Page 52 - Studio International - September 1974

REVIEW 10
for the purpose : blunted triangles The Secret Block for a Secret another major German cult, that of intermingled with other forms. One of
bend themselves apart to make slice Person in Ireland: drawings by cosy vapidity, one of whose prime the exhibitors, for example, began as a
openings and flanges (a hook-and-eye Joseph Beuys, Institute of exemplars in this century was the painter, another appears to be on the
arrangement) fastening shape off the Contemporary Art, 9 July- young artist, Hitler. Though way to becoming one. Francis
floor and dismissing it without note. 1 September undoubtedly not on that scale of Hewlett's 'leather' trunk and
This marvellous, easy suspension, New Ceramics, Ulster Museum, danger, Beuys reveals a comparable decorated brogues have caught some
though it proves Lowe capable, 11 July-15 September mindlessness. It may be said that what attention already but photographs are
doesn't put him spot on the mark. The The reputation of Joseph Beuys Hannah Arendt called the banality of meagre in comparison with the actual
work's thin steel plate, its far-view arouses presentiments that verge on evil in the third Reich was prefigured bravura of his objects. The technical
slat- holes and trim-end-containers the sinister: the ex-Luftwaffe pilot by Hitler's youthful studies and I feel problems solved here have to be left to
volunteer as easy riders between the swoops suddenly into the world of less than enthusiastic when the imagination. Divorced from and
sculpture and lateral space. Not too anarchist libertarianism contemplating what 'rough beast' obviously spurning the 'craft'
clear about imported lingo, he (demonstrating physically and may be slouching around in Beuys' tradition of his material, Paul Astbury
cuts the anti-form to decorative getting a bloody clubbing as a result) tracks. The dabblings in animism, represents ceramics at their
permissiveness, using internal and 'frees' a generation of students alchemy, magic, etc., may be traced to contemporary limit. Working most

incident where it's unsuitable as from traditional methods, hymning the the early myths of Teutonism and often on a small scale he has produced
means. Results are cubist cliché : the mystic virtues of beeswax and butter. while these have sometimes been a number of figures that establish his
front and back of twin-shapes playing The work on display in London, used by others (Tacitus, for instance) ambition, though it is clear that he is
mirror-image peek-a-boo within the enigmatically titled, looks private, for purposes of their own it amazes still exploring the possibilities. What
sculpture's enclosure. almost to the vanishing point, me to find Beuys' contrived naievety he may yet do is his business but I
Katherine Gili's 1974 piece, unlike innocent-looking drawings, some being taken seriously outside his own should be surprised if it was not as
Lowe's cosmetics, experiments with with tints. Opening in Oxford and culture group. In Belfast, where he adventurous and relevant as anything
weathercock space changes. It uses later showing in Edinburgh, Dublin himself is going, the 'revolutionary' is being done in any other medium. It
shape to advantage : a wall sheet and Belfast, the exhibition is making going to a real revolutionary situation. would be a great pity if the variety and
hoisted perpendicular on the base gets a notable clean sweep of these If the IRA or the UDA will smear achievement of this exhibition, in toto,
snipped to a rectangle cut-out and fills offshore islands. Beuys claims themselves with honey and beeswax were not made available outside
the close visual field. Spatial nuance liberation as his theme but appears to for him then my name is Belfast, a city honoured by its
is on the edges where these wall be as incapable of handling it in line as O'Shaughnessy. presence.
pockets collect oddments : a polygon, that third-rate American faux-naif, The one constant factor in work Timothy O'Keefe
a girder, shovel-shapes are propped Richard Brautigan, does in words. that has a range of thirty-six years is
knowingness, not achievement.
Beuys's real achievements have been
as warrior in Russia and the
lioninization he has derived from his
adoption of extreme libertarian poses
in a politically uncertain Germany.
What a Junkers 88 used to be has
been turned, by way of honey and
hare's fur, into a different form of
aggrandizement. Whether that is an
advance in political terms or not is
irrelevant in terms of what is presented
in London. We know there is a
common longing for the irrational and
a general willingness to be deceived
by the pretentious (not necessarily
that of over-statement) but when, as
at this exhibition, the posturing has
greater significance than the
achievement, it is necessary to
protest about the craven honouring it
is being given throughout these
Jeffrey Lowe Untitled 1974 Mild steel, painted 72x 47 x 156 in. islands. As a footnote, the catalogue
Francis Hewlett Flower Satchel 1972
notes that 'beeswax' in Irish also
means 'perfection'. Remembering
frontways, lean or angle back away Each of them fetishises charm and Myles na Copaleen's reflections on Edward Wadsworth, paintings,
from their wall support to make ingenuousness, to the puking point. the multiplicity of meanings that most drawings and prints at
openings that tunnel the sculpture's Where Brautigan rules himself out by Irish words are capable of, I feel sure P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., London,
back-up space into shape. Gili's almost total political irrelevance, that somewhere, perhaps in a small 16 July-16 August
ability to mould graspable volume Beuys deserves to be taken more island off the West coast, the same Edward Wadsworth seems, in some
from air, to tight pack it around the seriously, if only because the word also carries the connotation of ways, a strange choice for Colnaghi's
work's thin profile alters the tone of historical precedents and warnings 'bullshit'. first one man show of a twentieth-
modernist conversation. Her change- are more ominous. The Ulster Museum's current century artist. When, as one of the
over from material flatness to rounded A French critic of the 1930s, exhibition of New Ceramics is a brave Vorticists, he first shocked London
spatial illusion, however exciting, André Suares, once wrote of a venture into territory not well enough with his near abstract paintings,
leaves modernist syntax the same. Its formidable right-wing publicist, charted. The staff of the Museum have Colnaghi's was exhibiting 'modern'
ever present pictorialism, its framelike 'Barrès understands almost nothing taken serious work seriously and have water-colours and drawings by drab
limits, its movement from physical except while playing a refrain from mounted a display with the artists like James McBey, Muirhead
boundary to self-containment prevent Chateaubriand on his cello. He is to confidence that rightly puts it into the Bone and Henri Harpignies. In the
Gili's sculpture (like all its genre), thinking what Briand is to politics. category of 'art', not 'craft'. Eight vorticist manifesto of 1914 Colnaghi's
from commenting usefully on Cadences and sickening vibratos ... exhibitors are on show, varying from is far more likely to have been blasted
organization in a particular place. If I Barrès' intelligence is always traditional and fastidious forms to along with the English climate, the
were one of these six sculptors, I'd following suit. He hasn't one original full-scale technical achievements as Britannic aesthete, Frank Brangwyn,
sooner than later set my mind to weigh thought. A virtuoso, he sings well the sculpture. Full marks to the Museum cod-liver oil and the British Academy
up the danger for art : whether it falls music of others.' Whose music does for venturing where in this country than blessed like the great ports of
heavier in the region of gestalt Beuys sing to ? few have dared, or cared, to tread. The England, restless machines, James
niceties or in that of environmental The innocence that the exhibition pots and bowls of Sonja Lanweer Joyce and the Commercial Process
design. calls to mind is not that of the great reveal someone totally committed to Co. However, although Wadsworth's
Caryn Faure Walker surges of German romanticism nor her art : they breathe assurance and vorticist designs were dismissed as
the early enchanted freedom of like much else on display bring outthe 'purely experimental', before long he
Weimar; the work lies embedded in ways in which ceramics have won the acceptance and admiration