Page 72 - Studio International - April 1973

Art information

The mythological and the locally particular, in the show. Lear was no good. His reputation is whose existence cannot (or need not) be
high art and the homestead, are subsumed in phoney, based on his silly poems. There is a empirically verified . . . The "product" of art
him. He knew the Titan's strength and the difference between artists who travel to improve is not the real issue: the fabrication of meaning
churchwarden's boundaries. Vesuvius erupts their painting and artists who are interesting is the issue and may be read back from the
and the sea boils: on Folkestone sands customs merely because they recorded unlikely settings. observation statements that form the product'.
men check casks. Figures on Dartmoor, where The late exemplar of this is Holman Hunt, who The article's analogy is precisely relevant to
the Tamar and Torridge rise, mine for china transposed his work from an English to a Huebler's activity. If the exhibition had already
clay: they are against the blowy skyline, and foreign milieu — claiming even more vociferously been seen the points could remain constant, but
below them the rivers fall to the oceans. In that it was religious high art — to give it a the form of the article would have to change.
Chamonix, beside the glacier, is the serpent that spurious validity at just the time when its real The pieces (documents) obviously need to be
haunted him, centrally placed: the quality was plummeting. About this show seen in context to understand their meaning.
Wordsworthian and the Hebraic are both generally, I think that the subject pictures are This meaning is the same in an 'original' and in
there. One finds this imaginativeness in preferable, but not the caricatures or a reproduction, which has led Huebler to
no other artist of the time, but rather in Keats moralities, and I have a nasty suspicion that the examine how they are seen as part of their
and Ruskin, the two writers closest to the landscapists were servile not only to parks and subject. The work is represented by
art situation. Ruskin cared little for Constable: country houses (we knew that anyway) but also documentation (photographs and maps), and
I think he realized how null a middle-of- to the idea of landscape itself, a mode whose information (the text). The material is evidence
the-road naturalism had been during need to ingratiate increased as its relevance of the actual piece, a priority for its
the Romantic years. Clearly, in comparison to waned. This last criticism has equal application, comprehension. There are two parts to the
Turner, Constable had a head full of feathers then and now, to all critics, scholars and information, his thought and action (general
and an imagination like Wurzel Gummidge. collectors in the English watercolour business.0 information) and the record of his action
While they could both talk too loudly, Turner TIM HILTON (particular information). The connection
wet and windy, Constable toiling out of the mud, between them is arbitrary and frequently
there is a difference in their extravagances. amusing. Built into the work is its ability to
Turner's were the result of a privacy of DOUGLAS HUEBLER AT THE JACK. WENDLER develop outside the control of the artist. The
experience beyond anything that the RA could GALLERY, THROUGH APRIL. context is predetermined but the contents can
comprehend, while Constable's were avowedly If you wanted to find an artist for whom the be supplied at a different time, in a different
public, desperately trying to scale up his term 'conceptual' was really relevant, the work place, by other people. Collectors, dealers,
sketching into grandes machines. In Mellon's would have to comply with certain demands : a students and public have all been used to realize
show there are things interesting for the opposite historical relevance, and an equally relevant works. Paradoxically the less Huebler controls
reason: large-scale subjects compressed by the intention. Huebler belongs to the group which his work, the more he controls the idea. q
drawing medium. Very often (in Stubbs, for emerged around 1967 in New York through the LYNDA MORRIS
instance) artists were better when working exhibitions organized by Seth Siegelaub.
smaller, as far as the canvases go. But Talking about his early work, he stated, 'the
'PHOTO-REALISM, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE AND
furthermore, Fuseli, Blake, Brown, Mortimer world is full of objects more or less interesting;
PRINTS FROM THE LUDWIG COLLECTION AND
and others were most potent when not working I do not wish to add any more'. A lack of
OTHERS' AT THE SERPENTINE GALLERY, FROM
in oils, and not working in colour (Blake's pertinent art criticism has contributed to the
4 APRIL—6 MAY. OPEN DAILY I I AM TO 8 PM,
putting-in of colour after the drawing is often development of self-criticism in recent
ADMISSION FREE. 'NEW REALISTS' AT THE DM
obtuse). There are perhaps not enough work. When criticism has to deal with this
GALLERY, FROM 4-28 APRIL.
drawings in the current show to demonstrate development it attempts to form an analogy
this, but the point was well made in the Detroit with the work. The double-take is never Four years after the official revival of Realism
Romantic Art exhibition of six years ago. So the entirely satisfactory, especially with work in America, the much heralded paintings of the
immoderates now seem more isolated than they like Huebler's where an arbitrary choice New Realists have arrived in England, along
should be. Mortimer's mannerist self-portrait factor, personal to the artist, is involved. with their leading spokesman, Ivan Karp, who
shows the back of his head (two mirrors must He would no doubt appreciate the idea that a will deliver two lectures. The careful selection
have been used) as he reads a letter penned by review has been written about one of his of paintings, prints, and sculptures at the
himself whose writing, perfectly legible, is at the exhibitions before anyone (except perhaps Serpentine Gallery includes such classic
picture plane. He is recommending his work, himself) has seen the work — which will, or examples from the Peter Ludwig Collection,
of which there is a reversed glimpse, to someone rather might, be shown. This difficulty could Aachen, as Ralph Going's Airstream, Richard
who might be you or anyone else. The poise and easily be avoided by a general descriptive article Estes' Food Shop, Richard McLean's Rustler
the manner use sophistication as a tightrope: an confined to 'end products'. To make an analogy Charger, Howard Kanovitz's Cleo's View and the
intensity of cool, or everything collapses. John between the article and its subject is possibly the omnipresent Deane Hansor Supermarket Lady
Brown's The Geographers, on the other hand, most useful introduction to Huebler's which occupies the front covers of the two books
bursts with extrospection. His young men, framework. A brief description of individual out on New Realism. The exhibition is updated
scholars and explorers too, are intense in study pieces in the 'Duration', 'Location' and by works from Kanovitz and Robert Cottingham,
and intense in vision as they point from their 'Variable' series would sound like a roll-call of and extended by a separate show of prints at the
projections and graticules to new worlds beyond neat tautologies and avoid the actual issues. The DM Gallery.
the window. They are in my surmise fifteenth- work has already coped with these problems : By deciding on the least controversial label,
century Florentines who have just been 'Objects, words and facts, in themselves, exist 'Photo Realism', the organizers rightly place
reassessing Ptolemy. Graham Reynolds' deja lu without "meaning" nor do they obtain meaning emphasis on the artist's use of some type of
introduction has some stuff in it about exoticism, whenever used within an art context: they photograph as the intermediary device by which
the English as travellers. This is often claimed remain general and neutral to value'. In the physical existence can be recorded ('rendered'
as being part of the great watercolour tradition same text, printed in the Sonsbeek catalogue, is McLean's term) with minimum deliberation
(mirthless laughter). There are some examples he states his interest in 'various phenomena about the traditional painterly elements of

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