Page 47 - Studio International - September October 1975

developed as both collective and spaces and rooms in which they made
personal fantasies. simultaneous use of sounds, optical
(b) Optical/kinetic/space. The need to phenomena and sensory distortions.
study the dynamics of phenomena and of (c) Figural Space. Another type of
related experiences was making itself spatial art is that in which the field is
felt at the same time that the world of arranged 'in figures' which are practically
objects was being utilized for artistic always connected with the world of
purposes. From 196o onwards there was everyday images. Here the images are
a certain breaking away from everyday given meaning neither through
reality; a number of artists were programmed coordination, nor through
exploring the subject of perception, the accumulation of objects, but are
often in direct collaboration with composed as thematic 'fragments'
scientists and psychologists. I am concerning either advertising pictures or
Gianni Colombo
Elastic Space 1964/67 referring of course to the experiments artificial stereotypes. The choice of
Courtesy l'Attico, Rome which in Europe went under the name figures reflects the need to focus on the
of `Nuova Tendenza' and in the United trivial images which make up 'everyman's'
States, from 1966 onwards, under the visual panorama.
materials and soft objects; while Jim
Dine constructed The House with cartons, name of 'Experiment in Art and These figural environments began to
tins, clothes and signs, creating a Technology.' Here the analysis focused appear at the same time as pop art. They
`habitable sculpture.' The materials on optical-kinetic phenomena and the are fundamentally concerned with trivial
are obviously not used in a practical way research was carried out impersonally, and 'pop' situations. Among examples
but squashed together indiscriminately in groups. It was no longer the finished which can be cited are the works of
to form an 'assemblage' which it is product which was the main object of Segal who already in 1962 was giving
possible to enter and to live inside. investigation, but the operative strategy concrete, material expression to
The object loses its original practical employed. Precise methods of observation environmental situations — a couple in
usefulness and so becomes estranged were used, in close collaboration with bed or a family at table. Other examples
from its function' but at the same time it technicians, and in the early years are those of Oldenburg, including the
gains a new function, perhaps irrational attention was concentrated on the two/ Bedroom Ensemble of 1963 and of Warhol
and sensual. Therefore the environmental three-dimensional object. Later, they who, after his Clouds of 1966, covered the
0 works of Arman, Kaprow and Dine take became aware of the need to broaden the walls of the Witney Museum with
on a physical practicability that rests scope of their analysis of optical Cowpaper creating, in 1971, an
outside logic: every object-space presents quantities, of the effects of environmental casing for his works. In
unforeseeable associative solutions. disorientation and of perceptive Europe, artists creating figural
The layers of material, paper, wood and imprecision, and in 1964 they began to environments were deriving
glass form an extremely concrete 'lap' construct a series of kinetic-visual inspiration from history and nature :
which is almost `foetal'; and indeed environments. The dynamic and optical in 1966 Ceroli 'reconstructed' in wood
Oldenburg associated his Store, at effects within the individual the vault of the Sistine Chapel in which
107 East 2nd Street, with Eros." In it, in environments created by the various the 'frescoes' depict his own friends;
1961, he reconstructed with plaster groups — T, N, Zero, Recherche d'Art and Marotta, also at Foligno, created a
and fabrics painted in violent colours Visuel and Mid — are almost forest out of transparent plastic.
`slices' of the world: a Statue of Liberty programmed. The visual effects and Instead of defining and displaying
souvenir, a wedding bouquet, a sewing mutations are not allowed to happen by optical or `objectual' details, figural
machine, cigarettes in fragmented chance, but are the result of strict space is concerned with an iconic
packs, a plate of meat, a small yellow planning, as for example in Colombo's totality, a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland
pie, red sausages and ice cream cake. environment, 'after structures,'
The same year Kienholz, as if giving Boriani's 'multi-dimensional
concrete form to early erotic fantasies, stroboscopic room,' and Biasi's
produced an 'historical' staging of a 'space-object.'
famous Los Angeles brothel of 1940, In 1967, following the various `Nuova
Roxy's. As in the case of Oldenburg the Tendenza' exhibitions, a show was held in
reconstruction is fictitious; the Foligno called `Lo Spazio del'Immagine'
prostitutes, juke box, radio and copies of (the space of the image), and it provided
Life are assembled to form the a kind of catalogue of examples of these
environment; and joy is inevitably optical-kinetic spaces. The organizers
replaced by disgust. The examples of commissioned environmental works from
object-space I have mentioned do not individual artists, and thus helped to
seem to distinguish between the outside bring to the fore art with a topological
world and the inner world. The artist's theme. In the same period EAT was
subjective experience of the world is at being formed in the United States by
the same time shared and private, and artists, psychologists, musicians and
therefore his object-environments are engineers. In 1970 at the Osaka Expo,
EAT constructed the pavilion where
visitors could pass through a Mirror
Room and a Clam Room. Still in the
sphere of plastic-visual experiments,
there were the environmental works of
Castellani, Scheggi and Bonalumi, which Vito Acconci
Voices for a Second Sight 1974
are worth recalling for their rejection of Installation, Museum of Modern Art,
the mechanical and of technology. These New York
three artists constructed spaces at the
Foligno exhibition with inter-surfaces
which jutted out or else enclosed, and world of fantastic or trivial dreams, in a
which were made out of craftsman's mood which could be either macabre or
materials such as wood and canvas. gay.
Finally there was the Magic Theater Art (d) Factual Space. The `objectuar,
of 1968, an exhibition at the Nelson figural and optical-kinetic streams were
Gallery in Kansas City, in which Charles brought together in 1968 in a type of
Ross, Terry Riley, Robert Whitman and environmental work which was
Steve Antonakos, among others, concerned with the factual analysis of
Mario Ceroli Cassa Sistina 1966 designed a route for visitors composed of topological space. This research was
121