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Lot Essay
'I went [to Africa] because my paintings had become white, not by not putting anything on them, but by erasing everything. The white was not due to absence, but came from avoiding excess. I went to the desert because my paintings seemed like a desert, even though I was painting them in New York' (M. Barceló quoted in Miquel Barceló: Mapamundi, exh. cat., Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul, 2002, p. 18).
'What isn't has more intensity than what is. Because in Africa, light isnt colour. Light is much stronger than colour. Colour is almost corroded by the light' (M. Barceló quoted in op. cit., 1999, p. IV).
Paint as a natural force is the consuming interest of Miquel Barceló. In his hands, the conventional genre of still life painting is rendered anew as he responds to the combination of intuitive, impulsive and accidental forces that go into the making of an image. Painted in 1988, Bodegón amb 3 Peres slides easily back and forth between abstraction and figuration. Its bright white and yellow surface is a palimpsest of vigorous brushwork and highly nuanced interplays between light and shade. The monumental canvas depicts a few scattered objects that simultaneously dissolve and emerge against an open and undefined background. Like his intensely loose and gestural brushwork, Barceló work is never locked into a singular narrative construct and this painting presents its viewer with a number of possibilities. This could be an aerial view of a desert landscape or a lunar field, or simply a celebration of painting itself, with the work of art as relic of the artists energetic movement with the brush. Barceló painting is a physical act, and results in an extremely physical surface. He uses thick impasto and organic matter to hint at textures and terrain found only in the world outside. It is this strong interest in texture, which has become a trademark of the artist, that imbues Bodegón amb 3 Peres with a powerful energy that echoes the forces of nature. Barceló is taking only the barest bones of an artistic tradition and rethinking them to his own intense ends. The result is an otherworldly landscape that revels in its material splendour, its earthy strength, and vivid light.
Bodegón amb 3 Peres represents a period of significant change in Barceló life, and his art. This composition, with its almost empty background, is part of a development in Barcelós painting that was slowly replacing more cluttered compositions, as he tried to make the experience of viewing his work more direct. During a sojourn in New York in 1987 he began to experiment with varnishes and glazes, which introduced to him the notion of depicting transparency and light. Gradually, the previously frequent and explicit autobiographical references in Barcelós paintings were replaced by huge expanses of landmass: off-white, desolate and devoid of anecdote. This process of simplification culminated in the 'white paintings', an important group of works created between 1988 and 1990. The present work belongs to the inception of this series. Its white ground, painted over layers of yellow pigment, is a dazzling tabula rasa. The objects that appear on its surface are mirage-like, hovering in a liminal state between being and nothingness. This is an ethereal, transcendental scene, part geography, part biology, in which Barceló muses on the physical and metaphorical properties of matter, by representing solid forms in a state of visual flux.
The ability of light to destroy and define any sense of form was brought home to Barceló during his extensive journeys through Africa during the year this work was completed. There, the desert enchanted him. The white that was coming to dominate his paintings now made sense in the light of the Sahara. In the wake of his first voyage, Barceló created a large number of landscapes based on the desert he had seen there. Bodegón amb 3 Peres similarly shows three pears and various stones as if they were lit up like the stray objects on a vast desert plane, their existence largely manifested by the shade that they cast. In Africa, Barceló had observed how shadows often had more presence than objects themselves. Under Mali's glaring sun, everything is dissolved by the combination of heat and light. The stranded objects thrown into relief in Bodegón amb 3 Peres are likewise saturated by the relentless glare of Africa: 'At a temperature of 50°C and with the sandwind one sees everything much clearer, that is to say, one ceases to see anything at all' (M. Barcel quoted in Miquel Barcel 1987-1997, exh. cat., Barcelona, 1998, p. 86).
This apparent dissolution of matter is complicated by the painting's surface, which is, paradoxically, a riot of texture and detail. Bodegón amb 3 Peres breaks down paintings illusory field of receding space by creating images from thick accumulations of viscous pigment and other materials: 'For the white pictures, I used anything from grains of rice to almonds, beans and chickpeas in order to cause irregularities in the surface. Later they were simply lumps of paint' (M. Barceló quoted in Miquel Barceló 1984-1994, exh. cat., London, 1994, p. 94). It is Barceló's intention then to penetrate the mysteries of life by interacting directly with its innate nature. By embedding organic elements into the surface of his paintings, he adds a materiality that links the representation to the real world, and more importantly to life itself, 'I like the phenomenology of painting to look like nature' he has stated (M. Barceló quoted in op. cit., 1999, p. III). In this way, Bodegón amb 3 Peres is bestowed with a sensual fullness, heightening the conflict between the atmosphere of a space that remains immutable and the illustrated drama of its changeable and corruptible occupants.
'What isn't has more intensity than what is. Because in Africa, light isnt colour. Light is much stronger than colour. Colour is almost corroded by the light' (M. Barceló quoted in op. cit., 1999, p. IV).
Paint as a natural force is the consuming interest of Miquel Barceló. In his hands, the conventional genre of still life painting is rendered anew as he responds to the combination of intuitive, impulsive and accidental forces that go into the making of an image. Painted in 1988, Bodegón amb 3 Peres slides easily back and forth between abstraction and figuration. Its bright white and yellow surface is a palimpsest of vigorous brushwork and highly nuanced interplays between light and shade. The monumental canvas depicts a few scattered objects that simultaneously dissolve and emerge against an open and undefined background. Like his intensely loose and gestural brushwork, Barceló work is never locked into a singular narrative construct and this painting presents its viewer with a number of possibilities. This could be an aerial view of a desert landscape or a lunar field, or simply a celebration of painting itself, with the work of art as relic of the artists energetic movement with the brush. Barceló painting is a physical act, and results in an extremely physical surface. He uses thick impasto and organic matter to hint at textures and terrain found only in the world outside. It is this strong interest in texture, which has become a trademark of the artist, that imbues Bodegón amb 3 Peres with a powerful energy that echoes the forces of nature. Barceló is taking only the barest bones of an artistic tradition and rethinking them to his own intense ends. The result is an otherworldly landscape that revels in its material splendour, its earthy strength, and vivid light.
Bodegón amb 3 Peres represents a period of significant change in Barceló life, and his art. This composition, with its almost empty background, is part of a development in Barcelós painting that was slowly replacing more cluttered compositions, as he tried to make the experience of viewing his work more direct. During a sojourn in New York in 1987 he began to experiment with varnishes and glazes, which introduced to him the notion of depicting transparency and light. Gradually, the previously frequent and explicit autobiographical references in Barcelós paintings were replaced by huge expanses of landmass: off-white, desolate and devoid of anecdote. This process of simplification culminated in the 'white paintings', an important group of works created between 1988 and 1990. The present work belongs to the inception of this series. Its white ground, painted over layers of yellow pigment, is a dazzling tabula rasa. The objects that appear on its surface are mirage-like, hovering in a liminal state between being and nothingness. This is an ethereal, transcendental scene, part geography, part biology, in which Barceló muses on the physical and metaphorical properties of matter, by representing solid forms in a state of visual flux.
The ability of light to destroy and define any sense of form was brought home to Barceló during his extensive journeys through Africa during the year this work was completed. There, the desert enchanted him. The white that was coming to dominate his paintings now made sense in the light of the Sahara. In the wake of his first voyage, Barceló created a large number of landscapes based on the desert he had seen there. Bodegón amb 3 Peres similarly shows three pears and various stones as if they were lit up like the stray objects on a vast desert plane, their existence largely manifested by the shade that they cast. In Africa, Barceló had observed how shadows often had more presence than objects themselves. Under Mali's glaring sun, everything is dissolved by the combination of heat and light. The stranded objects thrown into relief in Bodegón amb 3 Peres are likewise saturated by the relentless glare of Africa: 'At a temperature of 50°C and with the sandwind one sees everything much clearer, that is to say, one ceases to see anything at all' (M. Barcel quoted in Miquel Barcel 1987-1997, exh. cat., Barcelona, 1998, p. 86).
This apparent dissolution of matter is complicated by the painting's surface, which is, paradoxically, a riot of texture and detail. Bodegón amb 3 Peres breaks down paintings illusory field of receding space by creating images from thick accumulations of viscous pigment and other materials: 'For the white pictures, I used anything from grains of rice to almonds, beans and chickpeas in order to cause irregularities in the surface. Later they were simply lumps of paint' (M. Barceló quoted in Miquel Barceló 1984-1994, exh. cat., London, 1994, p. 94). It is Barceló's intention then to penetrate the mysteries of life by interacting directly with its innate nature. By embedding organic elements into the surface of his paintings, he adds a materiality that links the representation to the real world, and more importantly to life itself, 'I like the phenomenology of painting to look like nature' he has stated (M. Barceló quoted in op. cit., 1999, p. III). In this way, Bodegón amb 3 Peres is bestowed with a sensual fullness, heightening the conflict between the atmosphere of a space that remains immutable and the illustrated drama of its changeable and corruptible occupants.