Page 82 - Studio International - November December 1975

artists creating not out of their own individuality and Roelof Louw, Alan Sondheim, Marvin Torffield and
developing artistic vision, but simply pursuing other, George Trakas. The show's raison d'etre, as stated in the
better artists' works to the limits of an empty absurdity. preface by Edward Fry, was to intervene in nature
As many critics and dealers have noted in connection (120 acres) 'to elicit cognitive recognition of natural
with the whole 'movement' of conceptual art, the term phenomena.'
itself is vague, its limits blurred. Andre and Bochner, George Trakas and Roelof Louw are among the most
formerly labelled 'conceptual' artists, have also objected ambitious and interesting in dealing with the landscape
to it. Edward Fry feels that the movement reflects a cultural scale. Both offer the most novel and complex experience
crisis, a 'Post-Idealist' situation where emotion has been for the viewer between man-made and natural
sacrificed to materiality. Unquestionably, the shifting use phenomena. Trakas's work, full of ambiguities, is
and non-use of the term indicates a sense of general structurally the most amazing and poetic — both
chaos and a confusion about the nature and role of art conceptually and perceptually. Union Station involves a
both for society and for the individual. wooden bridge constructed to cut through a dirt road at
The general trend of conceptual art in New York at the an angle of 44 degrees, 184 feet into the forest ; a steel
present is to place the object in a wider referential system bridge 99 feet from the wood bridge intersects with it. At
of values, and in doing this to reintroduce the exterior the point of intersection Trakas, in mid-August,
world as a principal element in their work. The conceptual dynamited the bridge. The blast of dynamite, like the
movement began, in one sense, as an oblique reaction to symbolic and functional nuclei in many of Trakas's works
Abstract Expressionism, to its fierce, even mystical shown last year (C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center), functions as
idealism, to its preoccupation with painterly surface a 'catalytic inclusion,' as it contrasts the materiality of the
values, and to its emphasis on the self-enclosed nature two bridges and reveals the swampy substructure of the
of the work of art. In contrast to Pollock and Rothko, who soil. What is most striking in Trakas's piece, set in an
were attempting to express profound inner states of incredibly beautiful sunlit wood, is the spectator's
emotion in a totally abstract way without direct reference function in the work. As the bridge's width is only for man
to the exterior world, the new conceptual artists are (the steel bridge is 10 inches wide, the wood bridge
introducing nature in itself as well as psychological 22 inches wide), one has an immediate, dramatic, visual
situations to their work. Of three currently important and kinetic response which increases as one enters the
shows in New York and the Metropolitan area, two work. Trakas rightly saw the bridge as 'a camera where
illustrate this trend : 'Projects in Nature', with 11 artists at the moving viewer becomes part of the equipment . .. the
Merriewold West, a 120-acre estate in Far Hills, New bridge functions as a synthesizer of body motion and
Jersey ; and the James Collins show at the John Gibson vision.' Walking on one bridge and then the other, the
Gallery, one of the major galleries showing what could be contrast between them intensifies one's perceptual
called post-conceptual art—artists, in this case, whose awareness : the patterns of sunlight sharpen, the woods
ideas are fused with human values. 2 The Richard Tuttle themselves—each branch, each leaf— take on added
show at the Whitney Museum, to whose works both the being. Trakas's environmental sculpture gives the viewer a
terms 'conceptual' and 'minimal' have been applied, powerful experience of a particular and unforgettable
illustrates how an art movement can inflate a fragile if place, created by a complex fusion of nature and art.
genuine talent into a top-billed museum show. Both Trakas and Roelof Louw present a total
In 'Projects in Nature' the frustrating problem inherent environment in which the aesthetic experience is
in much idea art—that the art is only an imperfect constantly changing. Unlike Trakas, Louw does not alter
reflection of the idea — was successfully overcome by a the landscape at all, except by inserting his sculptures —
number of artists. The artists represented are Carl Andre, dark steel plates comprising three sculptural elements
Alice Aycock, Norman Brosterman, Susan Eder, (two with two parts). As one enters a gate and comes
Richard Fleischner, John Goodyear, Clayton Lee, across the first sculpture, only one of the other two is
visible. The setting is pastoral, its major feature a hill. By a
precise placement of the torten steel plates 'near the
boundaries of a diagonally sloping field, and facing a

Roelof Louw Far Hills New Jersey 1975

common center,' one is made aware of every linear
contour and volumetric change of the ground surface. The
changes of direction and spatial potentialities of Nature
are as much a part of the work's statement as are the
sculpture and landscape. As one climbs the hill —a quarter
of a mile long — the relations between the sculptures and
the landscape change. One becomes aware of
experiencing parts of a unified whole—a whole gradually
defined by space and viewer participation.
Although on firstview Louw's work seems totally
abstract, ironically its effect on the viewer is to make one
highly aware of nature's modalities— nature as it is. The
duration of time and of space is fused in Louw's work, and
George Trakas Union Station 1975 this unity has a vital impact. In the end one has had an
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