Page 42 - Studio International - April 1974

Alphabet Spire III 1972 Alphabet Spire V. In the screenprint version
Colour screenprint Alphabet Spire III, the delicate tonal gradations
25 5/8 x 37¾ in.
Co-published by Kelpra Editions and of the radiant rainbow-like sky is forever
William Crutchfield reassuring. The rainbow itself is of course a
traditional symbol of hope; its appearance in
conjunction with technology in the Rainbow
Train suite is more than coincidental and again
conveys an underlying feeling of assurance. The
same optimistic note of hope is once more found
both in the 1973 watercolour Lightship
Augustus I and in its giant-size screenprint
version Lightship Augustus II where, with the
introduction of a beaming lighthouse, guidance
and deliverance are suggested.
By recreating handmade objects of great
beauty on paper, Crutchfield transfers his own
sophisticated delight in early photographs, old
movies and antique toys to an endearment of the
old-fashioned, man-serving and man-controlled
machine. This shifting of the scene back to an
earlier and less complex moment, however,
suggests that he is groping for a way of
psychologically coping with a now different
world, a world overloaded with dehumanizing
automation, and it is that world of felt
dislocation of which his works stand as the
symbolic expression. To make the perspicacious
inconsiderable apprehension, over the possible prepares to take to the skies and, as if linked observations Crutchfield makes is to refute the
sinister impact of technology on the individual inseparably with nature, fiercely clutches the absolute finality of our traditional perception of
and on the collectivistic society which that trees like a frightened child pushed into reality. With Crutchfield's help we are made to
technology inevitably fosters. More simply, unknown dangers . .. into the future and a new recognize our inadequacies and inefficiencies in
this is what Lewis Mumford has aptly called order of life. In Pair, his silvery planes, with dealing with issues of our epoch. At the same
modern man's surrender to the machine by gloved hands firmly clasped, glide playfully time, the ineffably rich potential of the mind in
modern man. Discussion on the validity of this past one another in an almost sexual ecstasy. experimenting with the discovery of endless
interpretation is not relevant to this essay. Americana: Covered Wagons shows a circular new possibilities, new combinations, new ways
What is relevant, however, is that the situation string of nineteenth-century covered wagons of bringing together disparate elements is
as Crutchfield sees it poses questions of vital perched precariously at the edge of an arid demonstrated, if only metaphorically. His
significance to the emotional life of man, both mesa; it is a lucid but terrifying image of the approach is hilarious but serious, a laugh with a
now and for the future. It becomes clear, frightened blind leading the blind - and more message. But humorous though it may be, his
therefore, that although Crutchfield uses the particularly of our obsession with security and humanization of the machines balances out the
past symbolically as a convenient point of over-protectiveness. In Not-a-Train from the dehumanizing mood. q
departure, his major concern is not the past but Rainbow Train suite, the boiler of an old- HOWARD E. WOODEN
the future, and his central thesis is actually not fashioned train engine is neurotically tied up in Footnote
the machine per se, but the overwhelming knots; colour becomes confused as forms 'Crutchfield's major works were completed shortly
omnipotence of the machine : man's own become confused. Even the letters of after he settled in Los Angeles, when two amusing
and emotionally powerful lithographic suites,
extension. Here it would seem as if he were Crutchfield's 'mechanical' alphabet amusingly Americana and Vistas, were published and printed in
searching for psychic compensation, and simply manifest human attributes. Sometimes they 1967 by Gemini GEL. Another suite, Air/Land/ Sea,
restating metaphorically the mythic slaying of string themselves out into space in a straight consisting of twelve lithographs and a title page, was
published by Tamarind in 1970; and in the same year
the father by the son. He depicts a world which line - and in over-reaching their mark they a de luxe folio volume titled Owl Feathers and
has come progressively to exclude man - a tumble to the ground. Or in another version containing fifty-three allegorical prints was published
machine-centred world through which man they arrange themselves to spell out HELP. by Domberger KG in Stuttgart. That year also saw
the production and publication of a number of
has projected his dreams only to find himself Not all is pessimistic, for although individual compositions including the colour
excluded. Thus only rarely is the human form Crutchfield's creations sometimes get caught up lithographs Eucalyptus II, City of Troy, Brown
Pelican, and the silkscreen Observation Point, the last
introduced into his compositions, for in the in absurd and strangely confusing printed in twelve colours by Domberger KG. In 1971,
context in which Crutchfield works, the human circumstances, they do appear to accomplish the the Six Rainbow Trains suite was published by
form would at most take on the aspect simply of impossible in the sense of making the incredible Bernard Jacobson and printed by Advanced Graphics
one more object and thereby detract from the true. In the Alphabet Spire series, one of in London. Advanced Graphics also printed in 1971
three of Crutchfield's most popular screenprints,
power of all other objects - mechanical objects. Crutchfield's most important undertakings, the Green Cockpit, Pair, and Eureka II. Two screenprint
However, while human forms are letters from A to Z stack up erectly into a tower posters, one titled Art and Technology, the other
Block of Sea, were published in 1971. Five major
conspicuously absent, one scarcely feels a sense of power symbolically hailing the future with the screenprints appeared in 1972: Twenty-six Emotional
of complete human estrangement, for clearly same optimistic assurance as the Eiffel Tower Letters, Alphabet Spire III, Help II, Beached City II,
discernible human emotions lurk ubiquitously: did almost a century ago. To Crutchfield, the and Third City of Troy. In June, 1973, a giant size
(36h 57 in.) screenprint titled Lightship Augustus II,
yearnings and conceits, frustrations and alphabet is man's greatest single invention and closely related to a contemporary watercolour twelve
triumphs. Hence there arise further illogical it is this supreme intellectual achievement that feet in length and titled Airship Tiberius II, was
references. In Green Cockpit for instance, an he seeks to monumentalize in his thirty-two- printed in seventeen colours by Advanced Graphics,
London. This listing is of course in no sense a
outmoded aeroplane, presented to us in foot sculpture Alphabet Spire IV, soon to complete inventory of his prints and watercolours.
untarnished comic strip colours, reluctantly appear and directly derived from the scale model His first sculptures were executed in 1973.

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