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Lot Essay
'Man goes to these worlds and finds them empty. Huge, uninhabited chunks of minerals. We arrive and understand this anguish... there are people who recognise that the hole, in the sense of the void, nothing, made by subtraction from the canvas, can say a great deal' (Fontana (1966), quoted in A. White, Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2011, p. 256).
At the centre of a white canvas, a pristine surface, is an elegant sliver of space. Executed in 1966, Concetto spaziale, Attesa is one of Lucio Fontana's celebrated tagli, or cuts. These are paintings in which Fontana used a blade to ease open the canvas, bringing the three-dimensionality of the picture to the fore while also introducing a mystical arena, enshrining it in the dark sliver of vacuum that lies at the hard of the picture. The dark heart of Concetto spaziale, Attesa becomes a point of focus for contemplation of infinity. In conceptual and philosophical terms, the tagli such as Concetto spaziale, Attesa push the boundaries both of art and of humanity, responding to the age of space travel and creating a crisp, proto-Minimalist aesthetic that chimes with a new age of technology where old-style images appear obsolete.
For Fontana, 1966 was the year of the single white slash, as is clear from Concetto spaziale, Attesa. It was during the course of that year that he created an 'Ambiente', an environment within the exhibition space of the Venice Biennale in which he participated. Collaborating with the architect Carlo Scarpa, Fontana created a labyrinthine procession of single white slash paintings, heightening the sense of crisp, clear elegance and adding an almost religious aspect to the viewing experience. It is a mark of the statesman-like position that Fontana occupied in the European avant-garde at this time that his group of exhibited paintings, every single one of them similar to Concetto spaziale, Attesa in that each comprised a white canvas with a single slash, resulted in his being awarded the prize for painting. On the occasion of that exhibition, Fontana himself declared: 'With the slash I invented a formula that I don't think I can perfect. I managed with this formula to give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigour, of serenity in infinity' (Fontana, quoted in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Vol. I, Milan, 2006, p. 105).
That Fontana was awarded the prize for painting revealed the incredible revolution of his approach to that medium. Fontana's cuts in the picture surface, which he had pioneered in works on paper punctured with holes as early as 1949 and upon which he had expanded, eventually creating the refined single slashes such as Concetto spaziale, Attesa, literally opened up a new realm within painting. It is important to note that Fontana's background was as a sculptor, and throughout his career, he continued to work in three dimensions. Indeed, it is precisely this three-dimensionality that he brought to painting, and which would be a crucial legacy from that first literal break-through onwards. In cutting the picture surface open, Fontana was addressing an issue which Donald Judd would come to tackle with his Minimalist manifesto, Specific Objects, in 1965. Judd objected to the falseness of the picture plane and especially to the nature of a picture as a rectangle placed upon and parallel to another rectangle - the wall. Fontana has responded to the same inherent challenge posed by the picture plane and by the sheer unavoidable and incontrovertible objecthood of the picture with this revelatory cut, emphasising the sculptural notion of the painting, ensuring that the viewer could not fail to be aware that the 'flatness' of the surface was in itself an assumption and an illusion.
Fontana compared the epiphanies of Spatialism with the new perspectives that were afforded to humanity by leaps in technology. The Second Spatial Manifesto declared, in terms that would prophesy the leap through the picture-surface, that:
'If the artist, locked in his tower, once represented himself and his astonishment and saw the landscape through his windows and then, having come down from the castles into the cities, he mixed with other men and saw from close-up the trees and the objects, now, today, we spatial artists have escaped from the cities, we have shattered our shell, our physical crust, and we have looked at ourselves from above, photographing the earth from rockets in flight' (Second Spatial Manifesto, March 1948, reproduced in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Milan, 1998, p. 118).
By the time he created Concetto spaziale, Attesa, Man had gone so much further. Cosmonauts and astronauts had escaped the atmosphere and gazed upon Planet Earth from Space. Rockets had sent probes to the surface of the Moon. Fontana himself has anticipated the day which would come less than a year after his death when man would walk upon the surface of the Moon. Indeed, on the reverse of Concetto spaziale, Attesa, he has written: 'I would so much like to let people know how Man finds himself on the Moon'. In a sense, the cut in Concetto spaziale, Attesa signifies the release between Mankind and many of the old presumptions of our Earth-bound existence, coinciding with the era in which we had reached for the stars. Fontana was creating artworks that were appropriate to a new era of human awareness of the vast scale of the Universe and our tiny place within it. That same Universe is celebrated in the elegant dark sliver at the centre of Concetto spaziale, Attesa: there, Fontana has opened the canvas. This is a portal to another dimension, yet is also a shard of space, pure and simple, evidence of the self-same Space that envelopes our own planet. Concetto spaziale, Attesa, then, is a spatial concept in two senses. It forces the viewer to reconsider the artwork as an object through the space that it occupies; and crucially, it is a cosmic reliquary, a homage to the loneliness of man in the cosmos, treading on new deserted worlds, and a shrine to a new age of infinite potential on artistic, physical or metaphysical levels.
At the centre of a white canvas, a pristine surface, is an elegant sliver of space. Executed in 1966, Concetto spaziale, Attesa is one of Lucio Fontana's celebrated tagli, or cuts. These are paintings in which Fontana used a blade to ease open the canvas, bringing the three-dimensionality of the picture to the fore while also introducing a mystical arena, enshrining it in the dark sliver of vacuum that lies at the hard of the picture. The dark heart of Concetto spaziale, Attesa becomes a point of focus for contemplation of infinity. In conceptual and philosophical terms, the tagli such as Concetto spaziale, Attesa push the boundaries both of art and of humanity, responding to the age of space travel and creating a crisp, proto-Minimalist aesthetic that chimes with a new age of technology where old-style images appear obsolete.
For Fontana, 1966 was the year of the single white slash, as is clear from Concetto spaziale, Attesa. It was during the course of that year that he created an 'Ambiente', an environment within the exhibition space of the Venice Biennale in which he participated. Collaborating with the architect Carlo Scarpa, Fontana created a labyrinthine procession of single white slash paintings, heightening the sense of crisp, clear elegance and adding an almost religious aspect to the viewing experience. It is a mark of the statesman-like position that Fontana occupied in the European avant-garde at this time that his group of exhibited paintings, every single one of them similar to Concetto spaziale, Attesa in that each comprised a white canvas with a single slash, resulted in his being awarded the prize for painting. On the occasion of that exhibition, Fontana himself declared: 'With the slash I invented a formula that I don't think I can perfect. I managed with this formula to give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigour, of serenity in infinity' (Fontana, quoted in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Vol. I, Milan, 2006, p. 105).
That Fontana was awarded the prize for painting revealed the incredible revolution of his approach to that medium. Fontana's cuts in the picture surface, which he had pioneered in works on paper punctured with holes as early as 1949 and upon which he had expanded, eventually creating the refined single slashes such as Concetto spaziale, Attesa, literally opened up a new realm within painting. It is important to note that Fontana's background was as a sculptor, and throughout his career, he continued to work in three dimensions. Indeed, it is precisely this three-dimensionality that he brought to painting, and which would be a crucial legacy from that first literal break-through onwards. In cutting the picture surface open, Fontana was addressing an issue which Donald Judd would come to tackle with his Minimalist manifesto, Specific Objects, in 1965. Judd objected to the falseness of the picture plane and especially to the nature of a picture as a rectangle placed upon and parallel to another rectangle - the wall. Fontana has responded to the same inherent challenge posed by the picture plane and by the sheer unavoidable and incontrovertible objecthood of the picture with this revelatory cut, emphasising the sculptural notion of the painting, ensuring that the viewer could not fail to be aware that the 'flatness' of the surface was in itself an assumption and an illusion.
Fontana compared the epiphanies of Spatialism with the new perspectives that were afforded to humanity by leaps in technology. The Second Spatial Manifesto declared, in terms that would prophesy the leap through the picture-surface, that:
'If the artist, locked in his tower, once represented himself and his astonishment and saw the landscape through his windows and then, having come down from the castles into the cities, he mixed with other men and saw from close-up the trees and the objects, now, today, we spatial artists have escaped from the cities, we have shattered our shell, our physical crust, and we have looked at ourselves from above, photographing the earth from rockets in flight' (Second Spatial Manifesto, March 1948, reproduced in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Milan, 1998, p. 118).
By the time he created Concetto spaziale, Attesa, Man had gone so much further. Cosmonauts and astronauts had escaped the atmosphere and gazed upon Planet Earth from Space. Rockets had sent probes to the surface of the Moon. Fontana himself has anticipated the day which would come less than a year after his death when man would walk upon the surface of the Moon. Indeed, on the reverse of Concetto spaziale, Attesa, he has written: 'I would so much like to let people know how Man finds himself on the Moon'. In a sense, the cut in Concetto spaziale, Attesa signifies the release between Mankind and many of the old presumptions of our Earth-bound existence, coinciding with the era in which we had reached for the stars. Fontana was creating artworks that were appropriate to a new era of human awareness of the vast scale of the Universe and our tiny place within it. That same Universe is celebrated in the elegant dark sliver at the centre of Concetto spaziale, Attesa: there, Fontana has opened the canvas. This is a portal to another dimension, yet is also a shard of space, pure and simple, evidence of the self-same Space that envelopes our own planet. Concetto spaziale, Attesa, then, is a spatial concept in two senses. It forces the viewer to reconsider the artwork as an object through the space that it occupies; and crucially, it is a cosmic reliquary, a homage to the loneliness of man in the cosmos, treading on new deserted worlds, and a shrine to a new age of infinite potential on artistic, physical or metaphysical levels.