The New York Times, June 3, 1982

Revolutions Per Minute (The Art Record)

Exhibitions come in all kinds and sizes, and sometimes we can’t wait for them to vanish. But there are also times when we would like them to stay forever. Besides, there is always an exhibition that we missed, or were not around for, or failed to get the point of.

Technology was bound to solve these problems. To the Gilman Galleries in Chicago goes the credit for a pioneer tour on film of an exhibition by which it set great store. This was a retrospective of Boris Anisfeld, the Russian-born painter and stage designer; and while nothing can replace the impact of original works of art, there is no doubt that the video cassette can do a lot to preserve the look of any given exhibition. It could also become an instrument of torture, of course, but that is another matter.

In recent years many artists have worked with sound and speech as their raw materials. Much of this is by the nature fugitive. So pioneer status may be accorded to a two-record album (sound only, no pictures) called “Revolutions Per Minute (The Art Record,” just published by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc. and the Charing Hill Company. This takes the looking out of art by presenting the Feldman Gallery’s artists in the guise of singers, storytellers, manipulators of abstract sound, educators and mono-dramatists.

It cuts a wide swath. William Burroughs get in because his reading of “You Only Call the Doctor Once” is accompanied by overlaps and interruptions by the artist Piotr Kowalski. Eleanor Antin, well known for her photo-pieces and tableaux vivants, reminisces about an imaginary career in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Joseph Beuys, sculptor and political activist who believes that discussion can itself be a work of art, argues back and forth with students at the Cooper Union. Hannah Wilke, painter and movie maker, makes a fine stomping noise with a song with words by herself that tells the listener to “Stand up and make your mark, my dear. Stand up or you may disappear.”

Typewriters make music for David Smyth, and Vincenzo Agnetti makes music by hitting his hand with steel brushes (among other things). Terry Fox makes music by stretching two 300-foot piano wires the length of a former church in Bologna, Italy, and plucking them with his fingers. Douglas Davis makes love to sound itself. And somewhere in all this R. Buckminster Fuller and Edwin Schlossberg think aloud in ways well worth hearing.

There are things on those two records that no one in his right mind would want to hear twice, but as a quick rundown on the avant-garde in all its variegations the album has much to recommend it. It can be had from Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc. at 33 Mercer Street New York 10003. The standard edition costs $15.

JOHN RUSSELL