Page 12 - Studio International - January February 1975

ART

AND

THE

STATE

Publishers' statement
The Publishers are pleased to announce AND
the appointment of Richard Cork to the
post of Editor of Studio International in
succession to Peter Townsend. He has THE
accordingly joined the journal from
January 1, 1975.
Peter Townsend will cease to be Editor STATE
with the publication of the May/June issue.
He is leaving the journal to develop other
publishing fields. OF
Our overall policy, in line with the
restructured magazine already announced
for 1975, will be to expand further the ART
range of our international coverage of the
contemporary visual arts. The larger
bi-monthly format will facilitate the Robyn Denny
communication of a well-documented and
An edited version of the first William
informed perspective on relevant Townsend Memorial Lecture delivered at
developments in the international art University College, London, on November
27, 1974.
community.
Richard Cork has been Art Critic of the The title came to me one day in
London Evening Standard since 1969. He Hampton Court maze.
I like mazes and the relation of
was a member of the Art Panel of the Arts contradictions that they embody —
Council of Great Britain (1971-4), and has plan and intuition, memory and
guesswork — an analogue to art in
organized several exhibitions, including the some kind of way, I have always
major survey Vorticism and its Allies at the thought. I like palindromes too; the
Hayward Gallery, London. In recent years title has a palindromic ring. An
early work of mine had a true
he has contributed to a number of art
palindrome as a title; a natural
magazines, including Studio International, connection between disparate
and delivered the 1974 Lethaby Lectures at elements locked three-dimensionally
the Royal College of Art. His book on together. Art and the State, and the
state of art: words which mean
Vorticism will be published by Gordon nothing by themselves but whose
Fraser later this year. linear flow suggests some natural
connection, obscuring the certain
fact that in the real world of our
Michael Spens experience the fluency is less natural,
D. Thomas Bergen the gaps between them greater.
Art has become increasingly separated
from the general body of culture, where
previously it was part of the common
experience. Possessed naturally without
special effort, it brought the
contradictions of the communal state into
some kind of order,its images a compound
of them all — its economy of forms
sharpening the focus, bringing into the
outer world the inner perceptions of a
general culture with symbols commonly
understood. A natural order that unified
the state of art, and the human state — a
kind of parity stemming inevitably from
each being an expression of the other.
2