Art
Merda, he says
Evan Anthony
The Tate Gallery is showing, among other things, a tin (labelled 'Merda d'artista') purported to contain the excrement of Piero Manzoni, an Italian Marx brother, who was, to say the least, a highly original and somewhat talented practitioner of the art of the legpull. The encapsulated excrement is but one of his bright ideas, along with selling his breath, signing the bodies of friends and declaring them objets d'art until death, and entombing in cannisters miles of paper on which he drew lines. He died at the height of his inventiveness, a young man of thirty, in 1963. The ripples he caused in the world of 'art,' some claim, are still rippling — and who am I to dispute that claim? It may very well be the case that without Manzoni blazing the trail, the manufacturers of tins of London fog would never had made it. In writing about him, Germano Celant quotes, appropriately enough, the words of Antonin Artaud: "Where there is a stink of excrement there is a smell of being." (The exhibit on view shrinks away from literal proof; you will have to trust the label).
The Tate's current homage to dada unites Manzoni and Yves Klein (a French Marx brother?). and together they make an interestingly irritating pair, threatening to bore you with an onslaught of capricious ideas. The casual viewer is advised that they demand careful study and much indulgence; draw back if it is a mere exhibition that you seek.
Klein also died quite young, in 1962. Perhaps the pranks and games — too often games that only one can play — exhausted these artists. A room filled with solid blue paintings — Klein's favourite colour, apparently — may be the subject for reflection for some, but the preoccupation is too personal to worry about. Manzoni was mad about white. Combined, maybe they anticipated Daz, who knows? Not that Manzoni's 'achromes' and Klein's fluttering pieces of gold leaf don't have their appeal — they do, but, paradoxically, for the reason that both men tended to minimise: they have that old-fashioned virtue, visual appeal.
So do many of the works on view at the ICA as part of the Basically White exhibition. It's a smooth show, an impressive collection of textures, bones, compositions. Interior decorators and Moby Dick lovers shou!d find much to muse over. The rips, tears and scratches artfully assault the surfaces, and the evidence of the authoritative hand of the artist is there. It is an interesting idea that succeeds in being a good idea; the variety of whites is a unifying factor and the parts make up a harmonious whole. Ben Nicholson's 'Relief in White,' a 1934 sigh of financial relief, though it would be nice to think they might shed the odd tear as well. For myself I can look back on some great times in the past three years. Five months of semi-solvency. Nationals, Derbies and Cheltenham Gold Cups are of course historic dates in the diary, but a Saturday afternoon at London Weekend's World of Sport studio, an early morning at Barry Hill's stable and a gumbooted scramble round the construction site of the new San down Park are also adventures I shan't easily forget. I've met a lot of nice people racing and an equal number of horrors, I've amassed an impressive shelf-load of racing books and even inspired the odd fan letter. There are regrets like never making a meeting in Ireland, frustrations like the polite Surrey wedding when the bride trilled 'I do' at the moment the St Leger field came under orders at faraway Doncaster.
Having done my obligatory waffle down memory lane, I have one final treat in store — a little lesson in how to lose the £31.45 still outstanding and what better place to blow it than at Aintree, on the Grand National? If by some quirk of fate I win, my debts can be honoured after all, if, as is more likely, I lose, well I shan't be here to tell the tale. Strictly speaking the funds hold £6 less than the sum stated, for three weeks back 1 declared myself for Francophile in the ante-post market, since when the horse has been acquired by one of racing's luckiest owners, Mr Stanley Powell, and has shrunk from the 33-1 I secured to second favouritism. Perhaps I should bung the lot on him and have done with it, but I never could resist a number of options in this of all races and besides, before I leave you, I can't resist passing on some advice from my peers. William Douglas-Home, for instance, won't hear of Spanish Steps getting beaten, while my spies tell me that another very public figure: Mr Clement Freud, MP, has some strong financial feelings for Scout. I could support the case for either — Spanish Steps because he started me off on my 'career (badly as it happened), Scout because he's won his last three starts in staying fashion and is quids in with recent victim Rough House, whose prospects were being confidently shouted around the Long Bar at Newbury on Saturday. However, since this is the very final frolic, 1 must come to my own conclusion and that is that Straight Vulgan and Ron Barry will reach the winning post first — or second, I mustn't forget Francophile.
. Assets: £31.45 (including £3 e.w. invested ante-post at 33-1 on Francophile). Outlay: another £5 to win Francophile, and £10 e.w. Straight: Vulgan.
entry, and Enrico Castellani's 'White Surface,' a 1973 contribution, are particularly fine pieces. White is beautiful.
Don Kunkel, at the Annely Juda Gallery, could well join the party at the ICA, with allowances made for the slight flushes of colour used in his collection of paintings, drawings and prints. Kunkel, an American having his first London show, specialised in symmetrically arranged curves, supplemented by impressions that appear at regular intervals, created by the pressing of nail heads against the canvas. The pictures earn admiration for both the technical competence and the visual pleasure.
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