Page 98 - Studio International - November December 1975

Hungarian. The other six were Erben, Erber, Gosewitz, is horizontal, a dynamic flow is carried round an angle
Hödicke, Koberling and Schönebeck. from a broad triangular plane into a projecting cluster of
With the exception perhaps of Lakner their work steel rods, still flexible yet gathered decisively into the
seemed a bit narrow. They tended to concentrate on a movement of the whole piece.
single observation without really succeeding in The third sculptor, Gavin Scobie, is the least shown of
enlarging it. Thus Keinholz had a series of 'bills of the three, but by no means the least artist. In two years he
exchange', sheets of paper lightly washed with has produced two remarkable series of works, both
watercolour and stencilled over with a sum of money represented at Cleish, the first in aluminium, the second
'For S351 00' or the description of an object for which in corten steel. The figure is important in all Scobie's
the picture might hypothetically be exchanged, thus 'For work, either implied within the sculpture or in relation to
two Unertl 4 Power Scopes'. He satirizes neatly the it.The earliest work here, Iris, sited on a hill-top like some
illusory realities of economics and the ambivalent place strange semaphore, is a spare figure balanced in a human
that art has in them, but he does not really do much more way, yet open as if ready to move or to dance. Eve, the
than provide a topical gloss on Duchamp's puns of first of the works in corten steel, adapts the perception in
seventy years ago. Iris to the new material. It is a beautifully complete yet
Hödicke and Lakner too both deal in puns. Hödicke light and open work. Two slender elements, one its inner
has a series of skies in metal paint, correct in tone but edge straight and firm, the other curving sinuously
more tangible than the photographic images of towards it, rise from an openly constructed base to touch
buildings by which they are framed ; the twentieth lightly at the apex. His largest piece, Place of the Bulls I, is
century's classic pun, the paradox of the picture plane in two parts and is altogether more massive. It is a noble
restated in a slightly new context. Lakner is more subtle. work, uncompromisingly sculptural, yet humane and
He has a series of meticulous images of classic texts in accessible. It deserves a permanent home.
aesthetics and art theory parcelled up with string and In this limited space the only other show which can be
hanging in the middle ofthe canvas, aesthetics all tied up, noticed is the 57 Gallery's Kitaj retrospective. The most
a weak enough pun perhaps, but more than excused by interesting work in it is a recent large double portrait of
his beautiful realization of the book's self-contradictory James Joll and John Golding. Kitaj describes it as
existence as a physical object, dog-eared and unlovely. unfinished, but it would be a pity if it were to become
The most painterly of the eight is Koberling. On each of cluttered as sometimes his other painting does. It is a
a set of canvases he has made a few simple gestures in fine picture as it stands.
colour wash. These are then described in an inscription
across the bottom. Thus a predominantly red canvas is
inscribed 'Rotes Malwas (ser)'. His intention is to stress
the direct simplicity of painting, but simplicity without
subtlety is banality. Some Brief Notes on the
Erben, Erber, and Gosewitz are minimalists of a kind. Edinburgh Film Festival
Erben is concerned with the definition of space by point
and line which have themselves no spatial existence. The 1975
other two are preoccupied by more esoteric quasi-
mathematical imagery. Gosewitz playing the age-old
game of squaring the circle, and Erber working out a by Peter Gidal
series of transformations between one complex
mandala figure and another. The Edinburgh Film Festival is a notable event in that it
The eighth painter, Schönebeck, was represented by attempts to present current filmwork of importance to the
two paintings from the mid-sixties in a Pop derived public. The public that comes to see films at Edinburgh is
idiom. truly interested in film ; when a film does not fulfil
The sculpture exhibition at Cleish Castle was the one's expectations, one remains and studies it. Or, one
outstanding contemporary show this festival. The three leaves. At Edinburgh both processes are simple. At
sculptors represented were Gerald Laing, Andrew other festivals there's always some insipid critic or
Mylius and Gavin Scobie. All three live and work in graduate student or film-maker-manqué who spurts
Scotland, though Laing only came here in 1969. drunken noises before leaving, a common though still
The exhibition, which included several really large unacceptable ritual. The level of seriousness at
pieces, was strikingly set out in the woods and up the Edinburgh is empirical proof that the films presented have
hill-sides near the castle, with some smaller pieces an audience, not just a series of itinerant voyeurs.
indoors. By sheer size the dominant piece was Laing's The organization and the overall conception was
enormous Division of 1971, 60' wide by 8' high, which is excellent. Absolutely highest praise possible. (Only two
permanently sited there against a screen of trees. The films didn't arrive.) Lynda Myles and her staff did an
scale is handled with effortless simplicity. Two slender excellent job, and that on a lowly sum of £12,000
arms spring horizontally and close to the ground from a (minuscule for festivals; one must travel around to see
symmetrically divided central mass. Several of Laing's film after all, and cannot just wait for entrées). The sum is
other works also use this symmetrical division, but in a only decent when compared to the paltry sum given to
series of smaller more recent works he has returned to the Avant-Garde Festival at the NFT in 1973, but
treating the figure directly, and in an idiom derived presumably that is in the process of being remedied. The
from Picasso, Epstein, and Lipchitz, he seems too to have Edinburgh Film Festival is more or less divided into two
returned to the beginnings of modern sculpture, Red parts ; first week avant-garde in the broadest sense,
Buddha for example, or Gallina I. By the extreme second week commercial in the broadest sense (overlaps
formality of his treatment however this new work meant both ways as well). In fact, the first week had no
preserves the aloof mystery of his more abstract pieces. avant-garde films ; Peter Wollen's selection of North
Though originally a painter, Andrew Mylius apparently American Avant-Garde was an unfortunate misnomer.
came into sculpture through the design of racing cars. 'E' for effort. The first week did, though, present a series of
He still preserves the fastidiousness of detail of that craft, very interesting, importantly interesting films, and I don't
and in his earlier work its aerodynamic shapes and say that lightly.
polished surfaces. The effect in some of these is slightly Straub/Huillet presented the epic Moses and Aaron,
ominous, suggestive of some powerful fast-moving as well as History Lesson and Introduction to the
machine, yet also inexplicable, a bit like the mysterious Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene by
obelisk in the opening of Space Odyssey, 2001 (though Arnold Schonberg. Chantal Ackerman's Jeanne
no sculptural comparison is intended). Dielman (with Delphine Seyrig) was presented in the 3
More recently he has opened up his shapes using hour 20 minute version (25 minutes cut and presumably
detached planes and clustered rods, but he has kept the this is the final version) ; I was exceptionally interested in
sense of movement inherent in the earlier aerodynamic this film as I was responsible for awarding Ackerman the
shapes, and also the sense of the 'existence apart' of the Prix de la Recherche in 1973 at Toulon under heavy, not
machine. In the most recent piece, Northwood 5, which to say immense, opposition from everyone. She certainly
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