Search for New Arts by Charles Biederman (review)

326 Books the practicing professional artists" (p. 126) and allowing more museum space to contemporary traditional painters such as himself. Such changes could be brought about, Whitaker suggests, "through the public, which is strongly on the side of understandable art" (p. 126). Needless to say, Whitaker's opinion is a minority view. Nevertheless, we recognize his American dream:"If we can but contribute a little more to the world than we take from it, in any pursuit, we are successful, and society is likely to pay us well for it" (p. 71). Search for New Arts. Charles Biederman. North Central Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minnesota, 1979. 145 pp., illus. Paper, $20.00. ISBN: 09605614 -0-4. Reviewed by Henry P. Raleigh* Charles Biederman is a painter/sculptor who has previously published versions of the thesis that appears in his most recent work, Search for New Arts. Biederman apparently presents his thesis for just one reason-to justify the claim that his own work is the new art. To do this the author takes on massive and, in this case, unresolvable philosophic and semantic problems. This might not be so bad in itself had Biederman not chosen as well to provide an extravagantly distorted and biased interpretation of modern art history. The introduction offers the first alarm: a flat-out statement that European art and civilization entered into collapse somewhere in the mid-19th century. It has been downhill ever since. Only through the machine honesty and historically unencumbered integrity of certain early American photographers, filmmakers and architects (and of course, currently Biederman himself) has the decadence of art been arrested and the aesthetic future assured. The argument is based on the premise that European art and architecture has been rooted in an exhausted mimetic approach to creative form. Objective/perceptual efforts had actually ended with Cezanne, and subjective/perceptual efforts concluded with Redon. Through Americans like Mathew Brady (photography), D. W. Griffith (film) and Frank Lloyd Wright (architecture) the way to the new nonmimetic extension of the perception of nature and art was indicated. Contemporary American artists fare no better than the Europeans. It seems that Biederman alone has known and exploited the new perception. Oddly, the author's own works are, judging from the many color reproductions here, very pleasant-angled arrangements of colored plastic rectangles on a two-dimensional plane, reminiscent of the formal designs of the De Stijl group after World War I. So much for the new vision, and, well, it does get very cold in Minnesota. Handbook of Regular Patterns: An Introduction to Symmetry in Two Dimensions. Peter S. Stevens. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981. 384 pp., illus. £26.25. ISBN: 0-262-19188-1. Reviewed by Robert Dixon** Symmetries are the most elementary of all space relations. They can be either opposite or direct; like the sameness ofone right hand and one left hand, or the sameness of two right hands, respectively. Reflections (mirror images), rotations and translations used in various combinations and sequences are the space transformations that enable us to check the exactness of fit in any symmetry. A pattern is symmetrical if it coincides with itself after being subjected to one or more of these transformations. In modern times mathematicians and crystallographers have studied the subject thoroughly, proving that the number of possible symmetry patterns is strictly limited and providing a rather abstract system of classification and notation. But symmetry was studied first and most often by artists, who have explored its possibilities by eye and hand in every age and culture, especially the symmetries of the plane. This is because so many artworks occupy a two-dimensional surface: walls, carpets, screens, fabrics, floors, and so on. Whether the pattern is Peruvian or Persian, Navaho Indian or Chinese, ancient or modern, the rules ofspace are the same. With the aid of modern theory all can be analysed and classified. Conversely, the underlying system of symmetries can be used to generate new patterns, designs and motifs. The subject is ancient, and theoreticians have worked out all the possible symmetries, but there has been a need for a full visual treatment and readable account of the principles, so that the *304 Springton Road...