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[[newspaper clipping]] The New York Times MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1975 33 L Videotape Replaces Canvas for Artists Who Use TV Technology in New Way [[image - video image]] [[caption]] An image from a video work by Peter Campus, who has worked in experimental psychology [[/caption]] [[image - video image]] [[caption]]Davidson Gigliotti A video image of the poet Allen Ginsberg from Nam June Paik's "Suite (212): Allen Ginsberg." [[/caption]] [[image]] [[caption]]The New York Times/Don Hogan Charles Nam June Paik, left, discussing his work with David Loxton, director of the television laboratory at Channel 13[[/caption]] By GRACE GLUECK Frank Gillette's new work for television is not the sort of thing that's geared to peddle soap. The 14-minute videotape shot on Cape Cod has as it sole subject the flow of water into and around a cove. "I'm interested in two extremes," says Mr. Gillette, a 34-year-old artist who used to work with the more conventional paint and canvas. "I want to take this advanced technological tool of television and turn it back on itself, to convey the most primordial of sources, our basic life-support system." Mr. Gillette, whose new work is part of a 12-piece cycle with an ecological theme, is one of a growing breed of video artists, for wrom [[whom]] the TV screen has become an esthetic medium. Uninterested in commercial television, they produce videotapes that take ingenious advantage of the technology, from crude vignettes shot on site to elaborate productions that call on the full technical resources of a TV studio. Their visually transient work, dismissed by the object-oriented art world only a few years ago, is now highly evident on the museum and gallery circuit. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art schedules videotape shows, and they were a feature of the Whitney Museum's recent biennial exhibition. Tapes may also be regularly viewed at such galleries as Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend, 420 West Broadway, and at other places such as The Kitchen, 59 Wooster Street, and Global Village, 454 Broome Street. A Ménage à Trois A proliferation of video festivals has also occurred during the last year. One is now at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Caracas, Venezuela, and in New York a women's video festival is in progress at the Women's Interart Center, 549 West 52nd street. And a respectable number of videotapes is being broadcast, via the network of public television stations. "There's a significant body of works being produced by independent videomakers that warrants weekly exposure on the public television system," says David Loxton, director of the Television Laboratory at Channel 13. Thanks to the Television Laboratory, for the first time a regular program of artist' tapes is appearing on the air. Funded with $94,000 by the New York State Council on the Arts, the laboratory is currently showcasing works by "the video community" in a 26-week series. Russell Connor, a pioneer of the video movement, is the host. The pieces range from Nam June Paik's "Global Groove," a swinging mélange of dance, music and abstract images, to Arthur Ginsberg's "The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd," which documents an extraordinary ménage à trois among a San Francisco couple and a portable video camera. Individuality is already notable among the most productive of the recognized video artists. Peter Campus, who has worked in experimental psychology, tends to deal with perception, as in "RBG," a complex work in four parts that gives the viewer many different encounters with color. "I'm not interested in exploring the medium," Mr. Campus says, "but on the other hand everything I do relates to it." Hermine Freed, one of the increasing number of women working in videotape, also uses it in a complex, "layered" way. A gifted visual and verbal punner, she has most recently made "Art Herstory," which she describes as "a video recapitulation of art history from the Middle Ages to the present." The work, using paintings of women and a superimposition device that allows Miss Freed to appear as some of the women in the paintings, comments on what she sees as "the cultural schizophrenia of contemporary women." The works of Bill Wegman and Andy Mann are somewhat less cued to perceptual and technical devices. Mr. Wegman, who frequently stars with his dog, Man Ray (known as the Rin-Tin-Tin of video), can foten [[often]] be accused of humor, a quality not yet greatly in evidence among his colleagues in the field. In one of his short pieces, "The Spelling Lesson," for instance, he gives a terse critique of his dog's spelling to which the animal actually yips responses. Mr. Mann, a 28-year-old tapemaker who is also an expert technician, does penetrating, candid-camera-style tapes wherever he "happens to be," and foten [[often]] becomes Continued on Page 63, Column 1 [[image]] [[caption]]Nancy Holt viewing her work at the Leo Castelli Gallery, where tapes may be seen[[/caption]] Morgenthau Reorganization is a Long, Uphill Struggle By MARCIA CHAMBERS When Robert M. Morgenthau became the Manhattan District Attorney on Jan. 2, he found the office—one of the largest and most respected in the country—using decades-old methods to cope with a criminal caseload that had increased threefold in 20 years. Among his laments: cases could not be tracked through the mounds of paper; assistant prosecutors were not effectively deployed to cope with the growing number of violent crimes, and budgeting of funds allocated to the office was haphazard. In his first 100 days in office, Mr. Morgenthau has had limited success in solving some of these problems. "We could not tell you how many robbery cases we have or at what state of prosecution they are in," he said. " We have no idea what kinds of sentences are imposed in cases. We would have to look at each case file by file. We don't have information on which to base decisions." There were other problems, too. Mr. Morgenthau found that a pre-inflation salary scale was depleting the ranks of experienced assistants and that his predecessor, Richard H. Kuh, had already spent $200,000 ear-marked for investigations through June 1975. Consequently, Mr. Morgenthau said he and his staff have had to dip into their own pockets to finance investigations. He has learned that while the office may have functioned well in the nineteen-thirties and forties, during the racket-busting days of Thomas E. Dewey and his successor, Frank S. Hogan, it has not kept pace with the problems created by the surge of street crime that now makes up most of the cases in the office. More Felony Arrests The volume of felony arrests, for instance, has increased from 11,183 in 1954 to 32,830 in 1974, according to the Police Department's crime analysis bureau. In interviews, Mr. Morgenthau appears relaxed. He puts his feet on his desk, chews on a cigar and deftly sidesteps questions he does not want to answer—for example, about specific investigations. He did discuss the changes he has made and, in general terms, the direction he hopes to take the office. He has reshuffled or replaced the chief of nearly every bureau except homicide. He has brought in what amounts to a new executive team, drawn primarily from Federal agencies. These are the men with whom he has worked when he was United States Attorney for the Southern District, a post he held for eight years. There he gained a national reputation as an aggressive prosecutor of organized and white-collar crime. Not surprisingly he has told the rackets bureau, once the showcase of the office, to step up its investigations. To that end he established a [[?]] liaison with the FBI.
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