Page 59 - Studio International - March 1974

Supplement Hunter's moon subjects seriously if he does truly recognize
what the artists I mention, and others like them,
American Art of the noth Century by Sam
Hunter, 487 pp, 839 illustrations, including are concerned with. They are surely not avant
Spring1974: 166 in colour. Thames and Hudson, London, garde in their ambitions, in the sense that word
now implies. Indeed, to be truly convinced by a
1973. £5.50.
Noland, say, itself implies a criticism of avant
This is a very illuminating book on gardism, of most of the recent art Mr Hunter
new and contemporary American art, and well worth discusses . . . and of his way of discussing it as
looking at. Almost everything is here: in pages well. The point here is not that one has to take
recent of illustrations, information, analyses and any line, stance or position for a particular
judgements; and all at a modest price. It makes
kind or species of art, but only for good art
no difference that most of the work illustrated wherever it might turn up. Can Mr Hunter take
ranges from indifferent to plain bad, and that everything seriously ?
art books the text is generally uninspired and at times It seems so. And yet, he is careful not to
simply absurd. It is still an illuminating book. identify himself too closely with anything so
This is how things are — in art and in criticism — square and old-fashioned as 'straight' painting
and it is as well to remember it. But if and sculpture. 'The most vital new avant-garde
Mr Hunter's aim was solely to reflect the expressions among the younger generation', he
generally abysmal middle-brow notions of writes, 'are in structurist sculpture and in
what contemporary art is about, he might have conceptual and process art. Judd, Morris,
done it better in a documentary format: in an Carl Andre — and possibly Duchamp [surprising
illustrated portfolio with representative here that Reinhardt isn't dragged in] — have
statements by artists and critics. This, however, replaced Johns, Noland and Stella as the source
is not what is presented here. He has written a of new creative impulses and ideas.'
`critical history', so the publisher's information Helen Frankenthaler and Larry Poons have to
tells us. If they are right, then the book is suffer a pat on the back, but for the rest the
illuminating only by default. news is that 'traditional painting, for the
I turned first to the chapter on recent moment, seems to be facing a mortal crisis,
painting. Its title is 'The Aesthetics of Boredom: with no immediate relief in sight.' Turn the
Abstract Painting since 1960'. Mr Hunter is, of page and see what's healthy.
course, quite correct: there has been a lot of So we turn the page and see. First:
very boring painting made since 1960, and he `Assemblage, Minimalism and Earthworks'
doesn't miss much of it. But with all the and then, newest of all, 'Art as Action and
irregularly carpentered canvases and the sprayed Idea'. Here are all the well-known recent
acrylic laquer on vacuum formed Plexiglas images from the art magazines. Pages of
objects — in short, with all the abstract minimalist sculpture, Robert Morris on the
novelties of this period — are paintings by the horse, Carl Andre in the woods, Walter de Maria
likes of Louis, Stella, Poons, Kelly, Bannard in the desert and — to give it some good
and Noland, by serious artists who have historical precedent — Pollock in the studio,
produced work utterly removed in quality discovering 'in his skeins of paint an activated
from most of the other objects discussed in this space and free energy which tumbled over into
chapter. Mr Hunter's blanket approach may at the spectator's physical and psychic realm'.
first sight seem to be justified in the name of art Then: women licking a car, a man under a
history: taking no line or position, but sheet, another pulling at his lips, the same one
presenting everything as it occurred. But taking spouting water: all serving to illustrate what is
everything at face value and giving everything meretricious about the recent art scene.
the same treatment isn't art history in any I have been discussing only three chapters,
serious sense (even if such a total catholicism and this isn't the whole book. There are ten
could, in fact, ever be achieved). It doesn't others to account for; and these are less
escape value judgements. They are merely obviously outrageous, by and large, because
unconscious or subliminal — are inherited ones, the art is older. Instead, they are popularized
given by what is taken as advanced art by the journalism, and can't be justified in any art-
majority of the art scene. And what — one is historical way. There is little here one couldn't
forced to ask — has an institutionalized history of readily find out from existing literature, and the
the American avant garde got to do with the organization of the material is at times quite
committed practice of art in our time ? The clue, chaotic. For example: after two chapters on late
I think, is the way in which the term 'avant nineteenth-century art and on realism, there are
garde' is bandied about continually. This is not a four chapters on early American modernism.
`critical history' in any real sense, but a The first begins — happily enough — with
catalogue of the furthest out (or what Mr Hunter Steiglitz and his circle, but goes on to American
takes as being furthest out) in any period. Dada before getting to the Armory show.
Of course, he doesn't fail to take seriously Louis, Then, we are told about Marin and Weber and
Stella, Noland, et al — any more than he doesn't after that Dove and O'Keefe, only to return to
fail to take seriously George Bellows, Stuart Marin again before moving on to Demuth and
Davis and Jackson Pollock. They are all part of the precisionists. Stuart Davis appears towards
the history and have to be in. But I find it very the end of the next chapter, devoted to scene
hard to believe how he can take his other painting and ios realism — a reasonable
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