EXHIBITION REVIEWS

Paris and Cologne is founded upon the observation that the a meaning which, in another context, it 'Bilderstreit' and 'Magiciens de la western 'civilised' world is introspective in might not have; but it is much the stronger Terre' its insistence on the primacy of western for it. Indeed Long is one of the few western art and that all so-called international artists to survive with credit, for many of Bilderstreit (at the Rheinhallen der exhibitions have hitherto been limited by his colleagues emerge as too calculating K61lner Messe, Cologne, 8th April to this perspective. Furthermore westerners and too reliant on strategy to withstand 28th June) 1 has been justifiably criticised regard any art which lies outside the the freshness, the directness and depth of as one of the worst conceived exhibitions western tradition as either ethnographic, meaning of the 'third world' art. Where of the decade. Taking up where Westkunst and therefore not art, or as craft. Magiciens religion, sex, death and functionalism seem left off, the organisers, Siegfried Gohr and sets out to show that contemporary art is to be the basis for the creation of most Johannes Gachnang, set out to chart the also produced within less developed coun- forms of 'ethnic' art, art itself is often the course of art in Europe and America from tries and that in the same way as western only reason for the making of western art. 1960 onwards, on the premise that Euro- artists work within, develop and deviate Although an artist such as Kiefer tackles pean art has principally been figurative from a tradition, so too do their 'third important issues, his work appears gran- while American art has been almost en- world' counterparts (Fig.103). diose next to the beautiful tantric drawings tirely non-figurative (either conceptual or The basis of the selection of the 'third of Raja Babu Sharma from Jaipur, whose minimal). They bravely sought to juxtapose world' artists lay in the quality and interest simple forms and sense of balance recall within the same room works from entirely of their work from a western point of view. the work of the late Peter Kinley. In the different persuasions; thus one found The organisers fully admit that it was im- context of the sand and earth paintings, Baselitz and Penck together with Judd possible and even undesirable for them to however, one begins to wonder whether and LeWitt, or late Guston (poorly chosen) select from any standpoint other than the the encrusted, earthy nature of the surface with Gilbert and George, Andre, Richter one with which they are familiar. In spite of Kiefer's paintings has an affinity with and Buren. While this might indicate in of extensive consultation with many dif- such 'primitive' religious or voodoo rit- the most banal way the different options ferent people from a multitude of countries, uals. Indeed viewing western art in such open to artists at any given moment, it they lay themselves open to the accusation company allows us to re-evaluate its im- uses the art itself in an illustrative manner. that they have plundered 'third world' portance. Polke (in this context only, and For every European figurative artist one art as colonisers, imposing their values and maybe deliberately) seems cynically triv- might put forward a counterpart working judgments on cultures to which these may ial, Alberola empty and Kawara sterile. in a conceptual mode. That is not to say be irrelevant. Baldessari's photographic story-book seems that there were no European conceptual Broadly, the western artists were chosen tired and knowing when juxtaposed with artists on view but simply that they were for their affinity with ethnographic or the innocence of Frederic Bruly-Bouabre, selected with narrow-minded partiality 'primitive' art (Houshiary, Long, Alberola, whose own imaginative tales deal with the and some, such as Toroni, given too much and Bourgeois; Fig.104) or for language of animals, stones and trees and space. One of the problems with this exhi- their interest in issues relating to the third illustrate the evolution of the nuclear miss- bition was its simplistic view of art history. world (Haacke, Baldessari), so that a fruit- ile from the chicken-bone by way of the Another major problem was more pol- ful dialogue would ensue. This resulted in arrow, and whose view of history (Caesar itical. While a range of western European whole sections of contemporary art being and Ulysses, for example), previously countries were represented, one was meant overlooked in the interests of a coherent known to westerners in a European form, to leave this exhibition with the feeling show. seems equally plausible as African history. that Germany had made the single most The purpose of the exhibition, therefore, It would be wrong, however, to suggest important contribution to European art is to supply 'third world' art with a context that only artists of the 'third world' are since 1960. The works of Baselitz and Penck and a framework in which it may be under- capable of maintaining such innocence, cropped up repeatedly as though acting stood by the western visitor. The choice of for the contribution of Ilya Kabakov is as some kind of standard which all against artists in both camps seems relatively hap- magical in its naivety and folkloric nature other artists must measure themselves. hazard since for every one chosen there (some might argue here that in terms of Baselitz, for example, was shown in five must have been many omitted for reasons contemporary art the USSR is a 'third separate galleries in the company of differ- of space as much as anything else. For world' nation). Houshiary contributes a ent artists on each occasion. Penck, a less im- example, Shirazeh Houshiary is included work of dignity, poise and intensity dealing portant artist, was found in three different but not , Rasheed Araeen with the elements of earth, water and fire contexts, as also was Polke. Undoubtedly and not Sonia Boyce. In addition, for suggesting ritual and religion, a sacred the works of Baselitz and Polke are of con- whatever reason, it was decided to exclude altar and an eternal monument, a place siderable quality but there is something those western artists, such as , for enacting magic ceremonies. sinister about this Germanocentric view, who actually employ 'native' craftsmen and Another of the exhibition's functions is which one had hoped had disappeared work within native traditions, an omission to show how similar ideas can develop in- over the last forty years. which seems particularly odd in view of dependently of each other, in both western A distinguished British artist recently the interest this exhibition generates in and 'third world' countries. For example, suggested to me that power in the art world the crossover of cultures (Clemente is in- Esther Mahlangu's painted house (Fig.105) resided with museum curators. My retort cluded but is represented only by strictly is highly reminiscent of Matt Mullican's was that it resided with dealers and, regret- autograph works). cosmologies (not included in the show) Bilderstreit tably, proved the point. This The cross-currents are one of the most while the imaginative and powerfully rich exhibition was dominated by the artists of fascinating aspects of the exhibition which panel paintings of Twins Seven Seven com- one particular Cologne gallery and as a is particularly beautifully installed at La bine a Klee-like demonism with Nigerian result the organisers' intelligence and in- Villette. For example, how is it that Navajo primitive imagery. Even his titles are remi- were tegrity called into question. Criticisms Indians, Haitians, Aborigines and South niscent of Klee's (for example The mother aside, however, there were some notable Africans all make paintings in the sand or of the world reptile) and it may be no coinci- works on show, although few were un- earth? To what extent did the traditions dence that he is collected in Germany. known. There were also some important within which they work ever come into Although the influence on western art artists who were poorly represented and contact? Similarly the exhibition makes of primitive culture has been treated at inadequately displayed. a point of underlining interests shared length in recent years (for example Primitive The of Bilderstreit to inter- between these pretensions artists and their western Art in the Twentieth Century,held in 1984 at nationality have been brought into focus counterparts, no more markedly than in the , New York, by Magiciens de la Terre (at the Centre the juxtaposition of Richard Long's Red and the surrounding debate, to which the Georges Pompidou and the Grande earth circle with the Yuendumu Aborigine present exhibition is in part a counter- Halle La Villette, Paris, 18th May to earth painting employing sacred herbs. punch), little interest has been aroused, 14th August)2 which claims to be the first The ritualistic and religious nature of the except among ethnographers and anthro- truly international exhibition. The show Aborigine work endows Long's circle with pologists, in the extent to which 'third

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world' art has been touched by the western world. This is another theme underlying the choice of exhibitors, although at times one feels that artists have been selected to illustrate the point rather than because the resulting art is good. Nevertheless there are some interesting observations to be made. For example, Chief Mark Unya exhibits a head-dress whose principal motif is an aeroplane, whereas all his other head- dresses are depictions of fish. While the fish are figures of fantasy, the aeroplane is treated in a naturalistic manner showing, possibly, the difficulty of incorporating un- 103. Onion,by Kane familiar motifs essentially alien to the artist's Kwei. 1988.Painted own culture. Equally interesting is Unya's wood.70 by 265by reliance on fluorescent colours which are 70 cm. (Exh.Georges obviously of western origin. Pompidou Centre, While Magiciens ask serious questions, Paris). it deliberately withholds answers. Given the paucity of our knowledge of art other than western, how do we judge what is laid before us? It becomes immediately apparent how much we rely on inherited traditions and context in the understand- ing of the art of our own culture, as the organisers admitted when they made their selection. How then should we approach the art of uncharted cultures? Furthermore, how typical of 'third world' art producers are those who have been selected for this show? If they are as typical as the western artists invited to exhibit, then one must assume that there is a vast production of art which continues to be unknown to us and which this exhibition encourages us to explore. To what extent are the 'third world' exhibitors artists and what differ- entiates them from craftsmen or even high priests? The Nepalese monks state in the catalogue that the notion of art does not exist for them. By including them in such an exhibition, are the organisers imposing an interpretation and function on their 'art' which is intrinsically alien to it? If religious artefacts, such as Jimmy Wululu's funerary monuments, are removed from their functional context, to what extent do they lose their meaning, and do they become simply in the secular 104. western tradition? Can the same question be asked of renaissance altar-pieces which have now, in many respects, become secu- larised by their removal to museums? Con- versely, when a secular work of western art such as Long's Red earthcircle is displayed in the context of ritualistic or religious art, how valid is its extended and amplified meaning? Finally, at what point do 'third world' objects transcend the barrier be- tween folk art and fine art and are these valid distinctions?

104. Articulatedlair, by Louisc Bourgeois. 1986. Painted steel and rubber. (Robert Miller Gallery, New York; exh. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).

105. Mabhoko- Kwandebele,by Esta Mahlangu. Photograph of the artist'spainted house in Mabhoko, South Africa. (Exh. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).

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Magiciens de la Terre is one of the most in oil: Angelica and Medoro at the Louvre, correspondence in style and handling be- thought-provoking exhibitions of this with its elongated figures and boldly cut- tween the picture at Poughkeepsie and his decade because it demonstrates the shallow- off planes, lit by the sun before a storm, large group portrait of Anne of Austria, ness of our knowledge of art and our arro- appeared very different from the other Louis XIV and the Duke of Anjou at the gant occidental attitudes. Whether one can paintings attributed to him in the exhi- ChAteau de Balleroy is striking.2 On the continue to show 'developed' western art bition. Martin Freminet could be studied other hand, a large number of the drawings in such a context while at the same time in unpublished works of great importance: in red chalk traditionally given to Bellange widening the range of art is another matter, first, a series of modelli in oil and grisaille ought instead to be attributed to St-Igny.3 for in the end this show is as selective for the decorations of the Chapel of the His painting style appears more graphic within its own terms as an exhibition de- Trinity at Fontainebleau, recognised by and rougher, more summary and also drier voted exclusively to western art. It takes a Dominique Cordellier among the unattri- without any Flemish overtones. I would brave person to organise such a show and buted works in the Cabinet des Dessins like tentatively to propose that the beauti- an even braver artist to participate in it. of the Louvre and now shown in the ful Crucifixionat the ChAteau de Lourmarin JEREMY LEWISON new galleries devoted to French painting (Fig.107) might be by him. In St-Igny, TateGallery there; and second, a large Adorationof the Juste d'Egmont and Bellange, we are faced shepherdsfrom the Musee de Gap. Quentin with three distinct artistic personalities Bilderstreit. Widerspruch, Einheit und Fragment in der Varin appeared in various guises: Jacques linked only by their taste for fashionable Kunst seit 1960. By Siegfried Gohr and Johannes Thuillier is right to remove the Martyrdom hats with large plumes. Gachnang + several contributions. 544 pp. + numer- of a saint at Beauvais from his while Georges Lallemand's wuvrenow appears in euvre, ous ills. col. and in b. & w. (DuMont Buchverlag the two canvases from the more defined, with a of ISBN 3-7701-2372-7. sloppily painted clearly corpus K61n, 1989). Church at Les Andelys, the Martyrdomof for churches, some of them 2Magiciens de la Terre. Introduction paintings by Jean-Hubert St Vincent and the St Clare, their rather Martin + essays. 271 pp. + numerous ills. in col. Martyrdom of documented, recognisable by and in b. & w. du Centre are reminiscent, in their childish narrative unstable, elongated figures with hooked (Editions Pompidou, 1989), - FF490, HB. ISBN 2-85850-498-9. style, of processional banners. On the other noses and tense attenuated fingers for hand, the Wedding at Cana of about 1618- example those at St Nicolas-des-Champs 20 or perhaps slightly later, from Rennes, and Notre-Dame-de-Bonne- Nouvelle, painted for the high altar of the Church Paris, and at Rouen, Senlis and Lombard. of St-Gervais in Paris, is an absolute The Adorationof the Magi in the Musee de masterpiece, refined and subtle and a Lille, already attributed to Lallemand by major touchstone in the history of French Charles Sterling in 1937, fits in easily to painting. this group, but the canvas of the same Bellange's artistic personality was hardly subject in the Hermitage is feebly executed made any clearer by the works assembled and looks like a copy. Are the GoodSamaritan in the show. The firmest attribution - and at Nancy and the St Sebastian by Ponce, Meaux the only one at all comparable in its vision- which are so close in style, really by Lalle- French painting ary extravagance and virtuosity of ex- mand? The abbreviated sculptural forms ecution to his drawings and engravings - and the highly contrasted lighting surely Conceived and organised by Jean- was the superb Lamentation from the argue against his authorship. The beautiful Pierre Changeux, Professor at the College Hermitage, which is related to a drawing series of six paintings at Notre-Dame-des- de France, well known neurobiologist and at Dijon; the bust-length Magdalen from Blancs-Manteaux, Paris, does not have passionate amateurof old-master paintings, the Musee Lorrain at Nancy, although of much to do with Lallemand: an inscription, the exhibition De Nicolb dell'Abbatea Nicolas far lesser quality, is directly related to 'Elle' on one of the canvases may be a Poussin set out to explore French painting it stylistically. A Christ crownedwith thorns signature (an article by Jean-Claude Boyer at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning which recently reappeared at auction on this problem will soon be published). of the seventeenth century, a period of (at Tours, 6th March 1989) is yet to be The Le Nain brothers were represented transition neglected by art historians. It fully studied, but appears very close. Other by the well-known Bacchusand Ariadnefrom was held at the Musee Bossuet, Meaux pictures pose different problems. Is the Orleans, and by an unpublished Adoration (to which Professor Changeux has given large Stigmatisation of St Francis from the of theMagi acquired by Professor Changeux ten seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Muse'e Lorrain certainly by Bellange? The in 1986 and given by him to the Museum French paintings) from December 1988 stiff heavy figures accord ill with those in at Meaux. As it was still undergoing resto- through February 1989, and both the the picture from the Hermitage and with ration it was not shown in the exhibition, thought-provoking selection of works and what we know of Bellange's style from his and is therefore illustrated here after the catalogue,' written by fifteen major drawings and paintings; Pierre Rosenberg its cleaning (Fig.106), which revealed an scholars of the period, raise interesting explains these discrepancies by proposing overpainted angel in the upper part. This questions, proposing no less than a whole that the St Francis is an early work. Or picture can be added to the very coherent new account of French painting. should we, as for La Tour, imagine two group of mostly religious subjects which The Rape of Helen given to the studio different styles for this artist - a diurnal Jacques Thuillier assembled in 1978 as of Primaticcio, from the Bowes Museum, and a nocturnal Bellange? the 'group of the Adoration' without sug- - Barnard Castle of which certain portions The art of the Rouennais Jean de St- gesting it belonged to the wuvreof the three are so beautiful that one wonders if it Igny, represented by the Presentation in brothers, and prudently hypothesising in- - is not at least partly by the master and the Temple recently acquired by the Mus~e stead that these were youthful works by a a group of works by Niccol6 dell'Abbate, de Dunkerque, now appears more sharply yet-to-be identified artist. Now, in the cata- including an unpublished fragment dis- in focus. The ravishing group of eight small logue, convinced by the Changeux Ador- covered in store at the Musee de Quimper pictures, mostly in grisaille, of French ation, he - rightly in my view - integrates - by Pierre Rosenberg were included as sovereigns on horseback, courtly scenes and his whole group into the Le Nain corpus. a preface to the show to represent the half-length female figures (at Rouen, Nimes However, I hold to my opinion that we First School of Fontainebleau. The Second and Chantilly, in the Musee des Arts see here not so much the hand of a tyro, Fontainebleau School was convincingly Decoratifs, Paris and a private collection; but that of Mathieu after 1648: this is explored in a large group of paintings. at Versailles and at Vassar College, Pough- suggested by the number of works in this They included a new discovery, Jonah keepsie) should certainly be removed from group, their stylistic coherence (I cannot deliveredfrom the whale from the Church his wuvre.Their supple and brilliant tech- see more than one hand), the evidence of of St Alpin, ChAlons-sur-Marne, by nique in any case reveals a Flemish hand. the early sources which describe Mathieu Toussaint Dubreuil, whose style re- They may well be by Juste d'Egmont as specialising in 'histoires', and their com- mains problematical especially as one (1601-74), one of the most important plete stylistic and intellectual divergence knows that he furnished his collaborators painters in Paris and one of the founding from the four canvases of the Life of the with his drawings for them to execute members of the Academie in 1648. The Virgin painted for the marquis de Mirabel

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