Page 16 - Studio International - July August 1973

further remark that the viewer is free to material in a meaningful order. He rejects the Directing the ICA:
speculate how the painting might have usual narrative textbook institutional history
continued across either vertical edge. The united and follows instead a synchronic, that is `point six paths to
image is one in which the camera pan forms a in time', history with just enough temporal optimism
‘ rebus, a representation of words by pictures, of breadth of coverage to allow a full view of
what is at that edited moment being said. relationships in the constant process of
Though de Antonio is at liberty to assemble evolution and change. Peter Cook
Ibis assortment of raw material in any way — he The discussing of collecting, for instance, and
seldom respects chronology, for example — his the issue of whether the galleries shape the art
details do not violate the relations of the whole market, a discussion which includes
from which they are abstracted. They heighten appearances by Leo Castelli, the Sculls, and
comprehension. Hence the zoom from the Philip Johnson, is tucked into the discussion of
detail of vertical panels and lines to the Pop Art, because chronologically Castelli and
whole Mondrian-esque face and figure of the the Sculls achieve eminence in the New York
Tenth Avenue telephone company building or art market at that particular point and
the shot of a central section of a Jasper Johns synchronically because they are, by their own
three colour American flag—maintaining all the telling of events and by de Antonio's
colour and spatial relations of the whole. conception of painting, significant dialectical
Theoretically this is the epitomizing function of elements in discovering the why and the what
the close-up, and it is not unrelated to the and in determining the fate and the life span of
Brechtian construction of character through Pop as 'painting' in its time.
elision and montage. Of course the purpose of the film is dual. The
In selection he shows a special fondness for recapitulation of the history of New York
ural and visual replication in a manner painting presented more or less verbally with
eminiscent of Rauschenberg's Factum I and colour illustrations is an end in itself as well as a
Factum II which are shown in the film. (This means to a dialectical explanation of the
was the very basis of Point of Order in which he gerund, 'painting'. But the standard, that is
howed the basic tactical identity of the diachronic, presentation of history alone denies
dversaries, Senators McCarthy and the important dialectical conceptions of the
Symington and the lawyer Joseph Welch in the ubiquity and over-all sameness of capitalist
Army-McCarthy hearings.) Though relations and the simultaneity of events, so it is
Emschwiller set up most of the interviewees for inappropriate as a framework for de Antonio's
the camera, de Antonio placed Ethel Scull on a definitions.
couch and Robert Scull behind it in imitation It is just this dual historical interest and
of the George Segal portrait of the Sculls. In collage tactic and especially the making of
one shot Rauschenberg pats a wall as Helen dialectical definitions which link Painters
Frankenthaler had in an earlier shot. These Painting to the rest of de Antonio's work, the
visual replications prepare us to make more overtly political films, Point of Order on
discriminating judgments on more complex the tactics of the participants in the Army-
replications : Johns's targets and Noland's McCarthy hearings; Rush to Judgment, a legal I am an optimist.
targets; de Kooning's use of newspaper and brief of the case against the Warren Commission Optimism leads to some strange, heady,
Rauschenberg's use of newspaper; Report on the Kennedy assassination; In the sacrificial, narcissistic and sometimes politic
Frankenthaler's response to Cezanne's apples Year of the Pig on America's involvement in the situations. And sometimes you are sitting there :
°and Newman's response; her response to war in Vietnam and the peculiar debasement of `This is absurd, here we are posed around a
Hoffman's `push-pull' and Stella's response; English rhetoric arising from that involvement; table, when the sun is shining outside. Time is
Scull as patron and de Antonio himself as America Is Hard to See on Eugene McCarthy's running by, and we all know each other's game'.
patron, impresario, confidante; Newman's and Presidential candidacy; Mulhouse; A White But then we must be reasonable. This is
Motherwell's and Stella's propositions Comedy on Richard Nixon and the rhetoric England. We must wait and listen to everyone.
regarding gestalt perception and the 'painterly' and tactics of American politicking; and Even if time is precious.
surface; the age of the painters of the first the BBC documentary, That's Where the A total idea: arrogance. A definitive position:
generation of Abstract Expressionism at the Action Is (their title), on the last New York embarrassing.
time of their first one-man shows and that of the mayoral election. Painters Painting is both an Optimism: the guy must be a fool : rather
'Pop artists and colour field painters; the extension of his method and an exposition sweet — but he'll grow out of it.
response of all the painters to received art by analogy of his method, because the potential Optimism is for kids and dreamers.
historical tradition and our viewing of the for political impact in film is not in advocacy If one has to be labelled as a dreamer, let's turn
paintings and our judgment of the veracity of smeared across the surface of filmic content nor it to advantage. One's mind can legitimately
their reports of their responses, and so on. is it in, supposedly neutral, that is mechanical, wander outside the stuffy room and the
Sometimes the comparisons are cut end to reproduction of physical detail (or ideational democratic timewaste. Dreaming, we can
end while other shots or propositions at widely detail were it possible to photograph, paint or conceive a mandate for an Institute of
divergent points within the film emerge as otherwise reproduce it), but in perceiving the Contemporary Arts that has some audacity and
having comparative rather than absolute truth relational basis of artistic perception, the does not get bogged-down in comparisons with
i nd similar elements acquire dissimilar historical frameworks for giving meaning to the old days of Dover Street, or what the
aesthetic impact. The collage method, a
Hayward might have done. Dreams without the
those perceptions, and the emergent forms given
dialectical method, that is a philosophic method, by artists, painters and film-makers, to those paranoia of whether we are doing the right thing
of assembling sound and picture 'takes' which meanings. In short presenting the viewer with a by everybody.
themselves have no inherent linear sequence, method for deciding what in his own life is real We're not.
enables de Antonio to present historical and which is ideology. Now we can proceed.
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