Arts
English art in Milan
Bryan Robertson
Anyone sauntering through the lofty Galleria in Milan last month in search of an innocent beer or coffee to extend the pleasures of a sunlit spring, would have been stopped in their tracks at the centre by a dense crowd watching, in the cleared arena, a girl in a silver body stocking reclining in a bath of white polystyrene bubbles. Occasionally, very slowly, she turned from one side to the other, an arm rose to clasp a chain suspended above her in a desultory effort to pull herself out ; the simulated white bubbles slithered to reveal a hip and a leg; another figure on nearby terra firma pottered about and made a meandering attempt, reclining on an elevated scaffolding, to reach her by proffering an arm. No contact. The encircling crowd shuffled about for position, drifted to and fro, mostly in sceptical silence.
Nothing more than this happened for about twenty minutes, the time it takes to watch Balanchine's company perform Stravinsky's Agon. Unfair to compare? Well, no: for what was going on in the Galleria was the first outdoor disclosure —an 'Action' by Coum—from the 'Performance Art' section of a huge exhibition, Arte inglese oggi 1960-76, which opened recently in Milan under the auspices of the British Council and the city government of Milan, and is mostly contained in fifty rooms, one for each artist, at the Palazzo Reale. If art itself is a big house with many rooms, then the word 'performance' has several connotations and the slow-motion antics for the public in the Galleria must be open to comparisons of all kinds.
This particular 'action' was not so much concerned with a difficult birth of Venus as the theme of polarities, an official said, or Adam and Eve, or Yin and Yang. Next day, same place, a crowd watched a man with head, neck and shoulders heavily drenched in black and white paint slowly assist another man in what seemed to be the building, with much sawing, hammering and lugging lengths of wood about, of a nailed open structure. The activity, also slow and a bit indecisive, was billed to last continually for the next two days and was not to be considered as 'action' or 'performance' according to one of its protagonists, Stuart Brisley, in the catalogue, but as a 'public exposure of process'. If the medium is the message, then process is the object. Idea, idealism, ideology, creed, orthodoxy—it's a dismal progression; Brisley with alert wits is against all that and other art traps; his 'exposure' avoids artiness, offers the vague pleasure of watching chaps at work—but those viewing apertures in walls round building sites provide
difficult if less Pavlovian acts to follow.
Out of the Galleria and into the Piazza Duomo where coloured banners designed by Richard Smith, Kenneth Martin, Tilson, Huxley, Turnbull and others flutter from high flagpoles; beyond the Cathedral, printed banners announce the Arte inglese oggi show outside the Palazzo Reale. On a landing of the stone staircase leading to the entrance lobby, Phillip King's 'Genghis Khan' sculptnre of 1963 reposes looking irresolute, with polythene tucked up underneath it, and scruffy in the daylight for which it was not intended—it's essentially an indoor piece, one of the most powerful inventions of the 'sixties, but was too big, even in sections, to be moved into the Palazzo. Better banished than traduced, it would seem; a small room inside called 'New Generation' of coloured sculptures by Scott, Witkin, Annesley, Bolus, Tucker, and King himself, has nothing as strong to offer.
The room in question is a rigidly whittleddown mini-survey of what was, historically, a far richer and more diverse gathering of talents: Sanderson, Piche and Woodham have been ironed out of the context, to leave a clear, but over-bland, field for the group associated with Caro. Elsewhere, sculpture of the past fifteen years doesn't make anything like the impact it should because of the omission of Bryan Kneale, Michael Sandie, Ken Draper and Martin Naylor who also work, with marked originality, outside the Caro camp in addition to the three other sculptors mentioned above. A lot of lightweight modish dross could have been scrapped to make space for Sandie, who has made some of our most spectacular and original sculpture in the recent past—and for Kneale, who has also devised toughly independent and beautiful sculpture.
The sculpture created in England during the period covered by the show arouses the greatest interest abroad, so that clarity and breadth would have been better served if it had all been shown separately in another year, with adequate indoor space, outdoor sites, and a proper sense of history and achievement. As it is, Tim Scott, Nigel Hall, Barry Flanagan and Caro come across with distinction—Caro by ignoring the historical theme and showing five recent pieces in rusted and varnished steel, made in 1972-3 in Italy, with sharp formal and textural unity. Paolozzi shows one thunderous assemblage in aluminium, wood and other materials (with a relevant painting on canvas) which the artist has presented to the City of Milan.
The representation of painting is far larger, covers a wider stylistic spectrum and has more room to breathe. Hockney, Riley, Richard Smith, Huxley, Stephenson, Jones, Denny, Caulfield and Hoyland show notably forceful canvases; Peter Blake's 'Alice in Wonderland' series looks fine, but his room, strong in collage, lacks a really capital work to sum up the edgy kind of painting that Blake can so brilliantly sustain —the Tate, very generous with loans elsewhere, could have parted with the haunted 'On the Balcony' with useful effect here. John Latham, of burnt books notoriety, emerges as an extremely fine artist with two superb wall assemblages.
The main thrust of the show (and its weaknesses) is split in two directions. The first aims at a lucidly didactic account of art in England from 1960-1975 but rigorously and capriciously oversimplifies the true range and weight of the art of this period. On this first count, the inclusion of Kenneth Martin, aged seventy, with his characteristic mobiles and some paintings, as the only English artist of his generation —or near it—to have, presumably, added significantly to the flow of ideas in the last fifteen years reveals an absurdly restricted and enfeebling view of English art.
The other side of the planning attempts fairness in presenting the work and ideas of a number of artists who do not work within the usual conventions of art—and this aspect of the show is both excessive in space and trivial in content. Richard Long shows a collection of stones found near Milan, scattered on the floor of a large bare room which otherwise contains a wall of photographs of landscapes, and thereby occupies far too much space, put politely, for what he has imaginatively put into it.
This stricture applies to most of the 'Alternative Developments' section of the exhibition. There is a thinness and formal vacuity in too much work here. Texts and photographs, either of an aesthetic or a socio-political nature are turning into a new academy. Richard Cork's expository text in the relevant part of the catalogue omits reference to Alan Kaprow and the New York 'happenings' of the 'fifties and 'sixties in relation to present-day performance art; otherwise his account has a cogency and brightness sadly lacking in the work under review.
Sir Norman Reid headed the selection committee, with Guido Ballo and Franco Russoli representing our Italian hosts and in England, Norbert Lyn ton responsible for the choice of paintings, David Thompson for sculpture, and Richard Cork for the newer departures. Misgivings are inevitable over such a gigantic show, but the assembly at the Palazzo Reale, open till May 20, provides a tremendous amount for the Milanese to see. Milan is very open in its attitude to foreign art, with dealers and collectors sympathetic to developments in England. The city has been most .generous to the exhibition and hospitable to the artists; the huge catalogue, superbly printed in Italy and full of information, is a notable example of Italian generosity—imaginative courage has sustained the show through bad times.
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