Page 98 - Studio International - July August 1975

point of view. This is not art but But if we would take it in its the idea in Five Structures clinical precision paradoxically
journalism.' And a challenge totality as a work of art, then (Scottish National Gallery of becomes picturesque.
reinforced in the question, 'Do maybe the colour photographs Modern Art, permanent The wall drawings reveal the
you really expect people to alone might well have served to collection) that a clear and simple same underlying preoccupations.
change their ideas or opinions make its point. For these images, Euclidian concept fully expressed Each wall, painted white for the
after viewing what they see carrying so many of the as a physical object can be quite occasion, was first mapped out to
everyday for real?' poses the indicative slogans and initials, bafflingly complex. Here he takes LeWitt's instructions with a
whole problem of What is Art? have a sufficiently clear verbal it further to explore the ambiguity complex geometric grid in
Perhaps the most unexpected content. No work of art can inherent in the expression or pencil. Against this grid he
comment was made by a highly contain and communicate the projection of any idea as image, placed a series of lines and
literate visitor who transcribed total situation, however, and the gap between seeing and simple geometric figures using
Yeats' poem, The Second though an honest effort has knowing. He sets out in four black and coloured chalks. Their
Coming, with its sharply been made to bind picture and different ways all the 122 shape and position was chosen
applicable lines : 'Things fall printed word together, and the variations on a basic cube that intuitively, but as each is in a
apart ... The blood-dimmed tide artist-organizer has scrupulously result from removing in all their sense inherent in the pattern of
is loosed ... The best lack all avoided the temptation to cover various combinations the first the grid, it is capable of
conviction, while the worst are the fissures in his lines of nine of its twelve angles. The room description in terms of it and of its
full of passionate intensity ...' response with adventitious in which the work was set out was relation to others. This
However, to measure its adhesives, it must be confessed dominated by a three-dimensional description is written in pencil
success or unsuccess, 'A Shade of that the demands which he makes model of the whole sequence alongside each line and figure,
Green' must be set against work upon his spectator-audience are meticulously constructed in but the meaningless rigmarole
in other arts of the same period insurmountable. One visitor wood to the artist's instructions, that results reveals the
and place. It is worth noting that added his note to the blizzard of painted a clinical white, and set indefinable complexity of the
the annual exhibition of the comments: 'What is the aim and out on a grey table squared with simple intuitive act, thus;
largest art society in the province message of this exhibition?' I white lines. The walls were hung `A red not-straight line drawn
held at the same time had, should have difficulty in with paired photographs and from the mid-point of the top
among its 150 paintings and answering with any precision. isometric drawings of each side to a point halfway between
drawings, only one item John Hewitt separate part, and small linear the mid-point of the yellow
relating to the continuing unrest, diagrams of the whole sequence straight line and a point halfway
and that reference seemed wholly and various groups within it. All between the centre of the wall
in its title, Ulster '74. Only Sol LeWitt these show each part from the and a point halfway between the
George Campbell in his one-man Scottish National Gallery same point of view. mid-point of the top-side and the
show last year came near to of Modern Art, Edinburgh The concept here is simple upper right corner'. This is as
finding effective images of our enough, and being remote from the simplicity of what
tragedy: the hooded and masked mathematically definable is it describes as our perception of
man, the tarred and feathered Scottish Sculpture '75 perfect and unalterable, but as the three-dimensional model of
victim, and the group of burnt- soon as it is projected into the the Incomplete Cubes is from the
out buses. But even these, The Fruitmarket Gallery, visible world, no matter how idea it represents. The subject of
powerful as they were, are only Edinburgh `scientifically', it loses its the work is not merely the
symbols of limited aspects of 12 Aprit-3 May immutable clarity. The four concept as the name the artist has
the vast agony. Others have series in which it is described are, coined might imply, but the
attempted to charge their motifs LeWitt coined the phrase in visual terms, each absolutely relationship, or lack of it,
with significance, but unless you `conceptual art' to distinguish his different from the other, and between concept and percept.
have lived here, the parcel on the own particular version of apparently, in spite of logic, from This art belongs in the austere
doorstep or the bundle on the 'minimal art'. His phrase has the original concept itself. Thus tradition that descends from
backseat of an unattended car become the catchword over here the linear diagrams inform us De Stijl. Fifty years ago Theo
can carry little menace, to describe a whole variety of more with delicate irony that the van Doesberg dictated a painting
however skilful the pictorial or less artistic activities, so it is cube is in fact a hexagon and over the telephone and so with
representation. By bringing timely to be reminded by this entirely without right angles. great economy demonstrated his
together traditional bits and selection of his work of what he Likewise the photographs and insistence that the material part
pieces - Union Jack, Tricolour, actually meant by it. The show isometric drawings, apparently of a work of art and what goes
Ulster Flag, Harp, Red Hand - included four main works each so nearly identical, show us two into its making are only the
some have tried to find a of which is a sequence or set, quite different things, and the vehicle of its idea and without
composite emblem, but the and a group of small, very three-dimensional model, where intrinsic significance. LeWitt
opposite pulls of abstraction and beautiful prints and drawings the whole sequence is set out takes the matter further than
emotive form have drained most of which are coloured. independently of the conventions van Doesberg's simple gesture to
these of any aesthetic quality. The most elaborate work, of representation, is just a pretty insist that the significance of a
The writers, the poets and the Incomplete Open Cubes, develops confusion of shapes whose work of art is intrinsic to neither
dramatists, have done better.
But the short compassionate Sol LeWitt. Installation of Incomplete Open Cubes at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
poem and the poignant ballad,
while penetrating, fail of the
larger scope, and many have only
achieved a splintered, hysterical
effect. Fewer in number, the
playwrights have found O'Casey
a useful examplar, though of
necessity adjusting their
vocabulary to a more laconic
idiom. But here again the play
which can only fill one evening
must still be a mere pintpot in a
Sargasso Sea. No novels have yet
been published by local authors
in this field; a steady stream has
issued from other typewriters,
and yet none of these, which
could, by precedent, reach out in
the expansive gesture, has so far
risen above the low horizon of
the thriller.
So it can fairly be maintained
that 'A Shade of Green, an
Edge of Orange', for all its
selectivity, makes a more
comprehensive and emphatic
impact than any other body of
work on its particular theme.

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