Page 44 - Studio Internatinal - October 1974

ASPECTS OF making an aeroplane, and testing it out. So
while it's being made, you're always thinking
about aeronautical technique. Then when it's
THE AVANT-GARDE finished, there is an aesthetic fact and if it's
beautiful, I can't specially make it ugly to react
against my academic training. But this doesn't
mean either that because of my academic
IN BELGIUM against the nature of the plane. However, all
training, I would make modifications going
these details and elements together form
MICHAEL BAUDSON & YVES GEVAERT something which is justifiable in plastic terms,
but you can't put it in the category of plastic
art.' The totality of Panamarenko's work, a
succession of graphic elements, where the
imaginary and technical references are side by
side, constantly pursues the construction of
precise objects, whose plastic finalities are
marginal.
In contrast with this, Bernd Lohaus's work is
the result of a rigorous analysis of the problems
The wish to define the current avant-garde in the international avant garde. of plasticity. According to him, drawing is the
Belgium is, at the least, debatable as a critical Some people will perhaps be surprised that strongest form of his thought on 'action', action
undertaking, given the multiplicity of problems Marcel Broodthaers was not at Oxford. In fact, resulting in gesture. In fact, creative activity, in
posed and their constant movement and given Broodthaers, whose international reputation is the physical sense of the word, remains of
the various subjectivities which the latter can already made, did not want to be taken as a primary importance to him, since it allows him
bring into being. However, we can at least try guarantee of the success of this exhibition, if to perceive more clearly a certain number of
to situate it in relation to the international the need arose, or to be considered as the leader structures and their potential realization in a
avant garde, that is to say in relation to a of a new generation. We refer the reader to the given space. Above all a sculptor, Lohaus
factual situation, by referring to the different cover of the current issue and the large considers his graphic thought, in which he
exhibitions which have brought the research exhibition at present devoted to him at the closely links the elements of painting and
carried out by certain young Belgian artists into Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels. sculpture, as a succession of signs, where
the open. In Oxford, just as in the Palais de Beaux- matter and space are balanced. It's after this
In this respect, the recent exhibition Arts, Panamarenko (see the interview in this analysis that he elaborates the essentially spatial
presented by Nick Serota at the Museum of issue with Irmeline Lebeer p.134) made a mural structures, through materials like wood (beams
Modern Art of Oxford, following the one drawing, a design for a plane on the scale 1/2 in which are rough or squared off so they fit
organized by the authors of this article, at the Brussels and 1/1 in Oxford. They are graphic together), sometimes rope (linking elements),
Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels in June 1973, studies which represent an important link in the sticky brown paper with white paper or with
picture rail, lastly the canvas which is more a
is representative not only of a large proportion elaboration of an actual model. The one in
of the Belgian avant garde, but also the Brussels has now been made, (U-Control linking element for the pictorial sign between
the ground itself and the picture rail than a
internationalization of its information. while the one in Oxford is being made
simple support stretched on a frame. Lohaus
It has since seemed to us interesting to (Meganeudon IV). At first glance, these two
can deny any notion of 'pictorial value' in his
concentrate on the artists featuring in this works appear formally as the most classic in the
use of black and white, or of any other pure
exhibition: Charlier, Lohaus, Mees, two exhibitions. However, the following extract
pigment, by interpreting its elements in terms of
Panamarenko, Roquet and van Snick. Though from a conversation with the artist enables us
a sculptural system of symbols. He also creates
they in no way form a group, nor even a to better evaluate the significance of these
groups which emphasize the links between
community of thought or plastic interests, drawings, and their technical and plastic
these artists all belong to the same post-war content: 'You can certainly put my work in the various materials, rather than their individual
generation, born between 1935 and 1940. In category of plastic art, since in a certain sense it presence. The 'gesture', a mere exaltation of
addition, if they raise different problems, they belongs there. When you see the drawing of an matter for many other artists, makes the matter
all understand the avant garde in terms of its aeroplane or a dirigible or an object, you are here a residue and disappears as a part of the
whole.
international implications and in this context face to face with a plastic or aesthetic fact, by
come together, through their plastic and critical the very fact that this work is drawn or painted The evolution and plastic analysis of Guy
development and by their exhibitions. with a plastic significance. What I do isn't just a Mees is quite different, for he is more interested
For example, after a stay in New York, designer's sketch. Anyway I couldn't do just in a creative constancy whose implications are
Panamarenko took part in the exhibitions that, it would upset me. The fact that I went to more political than formal. From the beginning
`When attitudes become form' and `Documenta the Academy is also partly responsible for my of the sixties, he was part of the avant garde in
V'; after studying Beuys, Lohaus participated in being linked to a drawing in plastic and aesthetic Europe, with among others the Zero Group,
the exhibition 'Painters who question painting' terms. I believed in the Academy ... I believe Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein.1 At this time, he
presented in Paris, Munchengladbach and it's important for a drawing still to be "good", made pictures of stretched and superimposed
Antwerp; Charlier exhibited at Gallery 18 in as an old painter would say. But you still can't lace, that he later integrated with geometrical
Paris and Roquet at Gallery 6 and the Galerie define it solely as a plastic event. It isn't just shapes (triangle, circle, square) placed on the
des Locataires (see Flash Art no. 46-47). that, for it's always related to an aeroplane ground. The abandonment of lace then led him
Finally Mees's work, shown at the Stedelijk which is being prepared. So it's a completely to a language of primary structures, based on
Museum in Amsterdam, is backed by the MTL — technical fact at the basis of it. This drawing at fluorescent tubes and aluminium. At the
Art & Project Gallery and that of van Snick by the Palais de Beaux-Arts is only an instant, beginning of the seventies, he broke with this
Wide White Space, two centres in Antwerp something which is completed now and "tarted formal past to present a series of works which
which are very active in the critical diffusion of up" to look good ... It's really a question of play on the situation and the function of the
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