Page 80 - Studio International - November December 1975

to your taste, you can contact him at Reckenbühlstrasse variation however) as a cross between Soviet Realism
17, Lucerne, though the leather-clad Luthi's more and American '50s and '60s commercial draughtsmanship
masochistic approach (Sihlhallenstrasse 7, 8004, with compositional elements which are more
Zurich) might suit you better. Not that all this is confined traditional to Chinese art, and the use of colour as an
solely to the Swiss, or to men for that matter. The undifferentiated union of its emblematic, realistic and
Dutchman Boeyen's more impressionistic narcissism (he other symbolic functions. In a sense though, such
looks at himself in the reflections of his painted surfaces) stylistic etymology and formal source references seem
may be more straightforward. Meanwhile, for the entirely irrelevant to one's impression of the paintings as
definitely heterosexual there is the Lawrencian nudity of totalities. They transcend style and formal description just
Alan Sonfist pretending to be a tiger in the long grass and as the ideology they communicate transcends the
the chic bandalero image of Brazil's Luiz Alphonsus. subject-matter of the paintings. There is clearly a tendency
Similar themes run through the women's contributions, to treat Chinese art with an air of sophisticated
though somehow in reverse. If the overall connotation of condescension or to indulge in 'campy' enjoyment of
the male contributions of this kind is narcissistic, the their naivety. The reasons for this are clear : in such
female is self-hating, with the exception of Lynda paintings there are none of the dualisms in which
Benglis who, in a fairly characteristic video-tape, makes Western artistic thinking is rooted. Form and content are
sexually loaded gestures with her tongue and mouth in unified not by a reductionistic process of formal
contact with the video monitor. The female 'ego-artists' isolation, but by an ideological synopsis. A formal
on the whole seem bent on self-punishment and description of the paintings is as irrelevant in this sense as
accompany their work with much of the rhetoric of a description of their subject-matter in terms of an
feminism (Freed's 'hurstory'), and the appendages to the understanding of their meaning. It would be possible to
photographs are almost always violent. (One amusing call paintings like Le sarclage de printemps colouristic
occurrence was the mutual dismay of Iole de Freitas and inasmuch as the colours are startlingly beautiful, yet the
Marina Abramovic upon the discovery that they were description would be misleading because it suggests an
both exhibiting photographs of themselves performing isolated interest in certain innate values of colour. Here,
stabbing actions, and the inevitable ensuing colour is rather returned to its semiotic home in
conciliatory discussions about how their interests were ideological signification. I do not mean that form and
really quite different). The self-punishing aspect is also colour are brought back to a connection with some
there in the work of Val ie Export, who showed video tapes natural reality as in nineteenth-century European realism,
of her body actions. However, it is most evocative in but on the contrary, their significance is ideological in
Ulrike Rosenbach's video-tape Sorry, which consists of a representing a social reality and in adopting an explicit
sound-track of a melancholy late fifties pop song (it rhetoric. 'What we demand is the unity of politics Et art,
sounded like a Phil Spector arrangement, though the the unity of content 8-form ...' (Mao Tse-Tung).
artist could not remember the group's name) which was It is not a Western version of realism in the sense of
played continuously with the image of the artist hitting paring away rhetoric and connotation to achieve a pure
her naked thigh in the same place to the slow beat of the denotative reference of reality, but one which accepts its
music and showing a reddening and finally a purple rhetorical orientation and denotes social relations as its
bruising of her skin. reality. In criticism I am confined to the vocabulary of
Lucy Lippard, in her catalogue foreword on the subject Western aesthetic thinking and am involved in formal
of the women's movement, calculates what she calls the description of sorts. However, in the realm of social
'dubious triumph' of a twenty-five per cent female relations (content) the normative dualisms of Western
representation in this year's Biennale. I would agree, not thinking are also absent. Technology, nature, social
because the female contributions are in any way worse relations and ideological aspirations are clearly unified
than the male contributions but because the female and exposed tothe Western world.We are taken aback, for
contributions so generally subscribe to the 'ego' example, by the representation of a machine as a human
obsession characterizing such a large proportion of the aid and are made aware of the cultural artificiality of our
male contributions. It is certainly important for women to Western reality. And we understand in the above-
assert their existence as artists, but in contributing to an quoted passage from Mao that 'human nature boosted by
art which asserts nothing else (except lam'), there is the petty-bourgeoisie ... is in essence nothing but
something rather self-defeating in terms of any politics— bourgeois individualism'. The significance of
let alone the politics of a women's movement. contemporary Chinese paintings to Western eyes,
I found little to recommend in any of the Biennale's however, lies not simply in exposing the stereotype of
ego-obsessed art except, interestingly (in the context of a our vision, but much more : they go beyond the distinction
discussion of the women's movement), the work between cliché and authentic representation — a situation
mentioned above by Rosenbach and, with reservations, of acceptance of stereotype in which the touchstone for
certain pieces of the work of Lynda Benglis as authenticity of a natural subsistent reality is removed and
exorcisms of women's normative relationships with the authenticity is transposed to the realm of ideology. It is in
'media'. If there is any value in this exhibition it may be this sense that Chinese art becomes a horizon for artistic
precisely in deflating this ego obsession : the impression aspiration, constituting an ideological unity which cannot
gained, I think, by most visitors seeing such work en be achieved (least of all by imitation) in Western
masse, was one firstly of its ludicrousness and then of its capitalist society, but nevertheless remains a model of an
rather boring futility. Some friends of mine counted up ideal in which the denotative and connative rhetorics are
the number of contributions by artists which involved unified in a single expression of ideology.
photographs of the artists themselves and came up with In comparison one can only refer to the main body of the
47 out of 122 artists, though the proportion seemed even Biennale as 'decadent'. The dominant theme of the
greater than that. exhibition seems to show liberal democratic art at its
Any Chinese delegation crossing the Avenue du lowest ebb, and it is significant in these terms that the
President Wilson to visit the section of Western art must new current of explicitly political or socially ideological
be the more surely confirmed in the beliefs quoted art appears to be very nearly unrepresented (except for the
above from Mao Tse-Tung concerning the inevitable contributions of Conrad Atkinson, John Stezaker and an
decadence of petty-bourgeois individualism. Conversely, interesting artist who is new to me, Nancy Kitchel).
for the Western visitor attending the Chinese section, it is I have concentrated on the European and Chinese
certainly like taking a breath of fresh air. The paintings on parts of the exhibition and scarcely even mentioned the
show exude an air of serenity. They are pictures of a British contributions, because in the main they do not fall
utopia made by people who believe they inhabit one, and into the dominant category of work which has been
the sense of joy and genuine happiness communicated described as 'ego art' (apart from Coum, a performance
must come as a real shock to westerners who, like myself, group). It is impossible to discuss the English section
can scarcely remember art communicating simple, except independently and its heterogeneity prevents
unequivocal expressions of the joys of life. The paintings generalization even there. One gets the feeling that the
portray episodes in the collective life of the village. One selection from England was uncertain about the direction
might describe the drawing style (there is some of English art — whether it is the politically or socially
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