Page 38 - Studio International - June 1972

was most marked between about 1967-70 naturally grown regular spacing of conifers in a regular man-made interior flash against that
when working in these styles seemed generally virgin forest near Cornell articulated by painting window's surface; the result looks like a
`new' to the artists involved as well as to those one row of trunks. Fire is a fire either large sequential progression from light-paned
observing their work. But with time, the enough to fill a TV screen or whatever size window silhouetting 'an object' to a black-
natural distinctiveness of each artist has become natural to incinerate a movie-screen. The planed window-pane background for a subtly
more pronounced, retrospectively clarifying natural movement of the sun from sunrise to high-lighted physical object: making a visual
the earlier interrelationships. sunset, the natural movement of a bird in differentiation of exterior versus interior
establishing its territory, the natural movement physical 'reality' (cf note 5) no less interesting
4(Nature) of the tide encroaching on the beach, have been than the 'invisible' structuring of naturally-
Dibbets's focusing on inhuman Nature naturally the basic means of structuring the positive changing versus man-made constant light.
has led him to be classified as one of the 'Earth differentiation of individual parts of work, or Throughout his work, Dibbets's attitude to
Artists'. And most of his works since 1967 have erasing a physical intervention (such as the Nature has a dispassionate objectivity about it
dealt with the traditional four natural elements ploughed perspective correction in the Land Art which is far from the associative empathy and
of earth, air, fire, and water, as well as those film) to leave the experienced concept as sole historicity of artists like Richard Long,
aspects of nature particularly predominating residue. Movement is not just part of inhuman Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George—or even
in his recent work: movement, time, and raw nature; even the movements in the Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson. With
light. This is not the Nature of Andre's extraordinarily visually rich films of Venetian Dibbets, Nature is observed, modified for
materialization of chemistry-tabled purity, Blind and Louver Drape are natural to those some specified times, but left and accepted as a
nor the molecular elementarism of Robert domestic material interventions of natural fact which is 'other'. An extension of this is
Barry's Inert Gas series : the elements, light: simple regular pulling on the cords to that factual nature is phenomenologically
for Dibbets, always have their own open and shut the slats. distanced by its representation through such
humanistically-scaled shapes. Earth is usually Light, as a natural necessity to photography, man-made apertures as windows, microphones
essentially flat—regularly growing grass or sand has been a material component of Dibbets's and amplifiers, camera lenses and projectors,
beach as planar as the photographic picture work since he began to use that medium. But and the human eye—which themselves are
presenting it; it is as continuous as the globe more recently light per se has been the structure treated as 'factually' as the phenomena
from a pre-Newtonian view, with a horizon-line and topic of Dibbets's work: through windows perceived (cf note 6).
as flatly horizontal as the geometrical structures at different times of day, or constricted through
Dibbets imposes (cf note 6). Water is present in different degrees of blinds in movement, or 5(Realistic)
terms of sea, with horizontal divisions from air constricted through different degrees of camera The most realistic 'being' of Dibbets's art is its
and beach, with waves, and with tidal movement shutter speeds. In his most recent series, phenomenological experience through its
and time. Air is less a case of 'weather' than of Dibbets has played off the intrusion of daylight fixed physical media. The photograph, film,
spacing : the territorial parameters of a Robin through a window photographed regularly tape, embodies Dibbets's art more than is the
Redbreast recognized, articulated, shifted; the from 3 pm to sunset against the obtrusion of a case with artists like Huebler and Long.

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