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Lot Essay
'A series of persons in a restaurant is more elementary than a series of numbers. The series is elementary, but people gathered for a common function constitute something more elementary. Numbers in the restaurant, persons in the restaurant, numbers like persons in the restaurant. One person plus another person makes two persons. Two persons plus one arriving person makes three persons. A real sum and a sum of people. ...(it is)... an artistic choice that describes not free time but real (collective) time.' (Mario Merz quoted in exh. cat. Mario Merz Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1989, p. 108.)
Comprised of a sequence of photographs of an empty restaurant gradually filling with customers - each interconnected by a neon numbering system that accords with the number of people in each photograph - Untitled (Una somma reale è una somma di gente) (A real sum is a sum of people) is one of four different major works on this theme that Mario Merz made in 1972. Each of the four versions of this work was the product of an orchestrated performance that took place in a different location. The first took place in the restaurant of a factory in Naples, another was organised and photographed in the King George VI pub in Kentish Town, London, another in a restaurant in Milan and this work, in a restaurant in Turin. It was this version of the series that Merz chose to represent his work at documenta 5 in Kassel held the same year of its creation in 1972. The present work was first acquired directly from Merz at this exhibition.
As Merz's exhibition at documenta 5 made clear, his restaurant works collectively belong to a highly important group of works from the early 1970s in which the artist attempted to infuse and animate architectural space with a deep sense of life, growth and of the infinite potential for transformation through the creation of specific and penetrating interactions within the interior space of these buildings. These interactions ranged from his installation of igloos and the articulation of their walls and other boundaries with illuminated sequential neon number progressions and spirals indicative of infinite expansion to the arranged performance, as in the present work, of populating a restaurant according to an organically proliferating ordering process.
At the root of all of these varied and ground-breaking works was Merz's fascination with the Fibonacci series of numbers. Expanding in what Merz described as 'an accelerated manner', the Fibonacci progression - one in which each new number is the sum of the previous two - is a progression found in nature in many forms ranging from the reproductive rate of rabbits to the scales on the tail of an iguana. In Merz's work it serves that serves as an energizing metaphor for the natural process of proliferation and potentially infinite expansion within both art and life. For Merz, the Fibonacci numbers - rendered by him as expanding, illuminating, immaterial energy in the material form of blue neon light - were used as a tautologically reflection of the fixed dimensions of a room, the number of steps in a staircase, or as here, to reiterate the number of people in a room. In so doing it was his aim to illustrate the mysterious interconnectivity of the world, its rootedness in nature and, by extension, the life that operates within this space.
'I did not understand why a work of art had to be a certain length when it could be infinite, ' Merz has said in this respect. 'In the Fibonacci series, there are no spatial limitations because space becomes infinite - not abstract infinity, but biological infinity.' (Mario Merz, quoted at www.moma.org.) 'My use of the Fibonacci series began with the idea that it was impossible to stop inside any of those spaces. I put myself inside a contradiction between opposites - between empty and full, between life and death, which is, I believe, the contradiction between Mohammed and Buddha - the contradiction of man per se as an act of life. These numbers do not so much cultivate the contradiction, as they absorb the idea of the contradiction; insofar as the numbers 5 in 5 are repeated, they are vegetative and biologically natural, considering that they have a sort of father and mother who precede them and produce the subsequent offspring. Thus these numbers often correspond to the proliferations of natural elements and human elements: for instance, we have five fingers, 2 eyes, 1 nose - that is to say, we have, 1,2,5, and can easily recognized this number, which transcends itself in a divaricating sense. I did this series because it is biologically conceivable, because it has a direction and above all, roots, but it has roots because it has biological meaning, even if the meaning is not directly scientific. This series is not purely imaginary, but is used in computers, which was why I thought one could always create relationships with it.' (Mario Merz quoted in exh. cat. Mario Merz, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1989, p. 109.)
It was in 1970 that Merz first began to make works using the Fibonacci series and in 1972 that he began the series of works known as Una somma reale è una somma di gente that were the first to apply the Fibonacci series to fluid social groupings, such as convivial meetings of people gathered around tables. Photographed by Gianfranco Gorgoni, the Naples version of Una somma reale was the first example of these works and as Merz has pointed out, the notion of production and consumption also sits also at the heart of the biological and social proliferation visible in these works. Ranging from 1 to 55 men, the 'proliferation of men', Merz said of the Naples version, 'is linked to the proliferation of beings which can be eaten and these to the proliferation of objects produced as these men are workers in a factory in Naples.' (Mario Merz quoted in C. Christov-Bakargiev, ed., Arte Povera, London, 1999, p. 119)
In this respect therefore the Una somma reale è una somma di gente works mark a significant extension of Merz's interest in penetrating formal but static architectural structures with the animism of the Fibonnaci sequence into the wider and more dynamic world of human and social interaction and also the economics of consumption. As Merz told Caroline Tisdall with reference to the pub version of Una somma reale è una somma di gente, the consumption of the clients within these structures plays an important part in the systematic opening of these works to the wider arenas of human interaction and life. 'These people give a unity to the number as it increases and they consumed a certain number of glasses of beer: a certain number of abstractions of capital you could say, but the number remained describable, and that is why we did the work in a bar.' (Mario Merz quoted in Caroline Tisdall, 'Interview with Mario Merz', Studio International no. 979, London, Jan-Feb 1976, p. 13)
It is in this way that these works also anticipate and explore the ideas of consumption that Merz was soon afterwards to further explore in his tables, spiral tables and fruit and vegetable produce works that he began to make in 1973 and which further extend and elaborate upon this concept. A later 1973 exhibition of another Una somma reale è una somma di gente held in conjunction with Merz exploration of produce and of art as a form of nourishment for example, bore the extensive but revealing title: A Sum of People is a real sum a real sum is also a serial sum a serial sum is a form human beings have a serial function as history the serial extension of paintings gathers a serial sum of human beings the spiral forms of fruit are serial sums of quantity we invite you to come on 1973, at ... 'o'clock to a serial function of the art academy.
Comprised of a sequence of photographs of an empty restaurant gradually filling with customers - each interconnected by a neon numbering system that accords with the number of people in each photograph - Untitled (Una somma reale è una somma di gente) (A real sum is a sum of people) is one of four different major works on this theme that Mario Merz made in 1972. Each of the four versions of this work was the product of an orchestrated performance that took place in a different location. The first took place in the restaurant of a factory in Naples, another was organised and photographed in the King George VI pub in Kentish Town, London, another in a restaurant in Milan and this work, in a restaurant in Turin. It was this version of the series that Merz chose to represent his work at documenta 5 in Kassel held the same year of its creation in 1972. The present work was first acquired directly from Merz at this exhibition.
As Merz's exhibition at documenta 5 made clear, his restaurant works collectively belong to a highly important group of works from the early 1970s in which the artist attempted to infuse and animate architectural space with a deep sense of life, growth and of the infinite potential for transformation through the creation of specific and penetrating interactions within the interior space of these buildings. These interactions ranged from his installation of igloos and the articulation of their walls and other boundaries with illuminated sequential neon number progressions and spirals indicative of infinite expansion to the arranged performance, as in the present work, of populating a restaurant according to an organically proliferating ordering process.
At the root of all of these varied and ground-breaking works was Merz's fascination with the Fibonacci series of numbers. Expanding in what Merz described as 'an accelerated manner', the Fibonacci progression - one in which each new number is the sum of the previous two - is a progression found in nature in many forms ranging from the reproductive rate of rabbits to the scales on the tail of an iguana. In Merz's work it serves that serves as an energizing metaphor for the natural process of proliferation and potentially infinite expansion within both art and life. For Merz, the Fibonacci numbers - rendered by him as expanding, illuminating, immaterial energy in the material form of blue neon light - were used as a tautologically reflection of the fixed dimensions of a room, the number of steps in a staircase, or as here, to reiterate the number of people in a room. In so doing it was his aim to illustrate the mysterious interconnectivity of the world, its rootedness in nature and, by extension, the life that operates within this space.
'I did not understand why a work of art had to be a certain length when it could be infinite, ' Merz has said in this respect. 'In the Fibonacci series, there are no spatial limitations because space becomes infinite - not abstract infinity, but biological infinity.' (Mario Merz, quoted at www.moma.org.) 'My use of the Fibonacci series began with the idea that it was impossible to stop inside any of those spaces. I put myself inside a contradiction between opposites - between empty and full, between life and death, which is, I believe, the contradiction between Mohammed and Buddha - the contradiction of man per se as an act of life. These numbers do not so much cultivate the contradiction, as they absorb the idea of the contradiction; insofar as the numbers 5 in 5 are repeated, they are vegetative and biologically natural, considering that they have a sort of father and mother who precede them and produce the subsequent offspring. Thus these numbers often correspond to the proliferations of natural elements and human elements: for instance, we have five fingers, 2 eyes, 1 nose - that is to say, we have, 1,2,5, and can easily recognized this number, which transcends itself in a divaricating sense. I did this series because it is biologically conceivable, because it has a direction and above all, roots, but it has roots because it has biological meaning, even if the meaning is not directly scientific. This series is not purely imaginary, but is used in computers, which was why I thought one could always create relationships with it.' (Mario Merz quoted in exh. cat. Mario Merz, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1989, p. 109.)
It was in 1970 that Merz first began to make works using the Fibonacci series and in 1972 that he began the series of works known as Una somma reale è una somma di gente that were the first to apply the Fibonacci series to fluid social groupings, such as convivial meetings of people gathered around tables. Photographed by Gianfranco Gorgoni, the Naples version of Una somma reale was the first example of these works and as Merz has pointed out, the notion of production and consumption also sits also at the heart of the biological and social proliferation visible in these works. Ranging from 1 to 55 men, the 'proliferation of men', Merz said of the Naples version, 'is linked to the proliferation of beings which can be eaten and these to the proliferation of objects produced as these men are workers in a factory in Naples.' (Mario Merz quoted in C. Christov-Bakargiev, ed., Arte Povera, London, 1999, p. 119)
In this respect therefore the Una somma reale è una somma di gente works mark a significant extension of Merz's interest in penetrating formal but static architectural structures with the animism of the Fibonnaci sequence into the wider and more dynamic world of human and social interaction and also the economics of consumption. As Merz told Caroline Tisdall with reference to the pub version of Una somma reale è una somma di gente, the consumption of the clients within these structures plays an important part in the systematic opening of these works to the wider arenas of human interaction and life. 'These people give a unity to the number as it increases and they consumed a certain number of glasses of beer: a certain number of abstractions of capital you could say, but the number remained describable, and that is why we did the work in a bar.' (Mario Merz quoted in Caroline Tisdall, 'Interview with Mario Merz', Studio International no. 979, London, Jan-Feb 1976, p. 13)
It is in this way that these works also anticipate and explore the ideas of consumption that Merz was soon afterwards to further explore in his tables, spiral tables and fruit and vegetable produce works that he began to make in 1973 and which further extend and elaborate upon this concept. A later 1973 exhibition of another Una somma reale è una somma di gente held in conjunction with Merz exploration of produce and of art as a form of nourishment for example, bore the extensive but revealing title: A Sum of People is a real sum a real sum is also a serial sum a serial sum is a form human beings have a serial function as history the serial extension of paintings gathers a serial sum of human beings the spiral forms of fruit are serial sums of quantity we invite you to come on 1973, at ... 'o'clock to a serial function of the art academy.