Swiss role
John McEwen
Contemporary art activity at the moment is centred on the ICA, where three shows are attracting equal measures of publicity and people: 'Photography As Art: Art As Photography'; 'The Museum of Drawers'; and 'Agnes Denes' (all till 11 February). In the absence of a dominant stylistic fashion photography still remains the most widely accepted substitute. It is easy to see why. Everyone can relate to it, as they say, and commercially it was a sitting duck — unexploited, easy to transport and cheap to insure. Kassel University in Germany has a photography faculty and a gallery they call the Kassel Fotoforum, to stress the fact that its exhibitions function as a link between the teaching and practice of photography.
A demonstration of what they mean is in the gallery at Nash House, a show, on loan from Fotoforum, of the latest developments in the work of those continuing 'the dialogue between contemporary visual art and pictorial photography', supported by a programme of seminars further to elucidate the theme. Art as this, art as that, never, of course, makes much sense since no-one so far has been able to say what art is. And, visually, this exhibition only serves to give one more stir of the mud. There is a predominance of photographs that take, in a rather dry, didactic, structuralist way, the nature of photography as their subject, but there are enough examples of contrary intentions on view, such as a beautiful wintry panorama of the Border country by Hamish Fulton, to scramble the coherence of even this, by now, very common approach. An impression not improved by a cluttered lay-out. Next door, in what is known as the Concourse — the passage that leads from the front hall to the restaurant — there is the less contentious exhibition of the 'Museum of Drawers'. As a private idea this would have been acceptable, even novel; as a public one it stinks.
A Swiss artist, Herbert Distel, had the brainwave some years ago of converting a little twenty-door cabinet he had handy into a baby museum of modern art. He painted it the obligatory mod white and wrote to all the most famous modern artists he could think of to ask for a mini-example of their work. There were five hundred compartments to be filled and in the end he succeeded in coaxing one item apiece — some of them, admittedly, incorporeal — from the required number of famous, and not so famous, artists. Naturally there are some pleasing objects, best of all a tiny signed Picasso etching presented by a well-wisher, not the great man himself, but to see the whole thing bandied about as some sort of conceptual art object in its own right is pitiful. The smug smell of mutual admiration it exudes mixed with a sweet whiff of Swiss success is suffocating. This is one collection not to be in, Upstairs there is a retrospective devoted to the work of the American artist Agnes Denes. Denes's work is forbiddingly mathematical in presentation. Much of it consists of isometric map projections or intellectual speculations plotted out on graph paper in the form of numbers. It looks tremendously worthy and scientific but just what it is all about appears to remain as much of a mystery to Denes herself as to her interpreters. Roy Slade has been asked to do the honours on this occasion but after much huffing and puffing he too has to admit that his 'writing is to serve as an introduction to the viewing. Within this format there is no way to deal with the complexities of each work and series. Finally the words of the artist, Agnes Denes, should help us approach her work.' They do not. They may be wild with intellectual surmise, but they clarify nothing. She teaches of course. It all seems to be just one more disturbing aspect of the American wet dream.
The Roundhouse Gallery continues its energetic exhibition programme with a show of wooden sculpture by John Cobb and abstract paintings by Trevor Sutton (till 3 February); so energetic, in fact, that now, as can be seen, two shows go on at a time. This is always a temptation as the waitinglist builds up. I shall discuss this double show next week.
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