Page 37 - Studio International - June 1972

contemporary grocery-store productions and
distribution) until in 1967 when he was
`finished' with the hand-painted object (see
note 8), he turned to those contemporary
technological media which are accessible to all:
photography, tape-recordings, maps, the
postal-system, films and video-tapes. His use of
the media is simple, sometimes even
technically 'stupid', totally lacking in that
sophisticated technologically-induced imagery
popular in Vogue or in that artistic-
bandwagonners' elevation of 'new' media to
The Avant-Garde Good. Any stooge with an
ordinary camera could achieve the
technological level of his photographs and
films; what Dibbets attends to, and is to be
judged by, is what decisions he makes about
what to 'shoot'. What he shoots and shows is
also easily understandable in terms of average
contemporary life, particularly his own. There
are many subjects from home-life (the
fabulously visual experience of the Venetian
Blind film was filmed from his enormous
living-room window; and there are many works
also of his old studio); there is the humorous
acceptance of the role of television and home-
movies in his fire pieces; and there is the
repeated view of 'Nature' (cf note 4) through
windows, from inside to outside, from the
viewpoint of the average semi-urban 'civilized'
person, without the romanticism of going out
into the wilds where no human usually treads.
In his use of these media, Dibbets is
approximately contemporary (art-historically
speaking) with artists who have also
participated with Gerry Schum's Video-
Gallery productions (from 1969) and
Willoughby Sharp's exhibitions of 'Earth Art'
(Cornell University, 1969, and the first issue
of Avalanche 1970) and of 'Pier 18' Shunk-
Kender photography (1969/70). Indeed, his
work has been confusedly equated by ignorant
critics and the art-world gossip-system with that
of Douglas Huebler (cf notes 5 & 6), Richard
Long (cf notes 5 & 8), and even Menashe
Kadishman. These connections have little to
do with Dibbets's—or anyone's—art, but rather
with 'style' : similarity of media, subject-
matter, and structural ingredients. In Dibbets's
case this confusion of style with others who
exhibited photographs and maps as
documentation of work, who used personal
and postal journeys as structures, and who did
direct 'anonymous' interventions in Nature,

(Facing page)
Two instants of the film Horizon Ila 1972, two loops
of 35mm film made by vertically panning the horizon
at different speeds and projected together
251