Du 6/1979 [antikvár]

The Art Magazine 6/1979 A Selective Summary of the Contents Décorative Art Today At the outset, the concept for this Number was quite simple. A first part would illustrate the work of a number of New York artists against the background of 20th-Century décorative art, while a second would discuss the ideas sur-rounding them. But as soon as we came to choose a title things began to become compli-cated. The literal German translations of "pat-tern" and "Patterning" seemed misleading and too restrictive. So we decided to use the English word "pattern", since it stood for the American movement we are considering. But this in turn brought its own problems, for although the amount of material available suggested that we confine ourselves to America, the subject mat-ter made this inappropriate. In the end, we asked Harald Szeemann to write from the European standpoint and John Perreault to give us the New Yorker's view of the Patterning people. At the same time we were com-pelled to restrict the European contribution to a kind of décorative art family tree supple-mented by a report on its practice in France, the only country in Europe where there is much of a concentration of artists working in the décorative genre. Among the aspects that feature our experience of the New York pattern artists are the light-heartedness with which they use the décorative art of ail kinds of civilizations as pegs on which to hang their work, establishing cross connections and adopting forms and colour combina-tions in the process and being quite open about it ail; and secondly the high proportion of women involved and their commitment to fem-inism. The essay on "art-hysterical" conceptions, though admittedly polemical, is to my mind among the most stimulating things thrown up by the patterning movement. But there are also a few points about which I have misgivings. There is, for instance, the almost unanimous rejection of what they like to call "tragic artists", an attitude that seems to me to involve a misunderstanding, for the tragic approach of artists like van Gogh, Pollock or Rothko is not a matter of choice but - like their pictures - a direct conséquence of the frightful intensity with which they lived. The rejection probably dérivés from personal or secondhand experience with various drugs around 1970. And another point: Much as I appreciate the aim to produce pictures in a language anyone can understand, I prefer those with iconographie, symbolic connotations of a mainly indi-vidual kind. Dominik Keller Retrogression and Progression Towards the "Dignity of the Decorative" "It looked as though everything had been tried out and done to death and that progress had come to a standstill. The avant-garde of modem art, which had tirelessly been producing new trends, styles, 'isms* and fashions since the start of the 20th Century had been marking time for eight long years. But now - and it is written - a 'revolution is said to be enlivening the drab scene and opening a new chapter in this century's art' (Willi Bongard) and stimulating discussion and turnover the movement is called 'Patterning' or 'Decoration Art', and the names reveal the entire programme." With these words, Alfred Nemeczek, writing in "Stern" (No. 13, 22.3.1979), introduced the new form of art presented by eight American exponents (four of each sex) in the Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts for the first time in Europe. I have faith in adventure and in the miracle of newly-awakened sensitivity and it was vouch-safed me to experience and express such things more than once. And although I have sought different directions since then - possibly because I was afraid or suspicious that any new event of this kind would be unlikely to have the intensity of something like the 1969 "Attitudes becoming forms, Life created by thought" - I had no hesitation in plunging back into the studio world and seeking out the exponents of "Patterning". The excellent information pro-vided by Johannes Gachnang about new paint-ing to be seen at the Berne Kunsthalle and the frustration produced by documenta 7 and the chances it missed to have a powerful visual sec-tion distorted expectations somewhat and diverted my wishful thinking into the usual hackneyed approach. I was expecting pinna-cles, and acquired atmosphere and quality of living from the artistic climate which these artists emanate. By contrast to earlier buddings of new styles and trends in New York, this for once is not a group of juveniles leading off against their elders. The Patterning artists belong to various generations. "The youngest of them put most of their energy into filming", said Richard Serra, one of the most powerful artists of the past decade. These people are aged between 33 and 55, and one of the most astonishing and favourable points about them is the high proportion of women among them, for they have contributed extensively to producing a "relaxed" climate, as the men them-selves admit. They have been meeting regularly since 1974 and arguing about the relationship between "high" art and its decorative relatives, their common ground consisting in a distaste for the austerity of Conceptual Art and Minimal Art and a love of a genre that provides pleasure to the senses and beauty to the environment, abandoning conceptual riddles and complex iconographical content. Most of them received their stimulus to produce these volup-tuous, colourful creations during travels in the Middle East, India, Afghanistan or Mexico, where they assimilated much of the centuries-old tradition of ornamentation. Many of these artists are unwilling to stop short at panels and other individual items and are hoping to obtain commissions to execute ornamentation in connection with construction projects. Where Conceptual Art derives its liberty from non-execution, these artists have discovered a primaeval pleasure in actually doing things.