The New York Times, March 4, 1983

“1984-A Preview”

This is an anthology, with Carrie Rickey and Ronald Feldman as curators, of prognoses – most of them predictably gloomy – about what may or may not be our general situation in the year that George Orwell chose as the title of one of his most famous books. Orwell thought of 1984 in terms of decline and decay, and while history has not borne him out in every detail, it has added one or two prize horrors of its own by way of portent.

So it should not surprise us that the tenor of the show as a whole is some of foreboding. But Cassandra was famously tedious in even her best founded outbursts, and some of her present-day successors have little but their outrage to recommend them. However, as always, the best artists have the most claim upon our attention, and there is much to be savored in contributions by Robert Morris, Vito Acconci, George Segal and Les Levine, all of whom send us home with the memory of a compelling and fully realized idea. There is also a four-part piece by Vincenzo Agnetti, based on an image of a huge globe poised on the very edge of a table, which made this visitor shake with fright.

The architectural section, with contributions by R. Buckminster Fuller, Paolo Soleri and others, sets a more cheerful note, though not everyone will envy the inhabitants of Dodoma, the new capital city of Tanzania, about which a great deal of information is given.

Those who would like to leave on an upbeat note should study a print by Edwin Schlossberg, which includes among many other verbal observations an aphorism that, if followed, will lead to happiness. It reads: “Indifference is isolation. In difference is texture and wonder.”

JOHN RUSSELL