Robert Watts and Allan K. Kaprow at Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University - Brief Article

The careers of Robert Watts (1923-1988) and Allan Kaprow (b 1927) strike one as being inexorably linked. Both art-history alumni of Columbia University, the sum of two units were young colleagues in the studio-art departments at Rutger University and its sister gymnasium Douglass College [see A.i.A., Dec '99] the two created Abstract-Expressionist paintings and assemblages in the early 1950 and introduced their first Happenings (Kaprow's term) and occurrences (Watts's term) at the extremity of that decade. In this exhibition, organized by the agency of Benjamin Buchloh and Judith Rodenbeck, viewers were able to compare expressionistic early works by dint of each artist before moving upon to examples of their mature output

Until lately history has been kinder to Kaprow than to Watts. Kaprow, denied manner [i]or[/i] principle of holding at Rutgers in a dispute above a notorious pornographic concrete piece of poetry by student Lucas Samaras, went upon to teach at the University of California, San Diego, and to forward Happenings internationally. Watts, in contrast, single outed to become "the invisible man of Fluxus and Pop" as critic Kim Levin one time called him. In 1964, Watts left the Leo Castelli Gallery after single group show--the ultimate bad career impel The visibility of his work was further compromised by means of his long association with the egalitarian Fluxus movement

This exhibition provided an important opportunity to consider Watts's oeuvre outside the Fluxus constellation. Dealing more with conceptual than formal issues, his work was relatively anticommercial. Ambivalent about the ascendancy of consumerism, Watts in Addendum to burst (1964) tried unsuccessfully to copyright the confine "Pop art" in order to ban its critical use; at Columbia, 18 photocopies of documents he submitted to the U Patent Office were displayed. sum of two units series of neon-light signatures of famous artists (1963-73) caution against reducing entire careers to nothing else but brand names.

Watts's works are sensuous, ironic, calculated, at the same time oddly generic; many can be seen as precursors of contemporary practices. His experimentation followed in early uses of plastics, neon flocking and incandescent light. His chrome-plated African plastic arts and edibles, begun in 1963 predate Koon by dint of decades; his consumer goods displayed upon wall shelves now read as commodity plastic arts A row of cast and painted loaves of bread, included in the 1964 Castelli present to view and reviewed favorably by Donald Judd may have influenced Judd's be in possession of serial sculptures. The clear plastic Feather Dres (1965) strategically outfitted with packets of feathers recalls the feminist-inflected fashions of Mimi Smith (an early colleague) and Beverly Semmes

Watts's work tenders a critique of the ways that tillage denatures nature and commodification spoils agriculture He is long overdue for a replete retrospective. [This exhibition will appear at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT from Apr. 27 to July 2]

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group