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Charlotte Moorman iwears gas mask i while playing cello joich 24” ruler Claes Oldenburg’s Soft Blender, 1965—sculpture made of vinyl, wood, kapok and cord 4 “THE DISINTEGRATION OF FORM IN THE ARTS. By Erich Kahler, Braziller. 133 pp. $5; paperback, $2.95. By John Simon This may be the dark night of the arts, Never before ‘has so much unequivocal trash passed for art, and been z extolled as such both by experts who should know + better and by a large public that, before, knew at least that it didn’t know and stayed out of it. But we have reached the stage where the new is good because it is “new, not because it is good, and where art delights the massec with much the same thrills as drae races, nut: Physical Things, « plastic wind tunnel by artist Steve Paxton performs his “Circus Mutilation” act is some at least half-conscious effort toward perfection of form, which means closed form, that makes them artistic.” But things have changed: “In all previous transformations of humanity, the breaking up of old forms was immediately linked with the creation of new forms; it was, in fact, partly’ at least, produced by the creative process. Today, however, the processes of dis- ruption by far outstrip those of new consolidation, indeed the creative processes themselves cannot help producing disjunction.” He “who speaks of wholeness, coherence, form, is eo ipso considered a romantic Te. actionary.” In the second lecture, the disintegrative process is Composer John Cage presents his “Variations VII," in the so-called mized electronic and letters in arbitrary arrangements. Quite rightly, Kahler associates this with the rise of science and tech- nology, and the longing for the safety of mathematical formulas. There are other reasons, too, which Kahler does not examine — economic, social, political. But at least he does sharply analyze the technological shift of com- munication away from the center of human beings to the periphery, to areas of specialization. And he points out how, both by trying to mimic this process and by attempting ineptly to escape it, art becomes a new, art- less, scientifically tinged art for art’s sake. There is a destruction of coherence, a conscious expunging of