A COOL look at what the Tate Gallery now offers the visi- tor may be timely,* given the torrent of adverse criticism the Gallery has received in recent months and the plans for its future which were announced in mid-December. Last year's Turner Prize provoked much severe condemnation of the Director in particular and the Tate's promotion of contemporary art in general. The largely poor reception in February this year of the most recent of its annual changes in display was partly fuelled by what was per- ceived to be an excessive zeal on the part of the Turner Prize judges to promote an art which leaves a majority at best puzzled and at worst aggrieved. Critics of both the Prize and the Tate itself reflect a more widespread dissatis- faction with contemporary art, especially the exclusion at official levels of its more 'traditional' manifestations.
By Lewis Kachur
'ALL my life I shall remember the musical instrument which is called the tenora', wrote Max Jacob in a prose poem of 1921 dedicated to Picasso. It recounts the moving impression made on him by a live performance of a Catalan band (cobla) and, specifically, by the little-known woodwind instrument which is 'as long as a clarinet, and would fight against four trombones. Its sound is dry like a bagpipe.' Jacob continues with his somewhat touristic account: 'I heard the tenora at Figueras, a city of Catalonia, in a little orchestra on the public square ... They danced the sardana, and before every dance the orchestra performed a long introduction in a grandiloquent manner. The decla- mation of the tenora was supported by the other instruments kept tightly together."
By David Anfam
DESPITE its importance, Clyfford Still's work poses greater problems for scholarship than that of any other artist associated with Abstract Expressionism. Secondary sources remain either scarce or obscure, while the complete corpus of his works has neither been shown nor published. What is known stems largely from Still himself, who thereby sought to preempt the mosaic of art-historical interpretation. He replaced it with a canon whose main agents are the gifts totalling sixty-nine paintings, together with their catalogues, made to three North American institutions: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and New York's Metropolitan Museum. If highly imposing, all are partial representations. Indeed, Still wrote his own history so clearly that its subtexts and probable sources have almost disappeared. For no period are these more relevant than his earlier career where, once reinscribed, they affect a reading of the whole.
By Joan Rothfuss
IN 1976 Petersburg Press published Foirades/Fizzles, an illustrated livre de luxe consisting of five short texts by Samuel Beckett and thirty-five prints by JasperJohns.* Conceived by Vera Lindsay, an editor at the London-based press, the project brought together two eminent cultural figures who, although they knew each other's work, had not previously met. It was an unusual project for Johns since, despite his established interest in exploring the relationship between words and images, he had collaborated with a writer only once before, and never on a book-length project. Indeed, Roberta Bernstein recalls him saying in 1972 that he doubted he would want to do a book with a writer at all. Approached by Lindsay soon afterwards, Johns nevertheless accepted, making. his participation conditional on Beckett's contribution of unpublished material only.
, an illustrated livre de luxe consisting of five short texts by Samuel Beckett and thirty-five prints by JasperJohns.* Conceived by Vera Lindsay, an editor at the London-based press, the project brought together two eminent cultural figures who, although they knew each other's work, had not previously met. It was an unusual project for Johns since, despite his established interest in exploring the relationship between words and images, he had collaborated with a writer only once before, and never on a book-length project. Indeed, Roberta Bernstein recalls him saying in 1972 that he doubted he would want to do a book with a writer at all. Approached by Lindsay soon afterwards, Johns nevertheless accepted, making. his participation conditional on Beckett's contribution of unpublished material only.
By Louis Alexander Waldman
AMONG the avant-garde trends of the early twentieth century, few had their eye fixed so keenly on the past as the Neue Sachlichkeit movement in Germany between the world wars. And hardly any of the artists assocjated with the 'New Objec- tivity' can be said to have embraced the old masters with such consistent enthusiasm as the painter Christian Schad. Through- out his long career, Schad's work makes reference, in a manner both serious and playful, to artists as diverse as Schongauer, Goya and Ingres. In a relatively early work, the 1930 Portrait of Eva von Arnheim (Fig.36), we can also observe his involvement with the styles and conventions of Italian renaissance portraiture.
(Fig.36), we can also observe his involvement with the styles and conventions of Italian renaissance portraiture.
By Robin Middleton
JOHN SUMMERSON presented to the world the image of a well- rolled umbrella, taut and elegant, restrained and controlled, but when he opened up he was all-encompassing, very protective. And his writings were at one with his person. With the sparest of frameworks he could cover the ground of architectural history, deftly isolating the salient facts, elaborating to just that degree requisite to give a sharp understanding of the context, whether social, legal or administrative, concentrating then on the organisation and form of the built works themselves, providing an analysis both wide-ranging and precisely focused - and also highly personal. But he was never merely idiosyncratic. The essence of his analyses was his deep concern for the distinction and quality of the architecture he surveyed. He wished always to grasp the nature of that quality and to pin-point its springs. His particular success was owing largely to the fact that he himself had been trained as an architect and thus understood intimately the operational basis of that art. In 1976 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the R.I.B.A.
By J. Bruyn, B. Haak, S. H. Levie and P. J. J. van Thiel
MADAM, Since its foundation in 1968, the Amsterdam-based Rembrandt Research Project has become known internationally for its work and publications. The original team consisted of six members, later reduced to five following the deaths of J.A. Emmens in 1971 and J.G. van Gelder in 1980 and the appoint- ment of E. van de Wetering in 1970. These changes were not announced at the time, since they had no effect on the aim and methodology of the programme. The Rembrandt Research Project would now like to inform colleagues and other interested parties of far more sweeping changes that have taken place.
Reviewed by Tony Godfrey
Reviewed by Lawrence W. Nichols
By Maurice Rummens
Reviewed by Malcolm Bull
Reviewed by Colin Rhodes
Reviewed by John T. Spike
Reviewed by Randall C. Griffin
Reviewed by Julian Freeman
Reviewed by Christoph Grunenberg
