Page Six THE MICKIGAN DAILY Saturday, July 13, 1968 THE MICHiGAN DAILY Saturday, July 13, 1.968 The destruction of the object DOkSbOOkS booksbo oks boo vs. the By R. A. PERRY Dada, Surrealism and T Heritage, by William S.I bin. The Museum of Mo Art, Paper: $4.95; Hardco $9.95. The world of Dada, w desired to "humiliate art 'the first decade of this tury, and of Surrealism, w sought to elicit a new m sensitivity in the twenties, swirls about us in the si Although the art historian siders Dada and Surrealis be art movements which died into other forms - art critics are only too h to find the appropriate c holes of op, pop, minimal, penings, mixed media,l etc. - the movements are vibrantly alive and strug their struggles today. Whil anti-societal, anti-rational nouncements of the Da seem mere historical odd and while today's artists consciously be seeking models, techniques, and ceptual ends, the uncons problems and needs - the art fillips - of the two a same. The problem is one of ography. The phenomen the twentieth century is cinating; its art objects re irrelevance. No' doubt it s quite simplistic in the sh of the accomplishments o zanne, Picasso, and Klee t that as the viability of r sentationalism waned, a faced the complex proble what to paint, William S bin, the author of the D Surrealism essay under co eration, realizes that reli mythological, and hist symbols no longer offere tent possibilities to thea Rubin watches the twe century artist move away these symbols - especial the disgust of the Great , but he does not appr the ironic truth that the sought not an order wi these symbols, no matter anarchic were the artists face activity and procl tions, but on the contrary way of revitalizing the ef ,of the visual world. *The zeal of Fauvism an analyses of Cubism wer Merely reveling in the di gration of the validity o object - the final dissol coming with abstract ex sionism - but were, a same time, attempting to the sanctity of the visua ject. Dada had all of the p of a mother clutching a baby to her breast, for explosive plastering of o and words over the canva page, it truly sought unde facade of anti-art a way consecrate, if In the as the objects of the n world. Surrealism, on thet hand, by striving so mi to manifestly charge the world through irrational j position of images, really claimed the death knell o Integrity of an object. time of surfeit (at lea those Western countries support this art), when p become tiny transistors i electric society, whenr loses its import because everywhere, Surrealist pai become a slightly erotic macher-Schlemmer catal which only those gadgets feed your private fetishes your eye. Thus Warhol's Campbel can comes as a late ande stone setting to a funeral took place at the Satie teau/Picasso ballet Parade kami within the object, ho previously weak in We eyes, is dead, and only th mental organization pro by drugs can reinvoke the some holiness of any obje the seance known as thet tieth century. It is impressive how, no ter to what degree manv tarily seeks the centrifug the atonality of Schoen the action painting of P -he turns back, somewha tropically, into the center: ton, describing the aims of realism in 1924, professed the group of artists soug express the real functioning of mind, in the absence of control exercised by rea and beyond any aestheti moral preoccupation. progression of The method of achieving an For anarchic system - such was Mer 'heir the paradox - was, as Rubin line Ru tells us to eschew "perceptual a w dern starting points" and thus work us l ver: toward an interior image, that whether this was conjured Op whch improvisationally t h r o u g h co t cin automatism or recorded illu- art n sonistically from the screen oti rhich of the mind's eye. mi ental The methodology did not re- th still .quire the directed spiritual end jun xties. of the Buddhist sculptor, who use con- also gave material form to the Rub m to image he had ideated after long Run have meditation, but, without "any wn and aesthetic or moral preoccupa- Ths appy tion," the Surrealist painter justn ubby- sought his images in the Freud- tion hap- ian context of common images men light, rising from dreams and free M still association, images common men :gling only at best. Without the moral incl e 'the or spiritual end in this interior inv pro- image-quest - now that the not daists symbols of history were im- Th ities, potent - the modern sculptor tiv may too often produced works, in new which, when viewed after clas- th per- sical Indian sculpture, look like lin cious dog droppings, or at best, works thi basic of essentially sentimental an e the poetry. cdo Arp admitted, that Dada, by Te icon- destroying the "hoaxes of rea- va a of son," yearned to discover an to fas- "unreasoned order." Yet that eq ek of order was never more than aes- les ounds thetic, and it was mere aes- or adow thetics that the Dadaists tried th f Ce- so hard to overrule. Rubin may T o say be right in saying that Rau- serv epre- chenberg and Duchamp differ ofn rtists in that the former tries to in- bot :m of 'tegrate his effects "into an ex- the] m Ru- perience of art," whilethe lat- bibl )ada/ ter, arriving at the same end, me nsid- ironically sought to work away onl gious, from that end. Rubin does not suc orical say, however, that Rauchenberg, ger d po- like Warhol, suffers the same ter artist. malady but has simply cheer- me ntieth fully accepted the sickness. in from In looking back on these art use ly in works in which the only found diti War iconography -was one which of eciate stated the impossibility of an six artist iconography, one finds: objects, mal thout things, curiosae. Is it not apt, co-c how then, that we have come to in- tex sur- flate art works into our symbols ally lama- of ,special sanctity? qui some * * * Sur ficacy William S. Rubin's catalog to sta the Surrealism and Dada exhib- uali d the it, which opened at the Museum ico e not of Modern Art in March and ato s not which will be in Chicago during art sdte- the last quarter of this year, to e f the purports to be not only a guide this lution to the exhibit but a "concise M .pres and comprehensive" exegesis on ord t the these two art- movements. The ped etain blurb from the N. Y. Times that lite ato- the essay "must from now on hei dad be the authoritative reference" ofa dead will lure many enthusiasts to a tha Ln Its book that certainly will not fan tion bjects their curiosity or ardor. arti s and It would be polite to call Mr. gon r the Rubin's catalog dry and cau- my tu r- tious; it would be more accur- ing ylum' ate, unfortunately, to call it doe atural boring and pedantic a g To begin with, the author, tre other who is Curator of Painting and fou ghtily Sculptor at the MMA has the voic visual singular ability to entomb po- ed. uxta- tential humor and to vitiate a selv t pro- work's vitality in high-toned one f the and flaccid pseudo-analysis. bra example' in response to et Oppenheim's funny fur- d cup, saucer, and spoon - rk which cannot but make augh - Mr. Rubin tells us penheim's classic work ifused the texture of one ible with the form of an- ter; here the fur, which ght provoke pleasant tac- sensations on a coat, be- nes disconcerting in con- iction with objects of oral in's style is enervated by its sophisticated detachment: at logic could be used to ify the killing and mutila- of millions revolted some of sensibility." Indeed! any of Rubin's pronounce- ts follow that art historian ination to boast discoveries 1 words that really tell us ing: .e absence of aerial perspec- e and, above all, modeling the round, combined with e abstract nature of these ear schemas, i m p e d e d ree - dimensional illusions d kept the forms clinging se to the picture plane. e environments of Del- ux's visions vary but tend ward either a Surrealist uivalent of the antique Hel- ism of Puvis de Chavannes, the Flemish counterpart of e Chiricoesque piazza. his MMA publication Will e best the serious student modern art, for it contains h an excellent chronology of Movement and an extensive iography. Several important n, however, are mentioned y in the chronology, men h as Bunuel and Satie, the minal influence of the lat- being totally ignored. No ntion is made of Surrealism the films, of its extensive in advertising, of such od- es as the Marx Brothers. f the 300 illustrations, only are in color, and the re- ining, small but well printed, ordinate closely with the t. The illustrations incident- 'give little indication of the te erotic aspects of Dada and realism. At one point Rubin tes that "the myth of sex- ity would become the only ographic common denomin- r in all Dada and Surrealist and literature" but he fails ver prove or expatiate upon conclusion. r. Rubin's entire well- ered essay remains dull and antic not merely because of rary style but also because never finds the movement art history anything more n some well-calculated, ra- al decision-making by the st who, seeing what has e before, says "what would logical next move be." Read- this well-illustrated essay s offer many insights and good brief history of the ids involved, but this reader nd its approach and its e dehumanizing and limit- Only when the artists them- es were allowed to speak didI begin to feel the blood,E ins, and poetry of the art. the art The prejudicial book, the, rac By STEPHEN H. WILDSTROM The Algiers Motel Incident, by John Hersey. Cloth: Knopf, $5.95; Paper: Bantam, $1.25. The reviewer helped cover the 1967 Detroit riot as a newsman for the As- sociated Press and filed the first na- tional story on the killings at the Al- giers ,Motel. Later, he covered the murder examination of Patrolmen Robert Paille and Ronald August.-Ed. Detroit Recorder's Court is housed in a dirty grey, stolid building across an alley from Police Headqutarters-a rela- tionship of more than physical signifi- cance. The court handles all criminal cases (except juvenile and traffic of- fenses) originating in the City of Detroit.. Its judges are elected on nonpartisan ballots,' but their positions are largely sinecures, since only rarely does an in- cumbent judge lose a bid for re-election. Recorder's judges almost never go on to higher judicial posts; similarly, judges rarely come to the bench following dis- tinguished legal or judicial careers. As in most municipal criminal courts in America, equal justice under law at Recorder's is considerably more equal if you are white and considerably less equal if you are poor. Like all U.S. courts, Re- corder's is required to appoint counsel for indigent defendants. Despite much talk by the Detroit Bar Association about setting up a reputable public defender system, court appointed attorneys in Detroit generally come from a remarkable, informal institution known locally as the Clinton Street Bar, named for the street which runs alongside the courthouse. The Clinton Street Bar is made up of a number of hack attorneys who have, for varied reasons, been reduced to living off court-assigned cases. The Clinton Street Bar is such a disreputable opera- tion that at least once last summer, two of its members came to fisticuffs in a courtroom over the right to -serve as a court-appointed counsel in a riot case. It is against this dismal backdrop that the incredible tangle in the thread of justice trailing from the Algiers Motel incident must eventually be unwound. It was almost a year ago that three young blacks-Auburey Pollard, Carl Cooper and Fred Temple-were killed by close-range shotgun blasts at the Algiers Motel on the fourth day of the Detroit riot. The original police report on the deaths said the three were suspected snipers and had been killed in a gun battle with police, although the report made no mention of the weapons one would expect to be seized when alleged snipers are killed or captured by police. The Police Department's version of the affair has now been thoroughly discredit- ed, largely through diligent reporting by; Joseph Strickland of the Detroit News, by Kurt Luedtke, Bill Serrin, Gene Goltz and Barbara Stanton of the Detroit Free Press, and now by John Hersey. The evidence is now overwhelming that at least two of the dead-Temple and Pol- lard-were deliberately murdered by law officers, and that other occupants of the Algiers Motel Manor House were physi- cally, and mentally tortured before being released. The death of Cooper is an enig- ma that will probably never be solved. Since reporters, doing work that should have been done by the police and the prosecuting attorney, have brought the case to light, there have been three preliminary examinations, two reviews and one trial (for felonious assault-not murder) in Recorder's Court, one federal grand jury investigation and one hearing in U.S. District Court-and no convic- tions. In another one ofd those strange twists of the legal process one has come to re- gard as the norm in this case, the press has been far more an !active participant in, rather than an observer of the legal mess resulting from the case. The first involvement of the Wayne County Prose- cutor's Office in the affair came when reporter Strickland took an assistant prosecutor with him when he interviewed a witness-Robert Greene-in Kentucky. Without the initial press. reports, there might never have been an Algiers Motel Incident as far as the public was con- cerned; it would have remained merely the shooting of three snipers in a gun battle with police. Now John's Hersey's most remarkable book-The Algiers Motel Incident-has been injected into the controversy. On Monday, Recorder's Court Judge Robert Colombo (a jurist distinguished primarily by his career as legal counsel for the Detroit Police Officers Association) ad- journed the first-degree murder trial of suspended- Patrolman Ronald August- charged with killing Pollard-until Janu- ary because of the publication of Hersey's "highly prejudicial" book, a work which Colombo admits he has not, read. How Colombo could rule the book pre- judicial, and at the same time take a swing at the press which has been so instrumental in executing what little jus- Algiers incident backdrop tise has been done in this case, is beyond my comprehension. At no time does Hersey assume the guilt of any individual. At no time does he ask, in the manner assumed by the Cleveland Press in the Sam Sheppard case, "Why isn't Ronald August, or Robert Paille, or David Senak, in jail?" Rather, Hersey has done two things in this book and done them exceedingly well. First he has put together all the pieces that have always been a matter of public record-transcripts of court testimony, sworn depositions, statements made to the police-and thus has as- sembled most of the pertinent evidence in the case (although Hersey, like every- one else, apparently did not get his hands on a statement made by Patrolman Paille to the Homicide Bureau in which he ad- mitted he killed a man at the Algiers. It is possible, however, that Hersey did see this document, which was ruled in- admissable evidence at the first murder hearing, but declined to include it for fear of prejudicing the trial). Second, through extensive interviews with the Algiers survivors ind relatives of the victims, he has painted a horrify- ing picture of three young men beaten down, brutalized and eventually mur- dered by the racist society which sur- rounds them. rst society If Hersey points an accusing figure at anything more specific than racist white society, it is at the tortured legal pro- cesses of Detroit Recorder's Court, a court in which a poor black man can be ar- raigned, examined, tried and sentenced in a matter of days but in which a white policeman can evade trial for months and months on end. A court where: an- other judge, Robert DeMascio, seemed more concerned with the arrangement of tables in his courtroom than in ex- amining two police officers for murder. It seems likely that Judge Colombo's outburst was aimed not so much at pro- tecting the accused from pretrial pre- judice as a means at getting back at an author who pointed an angry finger at Recorder's unspeakable due process rer- ord and at a press which forced justice in a case the police, prosecutor and courts would sooner have seen forgotten. It is to be hoped that if Judge Colombo actually takes the matter of Hersey's book before the American Bar Associa- tions' Committee on Free Press and Fair Trial, someone will inform the good judge that the Michigan Supreme Court saw fit to rule 8-0 that that committee's Reardon Report is null and without ef- fect in Michigan courts. It is also tq be hoped that if the Amer- ican Civil Liberties Union chooses to consider a possible violation of Patrol- man August's civil liberties resulting from publication of The Algiers Motel Incident, it will also consider the ultimate viola- tion of the liberties of Carl Cooper, Fred Temple and Auburey Pollard, as well as the continuing violation of civil liberties resulting from police harassment of the survivors of the Algiers incident ani the families of the victims. And it is to be hoped that publication of Hersey's book, helped along by Judge Colomobo's enormous publicity boost, will bring a massive outcry from the public. The Algiers Motel Incident may con- vince good citizens once and for all that "equal justice under law," when applied to America's lower courts, is a cherished myth, but a myth still. If the book has that effect, it will be of enormous public service, since the, massive inequalities of law are a, bayonet in the stomach of the black community, a bayonet which thust be removed if there is to be hope for a better and more paeceful society. Even the book has no social Impact, which, in view of the intensity of Her- sey's work, seems unlikely, The Algiers Motel Incident will remain as a master- piece of documentary technique. IF_______ 1D WORSHIP I In a st in which eople n the music it is ntings Ham- og in that hold 1 soup comic Ithat /Coc- e. The wever estern e new duced awe- ect in twen- mat- olun- al - nberg, ollack at en- : Bre- f Sur- i that ht to the any ason, ic or a Tm Y * Fine Clothing and Furnishings at Reductions of VAN BOVEN Semi-Annual SALE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH On the Campus- Corner State and William Sts. Terry N. Smith, Minister Ronald C. Phillips, Assistant Summer Worship Service at 10:00 a.m. Sermon: "Faith for Our Times," Raymond J. 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Stadium at Edgewood Across from Ann Arbor High SUNDAY 10:30 a.m.-Worship Services. Sunday SchoolI I 11 I U