born in Berlin in 1938 (K.P.
visualized through the medium of spatial hailed Objekte, benutzen as the first step beyond stands for Kommunistische Partei). He takes as
extension, but denotes nothing but itself: art, and as the new aesthetic in practice. Art, in his starting-point political considerations, such
proportion is revealed as the basic pattern his view, had been the ultimate point of the as the fact that colours have a political symbolic
underlying the world. hopes and aspirations of bourgeois society; and value. But 'we can find a broader base for our
Franz Erhard Walther is concerned not with now the productive resources were available to work only if we face up to the broader problem
art but with the intuitive evidential experience realize these aspirations. Thus art becomes of the masses, if we really go into it and try to
of actions and relationships. Born in Fulda in reactionary when it goes on acting as a surrogate, contribute something to the solution of the
1939, he has behind him not only an artistic a reflection of people's hopes, an impotent problem.' And the first thing about this is : 'the
training but a full apprenticeship as a reminder that there is such a thing as the effect of a message is always governed by the
confectioner. He devised his first Work Sets in freedom to take one's own decisions. Art must quality of the transport.' He consequently
1962, but it was not until the publication in 1968 be an exercise in which everybody has a chance produces his work in editions, mainly printed
of his book Objekte, benutzen that he suddenly to train for his own self-realization. The from letterpress blocks, with a touch of irony
became a celebrity. His objects, when you first recipient and realizer become one. in the classification of the markets for which the
see them in the museum, form an unprepossessing Since then less has been heard about art as a individual editions are intended. One picture
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