The Fine Arts : Rewards and Regrets in Seattle

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THE FINE ARTS
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Rewards and Regrets at Seattle
ALL THE art at the Seattle World's
Fair is not in the vast Fine Arts
■ Pavilion. Some distance away
at the U.S. Science Exhibit, a remarkable fourteen-minute film, produced by
Charles Eames with the assistance of
his wife Ray, qualifies as creative art
on a high level. In a specially designed
oval room the visitor watches multiple
images, cast from seven 35-millimeter
motion picture projectors, unfold a
dramatic prologue to the Science Exhibit (a project for which our government should be roundly applauded).
The pictures, thrown on a large concave wall six images at a time, spotlight the complex and comprehensive
world of modern science. Eames has
actually invented a new cinematic technique expressly designed to combine
many separate visual experiences at
once. Varying his rhythm, perspective,
and emphasis with lightning speed,
he synchronizes six adjacent moving
scenes into a powerful composite
statement about science and scientists.
The  dazzling   "Fountain   of  the
Northwest" by James Fitzgerald.
SR/May 26, 1962
In front of one of the new theatres
at the Fair, I came on another unheralded experience—a dazzling fountain
that seems to combine water and
metal organically. Three vertical units,
composed of innumerable cast-bronze
segments welded together, project
water in vigorous opposing streams, the
total effect a joy to hear no less than
to see. James Fitzgerald, the gifted
Seattle sculptor commissioned to make
this appropriately named "Fountain of
the Northwest," told me he "tried to
use the natural movements of water
that are common to the unique Northwest landscape — patterns of water
from melting mountain snow coursing
over rock projections—the feeling of
water you find in the rain forests out
here, dripping and cascading down
through natural shapes." In the sun
the fountain is surrounded by a web
of rainbows; in the night strong lights
turn it into a triumph of racing water
and gleaming metal.
It is a sad commentary that, were
it not for this privately commissioned work, visitors to
the fair would leave without
seeing Fitzgerald's sculpture;
for though Seattle is his
home, and though there are
six separate exhibitions in the
Fine Arts Pavilion, not one
of these is specifically earmarked for contemporary art
of the area, unless a small
nondescript group of Mark
Tobey's work could be so described. True, there is a large
show selected by Sam Hunter, Director of the Rose Art
Museum at Brandeis University, and devoted to American painting and sculpture
of the last ten years, but this
is predominantly a fashionable report stressing the New
York School and what Manhattan dealers are showing
these days. One questions
why Mr. Hunter, usually a
most perceptive connoisseur,
did not represent the countiy
more broadly, why he did
not study the entire West
Coast more intensively, why
he did not show certain key
figures in greater depth, why
he did not feel it necessary
to vary his menu with at
least  a   few  interesting  un-
Tsimshian stone mask.
knowns, why he chose more objects
than he had space for (the show,
particularly the sculpture, is cruelly
overcrowded), and why he represented
occasional outstanding artists with
sometimes trivial works. If this is an
accurate survey of American art during
the last decade, then heaven help us. I
found myself comparing some of the
more chic modern paintings with various exhibits in the Science Pavilion,
where functional graphs, diagrams, and
models sometimes inadvertently possess extraordinary beautv. For example,
I saw several mathematical colored
graphs resembling involved target-like
designs that for me were esthetically
more convincing than an enormous
painting of a target (79 x 114 inches)
by the recent best-seller, Kenneth
Noland.
JL HERE is no doubt that all the exhibitions in the Fine Arts Pavilion suffer
from unwieldy architectural surroundings; for due to highly obtrusive acoustical decorations, the paintings and
sculpture are everywhere burdened by
disturbing competition. Even the international section (again covering the
last ten years), selected and installed
con amore by Willem Sandberg, Director of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum,
must fight against architectural interference. It seemed to me that this
exhibition was not only better hung but
more representative than its American
counterpart. Each painter is shown
with several top examples grouped together so that the work has individual
impact. Mr. Sandberg was faced with
the added difficulty of including artists
from all parts of the world, and to do
this judiciously in a moderate-sized
show is no mean feat. From his exhibition one remembers a galaxy of artists:
the Italian Pinot Gallizio with his
curiously knotted compositions, the
Englishman Francis Bacon with a new,
less nebulous kind of horror, Dubuffet
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