Page 34 - Studio International - May 1974

appropriate to the transition from one model of subject of the official correspondents of the
Correspondence teapot to another. Yes, but in that case the Paris Biennale and also the representatives of the
motor-car to another, or from one design of
Paris Salons. But not to mention my reference
parallel in fine art cannot be anything as to Charbier is to imply that there was a question
delicate as, say, the transition from an early of falsification in the catalogue.
style to a late style in a painter's oeuvre. The One remark: I am not French, I've lived in
corresponding sequence in fine art would have Paris for only a relatively short length of time.
to be something like 'the cave-painting, the I am Roumanian, comrade Forty.
illuminated missal, the English watercolour, CADERE
Cubism'. If that kind of history of Western art Paris
sounds too bald to be useful, so is Professor
Smith's summary of the history of Western SPAR
technology. In recent years the need for an association for
It isn't the case that technological arts administrators has been discussed but few
inventions simply 'drive out' old ones. practical steps have been taken to form one.
Professor Smith seems to rely on a simplistic This is why, after a meeting held almost a year
Art and industry model of the process whereby an invention ago, a group of people formed a working party
Bernard Smith's 'Art and industry : a systematic becomes applied and diffused. Some inventions to discuss the practical requirements of such an
approach' (April 1974) deserves to be read with in fact peter out after a promising start (like the association.
care and respect. But some confusions seem to flying-boat); others do so and are rediscovered Unquestionably a society is necessary;
have slipped through the net of the four (like the golf-ball typewriter, I believe); others many administrators work in dreadful
distinguished institutions, which heard wait a long time before they are socially conditions, supposedly proscribed by law, for
Professor Smith rehearse his argument before developed (like Babbage's analytical engine); poor financial rewards. Career advice is almost
it saw the press. others are found totally impracticable (see the non-existent. There is no proper career
The notion of 'units' within 'sequences' is archives of the Patent Office, to which I once structure. For many there is no pension scheme.
clear as far as craft and fine art are concerned. personally contributed); others keep research There is no forum in which the problems, both
A given teapot stands in the same relationship to and development labs busy looking for particular and general, to the arts administrator
its craftsman's 'run' of teapots as a given applications (like laser holography). It is naive can be discussed independently; such a forum
portrait stands to its painter's oeuvre. But when to regard the automobile as a more advanced would help to relieve the isolation which many
a third type of production is introduced - technology, in some linear model of human arts administrators undoubtedly now suffer
industrial production - we are asked to consider progress, than was the locomotive. The from. Some six years ago the Arts Council
`machine sequences' where the units are automobile developed in fact to serve a specific recognized the need for good administration by
inventions. Smith gives two examples of such way of life which Raymond Williams has called setting up training courses. It is now the turn of
sequences: (1) bullock-dray, coach-and-four, `mobile privatization' and which has now been the arts administrators to come together as a
locomotive, automobile; and (2) clay-tablet, widely criticized within our society; many body to maintain and improve standards by
reed-pen, wood-block, linotype machine. This people now regard railways as a more creating the right working conditions for the
is getting rather like one of those I.Q. tests civilized form of transport. Nor does the profession.
devised by the Caucasian mind to prove its industrial system provide only for Practically anyone who works in connection
racial superiority; but let us persevere. `demonstrable human needs', unless H-bombs with any art form, other than a technician or a
The difficulty is that we cannot shift abruptly and deodorants come under this heading. performer, is an arts administrator; for
from specific material 'units' - such as teapots or I know that Professor Smith was trying to do example he or she may be a general manager, a
oil paintings - to technological inventions, a lot in a short article; and there is indeed a publicity officer, a secretary, a house manager or
without putting the notion of a 'unit' in a serious need today for someone to develop and the arts officer of a local authority. The working
`sequence' under severe strain. reorient the Mandan or historical-materialist party would like everyone who thinks he or she
A teapot or an oil painting can be destroyed model of the relations between art and industry. is an arts administrator and who is concerned
or stolen. A corresponding unit in a sequence of But it is a pity that Professor Smith decided to for themselves or their fellow administrators to
industrial production might be, say, discard this approach altogether. It is not the write to them for further details.
Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car no.1 which case that Klingender's classic study of industrial A set of draft aims for the Society is now
was crashed in 1933, or my own Volkswagen, iconography (which I agree with Professor complete. We ask all potential members to come
registration no. JYY 402K. Not 'the automobile'. Smith in admiring) exhausts the possibility of to an open meeting at the Place Theatre,
Smith might contend that the true unit in his historical-materialist analysis of these relations. Duke's Road, Euston, London WC1 at 3.3o p.m.
`land transportation' sequence is the set of Nor can I see the advantage that Smith gains by Sunday, 12 May, 1974, to discuss these aims and
specifications of the Dymaxion or my adopting a kind of electrician's model of the to launch the Society.
Volkswagen, ie a unique structure of connexions between the 'systems' of fine art, MARGARET TOLLIDAY
technological permutations which could craft and industry. It seems for him to have the Working party for Society of Professional
conceptually generate all individual Dymaxion function of eliminating the need to consider Arts Administrators
or Volkswagen 1300s. But then surely the problems of social and cultural conflict.
corresponding 'unit' in the case of craft ceramics JONATHAN BENTHALL Tony award
should have been, not this or that individual London, W10 I was pleased to read the article in your last
teapot, but, for instance, the specific combination issue on Roger Hilton. I was particularly
of paste, design etc. which enables a Comrades in art impressed by the statements in his letter which
connoisseur to identify and date any The letter by G. M. Forty published in the I agree with wholeheartedly. I was also
Wedgwood teapot made in 1780. February issue of Studio International adopts a impressed by the way Hilton's letter was laid
But (Professor Smith might alternatively political standpoint strongly opposed to that of out and presented, as an experience, to be read
contend) the sequence 'bullock-dray, my own article, to which this letter refers. and appreciated.
coach-and-four, locomotive, automobile' covers However, G. M. Forty could only confirm, in a PAUL WILLIAM WHITE
a much longer historical time-scale than is purified form, what I myself wrote both on the London, SWI
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