Page 45 - Studio International - September 1973

Principles of transitoriness largely because they do not modulate an
environment. Wetness again is his theme, but
Dore Ashton suggested in a simplistic contradiction. The
screen, with its surface constantly flooded from
above, sparkles with water's sheen. Whitman
projects a burning match on it. That's it.
Fire and water not to mix. The effects, as
technically inventive as they are, do not offset
the poverty of the content.
Carl Andre's effects are more subtle, more
austere and very self-consciously
impoverished. He has taken the shallow and
always murky rectangular pool in the MOMA
garden, and composed an almost
unnoticeable design on its floor with strips of
metal. If you look sharp you can see, down there
among the blackened pennies, rusty strips in
rectangular or rectilinear formations, which
might easily be mistaken for structural features
of the pool's floor, or part of the plumbing.
Minimalism and nature don't mix any more
than matches and water. If you only look, and
don't know the polemics of Andre's one-man
movement, you see a skeleton of a minimal work
of art. Yet the accompanying text quotes Andre
Carl Andre Waterbodies 1973. Museum of Modem Art, New York as having come to the conclusion that 'perhaps
the only single thing that art has is scale —
When is an apartment not an apartment ? When work of art.' Faute de mieux ? something which has nothing at all to do with
it is an environment, says the New York Times, The Museum of Modern Art has had a long size. It has to do with things being internally
discussing an art moderne arrangement of an series of what it calls 'Projects' reflecting the consistent with their own parts.' Out of this
interior as if no one had ever before theory that the artist is more interested in his orthodoxy and into the pool, and you don't
rationalized a living space. Save our creative process than in permanence. The most come up with much.
environment, begs an ad for funds on another recent projects are by two veteran Painters adhering to the same orthodoxy
page. (What ? Save this?) Try environmental experimentalists, Robert Whitman and Carl (broad enough to include the entire history of
living we are told still elsewhere. Finally, we Andre, both of whom go back to the elements — painting) have also reached out into various
turn to the art page and read about in this case water — to insinuate their visions in environments for the principles of
environmental art. (This, I suppose, is the kind the environment. Whitman's poetic transitoriness that mark recent art. The
of art you need for environmental living.) preoccupation with water goes back a long time; obvious 'environmental' painting is the mural,
When should the adjective environmental be back to the last full-dress exposure in New York and even in the history of painting, murals have
applied to the work of art ? When it seeks to when he composed a large room at the Jewish functioned in many diverse ways. The Roman
impregnate ? to dominate ? to dictate ? to Museum filled with murmurs, mirrors and villas with their trompe-l'oeil windows, or their
suffuse ? to infuse ? to travel ? to disperse ? If a glimmering, which he called Pond. The same systems of painted surfaces in which some
Japanese artist carves a netsuke, is the hand in analogical impulse is at work in this new project panels would be left void of imagery, differed
which it nests an environment ? When the good which also brings nature and technics together from the Roman villas in which the painter
citizens of Florence argued about where they in an arresting paradox. The baroque sculptors sought to establish a key, a mood which could
should place Michelangelo's David, were they of the Tivoli gardens could not have been more engulf the inhabitants (those almost
thinking of environmental art ? When in fact attuned to the sensuous power of plashing than impressionistic flourishing gardens that cover
Michelangelo deployed his resources, among Whitman in this quasi-humorous ensemble. The the walls of an entire room). Some Roman
them Marcus Aurelius, on the Campidoglio, decadent symbolists would have swooned at painters relished painting murals beyond
was he making environmental art ? Probably, Whitman's synaesthetic ambitions. All the murals, and others showed architectonic
probably. effects of theatre are permissible here, as well reserve. All muralists of any talent knew that
However, what seems to distinguish more as the objectness of sculpture. by scale alone they could create ambience.
recent experiments is a deliberate interest in The strongest ensemble is shown in a smallish Modern painters cannot be said to have
transitoriness. Much 'environmental' art is darkened room. A bulky and expensively advanced the theory of mural painting because
devised today for environs that will soon expel brass-bound staircase looms large, while the there is nowhere to advance to. There are only
it. For instance, recently the Philadelphia emphatic plop, plop, plop, plash, plash of a slow various scales, and various ways of
Institute of Contemporary Art commissioned spill of water instantly captures the attention. accommodating circumstance. When Pollock
several artists to create sculpture specifically for While the water drops, step by step, a projector sought to work with the principle of scale, he
the exhibition. The director writes that all the above shows a continuous film of a slow rock stated that he was going to work between the
artists 'assign importance not to the sculpture dance, blurred on a wetted screen, and easel painting and the mural. In the interstice
as object, but to the relationship of forms to one accompanied by a banal (but not very loud) between he hoped to avoid the rule of
another in a given spatial setting.' The difference rock theme. One is surrounded by sounds, circumstance while yet achieving the power
between them and Michelangelo is that, definite rhythms, and fugitive movements on (power to enfold, or engulf the viewer) of the
according to the director, Tor them the creative the screen. Here, then, the 'environment' is mural. Léger hungered after white walls which
process — the artist's solution to a given set of modulated while the objects are diminished he said became an elastic rectangle once he set
circumstances and conditions — is more in the interest of theatrical continuity. his brush to them and 'the rectangle disappears,
important than the creation of a permanent Whitman's other exhibits are less impressive, its boundaries and its depth erode.' The total
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