Donald Kuspit on ‘Critical Perspectives’ at P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York City
Ralph Humphrey, Wind, Rain, Fire, 1981, acrylic acid modeling paste on wood, 12 x 12 x 2 inches
ARTFORUM, April 1982
… Energism’s straining after intensity forces effect beyond what the structure of its works can sustain. [Marcia] Tucker’s choices do not suffer from this defect in quite the same way, particularly Kenneth Shorr’s expressionistic Altamira XX: A Moment Without End and Kent Shell’s three works, especially the two in black and white dealing with Antonin Artaud. Other works are in less expressionistic styles, particularly John Hull’s five ironically titled realist scenes of backwoods violence, and Kristin Hodson’s nine photographs of Secretary of State Alexander Haig posing with a visiting foreign dignitary. All the works deal with the topical theme of violence, more precisely of power. Some are searing, some are quietly ironical; all mean to be trenchant. Yet as a whole they convey a sense of beating a dead horse, in their mood of impotent rage as well as stylistically. They all raise the pressing point of art’s critical impact, its capacity to participate in social change by arousing conscience; but none have critical mass as art. Kevin Teare’s paintings seem most typical in this, their slurring of visual syntax masked by their mimesis of camouflage. I don’t see why art that is, in [Marcia] Tucker’s words, “committed, passionate, responsive, and undistanced” should be accepted despite its indifference to “questions of style, judgments of ‘quality.’ ” For too long it has been thought that such deliberate indifference guarantees “urgency” and is the sign of authenticity and vision. Like energy, urgency has a way of palling when it has nothing to back it up and is there for its own sake. …