London calling

ArtForum, Summer, 1993 by Thomas Crow

Work generated out of such approaches could easily be made to seem deficient when measured against American painting designed from the start to meet Modernist requirements of impeccable self-sufficiency (though Turnbull's remarkable white monochrome painting of 1958, and John Hoyland's 12.6.67, demonstrate that the ability was there). First the "Situation" painters were made to give way to the sculptors showcased in the Whitechapel Gallery's "New Generation" show of 1964. (When the BBC crew showed up at the opening, Mellor relates, the painters were asked to leave.) Then support diminished for all these artists save Caro. Toward the end of the decade, Greenberg would declare that British abstract art had developed to his immense satisfaction by devolving into the achievement of one individual: "Caro is the Moses of English sculpture . . . he has walked into the land of Canaan and spread himself out in it."(12)

Mellor's installation undercuts the idea of such splendid isolation by forcing one to see how greatly Caro's Hopscotch, 1962, is enhanced by its proximity to Riley's contemporaneous paintings. But Greenberg's view has prevailed without serious question until now, at the expense of the richer history of London art from the late '50s forward. Furthermore, the professionalism encouraged by Modernist standards of success helped a later generation of "post-Modernist" Americans to achieve recognition by rediscovering ideas born in the few years marked by "PLACE" and "Situation." And this has compounded the distortion of the historical record, encouraging a misleadingly linear history predicated on the centrality of New York. An astonishing number of the important works in this show are listed as "Artist's Collection": the physical evidence has yet to be put into the public domain, so that a proper account of the period can be constructed.(13) To that end "The Sixties Art Scene in London" makes a strong beginning.

1. "The Sixties Art Scene in London" at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, 11 March-13 June 1993. The accompanying catalogue, by Dr. David Mellor, is published by Phaidon, of London.

2. "American Fashion: The New Soft Look," American Vogue, 1 March 1951, pp. 156-59.

3. Roger Coleman, "The Content of Environment," Architectural Design XXIX, December 1959, p. 517.

4. The word "ludic" comes from Coleman's explanation of the "Game Environment" sought by the artists, in PLACE, exhibition catalogue, London: ICA, 1959, reprinted in Mellor, p. 72. On popular sociology see Robyn Denny, "Togetherness?," Gazette no. 1, 1961, n.p.; reprinted in Robyn Denny, exhibition catalogue, London: Tate Gallery, 1973, p. 23.

5. See Coleman, Situation, exhibition catalogue, London: RBA Galleries, 1960, n.p. Reprinted in Mellor, p. 90.

6. Mellor, p. 86.

7. See Michael Fried, "Two Sculptures by Anthony Caro," 1968, reprinted in Richard Whelan, ed., Anthony Caro, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, pp. 97-101. The Whittaker photograph appears in Mellor, p. 98.

8. According to "Situation" participant John Plumb, Freeman "transmitted the new style." See Mellor, p. 86.