print April 1970

Larry Bell

In his new works at the Pace Gallery, Larry Bell seems to be retrenching, returning voluntarily to the intimate scale to which he had been limited in his earlier glass cubes, but which he appeared to have transcended in several glass “wall pieces” shown outside of New York last year.

The glass is still treated by Bell’s elaborate optical lens coating machine, so that evanescent spectrums of rosy, smoky hues slide over the surfaces of the fragile, mirrored pieces. They are extremely narrow strips (three to six inches wide by about six to nine feet long) attached to the wall at waist height like

print April 1970

Robert Duran and Brice Marden

Robert Duran’s transformation to loose, lyrical color paintings began to occur around the time of Duran’s last show (see Artforum, Dec. 1968, p. 58) when he got interested in spraying the separate flat slabs and square posts of his compactly organized sculptures with very pictorial cloudy films of color. What was most vital about this work for me was not the positive forms of the solid units, but, instead, the more freely circulating labyrinthine channels created between and around them. Geometric mystical diagrams familiar to the art of India, China, or folk cultures throughout the world often

print April 1970

Frank Roth

Frank Roth used to paint volumetric automobile-part shapes in oddly jutting perspectives. Although his newer paintings are also concerned with such spatial effects, they are of a more abstract and more delicate nature. The basic idea of these paintings is to create a subtle impression of receding, corridor-like spaces which are realized by geometrically subdividing the field and surrounding some of the units with soft halations of color. The divisions suggest the orthagonal projections of perspective diagrams, but they lead from the corners of a field (sometimes rhomboidal, sometimes square or

print March 1970

Alan Saret’s Studio Exhibition

“MOUNTAINS OF CHANCE, DOCUMENTS OF Ruralism . . . Changing Manufactures” was the way that Alan Saret aptly characterized the concerns of his first one-man show at the Bykert Gallery last year. The current show of watercolors and drawings, and the sculptural pieces simultaneously exhibited at his downtown loft extend these same themes with a new scale and confidence. This assurance was bred, perhaps, by the shift from a fairly small, narrow working space (and from a gallery context for the display of the three-dimensional work) to a spacious high-ceilinged studio in which all of the factors of

print March 1970

Duane Hanson, William Stewart, and Yehuda Ben-Yehuda

Three artists working from different sources and backgrounds have populated the O.K. Harris Gallery downtown with a grisly assortment of human tableaux and animal viscera which are sometimes as startling as they are studied in their effects. Duane Hanson is a Minnesotan who had worked on his figure groups for about four years in Florida before coming to New York; William Stewart is a Texan who recently turned from some film-making to his current preoccupation with animal/ material constructions; and Yehuda. Ben-Yehuda is an Israeli who has done stage design and kinetic scenery, splitting his

print March 1970

Jo Baer

At the Goldowsky Gallery, Jo Baer shows a 1967–69 set which comprised part of the “Spectrum” series seen at last year’s Corcoran Biennial, in addition to a new four-part group of 36 by 39 inch paintings. While I am still mostly unmoved by the rigors of Miss Baer’s sets of white, banded-edged panels, her work nevertheless looks uncompromisingly single-minded, even tough, in the present context of loose, lyrical color painting.

The three larger works of the “Spectrum” group consist of greyish white fields (each 6 by 6 feet) bordered on all four sides with 3-inch wide black bands, lined on their

print March 1970

Edward Ruscha

Looking at Edward Ruscha’s latest collection of illusionistic word paintings at the Iolas Gallery, one is forced to deal with the inflections of a very private, odd, and wry sense of humor, which, however, is based on a straightforward, almost dumbly systematic method of collecting, enumerating, and recording selected material and images. This treatment of his subjects is in the surreal tradition of René Magritte, but commercial art techniques are also injected, so that the humorous jolts are often as unsettling in their own genre, as the Belgian master’s more fiercely psychological imagery. If

print January 1970

Tantra

INDIAN TANTRIC ART WAS PRODUCED by an esoteric cult of Tantra Yoga followers whose origins may predate the 10th century, A.D. It combines yogic instruction, religion, meditation, science, and a spontaneous folk art expression into a great variety of forms which vary considerably in quality and complexity according to the sophistication of teacher, artist, and student, as well as to the level of thinking and belief signified by the particular art forms. A recent revival (or rather, discovery) of interest in this art has resulted in the exhibition of several rare and sizable collections in this

print September 1969

“Process”, Theodoron Awards, Richard Van Buren, David Paul, Lynda Benglis, Chuck Close, Dan Christensen

The Whitney Museum’s two new Associate Curators, Marcia Tucker and James Monte, assembled a show called “Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials” during May and June which was initial evidence of the Museum’s updated interest in giving a more specific showcase to radical contemporary work (aside from the institution’s regular painting and sculpture annuals). Included in this programmatic-sounding rubric was a week of extended time pieces—films, electronic music concerts, and motion-time performances—related in concept or method to the sculptures and other works installed in a (somewhat

print Summer 1969

Sidney Tillim

Sidney Tillim showed two of his large figurative paintings and a number of watercolor studies and drawings at the Noah Goldowsky Gallery. Since Mr. Tillim is a critic who has been assiduous and perceptive in his frequent defenses of representational painting as well as in his discussions of modernism in the pages of Artforum, before turning to a critique of his current work, I think it is in order here to review some of the ideas upon which his own artistic enterprise is predicated. In his article, “A Variety of Realisms,” appearing in this issue, Mr. Tillim airs his dissatisfactions with the

print Summer 1969

Robert Huot

In a catalog mailed out from the Paula Cooper Gallery, Robert Huot pictured a number of his architectural detailing projects which had been installed in the lofts and homes of various friends or collectors as well as in the gallery. These projects consist of, for instance: painting alternately glossy and matte white stripes on a section of an already white wall; running a molding strip along two corner lengths of a floor baseboard; attaching ten short I-beams to a ceiling projection, or otherwise altering some detail of the room, its surfaces, or environmental context. Still, these changes retain

print Summer 1969

Stephen Greene

Stephen Greene’s studies, drawings and oils at the Staempfli Gallery show a hand and sensibility which are generally adroit in adapting to the needs of the mechanized biomorphic abstractions the artist has made his idiom. Like fantasized, fragmented, and floated machines, his rotating discs, socket-like forms and tensile lines are sketched out in a monochromatic Gorky-esque atmosphere which is both elegant and delicate in the best of the larger paintings such as the Equation of Night. Towards the formation of an intimately personal style Green draws on evident, though varied sources; his work

Emily Wasserman