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Harald Szeemann's Commentary On
Royden Rabinowitch's
Judgment on the Copernican Revolution

Configurations 1 & 2

Sculptors of the "middle generation", like Rabinowitch and Serra, are too committed to the ideas of modernity, from Rodin to minimalism, to become lost in post-modern ambiances and added object quotations. What distinguishes the generation of Rabinowitch from preceding sculpture concepts however, is a new take on the given - space, volume, geometry, site specificity. In a text from 2000, Rabinowitch measured his own perception of space against a description by Poincaré and reached his very own conclusions. Poincaré:

Is abstract (geometric) space revealed to us by our senses? No; for the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry. Is geometry directly derived from experience? Careful discussions will give the answer - no!

Rabinowitch answers:

The main difficulty in developing the directly constructible equivalent description of Poincaré's description of the space of ordinary experience (a description of space as directly apprehended - oppositely described to space as inferred, i.e. abstract space) was in realizing that this description, i.e. Poincaré's description of the space of ordinary experience, actually was a synthesis of two distinct but related descriptions, i.e. that description of direct apprehension that obtains when standing still and that description of direct apprehension when moving about. This was difficult for me to realize because it did not appear to me that I was directly experiencing deep space when I was standing still and it took a long time for me to realize that what I did actually directly experience when still were incidents united by the movement of the eyes on a vertical plane - the apparent direct experience of deep space when I was standing still was just a memory of when I was moving about, i.e. of when I was actually directly experiencing deep space.

Assessing Rabinowitch's works, this polarity becomes obvious: to the eye, the surface designs of the mostly geometric, firm bodies are treated in a way so as to integrate movement. To him, the effect of spatial depth is real while standing still. However, it becomes part of memory while moving about.

To me, this is a logical development of the early Greased Cones (1965) which keep all of their mystery because they contain form, action and site specificity as a force in a simple and memorable way. It is the greased cone ("Greased Cone"), in which two different matters communicate, move, become one within the same ring. Given are: a rigid jacket of sheet steel in the shape of a cone cover that encloses a cone of air; and the grease - green and anthracite grey in Bordeaux (1993), a semi-firm, gluey mass, which blankets the steel jacket.

The sculptural experiment compromises, as insight, the connection of a geometric body with a place and an action, an intervention. As well, at all points of its surface, it obscures a symmetrical body by an asymmetrical one, since the grease cannot be applied evenly on the cone. With Bordeaux, as a discipline for the greasing action, the expressive phase, Royden Rabinowitch has opted for two fundamental methods of applying the grease to the cone: by means of a broad brush and wood, in a horizontal and a vertical structure. This, in turn, is conditioned by the adhesive quality of the liquid-firm grease on the smooth sheet steel. If the angle is too steep, the grease will slip off. If the angle is too obtuse, the work turns into a two-layered floor sculpture.

The effect of this multitude of experimentally and empirically defined decisions is fascinating. The grease perceptibly covers another body without penetrating it or, leastwise as an option, forming it. This coat-over-coat situation renders it impossible to imagine the sculpture's weight or its true material presence. The Greased Cone appears strong and sturdy, preoccupied with itself and, at the same time, it appears light due to the grease structure, which sends irregularly the light as lustre back into the room. The greased cone becomes the grease-cone, thus an illusion. This "contradiction" of knowledge and reflection set traps for the sculptural evidence, which copes effortlessly. For it rests, unifying the perishable and the perennial, in itself.

In later sculptures, the grease layer is replaced by a surface organisation, which is inherent in material and perception. In 1987, Rabinowitch created the steel sculpture 9th Lesson of Emanuel Feuermann. In this sculpture, he attempted to capture the totality of a full rotation in half a turn, namely in a space that is physically placed and not abstract or stretched. It shows all somatic, sensually perceptible qualities: open/closed, up/down, front/back, the variety of directions, asymmetry through three axis. The result is astonishing, and came about, according to the artist, through the analysis of the musical instrument and the play of the violoncello. The structure of the movement on both bodies is reached through means of lamination and modeling, both following asymmetry.

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing". Rabinowitch loves this saying by Duke Ellington and it is the swing that drives the work to move. With a wink and adherence to his principles, the artist imparts his sculptures with physiognomic characteristics and a behaviour and character definition. "Stan" and "Ollie" - "Dick" (fat) and "Doof" (dumb) - "Fat" and "Wiry" - are somatic sculptural qualities that he inscribes onto two ellipses. The modeling runs along the longitudinal axis into the convex form for Stan and along the short axis into the concave form for Ollie (2003).

Recently, when Rabinowitch gives titles to his works, they are also reports on the procedure: Judgements on Thomson's Tube (1996), Judgements on Conformal Transformations (1998), Judgement on the Simple and the Explicit (1999), Judgements on Extension (2000). They are drawings that revolve around the same difficulties. At the same time, they are sculptors' drawings that bear witness to the contour-thinking and the possible animation of the outlined form. The forms are line drawings, hence directions that not only lie within themselves, but also possess the power to go beyond the form and stay connected to it nonetheless. Not for nothing does Rabinowitch speak about the inherent ethics of the judgements.

The structural patterns of the old and new world views and the changes brought forth by the 16th and 17th century revolution are reducible to two fundamental and closely connected actions I characterize as the destruction of the cosmos and the geometrization of space, that is, the substitution of the conception of the world as a finite and well-ordered whole, in which the spatial structures embodied a hierarchy of perfection and value, by the conception of an indefinite or even infinite universe no longer united by natural subordination, but unified only by the identity of its ultimate and basic components and laws; and the replacement of the Aristotelian conception of space - a differentiated set of innerworldly places -by that of Euclidean geometry (space of points), an infinite homogeneous extension from now on considered as identical with the real space of the world. (1957).

Rabinowitch converts this confirmation of experience as follows:

Oblate and prolate orientations of the closed vessels allow observers a specific orientation to the open tubes. Negative attributes of the open tubes as opposed to positive attributes of the closed vessels separate by shape internal and external considerations i.e. considerations entailing indirect and direct observations. The reduced volume of the open tubes reflects the reduction of the ego that arises when focusing. The volume of the closed vessels reflects the preservation of the ego that arises when focusing plays no part in observations. As observers build up collections of observations the construction's derivation is established from the two primitive members A1 & B1 connecting with the two derived members A2 & B2. As this happens states of awareness regarding internal situations as they are contrasted with external conditions assure a pre-eminence so that those things "out there" are separated but not disconnected from these things "in here". (May 1995).

To bring this breathing of the "out there" and the "in here" into sculptural form, the synthesis of inner and outer qualities, inner and outer beauty, he conditions a new canon of bodies that crystallizes out of combinations of cylindrical and conical surfaces, variably gathering and merging as born out in the geometric plans and outlines.

From this point on, nothing stands in the way of monumental sculpture. The simulation in the video (of Configuration 1) clearly shows the amalgam of all somatic qualities - in the static and moving perception of the solitary figure and the interaction of the four sculptures as they are arranged in a square on the square.

The ambition to demonstrate the Copernican Revolution corresponds to Rabinowitch's development. Empiricism and rationalism mark the early phase. Now his sculptures are to be understood as cycles, "recognizing - subject - ability to recognize - action of the recognizing subject providing objectivity".

Salve the location with four static and circling world bodies. The closed forms reflect the locality. The open tubes are the passage ways; the 10-meter diameters, the arch openings of the architecture; the multi-surface tanks, the closure (subjective but absolute); the tubes (objective but relative), the directed openings.

Tegna, Switzerland
April 2004

Translation E.B. Kirschner