Page 58 - Studio International - March 1973

modern 'one-image' sculptors, playing with 'the biography remains a slightly unsatisfactory inevitable outcome of such a life and such a
egg and its variants' !). book, in someways almost lightweight. His style person. Hence there is no possibility cf much
Lipchitz went straight from the Beaux Arts is partially to blame, for he writes in a sort of depth of understanding about what it might
into Cubism, and had neither the time nor the journalese of dramatic phrases, juggled tenses relate to beyond Pollock's own personal
detachment to evaluate what was going on and self-consciously 'profound' metaphors. circumstances. So despite the amount of
around him. The stressed 'vitality' and 'energy' But the irritation this creates {together with a material that Friedman has gathered which
of his later sculpture in fact conceals an most intrusively eccentric layout) covers a more could be used to refute the growing myth of
undeveloped and timid sensibility, which this important dissatisfaction which has to do Pollock as the pioneer responsible for Abstract
book embarrassingly lays bare. Lipchitz's with the nature of biography in general and Expressionism, as a whole the book adds to the
opportunity was to be drawn into the vacuum biographies of legends like Pollock in particular. legend because it concentrates on personality.
created by Picasso's ineluctable progress into, Friedman's valuable researches would be However, for the situation around Pollock, for
and sudden withdrawal from, the fully three- more readily acceptable if, like O'Connor's critical reaction to his art, responses of friends,
dimensional, in the years up to 1915. Perhaps basic biography for the 1967 New York press and public, Friedman's book is extremely
Lipchitz was - at a distance - playing the role for MOMA show, he had left it as a straight thorough. It will be a necessity for anybody
Picasso that one feels Braque and Gonzalez account of the events of Pollock's life, as the seriously interested in Pollock. Despite
played. But the situation demanded a totally dust-jacket sub-title 'A Biography' promises. irritating attempts to.read his mind, Friedman
new attitude towards the fact of sculpture - as But typical of the split intentions of the whole has a lot of very interesting things to report
material and structure and percept - not the book is the alternative sub-title 'Energy Made about his working methods, his history of
accommodation of the new idiom into the Visible' which shows that he has pretensions at alcoholism and his various attempts to control it,
traditional sculptural matrix. I remember least of writing a more profound study, and in his reactions to publicity, the people he knew,
reading somewhere that Lipchitz had the stone the end it is the amalgamation of these two the bars he visited, all of which will be grist to
sculptures he did at this time - such as the differing modes of investigation which causes other people's mills. 0
marvellous (Yale) Man with a Mandolin of the trouble. From the biographer's point of DAVID FREKE
1917 - carved by a professional stone cutter as a view the paintings of an artist he is studying,
deliberate gesture against direct carving. This is however much they might be the reason for an
apocryphal: the truth, as it appears here, is interest in the man at all, must nonetheless Calling Mrs Dube
really banal - Lipchitz wanted to make copies serve as witnesses for the explication and The Expressionists by Wolf-Dieter Dube.
of the clay originals to satisfy commercial illumination of the life. Like any other events 2I5 pp, I62 illustrations, many in colour.
demand, and could not, because of a recurrent such as moving house or changing analysts the Thames and Hudson. Cloth £2.50, paperback
bursitis, do the work himself. Thus several of paintings are raw material in the life of his £1.50.
the most important cubist pieces were achieved subject. A study of the paintings, on the other
in what is clearly the most satisfying and hand, reverses this system of priorities, and the In view of the number of studies of Picasso, of
appropriate material, through sheer paintings are no longer raw material but less eminent modern artists and of a wide variety
circumstance. become the end result; the life of the artist is of styles, movements and periods in Thames and
As for the recently more celebrated linear scrutinised only insofar as it can aid the Hudson's World of Art Library, it is perhaps
lost-wax sculptures of the 20S, which Lipchitz analysis and understanding of his art, and surprising that a volume on the expressionists
calls his 'transparents', they are his most original biography becomes subservient to the coherence should appear only now in this series. Had it or
work in concept; but in realization they tend to and autonomy of the work. something similar been published earlier then it
share in varying degree the flabby The two modes of investigation demand quite would have had no competition within its very
indecisiveness of structure and proportion that differing attitudes, but conflict only really arises reasonable price-range. As it is, it must now be
characterizes almost all the post-cubist when the subject is interesting not only because compared with several other popular and fairly
sculpture. Of course they do anticipate Picasso's of his art but also because his life lends itself to cheap books one of which (by John Willett in
and Gonzalez's linear iron constructions - dramatization. Pollock has been the victim of a Weidenfeld's World University Library series)
Lipchitz claims explicitly that Picasso took the legend which continues to grow despite a is very good indeed, even though this does
idea from him - but his failure to realize the determined attempt by W. S. Rubin to put the discuss literature and theatre and consequently
sculpture in the right material must assign to record straight about many mythconceptions. has less to say on the visual arts which are Dr
these pieces little more than historical The myth not only obscures the truth about Dube's prime concern.
significance, and signals the failure of nerve, of Pollock's life; it also distorts the paintings Dr Dube, the author of 'The
thought rather, which precludes him from a because they are merely used to demonstrate Expressionists', works at the Bayerische
central place in sculpture after 1919. It is sad to his (presumed) state of mind. Friedman's book Staatsgemaldesammlungen in Munich and has
think that the man who made them knows so sometimes comes very close to this sort of written on aspects of Expressionism before, most
little about the quality of his finest sculptures, attitude. It is not enough to report such things as notably (and together with his wife) on Kirchner
uniquely dense, rigorous and forceful, however that, after the move from working in a small and Heckel. This is his first full-scale treatment
dependent on a common idiom; these will stand bedroom to working in a large barn, 'his work of the subject however and it is disappointing.
comparison with the best sculpture made in this began to open up, to shout and sing' (p. 93). Although all the facts are there and the
or any other century. q One wants to know which works ? Did they development of the various styles and attitudes
WILLIAM TUCKER merely get bigger or was there some formal usually described as expressionist is clearly and
change ? Were there tendencies in his earlier logically traced, there is unfortunately a lack of
work which would have led to such an opening insight, an apparent hesitancy to come to any
Mythconceptions up anyway ? What about the Guggenheim conclusions as to what the artists were about,
Jackson Pollock. Energy Made Visible, by Mural for instance, when he had to tear out a what they hoped they might be able to do with
B. H. Friedman. 293 pp. partition to put the canvas up ? Restricted space this new formal language.
32 pages of black-and-white illustrations. was no hindrance then. Friedman conveys little This may seem unfair as, within its self-
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972. £4. 8.5. sense of these problems in Pollock's work; imposed limits, 'The Expressionists' does serve
equally he does not get to grips with the as a useful introduction to an exceedingly
Despite much valuable information, much of it problems of images, influences, intentions and complex subject, but the book's weaknesses will
hitherto unpublished, B. H. Friedman's sequences because he treats the work as the be immediately apparent to anyone even faintly
144