Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1977 - 21

THE SCENOGRAPHER AS AN ARTIST, PART II
HERBERT H. LEHMAN COLLEGE, C.U.N.Y.

BEES SALZER

This is the second part of Mr. Salzer's three-part article. The final part, "Communication," will appear in the Fall Issue.
[Ed.}

II. LIMITATIONS
One of my first jobs when I came to Ne~ York was as
ghost designer for a production by Salvador Dali and Abe
Feder. Dali envisioned a ballet called "Gala" in which
several men dance, then fight, and finally tear off one another's clothes, thereby revealing that one of them is a
woman. She is hoisted onto a pedestal, whereupon milk
spurts from her breasts and the men shower under this
fountain vivant.
The set was several large frame-work cubes which
were to be dunked into vats of some viscous liquid. In
model form, Dali dipped four-inch wire cubes into a
soap solution which formed beautiful bubble gems inside
the cubes. When the cubes were enlarged for the stage
however, a problem emerged: finding a viscous liquid
capable of forming a bubble over a four foot space, a sixteen square foot area. After the largest chemical companies failed to find a solution, (use both meanings),
Dali became impatient and took his project to Italy,
where the ballet was performed minus the large scale
bubbles.
The confrontations between Dali and the volatile
Feder are still vivid to me but the lesson I learned was
that a contemporary artist's thought process is not the
same as a designer's. The designer is trained to solve
practical problems in his search for an esthetic result;
the artist either jumps immediately to the end product,
as did Dali, or concentrates on process and forgets the
end result. The artist, in either case, is expressing himself with a freedom the designer has never been able
to exercise.
In purely esthetic terms, for the past hundred years
the painter has been attempting to work in areas where
it is impossible for the scenographer to follow. The painter's major intent in this period has been to destroy the
effect of looking through a window and thus, to destroy
the effect of observing the natural world from a distance
that allows contemplation: The painter wants to produce
a new relationship between time and space, to bring the
viewer into an immediate and timeless experience of the
work as a whole. To create this effect, painters have
qeveloped a series of styles beginning with cubism, going
through abstract expressionism, and coming now to minimalism. Each style has become increasingly abstract.
The scenographer can not hope to bring about an experience without time because the theatre is experienced
within a framework of time. The scenographer can rarely
follow the painter into abstraction because the human
figure on stage is never abstract.
The painter was not always as free as he is today. In
the Renaissance, artists were also designers. (Raphael
was among those who designed for the theatre). Artists

USITT

had their specialties but were often called upon to put
their hands to a variety of design tasks. They designed
buildings, table silver, monuments, servant's uniforms,
and weapons. And even as painters they were faced
with practical problems of decorating architectural
spaces of a given size and of keeping within a budget
by choosing a palette of affordable colors.
When perspective became a major interest of all visual artists, (see the work of Pierro Della Francesca) and
the proscenium arch became a picture frame, the paintings of the time became stage designs. As Lee Simonson
observed,
The vision of the artist as painter and the artist
as scene designer were virtually identical. l
The designer's vision seems to have remained much as
it was in the Renaissance. The painter on the other
hand has undergone tremendous changes over the past
four hundred years. Although the reasons for these
changes are as complex as all the history of the intervening years, several theories have gained general acceptance.
One theory holds that oil paints freed the painter from
large fresco commissions, thus allowing him to paint
small, portable, private works. Another theory suggests
that the disappearance of noble patrons freed the artist
from working under commission. The development of
photography is often cited as an agent of change because
the camera has relieved the artist from the responsibility
of creating a visual record of his world.
A historical explanation starts with the Industrial Revolution, which caused the breakdown of the master-apprentice relationship. With factories replacing craftsmen,
young men left home to work in cities where factories
were established. In the case of those whose talents led
them to be artists, they no longer studied as assistants in
the studio of a master artist, but now attended a new kind
of school, the art academy. The academies produced far
more artists than the ateliers had done because they were
separated from the economic controls of supply and demand. In order to market the works of their graduates,
the academies began to mount yearly shows.
The newly rich middle class bought the academy art
but in the process established a standard of taste considered abominable by many artists. These artists rejected
this taste and, as a reaction against it, developed the
image of an artist that we recognize today. According
to this image, the artist must oppose existing society and
he must resist any attempt by the society to alter his own
personal vision. The artist's honor depends upon his refusal to compromise his work for commercial gain.
But artists went further and dramatized their rebel
status by adopting manners and dress that openly dis-

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

SUMMER,1977

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1977