The Artist As Adversary : Works from the Museum Collections (Including Promised Gifts and Extended Loans)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The artist as adversary : works from the museum collections (including promised gifts and extended loans) Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Date 1971 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art ISBN 0870702262 Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1819 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art THE ARTISTAS ADVERSARY Works from the MuseumCollections (Includingpromised gifts and extendedloans) July I - September27, 1971 This exhibitionis supportedby a grant from the NationalEndowment for the Arts in Washington,D.C., a FederalAgency created by an Act of Congressin 1965. THE MUSEUMOF MODERNART, NEW YORK TRUSTEESOF THE MUSEUMOF MODERNART David Rockefeller,Chairman; Henry Allen Moe, John Hay Whitney,Gardner Cowles,Vice Chairmen;William S. Paley,President; James Thrall Soby, Mrs. BlissParkinson, Vice Presidents;Willard C. Butcher,Treasurer; Robert 0. Anderson,Walter Bareiss, Robert R. Barker,Alfred H. Barr,Jr.,* Mrs. ArmandP. Bartos,William A. M. Burden,J. FredericByers III, Ivan Chermayeff,Mrs. KennethB. Clark,Mrs. W. MurrayCrane,* John de Menil, Mrs. C. DouglasDillon, Mrs. Edsel B. Ford,Gianluigi Gabetti, GeorgeHeard Hamilton,Wallace K. Harrison,*John B. Hightower,Mrs. WalterHochschild,* James W. Husted,*Philip Johnson, Mrs. FrankY. Larkin,Eric Larrabee, GustaveL. Levy,John L. Loeb,Ranald H. Macdonald,*Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller,*J. IrwinMiller, Mrs. CharlesS. Payson,*Gifford Phillips, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller3rd, NelsonA. Rockefeller,Mrs. WolfgangSchoenborn, Mrs. BertramSmith, Mrs. AlfredR. Stern,Mrs. DonaldB. Straus,Walter N. Thayer,Edward M. M. Warburg,*Clifton R. Wharton,Jr., MonroeWheeler* *HonoraryTrustee for Life Copyright1971 by The Museumof ModernArt AII rightsreserved Libraryof CongressCatalog Card Number76-164876 ISBN0-87070-226-2 The Museumof ModernArt II West 53 Street,New York, N.Y. 10019 Printedin the UnitedStates of America CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 STATEMENTSBY THE ARTISTS 10 CATALOGUEOF THE EXHIBITION 22 INTRODUCTION Few modernar+ists have remaineddisengaged from the socialand political issuesand crisesof their day, and most have sympathizedwith liberal, radical,revolutionary, or Utopianprograms. Some have been activethrough out their lives,some for shorterperiods; others have been galvanizedby a specif ic event. While many, conceivingtheir art to be a personal,individual, and strictlyaesthetic activity, have maintaineda separatenessbetween it and their publicrole, others have linkedsocial programs and politicalaims to their aesthetictheories. The Futuristsissued manifestos endorsing war, militarism,and patriotismas well as anarchismand rebellion(and "contempt for women"),proposing at the same time to overthrowbourgeois ideals of art. The Dada artistsexalted the irrationalto expresstheir rejectionof con ventionalideas of "goodtaste" and the middle-classfaith in reasonwhich they blamedfor the senselesskilling in World War I. In spiteof some Marxistsympathies, the Surrealistpainters and sculptors,basically apoliti cal, rejectedthe Stalinistdogma of socialistrealism and createdan art subversivein contentrather than subjectmatter to furthertheir revolution ary goals. Ardentlysupporting the idealsof the RussianRevolution, the Constructivists offereda revoIutionaryart form as the equivalentin the visualarts of revoIutionary politicalideals. The abstractart of the de Stijlmovement, based on principlesof purityand balance,symbolized an ideal,harmonious society of the future. Exceptfor the GermanDadaists, the criticalattitudes toward society of these and of many other artists have been implicitrather than explicit. But the modernperiod has also produceda largebody of works in which the stateof the world,political and militaryinstitutions and events, socialinjustices, constitute the subjectmatter. It is with art of this kind that the presentexhibition is concerned. Whetherby meanso.f allegory, metaphoror symbol,irony, satire both humorousand bitter,cold realismor expressiveemotionalism, polemics or propaganda,these works are explicitin their attitudesof dissent,protest, or attack. Some of the artistshave been motivatedby a deep-seated,consistent desire to reform. Others,under the stimulusof criticaltimes, have producedisolated works of protestas acts of conscience.Some are indignantand condemnatory,some are meditative, some are hortatory,some are deadpan,but none are noncommittal. In the introductionto his Art and Alienation:The Role of the Artist , in Society Sir HerbertRead wrote in 1967:"The possibilityof alienation existswhenever social and politicaldevelopments create feelings of anxiety and despair,of rootlessnessand insecurity,of isolationand apathy. Life itselfis tragic,and a profoundart alwaysbegins with this realization. In the past it was stillpossible for the alienatedartist to addresshis feliow-menin a traditionallanguage of symbolicforms, but to have lostthis advantageis the peculiarfate of the modernartist: the linguafranca of visualsymbols no longerexists." The nineteenthcentury in Francesaw the accessionof the middleclass to a positionof dominancethrough the Revolutionof 1830and the establish ment of a capitalisteconomy as a resultof the IndustrialRevolution. About 5 the middleof the century,another revolution - in the visualarts - began to take place. These three revolutionsproduced a seriousbreach between the artistand the middleclass. As it gained in powerand affluencethe bourgeoisie,like all establishments,became entrenched and increasingly resistantto change. The artists,on the other hand, becamemore and more involvedin revolutionizingthe ways of seeingart, in isolatingand defin ing those peculiarattributes which distinguishthe visualarts from other art forms. They came to regardtheir own worldof feelingas more important than society's,and to considertheir art a private,asocial concern. In this processthe work of art itselfbecame more interestingand important than its subjectmatter. The middleclass and by extension,officialdom, clingingto the sanctionedart of the academies,began to see the artistas a radicalwho threatenedall the traditionalvalues of art and society. Dis illusionedwith middle-classdevotion to materialprosperity and conformity as well as middle-classnotions about art, the modernartist took on the role of outsiderand visionary,and thus lostthe supportof the only class from which he couldexpect patronage. But as the twentiethcentury has advanced,this gap betweenthe artist and the middleclass has been narrowed. Coursesin the historyand appre ciationof modernart are offeredin schoolsand universitieseverywhere; commercialgalleries where artistscan exhibitand sell their work have mushroomed;and improvedtechnology in printingand color photographyhas broughtmodern art in booksand reproductions to millionswho do not have accessto the originals. At the same time,the senseof alienationwhich had been peculiarto the artistand the intelligentsiais apprehendedas theirown conditionby an ever-growingnumber of others. "Neverbefore in the historyof our Westernworld," Read continued,"has the divorcebetween man and nature, betweenman and his fellow-men,between individual man and his 'self-hood' been so complete."A senseof crisisand mood of rebellionhas intensified, not only amongthe studentsand the young but amongothers who until rela tivelyrecently felt that the problemsof the countryand the world,though serious,even desperate,were withinthe powersof governmentsto solve. The catalysTSof this transformation of attitudehave been firstthe atom bomb,then the Vietnamwar. The latterhas provokeda crisisof conscience amongartists as has perhapsno other event sincethe SpanishCivil War. But this time the outcrycomes from a much wider spectrumof the populace. The protests,particularly in the UnitedStates, raise questions of the moralityof this war and of all war, of its physicaland psychological destructivenessto soldiersand civilians,of the diversionof government concern,energy, and resourcesfrom festeringdomestic problems of poverty, racialinjustice, the relatedbreakdown of respectfor constitutedauthority, the destructionof the naturalenvironment in the name of speed,present comfort,convenience, and profit. Mistrustof the government'swill or abilityto find solutionsto these and many other ills has led more and more Americancitizens to protestthis failureby meansof demonstrations,acts of civil disobedience,riots, illegal and violentacts, and to questionboth the systemof governmentand the valueson which it is based. The past centuryhas not been lackingin occasionsfor an art of social criticism:the Civil War in Americafollowed by the periodof Reconstruc tion, the FirstWorld War, the rise of totalitariandictatorships, an economicdepression, World War II and its tragicending at Hiroshimaand Nagasaki,the wars in Koreaand Vietnam,deeply divisive social and racial 6 problems,the assassinationsof leadingpublic men. The presentexhibition bringstogether works rangingin date from 1863to 1971,in which subjects such as these,and others lessworld-shaking, have been explicitlyaddressed. Limitedto the Museum'sown collections,promised gifts, or extendedloans (suchas PabloPicasso's studies relating to his GUERNICAmural, all in the Museum'scustody since 1939),it is necessarilyan arbitrarypresentation and in no sensea comprehensivehistorical survey. Each visitorwill find his own omissions. But likeprevious