This title was digitized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA).
About Contemporary art/southeast. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1977-1980 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1980)
The problem with the Construct works, contends Millard, is that they suffer from a deficiency of com pelling internal logic. “Art has the fleeting relation ship to vision that a lens has to light," he says. “Art should focus our vision and, for some moments at least, help us to see a relationship between it and our lives." Although the Construct works are not devoid of minor, individual merits, the show as a whole lacks the power to focus our vision, he says. The key to any critical indifference to the Con struct works may lie in the nature of Construct itself. Much of the Construct group’s work is “public art,” the kind intended for city plazas and grassy areas where average people gather, rather than museum going art enthusiasts. Because the Construct sculp tors arc attempting to communicate with, and to allay the hostility and suspicion of, the artistically unso phisticated, their work is seldom blatantly esoteric or offensive. In general, the group’s work has roots in the Con structivist tradition, in which everyday materials are modified and combined in an attempt to establish connections between art and life. The industrial materials of Constructivist sculpture were a radical innovation when the movement started in the early part of this century. Ironically, it is the familiarity of these same kinds of materials that make the Con struct sculptures non-threatening and accessible today. In the attempt to meet the public half way, the Construct artists sacrifice a measure of innovation and inspiration that leaves them open to charges of being “safe” rather than exciting, contends Millard. Furthermore, he characterizes the exhibit as “corpo rate art,” as commodities created for no particular space. “What we have here is a kind of supermarket display of typical works by the Construct artists.” The show, he said, looks as if someone “called up a warehouse and ordered a di Suvero, a Peart, a Snel- son, etcetera.” Not all of the critical reaction was negative, how ever. Whether they found the work personally excit ing or not, all those questioned believed the expe rience to be a valuable one for the general public. Caroline Montague, also of Thirteen Minus One, and a participant in the curated regional exhibit of the festival, praised the exhibit as inviting viewer partici pation. For her, the works’ lack of contextural rela tionship to their site was not an important considera tion. Instead, “it’s where it should be—in the park,” she said. “Because it’s not roped or barred off, people can interact with it and explore it.” Some of the works were overtly inviting. Frank McGuire’s dark maroonish “Wonder Wall,” with its chair welded to a platform and facing a blank, rec tangular wall, is a kind of stage area for spontaneous performance art. It is an ironic work that makes one aware of the act of contemplating art by being about the contemplation of art. The chair placed in front of a wall suggests a corresponding work of conceptual art in a museum setting, noted Montague. McGuire, with “the touch of the old hard-core welder," has created a work that is further ironic as a “solidifica tion of conceptual art,” she says. Both Montague and Sandman commented on the extreme attractiveness some of the sculptures had for children. Sandman explained the kids’ easy accep tance of this kind of art as the familiarity that comes with having grown up with it. The adults, he noted, are generally more wary of it. There are twin elements of playfulness and precariousness in the curving lines and gaudy colors of Jerry Peart’s “Call Collect,” and in the found-object, junk-pile quality of di Suvero’s “Eagle Wheel,” that make them inherently attractive to kids of all ages, however. “The di Suvero work has wit and flair, and a deceptive looseness that belies its well-planned struc ture,” says Poling. “He composes beautifully. There is 3
