Reply to Jan Jagodzinski

Readers’comments c@nhg substantial theoreticuland pra&’cul contributions to issues thuthave been raked in teJctspublishedin Leonard0 are wehmed. TheEditors m e r u ethe fight toedit and shorten letters.Lettersshould be writtenin Englishand sentto theMain Editorial Ofice. RESPONSE TOJOAN W T E R ’ S COMMENT It was gratifpng to read inJoan Marter’s comment on my article, “A Betrayal of Material” (konardo21, No.3,285-290, 1988),that awareness of conservation in modem works of art is increasingand that effortsto address these needs are being made in important American collections. Sincewriting the article, I have also learned of the research that has taken place in recent years in the Conservation Department at the Tate Gallery, London, specificallyin relation to the deterioration of plastics.During a visit in 1988,I was informed, however, that no ready solution had been found, and the materials of Gabo’s Construction in Space: Two Conesin the Tate collection are now graduallydisintegrating . As to the probable attitude of Gab0 and Pevsner toward deterioration in their works, we can of course only make intelligentsurmise.I would agree with Marter that they must certainly have pursued their aimswith full knowledge of the experimental nature of some of their materials. That theywould have viewed deterioration asa secondaryconcern and accepted the changing form of their works philosophicallyseems to me less certain. The fact that Gab0 constantlyexperimented with new improved materials, and that both he and Pevsner,when called on to renew or reconstruct failingworks, replaced unsuccessfulelementswith new materials in order to reinstill their original clarityof form, suggeststhat they did not accept the changescomplacently. But of course this talliespreciselywith the point that ProfessorMarter is at pains to emphasise, that their chief intention was to “makean art that was a fitting expression of the technological age”. EUuaeTHR.4” DepartmentofArt History UniversityofWitwatersrand Johannesburg, SouthAfrica REPLY TO JAN JAGODZINSKI In reply to ProfessorJagodzinski’s comments on my article, “RadicalResponse to a High-Tech World:ContemporaryAmerican Street Murals” (Leonardo21,No. 3,267-271, 1988), first of all, I am pleased that the article stimulated a response. I was very interested inJagodzinski’sdeconstructionist reading of the Minneapolis Tool and Dye mural and gained new insights into its imagery from his perspectiveson it. I also appreciate his interpretation of mural walls as osmotic membranes rather than dichotomous barriers. I do, however, want to respond to some points in his commentary. One often hears the argument that partisan political propaganda and art are antithetical.Jagodzinski seems to hold this view in arguing for the neutralization of propagandisticand dichotomous elements. I would argue that much (most?)of the best art (‘best’meaning that which holds and moves people), of all times, in all cultures , has been blatantlypropagandistic , or at least instrumental in nature. In the mural genre thiswould include Giotto’smurals in Santa Croce and Ghirlandaio’sin SantaMaria Novella, aswell as Leonardo’sLast Supper, Rivera’s (2nd) Man at the Crossroadsin Mexico City, Ben Shahn’smural for the Federal SecurityBuildingin Washington , DC, and the cave art at Lascaux . Strongfeelings about strong ideas are what give art life, both in its making and its perception. This leads to the question of dichotomies,which ProfessorJagodzinski sees as less appropriate in spreading the green message than deconstructivistanalysis . I would argue that dichotomy is fundamental to thought. We can understand what is in the context of what is not, and vice versa. I don’t want to be construed as thinking, however,that dichotomous thought is the highest and most sophisticated of processes. Rather, I would direct the reader to the images I critiqued.As a critic it is my goal to be guided by the image within its context as I perceive this interaction. In this light I would point out that street murals, like religion, simplifi.ideas for the sake of mass understanding and mass emotive identification.As any good propagandist knows, the most effectiveway to do this is to set the good guys against the bad guys, god against the devil. If the images are thus dichotomous, I’m only calling them as I ‘read’them. “Control of food”,for example,is an obviously romanticized vision. AsJagodzinski says,ultimately there is no ‘natural’growing of foods by human beings. Natural...