Page 51 - Studio International - October 1972

sculpture has ceased to be a public art) links
Visser, through all the neo-romanesque and
quasi-primitive and shining bronze of the
period, with what we now see really mattered :
the iron sculpture of Picasso and Gonzalez,
Giacometti, and finally Brancusi. I don't think
that Visser, around 195o, was very much aware
of Picasso or Gonzalez; he may have seen one or
two pieces or some illustrations in an art
magazine — what really impressed him was
the art of Brancusi.
Visser (like Maaskant after him) was
impressed with Brancusi's mystic devotion to
the art of sculpture and to his own sculptures,
which surrounded him like children; this ritual
of sculpture grew for Visser almost into an
allegory of what being a sculptor meant. On a
more rational level, however, he was intrigued
by an extraordinary tightness that is present in
a Brancusi sculpture — in the way an ovoid mass
is contained by its taut surface and its sharp
contour, or in the way the members of the (Top)
carved wooden sculptures are joined. It is a Installation shot of the Jan Maaskant exhibition at The Hague, showing:
tightness which is lacking in Picasso or foreground, Structure 1971, stainless steel and aluminium,
210 X 210 X 400 cm., left wall, Construction on Wall, yellow and aluminium 1972, 300 X 300 X 12 cm.,
Gonzalez, which is logical since they are not right wall, Construction on Wall, yellow and black 1972, 205 x 176 x /2 CM.
concerned with mass but with an open, spatial
kind of assemblage. Like Brancusi (and unlike
Picasso or Gonzalez or, for that matter, Anthony
Caro) Visser is very much a thematic sculptor.
He may pursue a theme or a motif for quite a
long time, with sometimes very little ostensive
variation. (See for instance the sketch
illustrated here, with some but not all variations
around Double Form, a series which took about
four years to develop.) Occasionally Visser
seems obsessed by a certain motif. Compared
to the capriciousness of his contemporary
Anthony Caro, this inevitably gives an effect of
dourness to his art (to some eyes it may look
somewhat old-fashioned, in the same way as a
Gonzalez sculpture from the thirties looks more
contemporary or 'modern' than a Brancusi from
the same period. Also in taste habits once
formed are hard to get rid of ).
Double Form is a variant in an extensive series
which started with the motif of two birds in
flight, the lower one upside down. The birds are
shaped in a quasi-abstract way; their bodies are
(Above)
rectangular though with slightly curving Construction on Wall, yellow and aluminium 1972, zoo x 150 x 12 cm.
surfaces, and 'growing' out of each side of the
body are four trapezoid forms for wings, head
and tail. The wings touch each other; heads and progressive abstraction of a natural motif, not as a translation of a natural motif but as a
tails only incline towards each other. Preceding implying a more or less logical end to the series : constructivist construction of neutral parts, it
this closed, concentrated image there is a still the most radical abstraction possible. Certainly implies a kind of seriality different from
earlier sculpture showing two birds standing on this was so with Brancusi who would go as far as Brancusi's. Not a seriality centered around a
top of each other. This small sculpture, made he could but wouldn't give up the natural motif central form, and progressing towards a final
out of irregular pieces of iron, is open to all for a completely abstract organization of parts. apotheosis, but based on changeability
sides, the birds placed in slightly different And one of the reasons why his art is so exciting of parts and relations between parts.
directions with their long beaks pointing in still is precisely his balancing on the thin line This implication came to Visser, it seems,
other directions. The process leading from this between abstraction and abstractness. Carel somewhat as a revelation; at least this is
early piece (1953) to the two birds in flight and Visser at this point broke away from his master. suggested by the eagerness with which it was
eventually to Double Form and its abstract If one did not know the precedents of Double developed in virtually all his subsequent work.
variations might be called a calculated tightening Form one would say it was a totally abstract There still remained some problems. (In
and closing of the sculptural image; no doubt sculpture, built out of flat, steel boxes in which seriality there is a tendency to loose structuring;
it was prompted by the example of Brancusi. parts might be interchanged since the original since there is some freedom in how parts should
But Double Form is crucial in another way. image of the two birds is no longer there as a join, it is equally logical that they should not
The development of the series consisted of a relevant model. In that the sculpture stands out really join but only touch. This tendency
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