Catalogues
Richard Shone
Amajor expense these days of putting on an exhibition is, of course, the catalogue. People expect one, they expect Colour plates and informative essays; catalogues can be a useful alternative to ac- tually seeing the exhibition in question; they look topical lying on the sofa or heaped on the table by the spare bed. They vary enor- mously from a few typed pages with all you need to know, to modest but authoritative Monographs. But at other times one can be *repelled by the sight, on entering an exhibi- ti°n, of a pile of veritable suitcases, as ex- pensive to buy as Vuiton luggage. Occa- sionally they can be of use (such as the labyrinthine but rich Les Realismes 1919-39 catalogue from the Pompidou Centre, Paris hot Year); but more often they are spurious ld-alls of knowledge, uninteresting to even an enthusiastic visitor, and need an aix-Port trolley to wheel round the gallery. American catalogues have slimmed ,Ilecently and to great advantage. I should Ike to single out a few of these which, lough the exhibitions were all across the 7.tlantic, are of continuing general interest. he Cubist Print, arranged at Santa Bar- ham University Art Museum, is exceptional :lir that it brings together and fully illustrates T.Te now not easily obtained graphic work of
Placed alongside that of Villon, Leger, Mar- i'oussis and several second generation art- As. The mistake of the selection is the 'ilace allotted to Jean-Emile Laboureur
goopaper-thin confections become see- 4h in this weighty company. There are essays by Burr Wallen and Donna "Item. The Americans like Leger, and in his centenary year they have mounted at the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, what ap- pears to be, from the catalogue, an exhibi- tion aimed at enjoyment, variety and celebration. It is not perhaps a major con- tribution to scholarship but for this we can be thankful. The plates (over 70 of them) are reproduced in excellent colour and there is an informative essay by Charlotta Kotik on Leger and America. At the moment the exhibition is thrilling Dallas, it seems, the last of its three venues (to 27 June). Its other venue was the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, and for the Canadians a separate French version of the text was produced. Canada's catalogues are frequently in French and English just as in Holland they often print in Dutch and English, thus mak- ing them more widely accessible. From Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture is another Canadian production, surveying the influence of African and Oceanic art on Western sculpture, a hoary subject, rife with trip-wires. The spacious catalogue is mercifully short on detailed discussion of the general topic (references are given) and full of interest for its range of specific photographs of and documenta- tion on the exhibits. It was written and ar- ranged by Alan Wilkinson, Curator of Modern Sculpture at the Art Gallery of On- tario, the repository of a huge Henry Moore donation and owner of several im- portant pieces by Gauguin, Matisse and Giacometti. Gauguin's insatiable versatility is demonstrated through an exceptional group of wood carvings including a bucolic wine barrel and a decorative pair of Breton clogs. Exhibitions exploring the connections between art and literature have been in- creasingly popular and The Dial: Art and Letters in the 1920s is a notable contribu- tion as source material. It commemorates the avant-garde American journal The Dial (1920-29) which, besides publishing criticism, poetry and fiction (Stevens, Williams, Hart Crane, Yeats, Woolf and Eliot) printed generous selections of recent and up-to-the-minute art, much of which was owned by Scofield Thayer, the journal's founder and a wealthy native of Worcester, Mass., where the exhibition was held at the Art Museum last year.
The catalogues mentioned so far have been of the conventional kind — profuse acknowledgements to funding associations, fellow-staff and unbelievably devoted secretaries, followed by essays, listings and pictures. They seldom vary. But creeping in are more intimate volumes, especially those
concerned with living artists. A spectacular example is the large Edward Ruscha exhibi-
tion, now touring the States — a laid-back production, designed almost as an il- lustrated autobiography with dialogue, essays full of four-letter words and obscure references and lots of photos of the artist (`Edward and Danna Ruscha on their wed- ding day, Las Vegas"). I DONT WANT NO RETRO SPECTIVE is in fact an excellent introduction to this Californian's work, a show mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum, soon to be seen at the Whitney Museum, New York.
Exhibitions at commercial galleries sometimes carry small catalogues and ones to look out for, covering 20th-century art, are those from the Whitechapel, the Fine Art Society, Anthony d'Offay, Wad- dington, the Warwick Arts Centre and the Mayor Gallery. D'Offay catalogues are distinctive in lay-out and typography and some have already become collectors' items, containing authoritative or personal- ly illuminating introductions — Cork on Epstein, Spender on Grant and (coming shortly) Michael Holroyd on Gwen John. The Whitechapel is well-known for its adventurous exhibitions policy, especially in bringing 'new wave' artists to this coun- try such as Baselitz and recently Anselm Keifer, for which show the Director Nicholas Serota has contributed an essay to the illustrated catalogue.
Over the years, the Tate Gallery has pro- duced catalogues that are essential reading on 20th-century art and artists, not only for the matter they contain but also as reflec- tions of current opinion. The high regard, among some art historians, in which Vic- torian painting is now held can be seen on every page of the recent Landseer catalogue (an Anglo-American enterprise). The Sutherland exhibition, now playing, has a less enticing catalogue. Ronald Alley's straight-forward introduction breaks no new ground, and surely this was just the chance for a re-evaluative essay on Sutherland, which took a more searching look, for example, at his European stand- ing, his conversion to Catholicism, the in- fluence of patronage from high places. But perhaps such curiosity would have seemed too close for comfort in what is, after all, a memorial exhibition.
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