Page 87 - Studio International - March April 1975

of today, as opposed to a retrospective
I CBOOK
examination of reputations already
posthumous or well-established. Kramer
makes plain in a sarcastic and dismissive
account of Duchamp's 'resplendent
triviality' how completely out of
sympathy he is with the Duchamp
tradition in contemporary art; and his
supplement judicial poise deserts him altogether over
MOMA's 197o Information show, which
incensed him so much that his review
reads like Mary Whitehouse in her most
indignant and idiotic 'how dare they
purvey this rubbish' vein.
Such antagonism would be interesting
if it was backed up by a prescriptive
alternative which revealed what Kramer
Potted Opinions introductory essay, where Kramer considered the really worthwhile new
developments in art to be. Instead,
invokes T. S. Eliot's well-known plea for
`tradition at the very centre of artistic however, he waxes enthusiastic about odd
The Age of the consciousness, in an intimate, symbiotic figures like William King, Alex Katz,
relation to the innovative function in art', Anne Arnold and Richard Hunt, whose
Avant-Garde and the inevitably miscellaneous attempts presence in this volume is made all the
An Art Chronicle of 1956-1972, 549 PP, to reassert that tradition through his more eccentric by the total absence of
Secker & Warburg. £6.50. collected reviews. If Kramer had not Judd, LeWitt, Kosuth, Ryman and many
raised our hopes by asserting that he other artists who deserve detailed
The resounding title which Kramer has wants to demystify the sanctity of today's assessment. Kramer's wished-for
given his large book suggests a far avant garde, with its 'effect of consigning revisionism is gravely weakened by his
more ambitious and cohesive survey both the idea of tradition and the museum failure even to confront a whole
than the one he actually supplies. For itself to a limbo of arbitrary choices and generation of artists who are influential
this volume turns out to be a selection of gratuitous assertions', we would be today, and he cannot hope to fulfil his
exhibition reviews — interspersed with content to accept his reviews on their own aim without acknowledging their
some longer essays — mostly written for level. But as it is, a distinct feeling of existence and taking their ongoing
`The New York Times', where Kramer bathos intervenes, precisely because our activities into account.
has been the art news editor for almost a appetite has been whetted for the kind of Richard Cork
decade. Inevitably, therefore, the result thorough-going critical overhaul which
is a compilation to be dipped into rather newspaper writing cannot hope to sustain
than read through as a sustained in any great depth. Refessential
argument. The territory he covers is so In view of Kramer's sturdy and reliable
wide, stretching from Turner to virtues, it is a pity that this Visionary Film
Documenta 5, and the caesuras at the end disappointment exists. For he is of course
of each review so frequent, that it is only right to view the mindless pursuit of by P. Adams Sitney. Oxford University
possible to consult the book like a radicalism for radicalism's sake with a Press, New York. $13.95.
dictionary of potted opinions. jaundiced eye. His ideal seems to be an Eine Subgeschichte des
This would not matter if Kramer had artist like Matisse — 'about Matisse's
made it clear from the outset that he was greatness as a painter, one entertains no Films
presenting an anthology of his working doubts' — since he embodies Eliot's Lexikon des Avantgarde-Experimental- und
journalism. There is a place for such combination of historical awareness and Undergroundfilms. Hans Scheugl/Ernst
things in the literature of art criticism, innovatory determination. Indeed, the Schmidt jr. Edition Suhrkamp
after all, and compared with the professorial side of Matisse's work (Frankfurt).
distressingly low level of most exhibition coincides with a similar bias in Kramer's
reviewing in England his contributions temperament: he states at one point that `Visionary Film The American
are never marred by our home-grown `the task of criticism today is, in large Avant Garde', is the first of the second
tendency to skip from show to show in a part, an archaeological task', and he generation books on the 'Underground'
plethora of flippant asides and appears to be happiest when discovering Cinema. The first generation were the
opportunist phrase-making. Consistently in a timely exhibition the significance of general scans of the whole field, like
workmanlike and securely grounded in a artists such as Medardo Rosso, Puvis or `Experimental Cinema' (Curtis) with
comprehensive grasp of twentieth- Corinth, whose work deserved little 'in-depth' criticism but which
century art history, Kramer usually revaluation. Conversely, he is not afraid served to establish a background of
provides a thoughtful, balanced to speak out against towering reputations information for a new culture. Sitney is,
commentary on the subject in hand. But and declare, for example, that 'the last by reputation, the major specialist critic
the modest limits of such writing do not gallery in the Pollock exhibition was a (as opposed to a critic/film-maker like
entirely square with the claims he dismaying experience, revealing an artist Mekas) of the post-war avant-garde
advances for it in 'The Age of the driven by aspirations which cruelly cinema, so his book is assured an
Avant-Garde'. This dichotomy is outdistanced his talents'. influential role. Because of this it is
apparent even in the preface, which If Kramer rarely gets down to important to point out what its limitations
declares on the one hand that the book examining any artefact in detail, so that are. Though one of the chapters is
`may thus be regarded as initiating a after a time one feels dangerously headed 'The Graphic Cinema: European
revisionist view of the avant-garde era — divorced from the business of either Perspectives', this does not refer in any
an attempt to see the classic analysing or responding to a particular way to the modern movement in Europe,
accomplishments of the avant-garde work of art (as opposed to generalizing but only very briefly indicates some of the
through the lens of a post-avant-garde about someone's entire career), he is influence of the early 'formal' avant-
sensibility', and then admits on the capable of deft and judicious summaries. garde films, like Ballet Mécanique, and
other hand that 'the essays and reviews Hofmann is well defined as 'above all, a predictably, that of Kubelka, on the
gathered here were written — usually in codifier of modernist pictorial procedures American developments. Of course,
haste, in response to particular occasions — in a sense, an academician of the Sitney is writing about the American
and for particular deadlines.' modernist tradition — while remaining an avant-garde, but because of the extreme
We are therefore left with an exponent of romantic Expressionism'. ignorance in America of the modern
uncomfortable credibility gap between But ultimately, this book fails to display European developments, and because his
the programme announced in the any desire for an engagement with the art book refers to films made as late as 1972,
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