Page 79 - Studio International - January February 1975

seen nor heard, but eventually person to make this mistake: product in influence upon a sensations of suppressed
recognized, is of course the video customs officials and dealers, buyer'. Christo has certainly excitement which both puzzle
camera, and the immediate and before him, have innocently proved this last statement to be and intrigue us. At the same
completely illogical effect is for undone a Christo in search of the true: one of his parcels sold for time, however, his constructed
the viewer to see the tape-deck as art object. For like a mummy, £1,000 at Sothebys in 1969! fragments spotlight the absurdity
the source of the monitor image, Christo's objects are protected by Recently his packages have of doors, making us sharply aware
the eerie, almost empty room, their bandages. His shrouds grown in size to engulf buildings, that while we tend to accept them
strangely distant and unrelated to preserve them from the hazards monuments, coasts and valleys. without question as part of our
the sound through the wall. The of life in the retirement of the In 1968 he packed his first public environment, they are in fact
sound and image come from 'art' zone, where they remain safe building, the Kunsthalle, Berne, often unnecessary barriers,
inside the sealed room but their from the destruction of a in 27,000 feet of polyethylene to erected out of a fundamental
visual 'location' is in front of the consumer society; but they are celebrate the museum's fiftieth insecurity.
spectator, both monitor and tape also rendered impotent, and can anniversary and the following Much of the tension of his work
deck. Typically, the installation only wait to be resuscitated, like year he covered the 80 feet high derives from the compound of an
is forceful and hermetic, those refrigerated American cliffs of Little Bay, Sydney,with uneasy amalgam of real and
enigmatic and full of pointed citizens thwarting death in the one million square feet of contrived elements. Each piece is
associations, not least the area of deepfreeze and hoping to be polythene. Schemes of this centred on a specific working
enquiry suggested by the key thawed out some day. The idea magnitude require financial part, which is then ripped out of
title word 'surveillance'. A of releasing his objects also backing from industry as well as context and placed instead in a
veritable watergate of allusions/ appeals to Christo, although he the patronage of arts councils. framework constructed according
illusions is opened, and the stressed that this would 'destroy These projects also need to the artist's formal
polemical and political reference the artistic significance for careful planning and considerations. The tattered
is far from being out of place, hereafter'. organization, with the support edges are a deliberate deception,
viz. WAR. of local authorities and the help designed to disguise the fact that
The final work, a large of local people to get them off he has chosen the parts which are
Drawing for 'Seated Storage the drawing-board. Christo of interest to him and discarded
Capsule for Henry Moore' (1966) enjoys this aspect of the work. the rest.
is one of a series of pieces in 'I'm making one of my Wentworth's concern with finish
various media relating to impossible proposals into is currently unfashionable, at any
Nauman's respect for Moore's possible realities' he said of one rate among many sculptors of his
sculpture which at the time was such scheme. There is a strong generation, who were reared on
being 'unfairly denigrated by element of parody in these welded-steel sculpture and have
younger British sculptors' (Jane Christo financial acrobatics, as if he is felt compelled to react in favour
Livingston) who would later find, Otterlo Mastaba Drawing 1973 mimicking the antics of his of more frail and ephemeral
that they needed him again. 28 s 44 in. sponsors — big business effects. But his professionalism is
Nauman has consistently Christo started wrapping corporations — and thereby a vital ingredient of the over-all
explored ways in which he can objects in 1958, soon after he emphasizing the absurdity of impact. The clean orderliness of
manipulate the spectator's bodily moved to the West from their activities. the central areas contrasts with
and mental awareness. Even the Bulgaria. Perhaps it was culture He also points a finger at their the aggressively battered
early untitled fibreglass and latex shock that made him abandon wastefulness by recycling their perimeters, setting up stresses
sculptures (eg Platform Made Up social realist paintings and the rubbish into sculptures and which reverberate across the
of Space Between Two depiction of objects on canvas monuments. In 1962, for instance, surface. The way in which the
Rectilinear Boxes on the Floor in favour of engulfing them in he blocked the rue Visconti, wood has been smashed in an
1966), using non-art materials, canvas, paper or polythene. He Paris, with a wall of used oil overtly belligerent manner
banal and uninteresting in entwines them in a mesh of fine drums, suggesting its possible introduces a further element of
appearance, had this ability; the string, knotted obsessively over expansion to divide a city. Its perplexity: we are confronted with
use of neon, then a non-art and over again, as if, no longer name 'Iron Curtain' also objects which, although
medium, was itself a major factor content to capture their likenesses, referred to the interface between apparently already broken, still
in producing an element of shock. he now wants to secure their West and East, where the culture seem to be unequivocably
Nauman's entire oeuvre is far actual imprisonment. Perhaps he that he left behind meets the asserting the preciousness of
more related, in its overt needs to keep hold of them. In the system that he now manipulates the art object. In some, the final
conceptual nature and use of the West we are encouraged to so skilfully. Is his wall of rubbish coat of paint marks the last
body, to the climate of West replace used objects quickly, so an indictment of both societies? stage in his process of
Coast art in the sixties, plus we rarely have time to develop At Annely Juda's, Christo enshrinement: it seals off the
Morris and Oldenberg, than to any love for them. In 'Future presented the plans and piece as surely as if it had been
Duchamp and Dada. Shock' Alvin Taller warns us drawings for his latest scheme — placed under glass.
Surveillance Piece, corridors (not that this alienation from things to build a Mastaba (an Egyptian A sense of absurdity hovers on
all) and several sculptures, eg can be extremely harmful. 'We tomb) out of 242,945 used oil
John Coltrane Piece 1968, gain all face' he says 'a rising flood of drums in the car park of the
their self-conscious expressive throw away items, impermanent Kröller-Müller Museum in
powers from their inaccessibility, architecture, ... rented goods Otterlo, Holland. This elegant
'a state of mind' explored to a and commodities designed for heap of empty oil containers, 25
much greater extent by Nauman almost instant death ... strong metres high, would tower over the
than anyone else. pressures converge towards the cars beneath (brought to a
Christopher Johnstone same end: the inescapable standstill by the energy crisis) and,
ephemeralization of the man- like grave-furnishings, smooth
CHRISTO thing relationship.' We may no their passage into the hereafter,
At the Annely Juda Gallery, longer respect objects as our life leaving us a fitting tombstone to
London. companions or regard them as modern technology!
12 November — 21 December. reflections of ourselves, but Sarah Kent
One day American artist, Christo's background might well
Ray Johnson, received a parcel have encouraged him to cherish RICHARD WENTWORTH
from Christo. He cut the string familiar things and to preserve At Art Net, London,
to see what it contained, but all them through his art, as Chardin from 6-25 October,
he found inside was a photograph honoured the pots and pans of and at the Felicity Samuel
of the parcel and this message his kitchen in his paintings, Gallery, London,
'Because you have destroyed my throughout his life. from 9 December to 31 January.
package, let this photo remind Or to take a more cynical The iconography of doors
you of it'. Johnson had view, perhaps it was Christo's would make a fascinating and
unwittingly dismembered a first contact with the deceptions complex study, as they have
sculpture, which like an of Western packaging that gave always been charged with a
Egyptian mummy, had been the him the idea of glorifying a dull special kind of significance in
Richard 14 'eat worth
parcel and not its contents. An object by wrapping it up. In his art. Richard Wentworth is Momentary Memento ( Protected Accident)
unwrapped pharaoh, after all, is 1963 exhibition at Galleria interested in the door as object 1974
18 * 7 * 2 in.
only a withered corpse, and Apollinaire, Milan, Christo but his investigations of its
Christo's objects are equally showed a collage of advertiser's three-dimensional reality produce the edge of his strangulated
disappointing when exposed to slogans such as, 'Westvaco results which are curiously images. Wentworth exposes the
the light of day. packaging gives you impact'; and analogous to the blind arcades of frailty of the elements he uses, by
But Johnson was not the first 'Packaging often ranks next to De Chirico. They prompt similar savagely enforcing their
9