Page 78 - Studio International - September October 1975

Bourgeois society forces artists
to live according to the same
italy competitive principles that prop
up the system. Art becomes more
and more the celebration of the
Twenty-four hours out ego and the narcissistic exhibition
of Twenty-four of the artist's own individuality
Galleria L'Attico, Rome through the use of the body or the
1975 presentation of a work. But in this
case an attempt was made to
Contemporary art, including the create an alternative model : to
avant-garde, has always used celebrate the 'we' instead of the
predetermined spaces and times '1' while preserving for each
for its initiation rites, and this was artist the singular nature of his
so even in the case of the own work. The only constant
Futurists''slapping the public's presence, 24 hours a day, was that
face.' The spaces are the gallery of the audience, so that the public
and the museum. The time is the itself became a 'work of art', a
ritual of the private view. There continual and active presence in
is only one receiver: the public the gallery even during the
that comes into contact with the passage from one work to another.
work in the way and time At midnight Tano Festa began to
preordained by habit. Art paint a mannequin placed on the
thereby guarantees part of its easel instead of a canvas.
own splendour, removing the art Kounellis presented a homage
object from the everyday context to the land of fairy tales,
and defining it according to the projecting it visually in several
the social rules that I have places at once and in a
described. decentralized way: in the gallery,
But now that many avant- where he showed nine live crows,
garde artists have moved from in Campo dei Fiori where he
the object to the concept, from illuminated the piazza with
the art work to behaviour, coloured spotlights, and in the
demonstrating the creative dormer of a palazzo from which
Ben Akkerman
Untitled 1974 however, is an assiduous process rather than the formal emerged a violinist who played
Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm draughtsman who, in studies for result, a new strategy is needed and broke the silence of dawn.
artificial Dutch landscape with his paintings, gropes his way, for art information. This should At 7 o'clock in the morning
its rigid fields and furrows, hesitating and correcting, be one which allows the public a there was Prini, then Clemente,
towards the most austere solution. more direct and continuous
ditches and canals, meadows, Mattiacci, Patella, Soskio,
copses and lines of trees. He What reaches full perfection in his contact while giving the artist Boetti, Pisani, De Dominicis,
tried to intensify the unobtrusive paintings remains incomplete and scope for less 'sacred' gestures and Ontani and Chia. The gallery was
poetry of this geometrically pre- vulnerable in his drawings. a position closer at least to therefore no longer a theatrical
ordained landscape by means of Akkerman shuns pathos, and his experience. space in which art shows only its
abstraction. In accordance with draughtsmanship has no affinity Fabio Sargentini recently own facade, the final result of a
the man-made regularity of the with the bravura of academy planned and realized a continual research that becomes form. It was
landscape he subjected the motifs talents who demonstrate their exhibition, 24 hours a day for a a space which encompassed the
of nature to a strict skill instead of developing a week in his Roman gallery entire arc of art events and of
metamorphosis. Trees, shadows, conception. His drawings, L'Attico with the collaboration of all possible events.
water and clouds were stripped painstaking rather than facile, a group of artists. The gallery At dawn Ontani presented his
of all accidental form and made to betray each hesitation of his hand, became a 'full-time space' in 'Dracula being'. Lying on a glass
each check or turning-point in which oneartist succeeded another
conform to the regularity of bier he showed himself in the
decision-making. It is not vitality with works, actions and creative
circles, sinusoids and concentric or condition of a vampire. The
of expression which he is processes. There were no pauses
parallel lines. identity of his position was
In Akkerman's compositions concerned with but structural between one presentation and reinforced by the timing which
the frame is of supreme clarity. In that sense Akkerman's the next. The artists, respecting coincided with the mythical hour
importance. His predilection is for drawings are calculations and the initial idea, deliberately of Dracula. De Dominicis, by
the square format because its very documentations of research; if applied interference and contrast, presented a visual
inertness shows up at once every they have a charm of their own in contamination, or, in other words, paradox, a witty motto which
subtle variation, every conscious spite of all that it is because of continuity. utilized displacement and
deviation from symmetry and their delicate graphic quality and In fact the temporal opened out space to determine the
order. In a very special way their quaint spidery handwriting. 'continuum', the solar curve of 24 right mental conditions for
Akkerman's paintings refer to What is prepared in his hours, fused the individual works grasping his work. This consisted
their frames: in recent works the drawings finds its definitive shape into a collective work. From this of a saying written over the entire
sides of the canvas are not only in the paintings. Instead of emerged a continuity in terms of floor of a room and which read :
made part of the painting, they are hesitation we now find the relationships which these 'we are the dots.' The material
structurally integrated into the unambiguous decisions, instead of artists share in life insofar.as they used was in fact common dots or
design, forcing us to view the uncertainty perfect solutions. all live out the same condition
painting from more than one side. Those elements which in the and the same role in a single Vettor Pisani
drawings are still wavering and confraternity. Anti-edipo
Akkerman's way of treating a
landscape is never a random only provisionally located in
collage of motifs. A guarantee space find their inevitable
against arbitrary composition is precision in the paintings.
the fact that he never tried to Akkerman's paintings are cool
produce a finished conception but but not cold. It seems as though
slowly worked towards a personal the starkness of the design is
vision. Even later when the tempered in the execution. The
language distilled from landscape boundaries are exact but never
becomes self-reliant and the painfully sharp, the line is firm
allusions to landscape almost but softly modelled, the surface
completely disappear there is smooth though of delicate
never a risk of haphazardness: the texture, and the colours matt with
evolution of his art is rooted in a a rich, subdued lustre. These
visually logical process of purely painterly qualities appear
abstraction. This process can be to clothe the geometry like a thin
traced in his drawings. veil: a veil which reveals as much
Fernhout did not make as it conceals.
drawings; all his decisions were Marcel Vos
made while painting. Akkerman,

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