Page 40 - Studio International - June 1972
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underpinning the harmony of the whole     Provos—who once scandalized the bourgeoisie   will be considered in American-speaking
      universe by people as diverse as Euclid,   with an actual inundation of free white   art-criticism as provincial derivations of
      Kepler, and Buckminster Fuller. And in terms   bicycles in Amsterdam and with threats of   `minimalism' if they are considered at all; and
      of the visual arts, there is that on-going tension   gassing the National Assembly with LSD—are   that the important physical-conceptual-
      between 'reality' of the planar surface and   elected Town Councillors. If being 'Dutch' is   ephemeral works of Boezem, Van Elk,
      `illusion' of depth assumed as primary to the   a geographical condition, it is a state of land   Brouwn, and Dibbets will be under-rated (or
      success of any 'picture'—as well as those   which is flat, flat, flat: with a countryside which   ignored) in the quickie-histories of the
      compositions of self-centering units of three   is not just conserved into a rolling garden like   International Conceptual-Art Bandwagon.
      (triptychs), bilateral (centralizing) divisions   England, but virtually man-made from the sea   I think Dibbets is very Dutch. Even in his
      into two, and frieze-like panoramas to be   into a productive greenhouse; with cities   defensiveness of being considered so. His best
      experienced laterally over time.          perched on communication routes, built to a   work has that sense of material conservation,
        But if we leave the Mediterranean and look   rambling scale crowded never more than is   meticulous attention to detail and craftsmanship,
      north, 'Classicism' takes on a slightly different   neighbourly. If being 'Dutch' is sociologically   pragmatic and international thought, and
      hue. The 'classic' periods of Dutch art are   cultural, it embraces a people imbued with   especially that many-levelled self-directed wit
      indubitably two : those realistic landscape,   centuries of (Reformation) individualism,   which is part of Dutch excellence. And much
      still-life, and bourgeois interior scenes so   bourgeois capitalism, security in commercial   of his better work deals with specific aspects of
      accurately crafted in the energetic Reformation   trading on an international basis, and wit about   Dutch culture. The television-as-fireplace film
      of the seventeenth century; and twentieth-  their non-involvement with those exports   plays not only on contemporary bourgeois
      century purely 'abstract' relational reality of   which give Holland its touristic image : tulips,   fixations on materialistic technology as
      geometrics in two and three dimensions on the   butter and cheese, and Hans Brinker and the   domestic possessions, but also on a Dutch
      part of Mondrian and Rietveld, internationalized   Silver Skates. It all seems small-scaled,   bourgeois nostalgia for the domestic pleasures
      as De Stijl Constructivism. Dibbets's work   picturesque rather than sublime in its ironies,   of 'an evening before the fire' : a nostalgia
      obviously relates to both. And it is not   and neat, tidy, and scrubbed with        which hardly pervades middle-class America.
      irrelevant to this that he knows the      industrious craft.                        It would be the Dutch to laugh first at the
      Rijksmuseum's bulging collection of those   What of Dutch art today, and what does it   conceit of Dibbets's recent series of Dutch
      Dutch 'realist' masters as well as and with more   mean to be a 'Dutch Artist' ? It means having   Mountains; knowing that such things do not
      pleasure than most specialist art-historians :   access to more transatlantically travelling   exist in reality, they would be most quickly
      nor that, when asked with other Dutch artists   exhibitions than anyplace else (the national air   curious about what artifice) was used to make
      to speak on Van Gogh for a national art   and shipping lines transport art to its museums   twelve juxtaposed un-cropped photographs
      celebration, he replied to the effect that he'd   free); it means potential individual subsidy by   panoramically circling a flat horizon appear to
      give up all the Van Goghs in the world to save   the government almost automatically on   present the illusion of mountains whose
      one Mondrian or Malevich.                 application; it means living in a society where   silhouetted forms are those of 'real'
                                                museums provide their own lists of 'good Dutch   geometrical ellipses themselves representing
      7(Dutch)                                  artists' to interested visiting curators and critics,   immaterial concepts (cf note 5); they might
      Is Malevich 'Dutch' if the biggest body of his   but whose personnel tends to prefer French   recognize the artist's manipulation of regularly
      work is owned by a Dutch museum ? Is it any   and American art; it means almost equal   shifting angle of camera lens and tripod as a
      more absurd to speak of what is 'Dutch' than   potential involvement with old-fashioned   mind-boggling technologically accentuated
      what is 'realistic', or 'Jan Dibbets' ? What is   art-schools, city-planning commissions, and   distance from Nature (cf note 4); and—like
      `Dutch' ? If it is a language (as it is), it is also   computerized industries; and it means working   me at this point—then appreciate the multi-
      multi-lingual—for, as an Amsterdam fruit-  within standards and 'visual literacy'   layered complexity of conceptual and
      vendor told me, 'nobody speaks Dutch so we   established by the National Art Heroes of the   perceptual 'reality' and 'illusion' in these simply
      speak a bit of everything'; as such, 'Dutch'   past leavened by recent memories of Manzoni   visually beautiful works, as well as their
      implies access to information on an       and Klein in exhibitions of 'Group Zero' and   cultural puns.
      international scale right-there-at-home. If   some of the most vivid visual sophistication
      being 'Dutch' is a political state of national   on television anywhere. It also means that while   8(Tradition)
      sovereignty, it is even more marvellously   having the cultural respect and amused tolerance   Dibbets's own tradition is not all Dutch at all.
      paradoxical: an oil-rich Calvinist monarchy   of their interested country-men, 'local' Dutch   The most seminal year in his artistic career was
      figure-heading one of the most pervasively   artists of international quality-stature like   1967, and that took place in England and
      socialistic systems in the world, where    Carel Visser, Ad Dekkers, and Peter Struycken    Germany as much as in Holland. At that time,
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