News & Notes

National Art Education Association

News &NotesAuthor(s): Burt WassermanSource: Art Education, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Apr., 1965), pp. 28-31Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190695 .

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NEWS & NOTES

BURT WASSERMAN

Italian Art in Detroit Until May 9 the Detroit Institute

of Arts is offering a fabulous show of 17th Century Italian Art. In- cluded are 95 paintings, 100 draw- ings, and 18 pieces of sculpture.

Today, critical examination of seventeenth century painting has brought to the fore the great com- plexity of artistic strains, thorny problems of attribution, and the outstanding quality of the produc- tions of this era. The exhibition serves to pinpoint issues concerning attribution and allows scholars to arrive at an evaluation of a mas- ter's style on the basis of carefully chosen works. The show is an art historian's gold mine. But, it also allows the public in general to be- come more intimately familiar with the remarkable number of artists and the surprising variety of styles which were in evidence during that sumptuous 17th century era. While works by artists of the Neopolitan, Genoese, and Bolognese schools are represented by sound and sig- nificant works, my personal pref- erences lie with two members of the Roman School: Nicolas Paris- sin the painter of cool, detached classic order and Gianlorenzo Ber- nini the sculptor of amazingly alive terracottas. Go to the show if you possibly can and see what you think reaches you the most.

The Old is New Thousands of people have

stopped at "Old Hundred," the new Larry Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The museum was opened to the public late last year. You would be welcome to place your name in the guest book beside those of visitors from all over our country and abroad who have already been there.

Dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary art and housed in a remodeled 181 year old historic mansion on Ridgefield's Main Street, the museum is open to the public. Mr. Aldrich is anxious to have the museum be of help in the art education program of schools. School groups may come to the museum by scheduling the visit

28 with Mrs. Ethel Margolies, the

gallery director at the museum. The exterior features of "Old

Hundred" have been preserved. In- side, many partitions and a large oak stairway have been removed to provide long open spaces for hang- ing. The newest gallery fixtures for the exhibiting and lighting of paintings and sculpture have been in- stalled, and the museum is com- pletely air-conditioned.

Originally built in 1783 by King and Dole, lieutenants in the Revo- lutionary War, "Old Hundred" de- rived its name from its use until 1883 as a grocery and hardware store. In those first one hundred years, it was the center in the eve- nings for discussion of the affairs of the state and the nation, including the new Constitution and the issue of slavery. It was also the first headquarters of the Ridgefield Savings Bank from 1880-84.

In 1885, Grace King Ingersoll, a descendant of one of the foun- ders of the store, took over "Old Hundred" as her residence. She is credited with raising the building to install a spacious first floor with a ceiling of ten feet, making it suitable for its use from 1929-63 as the First Church of Christ Scientist and for the present museum plan of a large, open first-floor gallery.

The museum at 45 Main Street, Ridgefield, may be reached by leav- ing the Merrit Parkway at exit 40; going north on Route 7 to Route 102, the Branchville Road to Main Street, Route 35.

The Pursuit of Purity About 1910, Kandinsky, seeking

to liberate his vision from the ma- teriality of the object world, "broke through" to a totally new non representational art. While Kandin- sky's early "non-objective" paintings were extremely fluid, roman- tically subjective and spontaneous in character it was not long before others, also in pursuit of a pure plastic idiom, turned to a highly controlled, classically oriented, and severely ordered language of form. Most notable among these painters were van Doesburg and Mondrian in Holland and Malevich in Russia. Their efforts took them to forms of

elemental purity in which simple geometric configurations and flat areas of color became the full ex- tent of their visual grammar and vocabulary. Supposedly, the "end of the line" was reached when Malevich painted the now famous White on White sometime around 1918.

However, instead of being a blind alley with nowhere to go, pure plastic art has grown, little by little, over the years, to the point where today the mainstream has at least three well defined branches. Continuing the initial line of de- velopment from van Doesburg, Mondrian, and the Constructivists is the approach to pure art that aims to project a philosophically ideal reality in spatial volumes brought to realization through the architectonic dimensions of color. This direction is most exquisitely demonstrated in the work of Bur- goyne Diller. The second path is exemplified in the pursuit of pure metaphysical experience seen in the work of Ad Reinhardt, Mark Roth- ko, and Barnett Newman. The third approach grows out of the optical play and visual activity that we have come to know in the work of Joseph Albers. This third stream of pure, geometric art is frequently rich in optical illusion(s) and after- image power.

Focusing attention on yet newer offshoots of these three main cur- rents is the exhibition titled The Responsive Eye now on view at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The show will run until April 25th. Afterward, the exhibition is scheduled for St. Louis, Seattle, Pasadena, and Baltimore.

Brought together for the exhibition are paintings and construc- tions which seem to initiate a new, highly perceptual phase in expres- sional art. Using only lines, bands and patterns, flat areas of color, white, gray or black, or cleanly cut wood, glass, metal and plastic, the artists whose work is presented establish a relatively new relation- ship between the observer and a work of art.

William Seitz, Associate Curator Continued on overleaf



N

"Equipo 47," anonymous, V 25, 1964, (engraving under glass). Collection Galerie Suzanne Bollag, Zurich. From the exhibition "The Responsive Eye," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 25 to April 25, 1965.



continued of the museum, commenting on the exhibition, says: "Unlike most pre- vious abstract art, these works exist less as objects to be examined than as generators of perceptual responses, of colors and relationships existing solely in vision; of forms, presences and variations often entirely different from the static stimuli by the artist. Such subjective experiences, brought about by simultaneous contrast, after-images, illusions and other optical devices are entirely real to the eye, although each observer will respond to them somewhat differently.

"The responses are by no means retinal, and they vary widely from

"Blue and Green Modulation." Peter Sedgely, 1964, (emulsion on board). Collection Howard

Wise Gallery, New York. This work and those on the facing page from "The Responsive Eye,"

exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from February 25 to April 25, 1965.

optical tensions and fusions of color or tone to sonorous interactions between hues of the spectrum, retro- active effects of flatness, advance and recession, and arrangements of shapes, lines and patterns that exert a control over perception capable of arousing delight, anxiety and even vertigo."

The exhibition is limited to works that represent this theme most pure- ly. Figuration, free form, gestural brushstrokes and thick impasto, which muffle and weaken the func- tion of colors and shapes, are excluded.

Every relevant tendency within the theme of the exhibition is represented, including those which have been categorized as "Optical," "Ret- inal," or "Cool" art, "Hard Edge Painting," "Visual Research," "The New Abstraction," "La Nouvelle Tendance," "Post Painterly Ab- straction," "Color Imagery" and "Programmatic Art." As was the case during the fifteenth century, when artists employed the new method of linear perspective, the means used in these works have reverberations beyond the field of art. They incorporate laws of vision under study by scientists since the time of Helmholz, Hering and Chevreul, which have been occa- sionally employed by artists since the time of Monet, Cezanne and Seurat. The recent appeal of this art represents a peak in the history of color theory; it utilizes visual demonstrations of experimental psychology and optics (among them the dynamic effects of ambiguous perspective and moire pattern); it transfers experiments begun in de- sign schools and laboratories to the fine arts; it offers a new and rich source of study to scientists in sev- eral fields.

"Nevertheless, it should be em- phasized," Seitz continues, "that these are the creations of artists, not the research of scientists or technicians. Certain of the painters and constructors to be shown pro- ceed as coldly and programmatical- ly as computors. Others are poetic, musical or mystical in spirit, and these two extremes sometimes exist together. Yet none of them follows systems or rules: rather, they discover inherent laws through cre- ative experience."

If you are unable to see the show while it is in New York City, per- haps you may take it in when it goes on tour.

Dr. Burt Wasserman is an associate professor of art at Glassboro State College in Glassboro, N.J. I



"Physichromie No. 116," Carlos Cruz-Diez, Paris, 1964 (white plaster). Collection Hans Neumann, Caracas.

"Hypercubic Structuralisation No. 5," David Boriani, Gruppo "T", 1961-65, (plexiglas, silk-

screen print). Lent by the artist.



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