Page 51 - Studio International - October1973

with the private. Hudson's work is will normally also be characterizing
notional and unsystematic. He uses our own way of seeing. And since
whatever materials are at hand to perceptions of expression tend to
produce witty, eccentric metaphors have a coherent style, it makes sense
for what it feels like to live in a body to ask how someone sees a human
in a world filled with other people. This situation ; that may even be the same
year he has gone from making objects question as what do you see
into the area of performance. A (happening) ?
typical performance piece consists in
his standing on a darkened stage Ironically, in coaxing us into a
pointing a 200 watt lamp toward the perception of physical circumstances
audience, moving it in various in the mode common to our reading
patterns, switching it on and off expressive behaviour, Serra has
regularly. The powerful light produces introduced a new and curious
a strong after image in the spectator's anthropomorphism into sculpture.
eye, an after-image he knows only Shift is a work of great physical
he can see, despite the public nature grandeur ; it already has the
of a performance. To every member venerability of a ruin. But, like a lot of
of the audience, half of the light the most powerful contemporary
piece is as private as a ringing in the sculpture, it treats the existence of the
ears, yet nothing of it is invisible. human world as a merely physical
fact.
Hudson's work tends to be Kenneth Baker
impermanent. I have known him to
perpetrate a work (which might later
become a performance piece) in a
social situation. Once he turned REVIEWS
himself into an object by
blindfolding himself and stuffing his John Walker graphics 1973
mouth, ears, and nostrils with tissue at Nigel Greenwood Gallery,
paper and remaining immobile. London, August.
Everyone present tried to ignore him, John Walker exhibited two current
until eventually his presence became print editions at the Nigel Greenwood
intolerable, an image of pure gallery in August. One edition
expressive constipation This episode comprised ten screen-prints based on
became the basis of a performance a series of paintings from 1967, and
called Senseless. the other twelve lithographs entitled
Blackboards. Walker's recent wall-
To know the exhibition scene in size chalk drawings provided a
Boston is not to know the art scene. partial model for the latter. Although
The Institute of Contemporary Art, exposed. At that point the second Shift (to Tony Serra) 1972 the prints were inspired by primary
which is finally moving into plane appears and runs in a Concrete. Coll : Roger Davidson work, in no sense are they decanted
permanent quarters after a history of different direction for 240 feet until Photo : Gianfranco Gorgoni versions of that source— their
continual relocation, promises to try it is fully exposed. There the third authority and conviction as printed
to make the exhibition calendar more plane begins and runs 150 feet in exaggerated perspective. Right in art is unequivocal. Most prints around
representative of what's really farther. The same principle describes the centre of the site, there is a wide now are pretty inconsequential : there
happening. The Institute plans a fall the treatment of the west hill, only. gap of about 120 feet where the isn't much thought; it's commonplace
programme of ten day shows in close because the land contours are so elevation of the land falls below the to regard print-making as a
succession which should allow more irregular, the configuration on the level marked by the work. In this gap commercial enterprise; its aesthetic
people more exposure. To what west hill is completely different. In there is at least one 'nodal 'point where content public relations. Walker's
extent such a programme will allow concept and procedure, the two the whole sculpture will fall outside prints avoid the usual nonsense and
the artists themselves liberties in halves of the piece are mirror images your peripheral vision, left and right. are first-rate.
presenting their work is unclear yet. of each other ; but, since in fact they The experience of the whole sculpture
Hopefully, the ICA programme will let obey the disposition of the site, they 'disappearing' is a shock and it In the screen-prints the image is
innovative work like Guillemin's, are formally very disparate. affords a kind of perceptual check on uniform throughout: a central
Jaroslav's, and Hudson's surface the site itself, to let us know there's emblem, resembling a folded sheet of
more easily than in the past. From the top of either hill, it is possible nothing special about the space paper, is set against a loosely gridded
Kenneth Baker to see the entire work. But once you there. casually sprayed mesh ; the mesh, in
descend into the site illusion prevails. turn, is superimposed on a swirling,
Walking through Shift, your sense of Serra has brilliantly contrived a stratocumulus ground. The prints run
through a complex range of
physical situation in which what we
'SHIFT' its bounds and composition changes see and how we see mean the same predominantly grisaille colour—
drastically through vivid and specific
illusions of distance, elevation, and thing. In ordinary physical occasionally enlivened with soft.
In 1972, Richard Serra completed a orientation. It becomes clear, once circumstances, it makes little or no extraneous hues. The planes of the
major work in King City, Canada, you're 'inside' the piece that the sense to ask how someone sees emblem — essentially two flaps and a
north of Toronto. It is a vast outdoor illusions it generates are due to the because landscape and objects middle— are separately printed : in
sculpture called Shift (To Tony integration of the structure of the generally offer no special obstacles one design the left plane is charcoal ;
Serra). The work sprawls across a sculpture with the structure of its to our automatic perception of the the middle a transparent medium
pair of low hills in a remote open site. The horizontal planes themselves world. But though Serra has shown grey; and the right is white. (In some
field. Using a contour map of the act as local horizon lines, and they that our perception of the physical the flaps are blended colour.) The
site, Serra found on each hillside the set up slices of earthen curved horizon world is normally a matter of our angularity of the emblem, its partially
shortest set of three continuous spans along their sides. Since the concrete position affecting what we see rather askew interlocking (resulting from
each of which measures a five-foot forms have no distinct identity apart than how (unless, for example, we its collaged prototype), is similar in
drop in elevation. Each of these spans from the site, the spatial and are under water), he has made no design to the detail in some of
has been realized as an upright structural illusions they set up seem reference to the kind of situation Laurens's cubist reliefs— the tableau-
concrete plane inserted into the slope to change the nature and function of where, under norma/circumstances, objets — of around 1916. The prints
of the land. So, at the top of the east the forms themselves. They appear as what we see and how we see mean impart a curious sense of touch —
hill, a concrete plane emerges and freestanding walls cut into the slopes, the same thing. What I have in mind curious, that is, in screen-printing;
runs in a straight line for 90 feet. or as retaining walls, or as triangular is the perception of other people's and the density and weight of the
Along its length, the land slopes until planes stood on edge, as steps, or as expressive behaviour. In describing image move the work away from the
the full five foot height of the plane is upright planes vanishing as if drawn what we see in someone's actions, we poster-like qualities of the medium.
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