Sculpture Takes the Vanguard

...There is, it seems, an assertiveness in all the newer forms of art...

...Yet it was not merely the portability of American painting which gave it a decisive head start...

...it is that sculpture's stubborn factually, its quiddity, may be more representative of the American temperament, of our taste for things, than even the most vanguard painting...

...In a novel arrangement, the Foundation set up by the Lipmans, whose interest in American sculpture is long-standing, will acquire and donate to the Museum significant works of sculpture on a continuing basis...

...There is, for instance, sculpture's dependence upon expensive materials and techniques...

...After 12 years of this sibling rivalry, the Whitney will open in September in new quarters uptown, in a building designed by the architect Marcel Breuer...

...Ronald Mallory's Motorized sculpture consists of mercury and various chemicals trapped between layers of Lucite...

...The exhibition, sent abroad by the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, should, in every way, form the proper introauction to any later exhibition of the younger sculptors who have followed in Smith's wake...

...Art today insists upon existential presence...

...Luis Perelman's "Industrial Petrifaction" is a group of machine parts embedded in a block of polyester resin, a fossilized relic of our culture...

...Not only is Smith's work vital to any understanding of recent developments by reason of its vigor and integrity, but his sculpture managed to take in, and improve upon, over three decades of important work, all of the vanguard disciplines-Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivismthat have informed modem art...

...This younger generation is the subject of an unusual show at the Whitney Museum of American Art...

...Furthermore, sculpture occupies our space...

...there are traditional figurative pieces, optical structures, Pop artifacts, even a piece of sculpture that has entered the electronics age: David Von Schlegell's threelegged aluminum figure that moves about the gallery on radio command, sidling along the floor like a shiny, and somewhat noisy, spider...

...There are, to be sure, exceptions...

...This may well represent the final breaking-down of that aristocratic tradition which has clung to art long after the aristocracy itself has become obsolete...

...Cast sculpture must rely upon the presence of suitable and, preferably, inexpensive foundries...

...For this reason, a number of American sculptors have taken up residence in Europe, especially in Italy...

...It does not impinge upon our activity or get in our way...

...But, whatever the devices, freestanding sculpture prompts circumspection...

...The most conspicuous evidence of the new sculpture's energy is its willingness to try unconventional materials...

...The cost of transporting sizeable exhibitions of sculpture is prohibitive...

...Where painting, traditionally, gives its dimensions outright, fixing the viewer like a spectator at the theater, sculpture engages him as an active participant...

...In time, this procedure will give the Whitney one of the most important collections of contemporary American sculpture, and provisions have been made specifically for sending the collection on tour throughout the country and, eventually, abroad...

...Pedestals are beginning to look quaint...

...Technical reasons are partly responsible for this conservatism...

...Sculpture makes particular demands upon the viewer...

...It is apt to be known mainly through photographic reproductions-hardly the most effective way to judge the scale and diversity of current sculptural efforts...

...paintings whose scale is too large to be taken in by the eye, that have to be read as a kind of narrative...

...Nor are the styles less diverse...

...In this democratic enterprise, sculpture may play a predestined role...

...The Whitney exhibition includes several works of this kind...

...The exhibition, the first selection of sculptures from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, comprises the work of 41 sculptors donated to the Museum...

...Fittingly, the Lipman sculpture exhibition, together with a show of recent acquisitions, forms the Whitney's last stand at its present location...

...The majority of its practitioners were born in the '20s and '30s and their work is just now crowding into the New York galleries with increasing frequency...

...There is ample evidence that painting is now reacting against this traditional reticence-Op art, which at the same time both claims and repulses attention, or the shaped canvases of some of the younger painters which provide another example of a compulsion toward three-dimensionality...

...There, it will have the advantage of larger quarters (and, hopefully, less stodgy exhibition areas) as well as a sculpture garden of its own...

...Where painting's striking innovations have bloomed and faded with increasing rapidity, sculpture seems to have gathered in these disclosures, acting upon them with a much slower timeschedule than has painting...

...In the Whitney exhibition, for example, there are sculptures made with Plexiglass, glass, automobile bumpers, automobile fenders, inlaid Formica, reinforced Fiberglass, aluminum and a variety of plastics...

...Certainly, there have been important individual sculptors shown both here and abroad, but the wide range of the new American sculpture has not had an exposure such as the "New American Painting" exhibition, sent to Europe by Museum of Modern Art in 1958...

...Stephen Antonakos' sculpture is a bit of electrified calligraphy on a base of enamel-coated aluminum-red, yellow and pale green neon lights blinking in air...

...It is one of the ironies of the current scene that just at the moment when American art was declaring its self-reliance, the Whitney Museum of American Art wasarchitecturally speaking-cast into the role of a cramped adjunct to the more affluent Museum of Modern Art with its impressive holdings in modem European art...

...it seems to be laying claim to all the democratic prerogatives...

...Yet, the strength of American sculpture at the moment -if not its actual achievement-is so pronounced, so varied in its possibilities, I cannot resist asserting that it may well make a more prominent place for itself than has American painting, which established its beachhead on the international art scene nearly a decade ago...

...There are pieces fitted and bolted together like heavy industrial equipment, sculptures made of found objects welded together, others that have the immaculate finish of machine fabrication...

...His work and his career are thus a paradigm of the holding action which characterizes modern sculpture's relationship with modern painting...

...as the piece rotates, the liquids course in and around pockets and obstacles, creating abstract patterns...

...We have to confront it, negotiate around it in some way, take a position vis-à-vis its mass...

...So, too, there are sculptures that adopt an essential or pictorial volume, the box or the sphere-forms which can be understood at a glance without investigation...

...Whatever one might feel about individual pieces in the exhibition, it seems clear that American sculpture is bursting at the seams...

...Outside of the major art centers, modern sculpture is not shown with great frequency...

...The techniques employed are no less varied: There are sculptures carved from wood or stone, cast in bronze, or modelled in terra-cotta...

...ON ART By James R. Mellow Sculpture Takes the Vanguard Critics are well-advised not to make predictions: Published statements have a way of rattling in the closet like so many embarrassing skeletons...

...True, during the modern period sculpture has lagged behind radical developments in painting...

...What may, in fact, account for the whole trend toward the "industrial look" in today's sculpture is its need and ability to touch some more indigenous base in the American experience than painting, which is still caught up in its dialectical argument with the European tradition...

...the museums (according to Malraux) are beginning to shed their walls...

...Even now, it can be made to walk among us on the same level ground...

...Painting, on the other hand, inhabits a reserved, sacrosanct or inaccessible area-the sheltering wall...

...The sculptor who stands in the foreground of this current activity is, of course, the late David Smith...

...American sculpture has only come into prominence within the past decade...

...Dan Basen's Sardine Cans is just thata prim little wall-construction of opened sardine cans...

...Then, too, sculpture is slower in making its presence felt upon the art scene...

...A retrospective exhibition of Smith's sculpture is now beginning to make a belated Grand Tour of Europe (it opens in Otterloo, the Netherlands, this week) and it will be interesting to watch its progress and its effect as it moves through the major art centers of the international circuit...

...In these, the surface decoration, rather than the formal ingenuity, motivates the viewer's dance...

...That exhibition put American painting on the international map...

...It is not simply that current sculpture is so aggressive in its forms, its use of color, its choice of material, for a similar boldness characterizes a good deal of contemporary painting...

...Much of this sculpture has the look, feel, ambience of present-day America without surrendering to any literalness in imagery...

...The Museum should thus achieve a preeminence it has sorely needed...

...it requires a certain motor activity on his part, directing him around its mass by the continuity and variety of its forms...

...There are times when one suspects that painting is the most doctrinaire of the arts...

...It gives every indication of a prolonged and effective vitality...