The Tate Britain conference at the weekend demonstrated the wealth of new work on the Independent Group by an international array of scholars. There is less general activity around the Group, and more detailed discussion of individuals and particular events. However, I wonder if this tends to maintain the disciplinary boundaries that the IG were challenging?
I'm currently doing my undergraduate dissertation on the Smithsons and 'As Found.' Unfortunately I found out about this conference too late and was unable to go!
What I have found during my research is a large amount of work that speaks biographically about the Smithsons, but as I am focussing on 'Parallel of Life and Art' and 'Patio and Pavilion' there has been little attempt to look at these works in a typically 'critical' art-history kind of way - no reference I can find to an analysis of Parallel as avant-garde exhibition for example.
From looking at the program of talkers and having read texts by some I agree that the interdisciplinary approach of the group maybe broken down by such a conference. Yet more inclusive accounts (such as the 'As Found' book for the Zurich exhibition) come across as overly generalised, perhaps?
A very good point. Because there are so many members of the Group and they all did really interesting things individually, it does get quite overwhelming, and so there is a tendency to concentrate on the individual biography, rather than critical analysis. 'As Found' was very general, I agree, but it was one of the events which started to open up debates about links between the Independent Group members, and common themes. Perhaps its a case of finding the right themes, and 'As Found' is fairly descriptive. At the Tate Britain conference, Dirk van den Heuvel delivered an excellent paper, where he looked at the Smithsons in relation to 'process', which included a consideration of Parallel of Life and Art and Patio and Pavillion. He can be contacted via the Tream 10 website (listed here under Links). We do need to somehow preserve the Tate Britain Proceedings for those who could not attend.
Have you looked at The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, edited by David Robbins, 1990, MIT Press. It wasn't available from the libraries I mostly use -- Birkbeck and Senate House -- so I bought my copy from Abebooks. It was worth it.
I found the Tate Britain conference hugely stmulating and interesting. I'm currently working on a dissertation about aspects of Paolozzi's graphic work for my MA and I'm now hoping to find a way into an MPhil/PhD that touches on the Independent Group
To all--I am interested if anyone can provide information on interest by members of IG in Wyndham Lewis--esp. whether they saw in his paintings any precedents for their own work.
No platform for non-academic discussion. Idealist might belive that art serves purposes besides debate of theory,history,list of dates and proof of purchase. All I had to do was hear of that, """"""....tomorroww..."""" IG. sounds like a falling gasping breath. (today)Desperate, as if we all must become designers, pick up a desk and laptop the way to a new form. (like, please, OMG, look around you, be aware. The last time you saw a Taco Bell commercial did you get hungry? Did you want a Supreme Burritto? Don't worry about it anymore, it is ok grad students. puts your books away. so if painting is dead, grandious displays of technique. of cotton hanging from ceilings and goats on pedastools, only gonna take us to white castles. WE WANT A DISCUSSION but I don't think the IG today tells us to give up. What do you 3 think? If the IG tells me to be aware of the visual world around me and what effect it might have, what effect it could have... it ain't gonna be in a gallery that joe gets a thought. So what IG says to me,.. tell me what that means, that Cathedral, that Rembrant, that Shiva, that Stonehedge, that Stainedglass, that Fork, that Chair, that Stain on that Cave. But then turn around and tell me that THAT is something else. I guess I could make my point by pointing to the peace tower at the Whitney Biennial recently, like art is trying to push itself out into the world, like they are sick of gallery walls and so they build a monument, in the face of the public, that go to an art show, and say they are sick of war, and make a statement, no more war...we will build a tower. And I can't imagine the men cleaning it up, no artists, custodians, construction, taking it down.
In response to Dan Horowitz's query above, I have a reference on the IG and Wyndham Lewis. In 1982 I interviewed Donald Holms, an ICA member in the 1950s and friend of some of those associated with the IG. He recalled being at the ICA in late 1954 when Lewis's 'Demon of Progress in the Arts' was published. He recalled: "...they (the IG) had just read of this book. I suppose just the first reviews had appeared; perhaps one of them had got hold of a copy...it might have been Toni del Renzio...he was very angry and was saying here is this attack on our dear Herbert Read and this man (Lewis) should be sued; they were really in that sort of frame of mind, even though they themselves...had been critical of Read's comparative moderation." Holms says that Lewis's book was an attack on what he saw as extremism in art. If all this is correct, then I suggest that the IG had no time for Lewis in the 1950s, but that's not to say that they were dismissive of his paintings. However, I have come across no evidence that they were ever affected by his work in any way.