The second phase of the “Arts of San Francisco” brought new prints to the gallery in mid-July. Six printmakers are showing, and of them Beth van Hoesen and George Miyasaki probably offer the greatest contrast, giving some idea of the scope of printmaking today. Miss van Hoesen, a master of probing line, is intensely analytical, whether her subject be rocks, radishes, or a self-portrait. Most of our skilled printmakers today are just that—they are known for their skill in printmaking. George Miyasaki is more: he is a creative artist as well, an image maker, and a painter of note. Especially in printmaking, his is a strong link with Japanese visual culture—the monumental stone, the subtleties of texture, the understanding of the “little drama.”
Some aspects of the Photographs of the Dance, devoted to studies of Ann Halprin and her company at work on the recently presented “The Five-legged Stool,” call to mind the experiments in simultaneity by Carra, Severini and Boccioni early in our century. Ralph Hampton, especially, has used time exposure plus repeat exposures to stress the importance of past-performance as a part of present performance. Warner Jepson manages some extraordinary effects of the movement, materials and objects seen for their own sake, while Chester Kessler, apparently regarding the idea-sensation as something controlled both by retinal and intellectual elements, has used a dramatic editing technique to recreate the material given him as audience.
This group of three photographers, like the signers of the famous Manifesto of Futurist Painters of 1910, have attempted to place the spectator, not in front of the picture, but at the very heart of it, in the manner of the theatre. They, themselves, could very well have made the statement “. . . The expression in a work of art of simultaneous states of mind—that’s what we aim at with all the fervor that is in us.” Leading from the Photographs of the Dance Theatre, or rather, as a part of that show, is the super-zany spiral labyrinth designed as “an environment” by Tony Martin and aptly named a “Theatre for Walkers, Touchers, Watchers and Listeners.” This is a “fun thing,” with its muchly-abused canvas walls, peepholes and slots and little drums and tuned wires and articulated gadgets leading to a purple-padded see-saw swing, dead-center—but why it is given museum space I’ll never understand.
––E. M. Polley
