Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Section A Introduction
- Section B Continuum, 1952–1961
- Section C Abundance, 1961–1971
- Section D Alternatives, 1971–1988
- 1 Disorientation and dissent in the art world
- 2 Alloway and the politicization of art, 1968–1970
- 3 Changing values, 1971–1972
- 4 Artforum and the art world as a system
- 5 1973 and a new pluralism
- 6 The uses and limits of art criticism
- 7 Criticism and women's art, 1972–1974
- 8 Women's art and criticism, 1975
- 9 The realist ‘renewal’
- 10 Photo-Realism
- 11 The realist ‘revival’
- 12 Realist revisionism
- 13 The decline of the avant-garde
- 14 ‘Legitimate variables’
- 15 Earth art
- 16 Public art
- 17 In praise of plenty
- 18 Crises in the art world: criticism
- 19 Crises in the art world: feminism
- 20 Crises in the art world: curatorship
- 21 The co-ops and ‘alternative’ spaces
- 22 Turn of the decade decline
- 23 Mainstream…
- 24 … and ‘alternative’
- 25 The last years
- 26 The complex present
- Section E Summary and Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Platesection
5 - 1973 and a new pluralism
from Section D - Alternatives, 1971–1988
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Section A Introduction
- Section B Continuum, 1952–1961
- Section C Abundance, 1961–1971
- Section D Alternatives, 1971–1988
- 1 Disorientation and dissent in the art world
- 2 Alloway and the politicization of art, 1968–1970
- 3 Changing values, 1971–1972
- 4 Artforum and the art world as a system
- 5 1973 and a new pluralism
- 6 The uses and limits of art criticism
- 7 Criticism and women's art, 1972–1974
- 8 Women's art and criticism, 1975
- 9 The realist ‘renewal’
- 10 Photo-Realism
- 11 The realist ‘revival’
- 12 Realist revisionism
- 13 The decline of the avant-garde
- 14 ‘Legitimate variables’
- 15 Earth art
- 16 Public art
- 17 In praise of plenty
- 18 Crises in the art world: criticism
- 19 Crises in the art world: feminism
- 20 Crises in the art world: curatorship
- 21 The co-ops and ‘alternative’ spaces
- 22 Turn of the decade decline
- 23 Mainstream…
- 24 … and ‘alternative’
- 25 The last years
- 26 The complex present
- Section E Summary and Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Platesection
Summary
Rather than supporting the artist's right to control her or his work, Alloway further challenged the power of established artists in his “Institution: Whitney Annual” that appeared in Artforum in March 1973. He remarked on a comment by the Whitney's curator, Marcia Tucker, made in the catalogue for the 1972 James Rosenquist exhibition. Tucker had offered her “warmest thanks” to the artist for his “patience, enthusiasm, and energetic help.” This earned a rebuke from Alloway: “Why thank a man for permitting you to act in his own interest?” He recalled that when he arranged the Newman show at the Guggenheim in 1966, he did not thank the artist because “we were, so to speak, in it together… It is the custom now, however, for the curator to thank the consenting artist above all, a clear sign of the decline of curatorial control and confidence.” The A.W.C.'s demand for artist power would be at the cost of curatorial power or, at least, independence. For non-established artists—groups of women, Blacks or Puerto Ricans—curatorial control could be handed over in particular exhibitions. That, at least, Alloway went on, would give the curators “the satisfaction of knowing that their disengagement would spare them allegiance to a moribund institution they have been instrumental in maintaining.” Much of “Institution: Whitney Annual” is a restating of his article on the Whitney Annual that had appeared a year earlier in The Nation. A large appendix of statistical material, compiled by Leon Golub, which included information on gender, geographical residency of the artists, and whether the artist had a dealer, enabled Alloway to consider more thoroughly “the Whitney Museum as an organization. It has an output, a product, in the forms of exhibitions and publications. The stable output, however, is inserted into an environment that has changed a great deal. I view the museum's survey shows as a case of output failure, unresponsive to the present level of information and to the interests of its audience.” The Annual, in the last few years when information was abundant, may have “maintained a democratic openness but without convincing the audience that the different styles shown were rigorously selected.
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- Art and PluralismLawrence Alloway’s Cultural Criticism, pp. 313 - 319Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012