A Hint, a Shadow, a Clue

"My father, methinks I see my father," quoth Prince Hamlet. Where? asked the startled Horatio. "In my mind's eye," replied the prince, with what must have been a sly smile. Today, more and more artists are devoting themselves to art that exists primarily in the mind's eye. Called "conceptual art," it usually exists in the form of a scale model, a preliminary sketch or a written description, suitable for framing. Any of these items, the artists explain, are but a hint, a shadow, a shade, a clue to the real thing, which is usually some concept so complex, so subtle, so abstract or simply so large that it cannot be reduced to a mere two or three dimensions.

Poetic Package. Currently on display at Manhattan's Dwan Gallery are 41 works consisting mostly of words or scale drawings. Among them is one work titled Art as Idea as Idea, which is simply a photographic blowup of the dictionary definition of real. It is the end product of Joseph Kosuth's struggle with the artistic problem of defining what "the real thing is." Says Kosuth gravely: "I think the importance of all art is its ideas." Japanese-born Shusaku Arakawa shows a canvas on which is handwritten a recipe for banana cake. Who, after all, could show in a picture the perfect joy of mixing, baking, sniffing and finally tasting banana cake?

Reflectively, Carl Frederick Reuterswaerd has polished a bronze tablet, and with an imitation of Rembrandt's signature on it, spelled out "Remembrandt." As the viewer gazes at it, his reflection becomes a part of the picture, suggesting that all art is based on the interplay between reality and the memory of how artists in ages past have dealt with the problem.

Conceptual art has become a favorite with avant-garde collectors. Kosuth's photographic version of real has already been bought by Businessman-Collector John Powers. Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art last week put on view ten scale models, sketches and photomontages by the Bulgarian-born artist Christo, who set out to show what the museum would look like if its building were wrapped in canvas and tied up with rope. Museum Curator William S. Rubin found Christo's ideas, with or without the rope to hang them by, a "poetic" comment on packaging, which has "become a crucial--and potentially insidious--aspect of the way in which the world is presented to us."

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