University Dally Kansan
Wednesday, December 11. 1974
9
Art invaded by crime, inflation, repression
By LYNN PEARSON
Inflation, big time crime and drawnout court action hit the world of art in 1974. Bulldozers in Russia were heard around the world as they destroyed their wheels. Controversy surrounded the October opening of the Joseph H. Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in New York.
The big art news this year focused on
events peripheral to the creative process
On Sept. 15, Soviet builders razed an extra outdoor exhibit of nonconformist art shown by a group of Soviet artists. Five of the artists were arrested, 18 paintings were confiscated and many of the spectators by vigilantes roving through the crowds.
AMERICANS WERE appalled by the Soviets' insensitive approach to censorship. Updates of the story ran for days in the New York Times.
Finally the Soviets agreed to allow the artists to show their paintings at an outdoor exhibition. The artists could show only the paintings they proved by authorities, and the showing
supposedly could be viewed only by friends and guests of the artists.
The subsequent show on Sept. 29, a Sunday—the only nonworking day of the Soviet week—drew a crowd of more than 135 persons. It was the biggest official sandwich event in history and art by画家 painters since the avant-garde movement in the U.S.S.R. in the 1920s.
SHOWINGS IN THE United States aren't usually met with such hostility. However, at times the construction and collections of museums were surrounded with hot controversy.
The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., opened its doors in October, ending 10 years of controversy. Everything about the museum has been criticized—its shape, its location, the quality of its collection, even its donor.
Hirshorn agreed in 1966 to give his huge collection of paintings and contemporary sculpture to the U.S. government if it would allocate $15 million to build a museum to house it. His collection includes 2,000 sculptures and 4,000 paintings.
Serious year lightened with merrier moments
By KATHY PICKETT
1974 was a year filled with such momentous, ear-shaking events that it sometimes seemed as if we were unable to rest.
But 1974 also had its lighted moments, even though many of its jokes—especially those about Watergate—were tinged with seriousness.
This was the year when "pardon me" took on a double meaning, when the eagerly awaited宠偶 Kohoutek fizzled out and the deputy-deleted became household words.
In 1974 you could get a nickel for a penny, but hardly anything for your dollar. Or you could earn your money "car-sitting" in a gasoline station line.
THE YOUNG FOUND 1974 a fine year—for streaking or for swimming nude at beaches. But the 67-year-old Chief Justice of the United States, Warren Burger, found it unfortunate year—after he fell off his speed bike and landed in the hospital.
Furthermore, "74 was the year of Wilbur
Mills and the fabulous Dalian accident,
not to mention David's death."
It was the year when politicians' wives had better jewels than Liz Tayron, and when seat belt buzzers became more of a controlling factor in our lives than the CIA.
This was the time of the *50s* nostalgia, and the year when stock brokers on Wall Street already depressed by financial worries, threw them into an agony when smoking there was banned.
WATERGATE OR Nixon—was the main source of jokes this year. People were saying in mock seriousness, "But it would be wrong." Jokes were made about Rose Mary Woods' dancing ability, and when the edited transcripts appeared, some people said that though the expletives were deleted, the obscurity remained.
In 1974, taxes were a real problem, with both Mr. and Mrs. Benny getting it on back page.
1974 inevitably had its share of Gerald Ford jokes. When Ford was vice president, he famously said he would "Agnew - by hitting someone with a golf ball." After the November elections, there was a cartoon of an elephant sitting on a squashed ear. The elephant says, "A Lincoln you're not."
THE UNIVERSITY of Kansas also had its lighter moments. There was Linda Loveclay, who stole the show from crusader Bill Glass. There was the human cannonball, who was about as successful as Kohoutek.
When KU's basketball team went to play at Duke University, levity hit Roberts doesn't have a prayer, and "Beat, GRU, for Christ's sake." Fortunately, KU was not.
STREAKING WAS one of the biggest hits of the year. KU had its share of streakers, especially the night after the KU-KState basketball game. Throughout the United States, they were by bicycle streakers, baseball-playing streakers and parachutting streakers.
"74 was also the year when a University of
Kansas coach won television on the Grueso Mauro show.
One streaker checked into a library to check out "The Naked Ape." One student politician campaigned with the moto: "Vote the Streaker, If Elected, He Will Run." Some of the less in-shape persons had a variation--snailing.
This was an up-and-down year for women's liberation. The cause wasn't exactly helped by "Having My Baby," the "Fly Me Campaign" and "We really move our tail for you." But then came TITLE IX to pull one out of their apathy. Men were not allowed to vote, women Women Voters. A stride for independence was made when the wife of San Francisco's mayor disappeared for a few weeks to complain of his actions.
DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES had a hard time, too. There were Polack jokes: "How would the Polacks have handled Watergate?" "The same way." Then Gen. George S. Brown insulted the Jewish people in a public statement.
Chicano singer Vikki Carri was startled while dancing with President Ford. She asked him his favorite Mexican dish, and he replied, "You."
Finally came Earl Butz' astonishing statement about the Pope's birth control position: "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules."
Most of all, there were many terms that never said what they meant. Inflation was not called inflation, nor recession recession. It was called Operation Cander was anything but honest.
FLIGHTS ARE FILLING FAST
SOME PEOPLE HAVE questioned Hirschhorn's enormous tax writeoff for a public museum about which he has had so much to say.
Others have questioned the government's acceptance of a bouquet of some 6,000 art objects, whose overall quality has long been the subject of speculation.
Make your airline reservations NOW for Christmas with Maupintour
The location of the museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. and its windowless doughnut shape have raised many voices of doubt and complaint across the nation.
However, following its official October opening, the Hirshhorn Museum began its existence as one of the world's preeminent museums of modern sculpture. The sculpture collection is authoritative up to the 60s.
Four convenient offices to serve
Aside from exhibits and showings, the creative process of art remains the same. No new art embelsed, as did Pop Art in the 80s. People with lots of money bought, art brought the cream of the established art craft brought Kooing, Vermeer and Toulouse-Lautrec.
AND AS ITS chief curator, Charles Millard, said in Art News recently, "If you're good enough—and its going to take 10 years, you must—then it the (controversy) won't matter."
you:
900 Massachusetts
The Malls
Hillcrest
Kansas Union
Phone 843-1211
William De Kooning made headlines in September when the Australian National Opera commissioned 4000 for his "Woman V" the highest price ever paid to a living artist for a single work.
Maupintour travel service
THE AUSTRALIANS also bought
JAMES DONELYN entitled "Blue
POLls" for $2 million.
Other record-breaking packs came for a penin brome figure that dated back to 16th-century France.
highest price ever paid for a primitive piece of art. A Constantin Brancusi sculpture, *Desire Blonde II*," sold for $750,000 in New York and received auction prize for a piece of sculpture.
The Southby Parke Bernet gallery in New York set a world record for total auction sales in May, bringing in $1,452,300 for several hundred impressionist paintings, modern sculpture pieces and watercolors.
Besides selling for record prices, art has increasingly become good灯 for burglers. New York City a alone, more than $1 million of stolen from homes and museums in 1974.
HEISTS INVOLVING $300,000 or $500,000 worth of art painted in comparison with what police called the biggest art robber ever. Sir Alfred Bisset was robbed of $20.4 million by a band of armed gunmen led by a woman. The woman was Bridget Rose Dugdale, daughter of a British millionaire and an Irish revolutionist. She was arrested and damaged. The paintings couldn't have been sold in any case—they were to well-known.
Perhaps one of the most interesting events of the year on the art scene was the trial of three executors of the estate of artist Mark Hotko. Rotkoh committed suicide in 2016, lying to remove the executors on charges that they had wasteful the assets of the estate.
THE EXECUTORS entered into an agreement with a New York art gallery to sell 800 Rothko paintings at a much lower price, costing $125,000, 700 of them at a 50 per cent commission.
The whole affair (the trial started in February) brought up the question of what
Humphrey Bogart
in Two Great Movies!
The Enforcer (with Zero Mostel)
SUA Presents
Wed., Dec. 11
7:30, 9:30 Woodruff
Knock on Any Door— Fri.,
(with John Derek)
Dec. 13
Director: Nicholas Ray 7:30, 9:30 Woodruff
Smith, who died in 1965, made enormous steel sculptures, which he painted carefully and purposefully. His executors have stripped his sculptures of their original paint and either left them bare or painted them a chocolate color.
tervation in an artist's work and negligence in care for his works after his
happens to an artist's works after his death,
especially work left as part of his estate.
THE MAJOR ISSUES here are in-
The Rothko trial continues, and a controversy involving another artist's sculptor Derek Larson resumes.
Maybe 1975 will see a workable solution realized.
The new Smith sculpture, along with his originally painted sculpture, has been put on display.
SUA/Films
Admission 50° — Woodruff Auditorium
Is a Smith a Smith without its paint?
Artists seem to have few rights protecting their works from vandalism or even destruction.
Waxman Candles "A gift that goes on giving throughout the year"
Hours 9:30-8:30 and Sunday Afternoons 1407 Mass.
K.U. STUDENTS
Information for High Schools and Prospective K.U. Students Is Available to Take Home with You over Christmas Vacation. Please Contact:
OFFICE OF SCHOOL RELATIONS 101 Kansas Union
or
OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS AND RECORDS 126 Strong Hall
DISCOUNT CENTER
2525 Iowa
Lawrence, Kansas
"One Stop Shop"
Minolta Clinic
Minolta Clints
Representative Joe Milanowski will be in to answer your questions on the Minolta Photographic System
Fri., 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sat., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
ADMIRAL AM RADIO
MINOLTA SRT100 CAMERA
- AM radio, with battery
* Pocket size
* #P1223
* Our regular price 6.47
GIBSON'S
DISCOUNT
PRICE
299
- With case
* Portable AVC LC through the lens light mattering
* Pocket 50mm F2.0 Lens
* Shutter speed 1 second to 1/500 plus bulb
* ASA 6-2300
* Macro Mkii buoyon mount lenses
* Depth of field preview
* Our regular price 293.97
GIBSON'S DISCOUNT PRICE 19997
KODAK POCKET 30
CAMERA OUTFIT
* Pocket 30 camera, flash extender,
roll of C110-12
* Camera has electric eye for correct
* Our regular price 99.97
**BIGSON'S**
**DISCOUNT**
PRICE **35^97**
MINOLTA HI-MAC E OUTFIRM
• Outfit includes case, camera and electronic flash
• Exposure range f/1.1 to 1000 at f/1.7 at 2 st
• Just focus and shoot — no setfialt
• Our regular price $148.97
DIBSON'S
DISCOUNT
134^97
Record Sale
Albums
Retail 6.98 5.98
Reg. 4.97 4.27
Now 4.17 3.57
Albums
Tapes
Retail 6.98 5.67
Reg. 7.98 6.77
Now 5.37 4.47