Page 47 - Studio International - December 1974

There is thus something categorically Londoners as well. Templon appears first showing is a highly decorative
Gallic about the preoccupations of to have occupied the place once held example of gesturally conceived
these nine artists shown together, by the Kasmin Gallery and the spaces sculptural forms. He proposes series of
although they employ different media he can give to Stella, Olitski, Noland, textured shapes which result from
and incompatible styles. They submit Motherwell, Kelly, Judd and Flavin sawing planks from the live shape of a
to the spell of a retrospective stance may have been acquired at our expense. tree. He selects his angles and vectors
which unites them and it envelopes the However, local factors motivate the with an eye calculated to indicate
reaches of their imagination in veils of tribute paid by the Galliera to a Parisian striking configurations and he reinforces
self-indulgence or self-protection. Gallery and the part Templon has the natural linearity of his raw material
Boltanski's autoerotic fury performs played in supporting the avant-garde is, with split wedges and artificial groupings
its pranks before an altar of childishness in fact, very impressive. His stable which succeed in defining both the
and it is hard to distinguish the record includes Ben, Louis Cane, Marc Devade, intellect's and the material's energies.
of its stations from futile attempts to La Gac, Meurice, Titus-Carmel, Bernar There is a great deal of sophistication in
raise ghosts; but his anger seems Venet and the Art-Language Group some of his works which recompose
genuine enough. Monory's case is more (Terry Atkinson & Michael Baldwin). primary layers in order to obtain novel
to the point. He may well have been Together they display an almost patterns through the processes of a
the first of the superrealists and his comprehensive survey of contemporary secondary slicing operation, revealing
perfect canvases could have exercised a tendencies and it is not the individual the interaction between glue-lines and
much earlier influence if they had not artist's fault if his work lacks the formal the grain of the wood.
been steeped in the deep blues of apparatus to seem convincing in a Finally, three cases of the
irretrievable loss. Monory's setting which isolates it. In the conservative values. Roger Brown (at
photographic naturalism has always circumstances it is not surprising that Darthea Speyer's) unites the primitive
been designed to distance rather than Titus-Carmel and Cane create the landscape painter's illusions with the
to bring near; it concealed its matter in deepest impression — and that a man flavours of Chicago surrealism.
the submarine chromatics of sunken like Venet remains in obscurity because Bernard Schultze (in the new Galerie
treasures and it denied his violence and the depths he probes remain B. Marcel Billot) displays miniature
obscenities with the peaceful monotony inaccessible unless they are serially paper reliefs which depart from the
of his surfaces. He draws a veil of cumulated. Titus-Carmel and Cane are precedent of his better-known pieces of
beauty over ugliness and he lacks committed to the conservative means post-atomic decay; and Roger Nellens
Fellini's irony which reproaches the of graphic communication. Titus-Carmel (at bolas) shows large scale oil
memory for falsifying facts with the is certainly one of the finest draughtsmen portrayals of machinery.
halo of unattainability. Monory stops alive on either side of the Atlantic. In R.C. Kenedy
short at the borderline between fact his dark pencillings he explores the born
and fiction; he reveals immense depths surrealist's rather morbid preoccupations
without probing them and tenders his with distortion, dissolution and decay — Germany
paintings as evidence of the unverifiable. but his nightmares are controlled and
But he is an outstanding talent in his subjected to the conceptualist's discipline; In Mainz the German artists' association
own right nevertheless, and he richly and this arrests his imagery with the (the Deutscher Kunstlerbund) staged
deserves the honour of his retrospective classic precision of inscribed messages. its annual exhibition — the 22nd since
at the CNAC. Cane, on the other hand, is a mannerist. the war. In view of the fact that almost
Jean Marie Bertholin's work has a He reintroduced Rothko's twilight 3,000 works of art were sent to this
much more directly morbid quality. problems in an updated and theatrical show, 376 of which remained after
It wears the guise of prehistoric setting. judging by the jury, one would have
manufacture and his sculpted objects The avant-garde galleries continue thought that the result would have
display the stone-age tool's rough- to demonstrate that the conventional provided a clear, precise picture of the
modelled surfaces. They have a arts are dead and that our period is state of art in Germany today, a state
numinous presence, whatever the cast without a recognizable style of its own. characterised by a certain sluggishness,
of their purpose or appearance. Each Erik Dietman (at the BAMA) Sarkis not to say stagnation. Mainz worked
one of them has been fashioned to (at Ileana Sonnabend's) and Toni Grand hard at playing the understanding host,
commemorate a private moment. His (at Eric Fabre's) are all committed to but any expectations that the
series of columns records the history of extra-artistic notions in their various exhibition would reveal something of
his children's growth; his pebbles ways and all of them owe something to the contemporary situation were
contain relics and secretively penned the spirit of Dada. Dietman is the most disappointed. This had nothing to do
messages or names. Piles of seemingly orthodox dada disciple of the three. with the fact that well-known German
absurd tools and broken bones as well He shows a collection of panelled artists simply didn't contribute any
as shards form the graveyardlike litter object collages dedicated to verbalizing works (even they are no longer being
of his creativity; and their arrangements the poetry of nonsense but he does not original). It rather came from the idea
transmit the sacral air of ancient tombs refrain from the occasional Duchamp- of splitting the exhibition up into four
opened up for the first time. Something addicted pun either (e.g. Fenêtre 'subject areas', two of which were
obsessive hangs about these gravely Masturbaniste' etc.) His work enters 'Picture Stories' and 'Artists explain
painted fragments of an irrational world the mind under the lizard's sign which their Concepts'. Nothing is gained by
and it exploits their patinated sheen to recurs in most of his designs. such thematic categories and the
broadcast a claustrophobia which is Sarkis, on the other hand, comes closer to turning-point in exhibition-policy which,
real as well as moving. Jean Pierre conceptualizing simple, quasi- it was claimed, this show would bring
Bertrand achieves a similarly memorable constructivist images. He shows a series about, is still as distant as ever. Only
evocativeness with the prestidigitation of tripartite designs which incorporate single pictures, like those by Edgar
of allegorically tearstained photographs three facets of the gramophone record. Hofschen, E.G. Willikens and Klaus
of bare trees and Jean Le Gac performs Nor does he conceal the fact that they Heider and single pieces of sculpture
the antics of the philosopher-clown represent the history of the Third like those by Hauser, Schoenholtz and
turned artist turned clown turned Reich — commemorated as it is in a Schmettaus were better than the
philosopher without the slightest wish series of commercially available average. Q.E.D: the Künstlerbund
to entertain, instruct or to amuse — soundtracks. The first of his panels must really devise something new to
and it is to his credit that he succeeds — displays the disc, the second the plastic attract the elite of German artists to
since he neither informs, nor pleases bag which contained it — and the third its exhibitions once again.
although he provides a great deal of ill- section of the triptych holds the sleeve. New galleries are being founded in
assorted material to divert from the The disc is disfigured by glasspapering Stuttgart, although the trend, caused
real business of art. Alain Lestié shows its surfaces; the plastic bag carries (From top to bottom) Ben at the Palais by the reticence of collectors, is towards
a series of trompe-l'oeil compositions india-inked markings of concentric Galliera 1974 galleries closing down in ever-growing
halfway between Magrittes and Clovis circles which stand for the record's numbers. The distinguished work of
Trouille's coarse Surrealism. grooves and the visible lettering of the Dennis Oppenheim, installation shot the Wurtemberg Kunstverein and of the
Gasiorowski's, Theimer's and Thibeau's sleeve is obscured with heavy, at the Yvon Lambert Gallery, 1974 Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart contributes to
contribution is not likely to contain expressionistic pigmentation. The Roger Nellens What's New 1974 the prospect that this city may soon
gunmetal grey of the monochromes
much interest for the visitor to Paris. Jean Marie Bertholin Cylinders become an important cultural centre.
The Galerie Daniel Templon's carries the overtones of Sarkis's The most spectacular evidence of this
commentary and his final effect strives Toni Grand No 17 1974, h. 85 cm
recently enlarged team occupies the is provided by Fischer Fine Art which
Palais Galliera and their joint showing for an elegance which strikes one as has just opened a branch in Stuttgart,
provides a portent-like juxtaposition of slightly inappropriate considering the run by Wolf Donndorf, formerly a high
American and Parisian art — which may experiments to efface the terrible official of the Cultural Ministry. The
yet have secondary meanings for message of our immediate past. Toni Grand's first exhibition consisted of works by