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natural world, are salvaged to be reincarnated in a new life. Far from
being solely a matter of categories or semantics, these shifts are of the
essence of much non-pictorial activity today. On one hand the proposi–
tion is stated that nothing is esthetic merely, and on the other, the
counter proposition that the useful or the ruined can always be made
esthetic.
After discovering this basic principle for himself, a spectator realizes
that it is only a question of accent or emphasis which decides whether
his experience is essentially that of assemblage or sculpture. The career
of the brilliant Richard Stankiewicz illustrates an oscillating sensibility
within this whole region. Composed of rusted boilers, abandoned
plumbing parts, pipes and metallic fittings of every kind, his work first
had an assemblage character, by turns wryly witty or primitivistic. But
of recent years, his vision has become more abstract and spatially con–
vincing even though the materials he uses have remained basically the
same. Much of this can also be said for the metal armatured canvas
constructions of Leo Bontecou. Similarly, with John Chamberlain and
David Weinrib, both of whom employ either tatters of mangled auto–
mobiles or snipped enameled metal plates and plastic, three dimensional
accomplishment is memorable. Weinrib, the oldest of a group of
sculptors which includes .Tom Doyle and Mark di Suvero,
has
notably
explored the possibilities of an environmental configuration. One can
become physically entangled in their work. And in addition, they
exemplify (along with George Sugarman and the young San Fran–
ciscan, Robert Hudson) an overall tendency toward polychrome sculp–
ture, the most remarkable since the end of the last century. It is there–
fore not at all surprising that these sculptors have direct affinities with
painting, Chamberlain with de Kooning, Sugarman with Stuart Davis,
Hudson with Frank Lobdell, Weinrib and his friends variously with
Franz Kline and Al Held. In general, conventions which painting had
long
ago
exhausted have been engaging the attention of serious sculp–
turs in their infinitely more resistant medium. In turn too, the initial
obstrusiveness of unusual materials fades as spatial dynamics make
themselves felt.
Whatever it is that may typify American art of the last seven
years, it is neither a single stylistic idiom nor an ideological consonance,
but at the most an outlook that expresses itself by obliqueness and in–
direction, almost canceling what it apparently sets out to do. In such
work initial appearances are invariably never to
be
trusted. Largely
this is what modifies their treatment of ugliness, otherwise a problema-