Page 49 - Studio International - January 1972

Mallarmé, who carefully insisted that no poet, systems — for the convenience of not having to likes it or not, for within the roundelay of
least of all he, would ever make The Book, bother making a spiritual itinerary. allusions and visual arrangements, the culture
the conceptual 'artists' do not see the reductio Since in every statement I have ever read of memory is bestirred, and the sense of creation
as a nutritive ideal, but as a realizable fact. coming from CAYC, the word expression has informed in the true sense of the word inform,
A book is a vehicle for propositions, propositions been uttered only with the utmost distaste, it with its binary meanings played against each
that sometimes vaguely suggest concrete seems odd that 'expression systems' should be other in a tension that can only be called artful.
poetry, and sometimes vaguely suggest among the desiderata for the next century's man. The anti-objectness of the object, the Book,
philosophic discourse, but never seem quite There are some artists, naturally, who have becomes an artifice. Oh yes, it has a title
rich enough to live in either territory. Many a bent in the direction of the poetics of non- embedded amongst the menus for the H.M.S.
homeless phantom words inhabit these books. object art, and who have managed to wrest Beagle and the battle plans of Alexander : It is
It's curious that these conceptualists almost from the codes of conceptualism a certain called 'White Papers.'
always stress their desire to inform, which as a degree of very personal expressivity. The There are other artists in New York working
verb means to give form or shape, and as an young British artist Michael Harvey has just with much more open propositions, in which
adjective means formless and unresolved. They issued a Book which superficially meets the they take a polemical stance against the work
usually manage to suggest a little of each. Take standards of the conceptualist dogma. It of art as such, but still function as artists
the three identical grey-clad books issued consists of a pristine white box without any inevitably. Among them is Helio Oiticica, the
recently by that specialist in information identifying marks on it, and a cargo of some 75 Brazilian theoretician of an anti-art movement
theory in the arts, the Centro de Arte y unlined white filing cards, with families of based on `the denial of the artist as a creator of
Communicación in Buenos Aires Tor the purpose messages imprinted. True to the conceptualist's objects, but turned into a proposer of practices.'
of providing information to the peoples of neat, businesslike, and scientific interests, The goal of Oiticica and his group is different
Latin America.' The one by Donald Burgy has Harvey has printed his signals scrupulously. from those proposed by CAYC in that he aims,
a group of some nine perfectly reasonable They are in no particular order, although if you finally, at yet another kind of 'object' in which
propositions huddling at the bottom of a white shuffle the deck carefully, you'll find several both intellectual and sensorial experiences can
page. Example : 'An observer accumulates sub-groups which suggest a master scheme. I fuse. And these 'objects' turn out to be a
information about his external environment suspect that Harvey follows the principle of healthy juxtaposition, sometimes completely
through sensory experience and information the musical canon, in which different parts take integrated, of various artistic practices,
about his internal environment through up the same subject one after the other, since including architecture, music, painting, theatre
introspection. These experiences are identifiable one of his cards repeats in a carefully arranged and the dance. Oiticica never stops with a
with brain processes that operate according to typographic sequence the sentence 'the canon groundplan or a model or a 'conception'
universal physical laws.' Burgy's propositions, form is a repetition upon itself.' (One of the rendered in language. His ultimate intention is
or rather, scientifically oriented philosophic most beautiful visual contributions in the book always a work, albeit a work in which the various
notes, are like so many interesting footnotes to is a page of music paper in which the staves are elements enjoy considerable autonomy. For
a work that isn't there. What isn't there on the interrupted along a diagonal.) instance, in a maze, with numerous chambers,
white of the page has none of the idealist What makes Harvey's book a real book is the platforms, stairways to nowhere, and netting
mystery that would have been there had sense that you have to 'read' it carefully several and nests, he has no objection to the performance
Mallarmé meant what he said. And it has none times to discover its inherent form. Its 'concept' of orthodox plays, or the playing of composed
of the urgency of a fully worked out, formed does not leap into your intellect and make you music, so long as the participants have threaded
and informed, work of art. It is not even a want to go out and buy the latest book on their way through the maze and had encounters.
reductio ad absurdam since his abbreviated information theory, which is what Venet wants Encounters, Oiticica seems to be saying, are just
thoughts are interesting enough to warrant you to do. Venet : 'It is the general idea of the beginning. Anything can happen in a
fuller exploration. Neither here nor there, but Information Theory which is important, not situation where an artist has imagined numerous
certainly conceptual. any particular work on Information Theory.' possibilities, and actually built certain calculated
Lawrence Weiner's book veers toward Harvey's book is addressed first to the limits. He makes what he calls 'a privileged
concrete poetry with its excision of syntax sensibilities available to: plays on words; space to be traversed by the spectator.' In so
and its poetic repetition of that rich conditional arresting arrangements of black marks; free doing, he is able to circumvent the frozen
word 'perhaps'. First page, 'perhaps when association stimulated by the evocation of platitudes which haunt the conceptualists, and
redone' and second page 'perhaps when objects or histories; satire; literature. In short, he is able to evolve. Since the experience he
rebutted' and third page 'perhaps when related' the traditional sources of aesthetic stimulation. offers his spectators is not purely conceptual
and so on to last page 'perhaps when returned.' Yet, he can parse numbers like the rest of them (i.e. addressed to the mind) and since he makes
Three words to the page. Well, perhaps, but and is not a stranger to ideas of set theory and it experience in the Latin sense, 'to put to the
not when repeated and redone. Perhaps every mathematical progressions and vanguard logic. test' (it is odd that in English, the old usage no
word in the book is embedded in a matrix of But he is a romantic, it must be said. Every longer pertains. We cannot say, as the Latin
rich possibilities, but perhaps not. four or five pages finds one with a single, languages still can, to make an experience. We
Ambiguity has more than seven types, if only Mallarméan word that reverberates throughout can only 'have' one), there is a dynamic which
the conceptualists knew it. the book. A beautiful white page with the word flows onward, always capable of change. He is
And Kosuth, prophet of the kind of `Arctic' centred perfectly; a beautiful white not stuck with
rhetoric the CAYC loves best, such as their page with the word 'Atlantic', one with the
credo at the end of Kosuth's little play on logic : word 'unique' and, to break the sequence, two
the members of the group, it says, 'intend to words, still centred, 'unfathomable sea.' This
enhance behaviour and massive communication family of evocatives lives side by side with a
phenomena and the rupture of traditional family of verbal calembours such as :
forms. This should permit the opening to new bending to tie a lace, thought Beckett,
expression systems, where researchers and bending to tie a lace, thought Proust,
artists attempt to represent the plastic interests bending to tie a lace, thought grandmamma
of the XXI century man.' That man, I presume, Other literary allusions (to James Joyce in
will rally to 'new expression systems' in much particular) help to lift these dazzling white
the way he rallies to new transportation cards into the realm of art, whether Harvey
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