Page 35 - Studio International - November 1973

their champion, Don Baum. Eschewing artist comes from a third world nation and must dictatorial powers by incorporating into its
me-tooism, the group, roughly centred around also contend with non-western artistic constitution a series of institutional acts that
the Hyde Park Centre which first exhibited traditions, his task of finding an identity as a confer on the President the legal right to exile
their works, evolved a philosophy which ran contemporary artist is that much harder. By persons considered to be a threat to national
directly counter to New York mainstream sending to São Paulo a group of United States security, to suspend elections indefinitely, to
assumptions of what constituted 'significant' high artists who set local taste above international recess the congress, to rescind any elected
art. trends, the Smithsonian clearly gives official's mandate, and to suspend a person's
The turning point came when in 1969 Baum encouragement to many artists and critics political rights for periods of up to ten years.
turned the lower gallery of Chicago's Museum attempting to foster regional styles within their The current state of affairs in Brazil reads very
of Contemporary Art into a raunchy basement own countries. much like that of the unnamed South American
environment and there, amid old furniture and The choice of Chicago for Sao Paulo also country which is the subject of Costa Gravas's
coal stoves, hung works by 28 artists including solves a diplomatic problem considerably film, State of Siege.
of the 12 going to Sao Paulo and two elderly thornier than Mr Canaday's above quoted In view of the continuing repression a group
Chicago naives — Pauline Simon and Joseph E. objections to American cultural insensitivity. of dissident Latin American artists living in
Yoakum. Titled 'Don Baum says, "Chicago It may well be an attempt on the part of the New York have formed an organization called
needs famous artists" ', the show and its State Department to evade the boycotts that `Contra Bienal' the main purpose of which
attendant publicity spoofed all the current have plagued abortive US entries to the past is to disseminate material discouraging artists
requisites for contemporary museum art — the two Bienals. In 1969 the entry arranged by from participating. As a result of this and other
works were small, full of literary subject matter Gyorgy Kepes, Director of the MIT Centre for factors many artists in New York and
and local colour (in both senses of the word), Visual Studies, was cancelled because of mass California, even had they been asked to enter
and stacked three and four high on the walls. defections by exhibiting artists who withdrew this year's Sao Paulo would continue to refuse.
In effect, Baum and company caught the their work in a general protest against political By contrast there is virtually no likelihood of
attention of Chicago patrons by thumbing repression by the Brazilian military regime and, a Chicago protest. The artists selected for the
their collective nose at New York and all it in particular, against a request by the Brazilian exhibition are little given to grand gestures and
stands for. Assiduously avoiding the journals, government to participating countries not to even less to mixing politics with art. (As one
they mined local sources and traditions. send 'immoral or subversive works' to the painter put it, 'Manifestoes seem to us to be in
Instead of competing with local native artists, Bienal. poor taste.') Perhaps, the truth is that artists who
they incorporated them into the movement. The 1971 entry was again cancelled, matured in Chicago during the 1960s have an
There is merit in sending a show of this kind ostensibly for lack of funds, but clearly in part ingrained sense of the uselessness of public
to the International Bienal. For it is directly because the State Department feared a political or cultural protest. If there is protest in
relevant to one of the most chronic cultural repetition of the 1969 fiasco. their art, it exists only as an ambiguous
problems of the twentieth century — that of the Although the Brazilians have apparently undercurrent. In fact there is an esoteric
conflict between modernity and regional withdrawn the self-censorship request to quality to this art — a penchant for in-jokes, for
cultural traditions. Any artist today must participating countries, nothing has happened obscure references, for double meanings — all
decide what he will do about Picasso, about in Brazil that would suggest a more enlightened time-honoured tactics of people who find
Duchamp, about Pollock, about Oldenberg, or more democratic posture. On the contrary, themselves in an alien situation or who wish to
even if his decision is to ignore them. But if an the government has recently consolidated its defend themselves against an alien audience.

(Above) (Right)
Kerig Pope Barbara Rossi
Two Infants Observing Nature 1962 3-D DO 1973
Acrylic on plexiglas on satin ground
Lent by Phyllis Kind Gallery

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