Artforum would like to observe the deaths of two art-world figures whose presences will be missed: Gene Baro, curator, critic, and organizer of special exhibitions of art, and Nancy Hanks, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

It is with great sadness that we record the premature death of the painter Wm. Schwedler, an artist who lived and worked in New York. He will be missed.

We mourn the sudden death of Richard Lerner of the Lerner-Heller Gallery. His commitment to humanist art was rare.

Artforum would like to pay remembrance to Betty Parsons. Her dedication and contribution to all aspects of the profession were monumental.

Artforum would like to pay remembrance to Seymour Greenbaum, the certified public accountant who was of great help, both personal and professional, to so many artists. Mr. Greenbaum had been a CPA for 30 years. He died in an automobile accident on April 9th, aged 60.

H.C. Westermann had a genius for making his art look like craft. The harmony that he established with his homey materials was capable of transforming the obvious and the sentimental into the sublime. The eloquent economy of his imagery suggested transcendent folk art, but the compact poetry of his vision lifted it much higher. Westermann was an unequivocally American artist who translated the cynical Duchampian monologue into a rueful Appalachian ballad.

William Copley’s remembrance of Westermann is a bear hug of a painting. There is no “awful rowing toward God” in this memento mori, but rather

THERE IS A GREGORY BATTCOCK story in each of us. Mine has to do with a dinner at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1974, the night before the first conference on video art. The host asked us all to rise and identify ourselves. One after another, we staggered to our feet, mumbled our names, added a self-descriptive phrase or institutional tag, then collapsed. Suddenly, 25 or 30 names later, an astonishing young woman split the air with a thrilling shout, never moving from her seat: “I AM GREGORY BATTCOCK!” At first the laughter came like a cold shock. Then it relaxed, breaking into a wave of

Rosalie Onorato died of leukemia on Sunday, April 27, 1980, at the age of 31. She was Circulation Director of Artforum from 1975 to 1979. We at Artforum are deeply saddened.

We thought it would be fitting to notify Rosalie’s Artforum friends and colleagues that a book fund has been established in her memory at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library.

Any contributions can be addressed directly to:

Mabel Smith Douglass Library

Rutgers University

New Brunswick, New Jersey

08903

Sincerely yours,

Nancy Rosen

Laurie Simmons

Rhoda Weisburg

The self attempts balance, descends. Perfume—the air was to stink of artists’ egos. Himself, quickly torn to pieces. His tongue in his cheek.

Marcel Duchamp, one of this century’s pioneer artists, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art.

He said that he was ahead of his time. One guesses at a certain