Page 40 - Studio International - June 1974

so easily.
not equate It the word 'art' has only recently acquired extreme, it does not cease to convey
Gene Davis's Video Puzzle is also effectively the sense of the visual arts, it is yet a very old information, but it does so in a way that makes
without movement - or so one judges from the word in the general sense of 'skill'. The the nature of its own intervention the central
description : a nude female model lies supine in vacillation of art between object and act which focus of attention. Television may read like a
the middle of the television image. What subject has been so much a feature of recent borrowed eye, but the socket of a human eye
could better serve to establish links with our developments may well relate to a persisting will not fit in one's mouth, the lens of a camera
habitual anticipations of conventional art ? ambiguity as to the identification of skill with the will.
The figure is arranged in a 'difficult' position process of its application or the definitive Alberti compared the surface of a painting
with the feet pointed directly forward, but the achievement of its objectives. If painting and to a window and exhorted painters to 'present
camera accomplishes the task of foreshortening sculpture imply an equation of art with objects the form of things seen on this plane as if it
with ease. In this position, the head loses much modern art of the post-1950 phase has were of transparent glass'. So in another piece I
prominence and the movements of the model's valued painting and sculpture as they epitomize drew the lens of the portapak over a window-
mouth must be scarcely discernible, but the the act of their own production. The video- pane. I moved it freely, twisting and turning,
fact that her mouth does move is important. screen presents act as act within the conditions banging off the edge of the frame, doodling
The distinction which the English language - of a continuous pictorial surface. Many artists and even writing the word art and my own
in its elaborate generosity - allows between like Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman have name and the names of my children. The
the nude and the naked assures us of the used videotape in this way, essentially as a screeching sound of the lens-mounting moving
suspension of male concupiscence in return for means of documentation in which the art over the glass may point up an analogy with the
the privilege of art, and yet the media of aspect fluctuates uncertainly between the surface level of Alberti's pictorial metaphor (as
painting and sculpture can by their nature only document and the events it reports. My own my nude piece may recall the conventions of
give us an account of physical parts. Who ever main concern in the use of videotape has been life-drawing) but such conclusions have their
locus in the associative faculty of the beholder.
As primary information these pieces declare no
more than the physical structure and context of
the apparatus which creates the message it
records. And if there are such associations with
more familiar notions of art, does that make my
pieces more or less art ? And is the value of the
piece dependent on the outcome of that
question ? To what extent is value dependent on
classification ? Are taxonomy and axiology
co-extensive and does the use of those terms
immediately defer the problem to the
competence of a philosopher - or sociologist -
or an economist - or a psychologist ? Is it right
that we should defer it ? Who is responsible ?
Historically, the notion of art emerged as a
connotation of the activities of painting and
sculpture which at one time had a practical role
by virtue of their power of transmitting visual
information. The shift of emphasis, if it
liberated art from the obligations of honest
accountability, by the same token permanently
reduced its credibility as a simple meaning
system. It will be a matter of taste whether we
refer to 'transcendence' or 'functional
incapacitation'. It is surely a matter of common
experience that titles like The little tear gland
that went tic-tac or Debris of an automobile
heard of asking an artist's model what she Gene Davis Video Puzzle 197o giving birth to a blind horse biting a telephone do
thought about art ? In this case the model does Black and white video tape not evoke criteria of literal accuracy. The
speak, reciting a series of letters which, despite to resolve these two levels of operation by meaning of art is romantically supposed to
irregular phrasing, spell out to the discerning involving the camera as a functioning reside in some oblique level of implication,
ear an artistic message deriving from no less an component of the act it records. In one which may range from the personal proclivities
authority than Clement Greenberg: 'Works of instance I spent half-an-hour inserting the (hopefully repressed) of the artist to an
art that genuinely puzzle are almost always of small wide-angle lens of a portapak into my intuition of truth beyond human
ultimate consequence'. Is this art ? Is it of mouth. I made another tape by drawing the comprehension. On both counts such
ultimate consequence ? And is the model naked same wide-angle lens over the body of a nude interpretations bring art into disrepute, in the
or nude once she opens her mouth ? At one time model. The point of contact was blurred and one case as an intrusion into privacy and in the
the laws of the London stage required that signs only occasionally did recognizable fragments of other through sheer silliness. The question of
of life and the display of living flesh should be the girl or the studio reveal themselves as the how art can have meaning in any normal sense
mutually exclusive. Is nudity (as opposed to camera tilted obliquely, but the continuous (or alternatively by-pass the problem of
being shamefully naked and unadorned) the scraping noises of the soundtrack, and the meaning altogether) is one of prime
condition of mute and immobile submission to occasional crackle as the lens passed through importance. Titles require the same grain-of

the transcendent male fantasy ? Is artistic her hair, established that the camera and the salt as pictorial images, yet the words in the
licence ethically defensible or is it just a piece of girl were physically touching throughout the catalogue which indicate means and materials
privileged cultural hypocrisy ? piece. When the equipment is forced to this are usually to be taken at their face-value.

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