Well not every aesthetic category: Burri (like
Manzoni) couldn’t get off the wall. The
pictorial frame remained the laboratory within
which any kind of material experiment might
take place. But it would have to be Carl Andre
who inherited that material sensibility on
this side of the Atlantic. More than any other
minimalist artist of that generation, it was
Andre who understood the potential of matter
as a readymade (just as Warhol understood the
new potential of the image as a readymade).
But the problem with this ‘discovery’ is that
one either follows it to its logical conclusion,
at which point not the readymade but ‘matter’
itself becomes the problem (indeed, the very
possibility of raw matter understood as a
readymade requires the concept of matter to
have undergone any number of redefinitions,
which, of course, is exactly what was happening
for a generation that was just coming to terms
with the conundrums of quantum mechanics), or
one becomes trapped by the logic of the
‘discovery’ itself, whereby its moment of
revelation is endlessly restaged. Which is why
there really was nothing ‘new’ about (14)
AndRe’s Timber Works/Copper Works show at Paula
Cooper. It’s not so much that the moment of
The works are a bit dry, and visually a bit
these works had passed, it’s that Andre
dull, but what Kruger is groping for is the
continues to refuse to use his work to ask the
connect and disconnect between image, word and
tough questions – the questions that his work
meaning, which she exploits so well in her
made possible in the first place – ie, how does
classic 1980s work. That too owes a debt to
one represent ‘matter’?
Ruscha, but his drawings of words, which seem
to be spelled out by lengths of ribbon, are too
fun and witty to have Kruger’s kind of depth.
The letters in Tulsa, pictured from above,
unspool across a flat background as if they
were the buildings that form the city
photographed from an aeroplane. Pee Pee (1976)
is a visual pun for the two big Ps at the
beginning of each word – guys are so focused
on the functions of their dicks.
(22)
The Complexity of the Simple, L&M Arts
L&M specialise in exhibitions of superlative
pieces – witness their painfully beautiful
selection of late de Koonings last fall –
contextualised with curatorial intelligence
and concision (and aimed, of course, at selling
available works to the lucky collectors who
can afford to buy at this level). What happened?
I simply don’t see what a small Anselm Reyle
of crinkled foil has to do with an Agnes Martin
from the 1980s. Or how Liza Lou’s beaded tree
branch relates to one of the most sublime John
This is a deeply interesting question for
Chamberlains, 1962 no less, one is likely to
perhaps one-tenth of one percent of the general
see anywhere. Mark Rothko and Mark Handforth?
population. For everyone else it is deeply
Are they crazy? True, apparently simple visual
uninteresting, or simply trivial, but it
statements can be astoundingly poetic, but
underpins the kind of experimentation or
dull art is just dull art, and it looks even
‘intervention’ that we see in Burri’s work,
worse in great company.
and which appears wholly lacking in Andre’s.
Yet both artists came to the question of matter
(23)
because it had been made particularly timely:
CALdeR And MeLOTTI Lyrical Constructions,
Burri because postwar Italian artists needed
Barbara Mathes Gallery
anything that could resist the weight of the
Reviews Marathon.indd 80 7/1/08 16:51:02
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