Page 47 - Studio International - March 1974

seen, this is not amazing. It is often all artists up to 35 of a proper chance Diane Arbus and photograph it becomes stranger :
defended with the concept of of being exhibited. Its resuscitation 'I mean if you scrutinize reality closely
quality — source of endless disputes — with the addition of a set theme is American freaks enough, if in some way you really,
and in Mr De Wilde's case called grotesque; if even quite young artists really get to it, it becomes fantastic'.
'characteristic choice'. Anyway, there are forced into such a corset, instead Many successful modern In a recent, and brilliant, review of
are large fields to be covered : from of being able to develop freely, then photographers are intermediaries, Arbus's work, Susan Sontag develops
industrial design to ceramics, objections must be loudly raised explorers and reporters on our behalf. the idea that it was largely, even
photography, tapestry, posters, etc. in the interests of the young They take unfamiliar and often exclusively, about 'pariahs and
A large task for one man to be the best generation of artists. It must be disquieting societies as their subjects. miserable-looking people'. She goes
informed in all these fields and clear to all those responsible that Until fairly recentlythese societies were so far as to claim that 'anybody Arbus
sub-divisions. Why not have the themes lead directly to adjustment safely distant, in Russia, in Africa, or, photographed was a freak'. This
specialists on his staff make the and accommodation. It is therefore particularly, in China. Of late these fascinated attention to the misshapen
decisions for their parts of the museum to be desired that all young and aliens have been detected nearer to only accounts for a proportion of the
collection ? Priorities could be creative artists may be able to take home; photographers have turned pictures, though, and it is no more
discussed in staff meetings. part in the Deutscher Kunstpreis der their attention increasingly to the than a particular manifestation of her
(c) The modern art that Mr De Jugend without being subjected poor, to cult and interest groups and much broader taste for the strange.
Wilde collected during his ten years to the thematic constraints. to ethnic minorities. This was a There are a number of pictures in
as director of the Stedelijk earns him In Stuttgart, where the beautiful distinct feature of American the book which have no possible
the respect and gratitude of all. The electrostatically charged Plexiglas photography in the 1960s and its connection with freaks, yet they are
growing public interest in the still boxes of the Düsseldorf artist Erich most complete expression is to be undeniably strange. In a very puzzling
existing problems, concerning the Reusch are on show at the year-old found in the work of Diane Arbus, the late picture, A family on their lawn
internal and external functioning of Galerie Mueller-Roth, I met Senior successful fashion photographer who one Sunday in Westchester, NY 1968,
the museum, is something the Curator Siegfried Cremer at his home. studied with Lisette Model, turned to a couple sprawl on deckchairs.
museum people themselves should The reason was that Cremer, one of art-documentary work in the 60s and sunbathing, whilst their son plays on
be grateful for. the most important collectors in the in 1971, at a time when her work was the lawn in the background : a row of
Liesbeth Brandt Corstius field of Nouveau Realisme, is in the becoming celebrated, committed trees cuts out most of the sky and
process of splitting his collection suicide. closes the picture. This could
Germany of 500-odd pieces, amassed since epitomize middle-class normality, but
for the sombre gothic cast of the
the late 1950s, into two large self-
The twenty-first post-war annual contained groups and handing these bank of trees and the unalleviated
exhibition of the Deutsche to two museums on permanent loan. leaden intricacies of the wide stretch
Künstlerbund (German Artists' The major part of Nouveau Realisme of lawn. The boringly normal has
Federation) — held this year in is going to the Landesmuseum in become sinister in this photograph.
Berlin, where the federation was Münster and will be shown to the Just as mundane is an image of an
founded in 1903 to counter public in the museum's new building Elderly Couple on a Park Bench, NYC
conservative forces — lured many in the spring. This section contains, 1969: they look sour and tired,
artists and art critics to the former in particular, works by Arman, César, admittedly, but far from odd : there is,
German capital. A newly elected, Christo, Deschamps, Hains, Klein, however, an element of the 'fantastic'
and very much younger, committee Raysse, Rotella, Spoerri, Tinguely. in the heavy black labyrinthine pattern
had come up with an exhibition The second group is going to the of the woman's astrakhan coat and
concept hitherto unknown to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung the accidental alignment of neck and
federation, which as an institution in Munich and is to be hung in its shirt which makes the man's head
is only of significance on the German annex at Wasserburg am Inn. The into a continuation of his shirt front.
art scene. Artists were invited main theme here is the intermediate : More discreetly 'fantastic' is a
according to 'themes' — 'synthetic that is to say, script and picture. picture of A Woman with Pearl
A flower girl at a wedding 1964
figuration', 'actions', 'visual In addition there are the visionary Necklace and Earrings, NYC 1967;
arrangements' and 'realism' — which architectures of Hermann With Diane Arbus it was no longer a the cord fabric of her hat makes a
seemed too vague to many of the 300 Finsterlin and a self-contained case of documenting the squalid and pattern of parallel lines which looks
members and resulted in a storm of collection of some fifty works by dangerous sectors of American urban very like a blow-up of a crude
protest. Consequently the committee Dieter Rot. Cremer's previously life, but of identifying and wirephoto and this is curious above
finally decided to ask all the members art-strewn walls were almost empty photographing its more eccentric the detailed description of her face,
not already accommodated in the and he explained to me why he was inhabitants, of seeking out the but it is no more than a witty
previous groups to exhibit in an parting with his collection. He said veritable curiosities. Her subjects demonstration of the resources of
additional category called 'prism'. that it was growing beyond a private range from the disturbed and photography. As she said , one of her
This category, in which each member setting and that ownership of art was mongoloid through the ranks of great preoccupations was with the
could only show a single work, was illusory ; he added that such a transvestites and hermaphrodites to differentiation of substances : 'I
a unique disappointment. collection acquired a momentum of the near-normality of burlesque wanted to see the difference between
The exhibition—which was on its own which came to direct the entertainers and topless dancers. In flesh and material, the densities of
view until the end of January in two collector's life, and that he wanted to the resultant portrait gallery there is a different kinds of things : air and
locales, the Akademie der Schönen be free of it for this reason. While stress on the grotesque ; many of the water and shiny'. This interest in the
Künste and the Neue Nationalgalerie — I was takling to Cremer, Dieter Rot. figures are ugly, their settings are substance and the texture of things
must be summed up as, on balance, an who has just done a new etching for mundane and their actions perturbing. often goes no further than a delight in
experiment which failed, even though Edition Manus-Presse, was having In the recent monograph devoted to differences of material.
there were outstanding pictures and a discussion with Hansjörg Meyer on her work the pictures are simply and More often than not this
objects to be seen. It cannot be the the floor below. Meyer had just arbitrarily presented with a studied preciseness about substances serves a
task of the Deutsche Künstlerbund returned from London, bringing new minimum of comment. Typical more complex intention. Patriotic
simply to imitate the museums and works by the English group 'Visual captions give a subject, a place and a Young Man with a Flag, NYC 1967
put on exhibitions restricted to Poetry' for Cremer's collection. date : Xmas tree in a living room in offers a range of matte and reflective
themes, like this one. Rather, it It is sad for Stuttgart that this Levittown, L./. 1963 and Mexican surfaces, delicately modulated half
should reflect the current German art collection, centred on European dwarf in his hotel room in NYC 1970 tones and the clarities of an
scene — all the more so since most of avant-garde art of the 1960s, is are examples. The unifying factor is emblematic badge and a flag,a richly
the well-known German artists belong going to museums elsewhere. To that in some way or other each of beautiful setting for the youth's
to the Federation. round it off, Cremer some time ago the subjects depicted has fascinated blotched and pustular face. She had
The evil of tying artists down to parted with the American Pop artists Diane Arbus. Although she it in her power to ridicule and it was
themes has not even stopped short for a good price. The proceeds were concentrates on eccentricities of a power she did not refrain from using.
of the exhibitions of the former used to the advantage of European appearance, on 'freaks' as she calls There is something of George Grosz
Deutscher Kunstpreis der Jugend sensibility. A marvellous catalogue them ('Freaks was a thing I in her occasional savagery, but where
(German Youth Art Prize) which on the Cremer collection gives details. photographed a lot'), she notes a lot he revealed the lusts and brutalities of
were held in several towns. This Günther Wirth of other things too. Virtually a rampant middle class she attends to
prize was perfidiously done to death (Translated from the German by everything she pictures is strange and anyone who has been to the trouble
some years ago, thereby depriving John Wheelwright) in the course of being fixed as a to prepare a face or posture for the