Page 45 - Studio International - September 1972

that whilst 'there had been a time in the
eighteenth century when the artists and poets
treated industry as an acceptable part of their
environment' there soon arose a growing sense
that 'instead of creating plenty of profusion,
the new technology of coal, iron and steam had
brought with it problems out of proportion to
the benefits it claimed would follow.' This fear
and alarm could be seen in the work of John
Martin 'who illuminated Pandemonium with
flaring coronas of gas lights and has more than
a hint of the Thames Tunnel in his evocation
of Satan's Bridge'; as in the pictorial imagery of
a number of late eighteenth-century artists.
Eventually the sense of wonder and achievement
which the industrial revolution evoked 'was
obliterated in commercial attitudes that eroded
and even dissolved the bonds that the earlier
artists had established with the technology that
was transforming their world.'
The pioneers of the modern multiple
movement - the men of the Bauhaus and de
Stijl, the Russian Constructivists, Moholy-Nagy This was particularly depressing in a collection
and Vasarely, Duchamp and Man Ray, of 'multiplied art', implying, I should have
Spoerri - were products of a second industrial hoped, the adaptation and use of modern
revolution, of a new technology 'that was technology and mass productive means. There
transforming their world', which like all were, in fact, only a handful of unlimited
man-made concepts could be used for good or objects, and as few conceived or created in
ill, for greed or the fuller understanding of terms of industrial, manufacturing potential.
experience. Indeed the predominant image of Berlin-and
They were men in the Shelleyian mould. possibly of the particular Teutonic version of
Christopher Small in his Times article wrote the contemporary guilt-ridden artistic malaise
that 'The alliance of mechanization with its -was Joseph Beuys. He dominated at least ten
own ideology of private gain-"the calculating different displays and his work seems to obsess
principle", as Shelley called it, covering at once more experimental publishers. Sincere though
the calculations of power and output that he is in his political views, and his rejection of
machines can be subjected to, and the calculation the disabused role of the artist as
of profit and domination-was seen quite clearly object-property-investment maker, his
by him as a threat to human life.' The Russian programme is paradoxical to say the least, if
Constructivists, Moholy-Nagy, Duchamp and not downright confused. How can he reconcile
their followers saw that in art the 'calculating a poster bravely inscribed La rivoluzione
principle' was debasing creative insight. Shelley siamo Noi in an edition of one hundred and
bemoaned that 'The cultivation of those sciences eighty selling for over Do each ? Who are the
which have enlarged the empire of man over the 'noi' which make up the revolution ? Which
external world has for want of the poetical hundred and eighty ? Presumably no one
faculty circumscribed those of the internal who cannot afford £10. A mixture of arrogance
world; and man having enslaved the elements, and simplicism is not untypical of religious or
remains himself a slave'. revolutionary leaders-from Jesus down to
The Multiple pioneers sought to turn back the modern hippie; but unlike a Dancing
the clock, or at least to reintroduce the poetic Dervish who performs an entirely personal
(Opposite)
faculty into the second machine age. They ritual, which the onlooker may also find Joseph Beuys
attempted to provide an answer to the question aesthetically or spiritually relevant, Beuys and La rivoluzione siamo Noi 1972
Sir Arthur Elton set in his Industrial Revolution his like are saying 'Look Mom I'm Dancing'. Diozotrace on polyester, edition 180
essay : 'Many of today's painters have retreated (Vito Acconci, on the other hand, in his Edition Tangente Heidelberg
further than ever from reality. Yet the world celebrated Seedbed, is saying 'Look Mom I'm (Top)
surrounding them, if more threatening, has Wanking'.) Weseler
Atemobjekt 1972
achievements at least as spectacular as those The necessary exhibitionism of these Mixed media, edition 40
which enthralled the late Georgian and early personal demonstrators I find increasingly Eat-Art Gallery
Victorian artists. Will those of our time ever embarrassing, but more important is the
come to terms with the manifestations of our evidence they provide of the deep-rooted (Above)
Cesar
technology ?' crisis in modern art. German artists seem to Thumb 1972
After Berlin I have grave doubts that they bear a special burden of guilt, especially the Sugar, edition 25
ever will; that their galleries and publishers younger post-Nazi generation. How else to Eat-Art Gallery
would let them. At the Berlin Fair there was explain the frustrated aggressiveness, almost
ample evidence (as indeed there is in the total childlike in its innocent savagery, expressed in
contemporary art scene) of a deep-rooted so many of the German graphics which
objection to, or possibly fear of, the machine. occupied more than half of the sixty-eight
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