Page 17 - Studio International - September 1973

privacy of one's studio, but there's also the Francis show at the Whitney, and I've really they're doing. Then they start separating out
distribution of art. And the extent to which an taken him apart. from the movement — in fact denying that there
artist accepts the need for distribution to a wide JR: This brings us back to the elitist-versus- ever was a movement, but only their personal
public, then he is somewhat implicated with all popular-view controversy in a way. With your styles. And this is a fairly standard procedure
those peripheral people. Without their more flexible, more popular view, you have high whether it's Rothko, Still and Newman among
intervention the work would go from studio to and low standards, but Harold Rosenberg has the Abstraction Expressionists, whether it's the
apartment or studio to palace, and there it would high and low standards too. How do they Minimal artists, Andre, Morris and Judd . . . or
rest. So the distribution does require most of all compare ? among the Earth Artists, Smithson, Heizer,
these other people. On the other hand, I think LA: I think the difference would be that I don't Oppenheim. They all made temporary
the system is under strain now. A lot of artists think that my standards of good and bad are coalitions, and when it's broken down, it's
feel the strain of perpetual publicity. Publicity necessarily the most interesting things to write always to assert the autonomy of each of the
has been so good that avant-gardes get no about. I have extremely clear notions of good members. Now they no longer need the
period of peace. You invent something, and it's and bad as far as I'm concerned. You have to be consolation and support and confirmation that
in Time magazine in a few months. Your ideas rather interested in the critic, if all he's telling the group gave at an early point.
get separated from you very quickly, and I think you is 'I love it,' hate it,' It's good, it's bad' — JR: Do you think dealers or critics — or any
a lot of artists have rebelled against that idea. because it's so much coming out of the critic's individual — can bring things together as a
A lot of them have also rebelled against the own psyche. Whereas I think a critic is a movement-maker ? I'm thinking of a movement
pressure of collectors. person who spends more time than most people like Photo-realism where several dealers have
JR: So you would say by disseminating looking at art and also considering the meanings tried to establish their own titles.
information about the work and the artist, the of the art he's looking at. So very often the LA: Yes. But look how many years before that
critic is aiding this process of distribution ? information I'd like to give — reflections that I'm Malcolm Morley was doing it. It's true — as a
LA: Very much so. He's servicing the artist! having about something — is stuff that has a little result of Morley's influence and other mediating
JR: You've said that one of the problems a more claim to objective value than declarations influences — people started doing it and then,
contemporary critic faces is how to deal with the of good and bad. I think good and bad is mainly really quite late, a couple of years ago, dealers
pressure of a crowded scene. How do you a lot of shit you know; it changes from critic to started putting their own names on it.
respond to the stylistic diversity that you critic, from generation to generation. JR: You've also said that there's a certain
contend with ? Information giving interests me more. necessity, or maybe it was presence of fashion in
LA: Well, I think it's absolutely the condition JR: I find your writing very technical, every movement.4
of life in the twentieth century. It's been growing somewhat historical even. For example, I LA: Necessity is okay. I think that human
up since the middle of the nineteenth century, remember your references to a Rosenquist society is somewhat conservative in the way it
and it's proliferated even more intensely in our piece as pre-Estes, a Kitaj technique as organizes itself. And one of the forces for
own time. And on the whole the majority of art pre-Rosenquist. You're very much aware of change in a society like ours that's organized on
critics like to pretend it doesn't exist. Hence the these historical links. the basis of mass communication is fashion. This
popularity of elitist views; it keeps art down to a LA: You see I have a kind of interest in what I forces annual or bi-annual changes. Some of
manageable size . . . call short-term art history. There's art history these are very minor — a hem up and down a bit,
JR: You mean it's easier ? that's usually written to set out an absolute a tail fin angle shifting — but, nonetheless, it does
LA: Yes. It's somewhere like where it always chronicle of events and to fix the research in a keep a constant pressure up for change. And
used to be when there was just Florence and certain area. Well, you can't have that kind of within the art world it's customary for people
Siena. But I think an art critic really ought to certainty or fixity when you're dealing with with an old fashioned humanist schedule based
figure out ways to devise a system to cope with contemporaries, because they're changing all the on the presumption of art's eternity to assume
the plenitude of twentieth-century art. time, and you're changing all the time. that once a movement is going, it should never
JR: This brings something else to mind about However, this doesn't mean you can just flob stop. But the fact is, there's been a very rapid
your writing compared to a lot of other critics — along with nothing. So I use the term short-term changeover. And I think the notion of fashion, of
and that is I rarely read anything negative art history. One tries, in an empirical sort of annual style changes, has not influenced artists,
that you write. You seem less concerned with way, some of the sense of history which a but it has influenced the writers who write about
whether something's good or bad, and much historian dealing with a settled part of the world art. Where do these things start ? in journals like
more committed to detail, comparison, does, but applies it to the present events. It's Vogue and New York Magazine. The first
explanation and analysis. I was wondering if your kind of a provisional, tentative, as-I-see-it-at- article on earthworks appeared in The Saturday
way of dealing with stylistic diversity is just to the-present-moment history. Evening Post! It's a persistent thing; there's
write about those things you like ? JR: Let's move into the contemporary art scene enough coverage of new movements, as
LA: That's a good point. When I came to today. What would you say are the necessary something desirable, something groovy, which
America, it seemed to me I was surrounded by ingredients of a movement or style before it is necessary given the conservatism of our
enough negative criticism, so I tended not to can be classified as such ? major art critics.
write about people I didn't like. But I break LA: Let me see if I can answer it sociologically. JR: In terms of fashion, do you think there's
down every now and then; I wrote an attack on I think movements occur when a number of some predisposition to make these things
Sandy Calder the other day. I thought if I didn't people with separated interests realize they have happen ? For instance, was there something that
do it soon, he'd be dead and never have a chance things in common with other people. And brought about the emergence of the Pop
to read it. I've just written an article called because the ideas they have are innovative, movement or was it someone ?
`The Decline of Sam Francis'3 because I think they're drawn to each other — they're the people LA: I think it was something. Because what
he represents a crisis. You know with the who best understand each other's work. This happened was a bunch of people born in the
DeKooning group of second generation means there's a temporary coalition of people twenties, who had grown up with the mass
abstract artists, it's known that they've gone who share certain aesthetic predispositions media and had been that much separated from
down, but it's assumed with the stain painters, compared to the rest of the art world. And that's the classicizing, humanistic processes of higher
those that followed on from Pollock and when you get a movement. That's the first step; education, just naturally took the mass media as
Newman, that they're okay. But I think they've that's how they come together. Then they stay subject matter. Andy in New York and
weakened too — only five or six years later than together for a while. Then they start making it. Lichtenstein in New Jersey in 1960 started
the DeKooning group. So I've taken the Sam So they've firmed up more clearly what it is doing comic strips unknown to each other. A lot
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