Page 53 - Studio International - March 1974

organized for an English tour. In the Is visibility a defining prerequisite to 'art for art's sake' idea or of a their temporal separation in the
painted 'trames' one can trace the the visual arts ? hermetic art activity conducted in display.
prototype of his stainless steel web- Barry as with the best conceptual deliberate isolation from other human Barry's latest work similarly
frames shown in kinetic exhibitions in art of the late sixties, posits activities. It is by encouraging stresses this though the object
the 60s. Morellet's Groupe de problematical extensions of existing a minimalist scrutiny of problematic elected (the circle) is not
Recherche d'Art Visue/collaborated norms ; if not to discover some latent extensions of minimal art (i.e. as things characterized by the words which are
freely with technicians on light boundary, then certainly to extend for consideration in themselves) presented in sequence. The verbs,
projects and ballets, accepting existing ones. However, it is that the roots of the dilemma in the representing actions, seem to
impersonality. Despite the occasional characteristic of American conceptual l'art pour l'art tradition is covered up. characterize what one might call
unforeseen and pleasing constellation art, in contradistinction to certain It is this aspect which clearly 'response' to the situation presented,
of lines in his own paintings of around areas of British conceptual art, that distinguishes it from its British as though the verbs from sentences
1960, generally Morellet's work problematic conjectures are not used counterparts. The gravitation of describing the work, or response to the
proved less arresting than Kelly's. as a basis for the necessary theoretical the avant garde to extremities in the work, are isolated individually as signs
According to E. C. Goossen, when redefinition of art-activity which one twentieth century is a way of finding for the work itself. The work might
Kelly was asked if he employed might say is prima facia warranted by borderline cases and thence be regarded as a more traditional
systems such as geometry he replied the nature of the entities which Barry natural parameters for art. The readymade situation, or at least one
that he 'never wanted to do anything and others can admit into the realm difficulty comes when one discovers which is at variance with the
that was open to everybody !' of art. Instead the entities are in incessantly extending outwards nominalism of American conceptual
Catherine Lampert forwarded for consideration in an that there are no natural borders— art, since the object characterized and
entirely deadpan and formalistic way they are conventional. If the same elected to the status of an art work
Robert Barry at the Jack Wendler as objects for critical inquiry in traditional modus operandi is then is present in the form of the circle.
Gallery, London, 4 — 28 February. themselves and apart from external retained in the absence of an object My impression of Barry's new activity
Robert Barry is a member of the connotations. of discovery in art, it can only serve is that if previously he could have
American conceptual art grouping At approximately the same time the mere extensions of existing been called an explorer of boundary
(not group) composed otherwise of as the 'Inert Gases Series', yet conventions. But there are boundaries regions in the sense indicated above,
Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner another entitled 'Radioactive Series' even to convention — language. then his new work might be regarded
and Douglas Heubler, who showed was used to pose similar problems. It is therefore not surprising that as a move inland.
together in New York from about 1969 The problematics of 'Inert Gases perpetuators of the tradition should Rosetta Brooks
and represented the first manifestation Series' seems to be linked nominally gravitate to this parameter.
of conceptual art in America. with the ontological problems posed Robert Barry's new work at the
The starting point for Robert by the latest developments of particle Jack Wendler gallery is like his
Barry's work was in the physical object physics, at least with regard to the previous phrase specifications, and
/art object factor of minimal art. His idea of a 'physical object' and more is similarly presented on a rotary slide
initial engagement in work which has importantly, as before, with regard to projector, issuing one word at a time
been termed 'conceptual' was in the 'physical object of art'. with a blank slide intervening,
developing radical extensions of Like Weiner and Kosuth, Barry has presumably to eliminate the possible
minimal art's innate presuppositions evinced his new metaphysical 'narrative' effect of a more continuous
through a similarly radical and commitment as a polemic against the temporal sequence. His phrase and
problematic extension of the species physical art-object and 'object art', words text pieces, since about 1971,
of physical objects, entertained the art-work being taken to reside in have often been deliberately diverse
conventionally as art-objects. The the specification for a real object and sometimes paradoxical nominal
identification of the art-work and its rather than in any particular physical characterizations of a single entity
physical artifact in minimal art object conforming to the description. (the object elected to the status of an
conforms to the formal types of It is exactly the same specification for art work). The work published in Andy Warhol Mao Tse Tung 1973
painting and sculpture and formally the art-object as is made theoretically 'Konzept Kunst' defines abstractly Black crayon, 36¼ x 36¼ in.
stable objects. However these formal by Richard Wollheim in his 'Art and the limits of what can be elected
types are rendered indistinct by Its Objects' in the revised 'physical nominally as an art work. 'It can be Andy Warhol: new drawings of
virtue of the form of scrutiny object hypothesis' where the presented, experienced, defined, Chairman Mao at the Mayor
encouraged in apprehending minimal 'connotation' of physicality in the placed, first, last, changed, Gallery, London, February
artifacts, which are of natural or art-work is insisted upon, but where described, interpreted, integrated, There are eight Warhol Maos,
physical properties. The painting as a the art-work is specified as a class sustained, clarified ...' It is in itself whether drawn by Warhol or not
three-dimensional object is as much (class description) of physical objects. a sort of self description, which is to (they are not signed on the front, yet
a sculpture within these Thus the art-work resides in the say that the work is a particular for the director I spoke with assured me
specifications. The last convention nominal specification, the kinds of which the phrases are universal. The they were by Warhol ; I asked whether
to go in the forwarding of the simple objects admitted are restricted in work has the status of an he'd got them from Warhol ; he
'ready-made' art work was the conceptual art only to the limits of abstraction by virtue of what it responded 'I never met Warhol in my
conventional generic distinction language. Thus Barry cites states of connotates and the status of a life.' That wasn't much of an
between painting and sculpture. mind and thoughts. particular by virtue of what it assurance.). They're each about
Morphological instability of the Total extensionality or all- embodies (as an art work). The latter 3 by 3½ feet square. They seem to have
physical artifact became the inclusiveness in art attend the is simply included in the former. been drawn on to a projection from
manifesto of 'going beyond painting tautologous dead-end of radicalism The operation of Barry's new work Mao's portrait by use of an
and sculpture', the development in that art-works are, under this mode is in one respect different from the epidiascope, through projecting the
being termed collectively of consideration, simply things which works which immediately antecede it. photograph on to sheets of paper
'conceptual art'. are called art-works. ('If someone There are no descriptions in the new upon which the artist then sketches,
Robert Barry, in 1969, with his says it's "art" ; it's art', Don Judd.) work, nor is there a nominally with pencil, vague shapes to
'Inert Gases Series' went still further, In one sense Barry might be regarded specified subject. The specification correspond with the projected image.
making the object, inert gases, not as a celebrator of the uncompromising made is a good deal more esoteric. The quickly sketched in pencil
only formally unstable (defying nature of the 'dead end'. But wiping The work consists of a list of verbs markings are not like Twombly's
formal identification), but also the slate clean (to use a cliché) is displayed as slides being interspersed delicate intuitive lines subsumed to a
indetectable by ordinary sensory only necessary and useful as a firstly by a blank slide, secondly by a rigid, controlled mental framework.
means (the group of inert gases are preparation for writing something slide of a faint ultra-violet circle and These lines are not explorative,
so-called because of their chemical new. There is little sense at this time finally by another blank slide. Like procedural corrections and
inertia, invisibility and non-toxic in idly celebrating the emptiness of his previous list of words, the words re-corrections of an artist's attempt to
nature). In other words, Barry appears the 'slate'. Otherwise the danger and themselves evince no direct re-present an image. These lines are
to be questioning whether there is dilemma of American conceptual art semantic inter-relations. In the work merely filling in space, straight
anything which can prevent his is that no scrutiny of the roots of the cited earlier, the relations of different efficiency drawing, and map-like
introduction of wholly invisible tradition which yields such universals applied in a sequence are in outlines making of the areas enclosed
entities within the minimalist problematic oddities is ever made and the manner in which they stencil-like shapes. Each section is
suppositions which dictate that any thus the tradition is perpetuated. In characterize the asserted art object, thus flattened out even more through
physical object can be nominally fact, conceptual art is perhaps the 'it'. The indirectness of association of simple outlining, and the whole
afforded the status of an art-work. most extreme manifestation of the the emitted words is emphasized by portrait ends up looking like a huge