books December 1985

André Kertész, of Paris and New York.

With essays by Sandra S. Phillips, David Travis, and Weston J. Naef, London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 288 pp., 125 black and white illustrations and 180 duotone prints.

WHEN ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ died, on September 28, 1985, aged 91, he relinquished the title of photography’s most celebrated living legend. It was a title that a growing band of acolytes and admirers had in recent years rushed to bestow, and one that the photographer himself considered long overdue. Kertész took pictures for 73 years, or almost half the time that photography has existed, and although he arrived in New York in 1936

print November 1985

Rut Bryk

Rut Bryk, now in her sixties, has been one of Finland’s leading ceramists since the 1950s. Early in her career, she was known for her forceful use of simple colors and shapes in her pottery; more recently she has turned her ceramic skills to making abstract sculpture. Her most recent exhibition opened the week that her husband, Tapio Wirkkala, died, making it a sadly symbolic reminder of the endurance of art over loss and death. Bryk showed portions of the monumental ceramic murals she has been building for the Finnish embassy under construction in New Delhi. Composed of thousands of tiny, highly

print October 1985

Kari Cavén

Jaded by the overproduction of an in New York, one hardly expects to be awakened into feeling by work made and exhibited thousands of miles to the north. Helsinki, though it remains an active center of architecture and design, is scarcely home to artists working on the cutting edge. But 31-year-old Finnish sculptor Kari Cavén, in his second one-man show, produced a group of constructions in painted wood that dispense the unmistakable tonic of authenticity Though his graceful, geometrically spare wall pieces hark back to Cubism, Dada, and Constructivism (still beloved in northern Europe), this

print September 1985

Jean Le Gac

During the ’70s Jean Le Gac’s bookish works—composed of Polaroids, tiny drawings, and paragraphs of text that eccentrically combine the theoretical with personal reminiscence—were received as conceptual art. His most recent exhibition in Paris shows that he has amplified and complicated his earlier narrative concerns. Interested equally now as before, in the motives and processes that inform the artist’s mind, Le Gac’s new series combines pastel, color photographs, and text in an investigation of the emotional correspondences—the metaphors of memory—inspired by the books and stories of his

books Summer 1985

Welliver

Welliver.

By Frank H. Goodyear, Jr., introduction by John Ashbery, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1985, 165 pp., 9 black and white illustrations, 60 color plates.

Sixty tipped-in plates, an oversized format, and fine color reproduction on beautiful paper make this volume on Neil Welliver’s work a satisfying retrospective compendium to look at. The texts, as is the case with most monographs, are advocacy writing, encouraging the aggrandizement of the artist’s reputation by attempting to place him within the American tradition of landscape painting while claiming his essential

books Summer 1985

The Pluralist Era: American Art, 1968–1981

The Pluralist Era: American Art, 1968–1981.

By Corinne Robins, New York: Harper & Row, 1984, 246 pp., 88 black and white photographs, 8 color plates.

In the first chapter of her earnest march through 14 recent years of American art production, Corinne Robins quotes Kim Levin in 1979: “The 1970s has not been just another decade. Something did happen, something so momentous that it was ignored in disbelief: modernity had gone out of style.” The mechanics of the death of Modernism are indeed an interesting topic, and a rigorous, insightful discussion that explored the idea in relationship to the

books May 1985

Earthworks and Beyond

Very few of us have been able to walk the land of Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, 1977, in New Mexico, or to consider Michael Heizer’s monumental Double Negative, 1969–70, incised into the Nevada desert. John Beardsley’s book now presents a critical evaluation of the evolution of works that incorporate and/or alter the landscape itself. This thoughtful volume is very well illustrated and provides a context for understanding the achievements of a highly diverse range of artistic endeavor. Beardsley’s discussion ranges from the land interventions and reclamation projects of Robert Smithson and

books December 1984

New Art, Art Plastic, Beyond a Portrait, Emile Gallé, Howard Hodgkin, Munch, and Irving Penn

IN THE GRANDER SCHEME of things, this tabloid-sized record will surely look dated in no time at all. Compiled by four editors who seem to have combed recent catalogues and reviews rather than looked at the real thing in order to make their selections, this cross between a telephone book and a mail-order catalogue illustrates works (very little sculpture, endless numbers of paintings) by 118 artists “exhibited in the United States.” For the unfamiliar reader this will be confusing since there is only one page of text (in the form of an editors’ note) to accompany the mass of images laid out

Alexandra Anderson