Page 43 - Studio International - May 1973

Carel Visser joint created by the equal weight of the part pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1968, so
hanging in a strict vertical from a shared Visser blew it up until 'it couldn't be any
At Each Other horizontal edge, despite the laws of gravity ? bigger' (and still retain its personal physical
Yet it looks easy: partly because the double- quality) and exhibited this version titled with one
spiral appears 'lighter' than the solid bar hanging part, a near with one hanging part, b
through its visual activity, and its implied which had an identical arrangement of parts but
movement seems natural in a hanging whose scale was different. In a sense then, 'this
Even through this photographic reproduction, (spinning ?) position; and imagine how piece' is 'just a stage' in the life of an idea
can't you feel the soft abrasive surface of that awkward and rigid the piece would seem if the conceived by Carel Visser and born and reborn
cold heavy iron resting on the smoother curve position of these parts were exchanged. Or in different times sensitive to different contexts.
of the pressed cement sewage pipe ? And those imagine the piece if that juncture's right-angle This particular stage is perhaps its maturity: it
gloppy waves of welding solder, shining with were not so clearly achieved: the coherence of all acts publicly, independent of its ancestry; and
finger-sized regularity, articulating the seams ? formal elements as either horizontal or vertical as its iron rusts into dissolution, it will die
And how it all seems within reach - no higher would be lost, and the piece would be less an naturally. Visser has already turned to a future
than the hand can touch and the eye meet integral whole; its parts would revert to generation of work: in the six years since
directly; its base just larger than comfortable `known' geometrical forms arbitrarily At Each Other was reborn, he has taken the
to embrace; its basic module of 15 cm cubes `composed' by personal intuition cube and made it wobbly, folded, flat, stacked,
really hand-holdable to a fullness about to comprehensible to the cubist-constructivist open and closed in steel and leather acting
burst ? For all its 'abstract' or 'geometrical' mentality and 'taste' of yesteryear; it would `naturally'. These works are as generically
style, At Each Other is a very specifically lose its autonomy, its manifest embodiment of a different from the mid-6os 'salami series' as
sensuous thing, attracting the eye and hand like a self-governing idea, its structural freedom from were the multiple modular, more imagistic
beautiful human body. This is really both artist and spectator. abstractions of vertebrae, birds, cacti, and
sculpture: its direct parental line goes back to the Of course when I write of 'the piece' now, I towers of his work in the 5os. But in the poetic
material, integral sensibility of Brancusi's mean the piece made of cast iron: not the whole natural tautologies of his oeuvre, the salami
works; its background development in respect of this particular version of At Each Other with series is a sort of fulcrum: more sensuous and
for abstracted Nature and systematic thought its cement base. This is a larger version of a logically objective than Caro's work, more
relates to such aunts and uncles as Mondrian piece done in 1966 which had no base. That poetically associative and self-contained than
and De Stijl; its material directness and almost piece, just over a foot in each bar's length Andre's, more comfortably domestic than
anonymous simplicity of arrangement is (35 cm), could rest on any cocktail table - the David Smith's : it is so good that it has freed
contemporary friends with pieces by Carl Andre. intimate, domestic size in which Visser first even Visser to explore further conceptions of
At Each Other seems so reasonable, so self- executes most of his ideas. But as a size it was not sculptural experience. q
evident, so coherent and economic that - like appropriate to public exhibition in the Dutch BARBARA REISE
others by Visser in isolated appearances - it can
be seen, accepted, and understood quite
quickly. But therefore quite superficially: for
Visser's sculpture, like quiet and
unassuming people deeply rooted in
intelligence and love, is not to be appreciated
as intellectualizing acquaintances good only
for a one-night-stand.
Carel Visser speaks of his sculptures in terms
of 'families' and 'mates' rather than 'series' and
`opposites'. The clan of At Each Other is the
`salami series' which juxtaposes bars of solid iron
with equal-sized 'bars' sliced into equal
sections which first 'fall' from - then hang
from, or sit on, or lie behind, or are stacked
next to - those un-cut bars like eatable chunks
cut from a large salami. Its immediate family is a
group of works in which the chunks 'cut' are
eight cubes welded together along an axis so
that their successive out-juttings form a
counter-clockwise double spiral which is
physically and conceptually self-balancing. As a
governing principle of arrangement, this double
spiral is a beautiful idea: it implies movement
while being static; it is inherently simple but
seemingly complex; it is dumbly logical but
evocative of the kinetic potential of a backbone
or whirlwind; and it is consumately three-
dimensional in its visual activity. And when
such an arrangement hangs vertically from its
more uniform and visually stable horizontal
mate by just one welded edge, the relationship
between the two elements is obviously At Each
Other: for it is that juncture which rivets the
attention. Can't you just feel the tension in that
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