Word: primitivist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Biennial's sculpture tends toward a kind of monotonous and outsize wackiness. A lot of it has more in common with precincts or buildings than with the usual conventions of sculpture: surrealism, mixed with primitivist nostalgia, is its presiding spirit. Donna Dennis' large-scale model of a frame house−swollen doll's quarters, too small to function as a building−is one example of the syndrome, and another is Alice Aycock's 24-ft.-long construction of arches, ladders and drumlike wooden wheels, whose title (The Happy Birthday Day Coronation Piece) sounds as portentous...
...Jungle Line" combines a National Geographic tape of the warrior drums of Burundi with Mitchell playing Moog synthesizer and guitar. She sings a poem with images such as "Thru I-bars and girders, thru wires and pipes/Thru the mathematic circuits of the modern nights" and allusions to the French primitivist painter Henri Rousseau as well as The African Queen. But "The Jungle Line" drones after the first few lines, and unfortunately, musical innovation extends to the abandonment of bridges...
LOVE WITH A WHITE GIRL). An Indian cocktail waitress named Mary Whitecloud lives for her basic-black Volkswagen done all over in marvelous primitivist scenes. Other cars are flags, dollar bills, insects and painted faces coming at you on the freeway. John Livingston, Hollywood designer, had to have a car all his own, unique, so he stripped a Chrysler down to its frame and hand-built his own shiny aluminum body held together by crude rivets; the car is pointed at the ends like a silver Buck Rogers rocket ship -enough to frighten drivers off the road on Santa Monica...