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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archivio Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, under no. 270.
Executed in 1966, Pomodoro's Disk with Shattered Radial combines many of the complex strands and concerns that make his sculptures so fascinating. Looking at the strange detailings in this burst-open form, the viewer sees intricate workings that seem half mechanical, half organic. This could be the crystalline by-product of some strange reaction, a form of erosion, or complex technological workings as though in a computer, a calculator or even a typewriter. There is a sense of destruction, of erosion, that is reinforced by the deliberately shattered appearance of the disk. But at the same time, it is crucial to note Pomodoro's insistence that these 'erosions' were a form of writing.
Writing was all the more pertinent in the work of Pomodoro during 1966 because it was the year that he taught at Stanford and also cemented his contact with the Beat movement, becoming a friend of the poets Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. The erosions in Disk with Shattered Radial have a calligraphic quality, an intricacy that speak directly of the process of creation, charting Pomodoro's own movements in creating these shapes, etching them out from the ordered whole. And in so doing, Pomodoro was allowing himself an exploration of the concept of 'negative space', of the gaps as being a part of the medium of the sculpture. The gashes in the surface of this sculpture, and the way that they allow light and space to pass through, are as integral to the finished result as the shining surface itself.
In Disk with Shattered Radial, Pomodoro expressly gives the impression of a rupture in a formerly cylindrical, 'pure' form. Yet these marks, these erosions, show an interest in the contrasting forms, in creating something that has a dialogue with the modern world, with the space around the sculpture, that recalls Sputnik satellites and computer banks as much as pure geometry or pure form. Pomodoro himself explained this by comparing himself to the Romanian sculptor, Constantin Brancusi: 'Brancusi has something that seems, finally, to be a form of mysticism, whereas my own work has a quality that's much more up to date' (Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York, 1982, p. 201). Pomodoro's work is timeless, ageless, and yet effortlessly of its age, of our age, of the machine age.
Executed in 1966, Pomodoro's Disk with Shattered Radial combines many of the complex strands and concerns that make his sculptures so fascinating. Looking at the strange detailings in this burst-open form, the viewer sees intricate workings that seem half mechanical, half organic. This could be the crystalline by-product of some strange reaction, a form of erosion, or complex technological workings as though in a computer, a calculator or even a typewriter. There is a sense of destruction, of erosion, that is reinforced by the deliberately shattered appearance of the disk. But at the same time, it is crucial to note Pomodoro's insistence that these 'erosions' were a form of writing.
Writing was all the more pertinent in the work of Pomodoro during 1966 because it was the year that he taught at Stanford and also cemented his contact with the Beat movement, becoming a friend of the poets Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. The erosions in Disk with Shattered Radial have a calligraphic quality, an intricacy that speak directly of the process of creation, charting Pomodoro's own movements in creating these shapes, etching them out from the ordered whole. And in so doing, Pomodoro was allowing himself an exploration of the concept of 'negative space', of the gaps as being a part of the medium of the sculpture. The gashes in the surface of this sculpture, and the way that they allow light and space to pass through, are as integral to the finished result as the shining surface itself.
In Disk with Shattered Radial, Pomodoro expressly gives the impression of a rupture in a formerly cylindrical, 'pure' form. Yet these marks, these erosions, show an interest in the contrasting forms, in creating something that has a dialogue with the modern world, with the space around the sculpture, that recalls Sputnik satellites and computer banks as much as pure geometry or pure form. Pomodoro himself explained this by comparing himself to the Romanian sculptor, Constantin Brancusi: 'Brancusi has something that seems, finally, to be a form of mysticism, whereas my own work has a quality that's much more up to date' (Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York, 1982, p. 201). Pomodoro's work is timeless, ageless, and yet effortlessly of its age, of our age, of the machine age.