Page 52 - Studio International - March 1972

New York surrealists saw their anti-metaphorical mission flown terms, the illusion of an illusion is
radically. Remember Max Ernst's scorn for invested with more image power than plain
commentary: Renoir's three apples, Manet's four asparagus illusion for the old philosophic reasons that
and the Cubists' tobacco package. He wished to we all know. When it comes to sculpture, Janis
realism again? stretch metaphor beyond the reasonable, while is even more enthusiastic about the sculpture
the ordinary realist wishes to diminish metaphor `which baits the unwary to wonder, is it for
Dore Ashton to achieve the reasonable. real ?' As a matter of fact, the centrepieces
The artists who have lately been assigned the literally and figuratively (which must be taken
role of New Realists generally uphold the older, literally as literal and figurative) were
more practical tradition. Many of them have Duane Hanson's cigar-chomping businessman
always been with us. (It is a fact that the modes of whose lifelike figure confronted visitors as they
realism, with the exception of so-called 'sharp- entered the gallery, and John de Andrea's
focus realism', have not changed for the past women. But such wonders have their own
half-century at least, although for various reasons tradition, and it is not usually an artistic
the critics would like to declare a new tradition. What draws us to waxwork museums
movement.) Anyone who has followed Whitney has little to do with art. Schopenhauer
annuals in America for a couple of decades discussed and dismissed waxworks (If
knows that the realists have not changed. What deceptive imitation of reality were the object of
has changed is the psychological climate. And art, waxwork effigies would take first place'
with gathering urgency, a need has appeared. It he wrote, and proceeded, with very
is a cultural need. As Linda Nochlin, who is commonsense logic, to take for granted that
the most brilliant apologist of the New Realism none of us would give first place to Mine
has noted, the questions raised by realist art are Tussaud.) What the lifelike effigies in Janis's
always moral, epistemological and, in the last show do have to do with is a deeply desired
analysis, political, rather than purely aesthetic. exclusion of art. It is a reflection of the need to
Unquestionably, the surge of interest in distance everything, to have done with even
realistic painting and sculpture has dimensions the discussion of relative values, and to get
of philosophical and political polemic, and away from the unending confusions the
shares in the strong behaviourist directions of metaphorical dimension sponsors. Fatigue is
current thought. The realist painters are the mother of this invention.
outspokenly anti-metaphysical, and look upon Since painting is still less welcoming to
ordinary humanism as an archaic doctrine. In absolute verisimilitude, it is in the painting
their 'uncompromising positivism', as one of problem that the discussion of New Realism is
the realist theorists puts it, they partake of the most enlightening. At the Janis Gallery, at any
anti-metaphysical tradition epitomized by rate, the balance was tipped in favour of those
Wittgenstein, who urged us to 'stick to the painters who begin with the photograph,
subjects of our everyday thinking and not go although several of the more prominent photo
astray and imagine that we have to describe realists were not included. Amongst them, there
extreme subtleties'. And they fall into line with are divisions between those who work with the
radical anti-humanists, such as B. F. Skinner highly-focused colour image of objects, mostly
who writes that 'we do not need to try to discover motorcycles and cars; those who work with
what personalities, states of mind, feelings, wide-lens photos of cityscapes; those who work
traits of character, plans, purposes, intentions, with city furniture such as store windows and
or the other perquisites of autonomous man gas stations, and those who work with the human
really are in order to get on with the analysis of visage. Of the latter, the most sensational
behaviour.' (To which Noam Chomsky polemicist, Chuck Close, was not included,
promptly replied: 'It is hardly possible to argue probably because he was having a large
The realist revolt, which occurs with as much that science has advanced only by repudiating exhibition together with Paul Sarkisian, another
regularity in art history as the romantic revolt, hypotheses concerning internal states.') photo painter, at the Museum of Contemporary
usually entails an assault on the notion of Having recognized that the new realist urge Art in Chicago.
metaphor. Since metaphor is oblique, and since reflects a strong current of thought, is a product Sarkisian matches Close by presenting in the
it must, by its very nature, hold more than a of the Zeitgeist, and honours the old artistic Janis show a huge monochrome painting of a
single association, the realist sees in it a turning notion that an artist is always of his time, most rustic, tumbledown house. His dependence on
from reality. Always the impulse is to reduce of the critics eager to establish a 'new' realism the photograph is not as radical, although the
metaphor in order to see the plain and simple launch into epistemological arguments. They foreshortened planes and tonal values repeat
direct truth of objects in space. The current discuss illusion and reality and other stock rather closely the camera's rendition. Sarkisian,
revival of realist energies does not depart from aesthetic problems which bring them back again for all his blandness and cataloguer's matter-of-
the tradition, it only skips back a century or two. to the aesthetic increment of the new painting factness, departs enough from the photograph
In the twentieth century there was another kind and sculpture, which they began by denying. It to land in a kind of eighteenth-century
of attack on metaphor, but with opposite is this problem which haunts all the rhetoric picturesque realm with all the weakness that
intention. The surrealists intended to obliterate accompanying such exhibitions as `Sharp- tendency has always had. There was a sad echo
the syntactical obliquity of metaphor by Focus Realism' at the Sidney Janis Gallery. of the 193os in Sarkisian's sentimentality.
substituting such powerful, self-sufficient images The essence of Sidney Janis's approach is Gorky called the realism of the '3os 'poor art
that the receiver would be blasted out of habits of that the works presented have value because for poor people.' The realism of the 197os is all
association; would be transfixed by an they confront the spectator with the question: too often emotionally poor art for emotionally
intransitive experience. But far from expecting is it a photograph or is it a painting ? For him, poor people.
a clear situation of objective reality, the the 'double-take' is the meaning. In more high- The motorcycle and automobile painters,
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