What art have I seen? Radical Geommetry
Radical Geommetry at the Royal Academy is pretty quiet on a Saturday afternoon. I came because I’m interested in Carlos Cruz-Diez and his use of colour and optical effects (but the largest piece is in a room where you can’t stand back far enough to appreciate it). Anyway the reviews have tended to be concerned in whether South American abstraction was derivative or an interesting thing in itself. If this is derivative then what becomes of Jim Lambie when you are looking at Otero’s Colourhythm 38 of 1958?
But that might be unfair because Soto’s maquette for a mural (1952-53) probably became something like the piece of cast concrete public art outside Charing Cross Station in Glasgow – very dated. Could and should that sort of work be revitalised in the way Alex Frost has with mosaic (another 70s public art classic)? Yet the concerns of these artists (abstraction, interaction) remain relevant today, the aesthetic largely retains its power and South America has gone on contributing to ideas of what art can be (eg Ala Plastica, Grupo Etcetera).
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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