Page 83 - Studio International - November December 1975

experience in which time and the accumulation of 'frames' indigenous trees and vegetation. Andre, placing
aesthetic and existential impressions exist in a an aluminium plate in a moving stream, 'challenges one's
paradoxical but harmonious relation to each other : cognitive powers at the limits of visual perception,' to
fragmentation has become unity, nature has become art. quote Edward Fry.
Concerned both with maintaining the 'expressive James Collins (John Gibson gallery) shows in a
concerns of sculpture' and with sculpture as a metaphor different way that idea-art is moving away from the split
for 'directing physical response,' Louw's work is a perfect between feeling and the material object. Collins' idea was
example of infusing logic into nature, and romantic psychologically inventive and subtle. The situation was as
feeling—both in inner spirit and in its source in nature— follows : Collins asked six attractive women, strangers to
into art. him, to allow themselves to be filmed with himself sitting
behind them looking at them from the back. The girls'
awareness of his presence and of themselves as visual
subjects was equivalent, strangely, to a practised
intuitive person inducing a distinct personality to emerge.
The work focuses on the concretizing or freezing of
delicate permutations of spontaneous emotion. Collins
made three enlarged colour stills of each girl from the film
sequence and six radically different personalities confront
one on the gallery walls. In each case, one is aware of the
subject's thought, sensuous response, shyness, coquetry,
and that elusive revealer of character— physical posture
and gesture. In a small side room of the gallery, the actual
films are continuously shown.
The Richard Tuttle show, like 'Projects in Nature,' has
been carefully considered in relation to the space it
occupies, the whole second floor at the Whitney Museum.
Marcia Tucker, who organized the exhibition, says that
most of the works were not selected in advance, that at
least some works in particular groups will change twice
during the show, and that she will write the catalogue
after the exhibition closes. By then she trusts she will have
understood the qualities, 'so elusive and ephemeral —
materially and conceptually,' that had impressed her in
works seen earlier. The conceptual content of Mr Tuttle's
sticks of wood and bits of wire seems to me not ephemeral
but zero — although there were some other qualities I
liked. Hilton Kramer in a review in the New York Times
quoted Mies's statement that 'Less is more,' then added
that in Mr Tuttle's work 'less is unmistakably less. It is,
indeed, remorselessly and irredeemably less.'
While I agree in general with Mr Kramer's judgment, I
take exception in the case of a few particular works. For
Susan Eder Rainbow Environment example, Ten Kinds of Memory— bits of string delicately
arranged on a dark rug — has affinities with oriental
In Susan Eder's Rainbow Environment, the artist had calligraphy. On the other hand, Orange Plot is Mr Tuttle
the Davey Tree Expert company 'surgically embed' 20 at his most pretentiously minimal. In a huge space,
glass prisms (measuring 6 x 2 x 1 in) into a grouping of relatively speaking, Tuttle has drawn with felt-tipped pens
trees in a semi-wooded area — so that the trees are not (of two colours), two blots that are hesitantly joined by
injured. The prisms diffract sunlight into highlights and spidery lines.
spectrums. Eder calculated the sun's altitude and azimuth Orange Plot could be a metaphor for the entire show.
for 3 pm on 21 September ; the prisms were oriented to The works did not seem to me to justify the use of so much
catch the sunlight and aim the spectrums on to other space in a major museum or to create an organic
trees and on to the ground — preferably into shadows relationship between the space and the works—as did
where too much sunlight would not overpower and then happen in 'Projects in Nature.'
dilute their light. This produces 'rainbow patches' on the Post-conceptual art, at its best — as in Trakas or Louw —
trees and on the ground. As the artist says, 'the element of expresses a successful fusion of the real and the ideal or
time is also a central concern. There is not only immediate the romantic. It deals boldly with what Marcuse called
time, during which the rainbows move as the sun moves 'the dissociation of art from reality.' These artists are
(becoming in a sense a clock or calendar) but also attempting to bring art back to a key position in human
gradual time, during which the prisms will eventually be life.
absorbed into the trunks of the trees.' The work is thus a
complex metaphor of time, change, and man-nature 1 Lippard's quote refers directly only to Oldenburg's trench and LeWitt's
rapport, in a world where man's sense of relation to buried cube. (Changing, p. 270). However at this point it is evident that
the term 'conceptual art' should be stretched to include a wide range of
Nature, to the city, to himself, to art, has become more and
works where the idea and the object are fused and of high quality. Jan
more undefined. The conception is more exciting than its Dibbets' early horizon-time pieces, Joseph Kosuth's One and Three
embodiment, though the work is poetic and provocative. Chairs, Peter Hutchinson's seeding of the rim of a dormant volcano in
Alice Aycock's Project for a Simple Network for Mexico, and On Kawara's series, / am Still Alive, seem outstanding
examples.
Underground Wells and Tunnels was inspired by what
2 A new gallery to watch, Sperone, Westwater and Fischer, has just
Gaston Bachelard refers to as 'underground opened in New York formed by the partnership of Gian Enzo Sperone of
manoeuvres,' childhood fears of the cellar and attic. Turin, Konrad Fischer of Düsseldorf, and Angela Westwater, ex-managing
Aycock excavated an area, adjacent to a cornfield, of editor of Artforum. A group show in September showed a remarkable
copper 'corner' sculpture by Carl Andre, as well as works by LeWitt, Judd
about 20 x 40 feet, and constructed six concrete wells and Darboven. The gallery's first one-man show, opening October 4th,
connected by tunnels, through which the spectator can will be of large copper floor sculptures by Carl Andre, from his new
crawl. Three of the wells are covered with concrete and 'triodes' series. Some of the subsequent shows planned are by Brice
then earth. The artist's chief interest was the spectator's Marden, Gilbert and George, Hamish Fulton, Robert Ryman and
Richard Long. But as Angela Westwater says, the schedule remains
psychological response. There is a great range of flexible as this is a new gallery and she expects it will contain many
phenomenal content in the work of the other artists in the surprises.
show : Sondheim shows micro and macro analyses of
specific aspects of the area ; Goodyear depicts the earth's
spherical shape through comparisons of latitude ; Lee
demonstrates temperature variations ; Brosterman
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