Page 19 - Studio International - March 1972

mixed exhibitions. This has been largely Council and those supporting them, magazines, ten days on STV to an audience of 250,000 per
prompted by the imminence of the so-called writers, gallery owners, collectors, etc. are night. They didn't know what they were looking
Hayward Biennale, a very large exhibition committed to a London-based hieratical view at and didn't expect it, so all the rubbish
organized by the Arts Council and designed to of art, then this sort of cock-up will recur again surrounding art was circumvented. In the APG
give a picture of the art life of this country. and again. show at the Hayward those films were shown
The show is the culmination of various regional This may be being over-harsh to the Arts again, continuously, on a specially adapted
shows, called 'Spectrum', all of which used Council. They might say, and it's a not television. But the context, a darkened room,
different methods of selection. unsensible view, that it is their job to reflect, endless statements on the walls, the hushed
In recent months many ideas, old and new, not to initiate, and that as we do have a London- atmosphere of self-importance, completely
have been proposed. I myself have been based hieratical art world then a representative swamped the films and we were left with
responsible for two of them: The Family Tree exhibition should reflect this fact. But even exhibition fodder.
Method (by which each artist selected himself if this is so, is a mixed exhibition the best way If you're going to have a mixed show it should
selects two more and so on until the required of showing art ? After all, it is worth remembering be as chaotic as possible. Why doesn't someone
number of artists is reached), and the L. J. that in the history of art the mixed exhibition organize a Salon de Refuses and then we'll see
Grobes Abdication Method by which no is a relatively newfangled idea, being only just who is interested in art and who in
selection at all is made owing to the amorphous about a hundred and fifty years old, and its reputation.
nature of the exhibition, (Studio International, cousin, the permanent mixed display at a ALISTAIR MACKINTOSH
Dec. 1970). Curiously enough the latter, which gallery, is not much older. But it is a highly Edinburgh
was meant as satire, has proved more relevant unsatisfactory way of showing art as a visit to
to current thinking. even as well planned a gallery as the Tate
However, in the plethora of methods will show. It is virtually impossible to look at a Self criticism
suggested, one or two absolutely fundamental Morris Louis if you have a Stella gesticulating John Elderfield speculates in your January
points have not been raised at all. For instance wildly on your left and an Elsworth Kelly number that his disappointment in the recent
it is tacitly assumed all along the way that sulking to your right. Only the Rothko room work of Frank Stella, Jeremy Moon and Terry
everybody wants to be in this exhibition. I works, for only a single voice is heard there. Frost is due to their not having looked closely
would have thought that, given the disastrous But we may be certain that no artist in the enough at their paintings. He cannot mean this
history of such mixed shows, that what was Biennale is going to receive Rothko treatment. literally, for surely there can be no evidence in
needed was a foolproof method of NOT getting A visit to the show, to any mixed show, will the paintings under review of how long, or how
selected. Because, let's face it, the Hayward mean a terrible series of mental gear changes studiously, each painter looked at them in the
Biennale is going to be the biggest drag in the which will exhaust the eye very early on. Most course of finishing them off, or before sending
history of contemporary exhibition-making. of the works will come over less well than they them to the gallery. What does Elderfield mean
The whole idea that a big mixed show can in would do in a small one-man show, and the then ? His call for 'a rigorous inwardness to art'
any way reflect the artistic climate of our time successful ones will, by the nature of the thing, does not help the reader.
is pure lunacy. Think what would have be the 'easiest' and most obvious. Mr Elderfield is a gentlemanly reviewer and
happened if this show had been organized in If it is true that most of the works in the hastens to reassure us that these painters'
1872 (it was, and it was called the Academy). show won't be seen to their best advantage, `seriousness and ambition is not in question',
Virtually every artist of importance would have then the only possible reason for wanting to be and again that 'their integrity is not in
been left out. The usual reply to this parallel in it at all is reputation, and here we have the question'. There is a club, it seems, that
is that our art administrators are more aware crux of the matter. The reason that there is so occupies the 'high central plateau' of visual art
of what is important than were those of 1872, much ill feeling over selection for the show is identified in Jeremy Moon's December article
but I think you would have found those earlier because it is reputation that is at stake; the `Enemies of painting'. It is against the rules for
men defending themselves in similar terms. A name in the catalogue carries more weight than members to question the seriousness, ambition
general belief that you know where it's at, is the work on the floor, wall, roof or whatever. or integrity of other members. The club is now
no proof whatever that you do. Quite apart from the simple difficulties of rather beleaguered.
Even if the Arts Council or the appointed taking in so many different works, a mixed Perhaps if Elderfield were to take his own
selectors do succeed in reflecting the taste of our exhibition is an ill-founded concept anyway. advice and look at his own work—his review—
time, where does that leave us ? A large mixed It was invented as a sales-method and it still more closely, he would see that, having described
show of some fifty plus artists can still in no resembles nothing so much as a big store at sale acutely (and I should have thought damningly)
way reflect the actual art life of Britain. It just time. I'm afraid it shows what a low opinion what is wrong with the paintings, he offers little
isn't possible in terms of space. Even if every artists have of themselves that they allow their guidance to the three painters on how to look at
artist selected was considered a just choice by work to be put away behind locked doors 'their work more closely and critically. It's no
everyone, there would still have to be a lot of (locked metaphorically to 99 per cent of the good telling people they have had a 'lapse in
important people left out. There are more population) where they can do the least harm. taste'. To look afresh at one's own work—in any
artists working in Britain today than in the The context of a major mixed exhibition must medium—one needs to be offered new models,
entire history of the island put together, and be one of the deadest and most academic going or a new critical vocabulary.
they aren't all going to get into the Hayward (perhaps that is a just fate for the academy of Elderfield concludes that 'so far as art is
by any means. So a lot of the ill feeling stems the avant garde). Civilization has justified itself concerned (excepting ideology, which is
from the fact that the show is trying to do by its art for too long and artists are willing to something different) to pretend that there is any
something which is impossible. If the Arts help it. I find the mad rush by exponents of a alternative to [what is usually called a 'formalist'
Council had a truly responsible attitude to the so-called radical art to immure themselves in standpoint] is to mistake the nature of the
creativity of artists in Britain, as opposed to a that bastion of respectability, the Hayward, medium. It is the least, and the most, we expect
mythological system called 'the art world', then slightly sickening. of art that it bears looking at.' Can this once
this show would never have taken place in this For even the best conceived idea gets its illuminating art historian be so ignorant as to use
form. There would have been a continuous balls cut off in such an environment. To give the term 'medium' as a category to which 'art'
series of exhibitions on a country-wide scale so an example : for the series of events 'Locations belongs ? Can this expert on Nazi and early
that no one need feel dismayed at being left Edinburgh', David Hall made a series of short Soviet art be so perfunctory in distinguishing
out of one of them. But as long as the Arts films which were broadcast every evening for art from ideology ? And the last sentence I quote
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