COLUMNS

  • Gilles Deleuze’s ABC’s

    ODDLY ENOUGH FOR FRANCE, where literary-chat shows are prime-time staples, Gilles Deleuze managed to make it through a lifetime as a philosopher without ever appearing on TV—well, almost. In 1988, nearly exhausted by the serious respiratory problems that led to his death last November, Deleuze agreed to work with the French/German cultural channel Arte. But he categorically refused either to submit to an interview or to sanction a documentary of his life and work, insisting instead on designing his own broadcast with Claire Parnet, his former student and his interlocutor in Dialogues. Together

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  • Lisette Model

    Lisette Model, 1906–83
    It is unfashionable to acknowledge the existence of artistic temperament; the idea of equality implies, superficially, that everyone is as good as another, and that to be equal is to be alike. Lisette Model had a full share of this unpopular temperament, first as a promising musician, later as a photographer. Photography is apparently the most democratic of the arts; anyone may try it—wonderful pictures are sometimes the result of an accident. What makes a great print? Not, above all, the mechanical ability (which any child could command) to print maximum black, white,

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  • Gene Baro and Nancy Hanks

    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.

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  • PASSAGES

    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.

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  • H.C. Westermann (1922–1981)

    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

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  • Gregory Battcock

    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

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  • Rosalie Onorato: 1949–1980

    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

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  • Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)

    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

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