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ROBERT GOLDWATER
in the work of the last two there is an exploitation of an extreme flexibil–
ity inherent in the wax and the plastics from which the bronze is made.
Agostini's refined neo-realism, executed in the most delicate of plasters,
so breakable they must be cast
if
they are to last at all, with their sheer
polished surfaces and their accurate rendering of the materials of the
mold look like nothing so much as the details of a Bernini marble.
Hadzi, too, works directly in the wax, and his Roman piece-molds allow
him the flexibility of construction made of many parts, each with its
modeled, tangible, light-absorbing surface. The artists of assembled
sculpture, and in welded metals, while certainly very different in icono–
graphic aim, are determined to outdo a freedom first sought by painters;
so now are these renewers of more traditional techniques.
Theodore Roszak, who exhibited at Pierre Matisse, showed an acute
awareness of some of the dangers of accepted stylization. In earlier work
(whose best known example is
Kitty H
CDWk)
he had achieved a fusion of
elements, so that reference and representation, style and symbol were
all one; the mind might analyze, the eye refused to separate. Recently,
introducing a more descriptive depiction of the human figure, he has
been employing a newer language; because it is recognizable as a common
tongue, already stylized, and refers to representation, it somehow remains
apart within the work's abstract shape. The effort at integration perhaps
explains the elaboration of the larger pieces; in some of the smaller,
simpler ones, it was achieved.
Henry Moore's show at Knoedler's was an exhibition of official
art.
It explained at once what artists reject when they say they wish to work
without style. This was style with a vengeance : modern, monumental,
and altogether right-or wrong. Even years ago, the sources of Moore's
reclining women, so near at hand in Picasso, so far away in Mexico and
Greece, were difficult to forget; now the intervening style was Moore's
own, a style applied to the work rather than growing from it. One was
blinded by instantaneous recognition and had no need
to
examine
further. In the same way the tall uprights, only too clearly monuments
first, were meant to be justified by their reference to a style, this time
somehow both ancient English and primitive. It is perhaps because
Moore's conscious relation to Art is so clear that compatriot commentary
bears down so heavily on Nature and Unconscious. (Suddenly one has
enormous respect for all those personal and pictorial antics whose
performance wittily keeps Picasso from becoming his own monument;
it would be so easy for him.)
