Art/Not

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Morgan Meis in The Smart Set:

Hilton Kramer, longtime chief art critic for the New York Times, was never a shy man, at least in print. He thought of art criticism as a battle. There was a war, as Kramer saw it, between good art and bad art or – maybe more crucially – between art and non-art. Kramer saw himself as a warrior on the side of Art and The Good. In this war, it did not pay to be nice.

Reviewing an exhibit at the Whitney Museum by the young artist Richard Tuttle in 1975, Hilton Kramer wrote, “To Mies van der Rohe’s famous dictum that less is more, the art of Richard Tuttle offers definitive refutation. For in Mr. Tuttle’s work, less is unmistakably less.”

Among Tuttle’s works that Kramer hated were wire pieces from the early 1970s. Here’s what Tuttle does to make a wire piece. First, he enters into a meditative state. He considers the nature of the line he is about to draw, in pencil, on the wall. Then, he draws a line in one fluid motion. Next, he takes a length of florist wire (thin, flexible wire) and tacks one end of the wire to the end of the line he just drew. Then, he unspools a length of wire and tacks the other end of the wire back to the wall where the line terminates. The wire dangles and bends and assumes its own shape. Then, there are two elements: a two-dimensional line drawn on a wall, and a three-dimensional length of wire that hangs, semi-sculpturally, off the wall. Actually, there are three elements, since the wire casts a subtle shadow.

More here.