.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
'I get these things [bottle caps] and I intervene by cutting them and opening them up and bolting them together in order to create very huge sheets that are so big that they give you the freedom to play around with them. Initially these were purely sculpture, but as time went on I saw that there was a need for me to consider so many other elements, like the colors that show the brands of drinks - like the reds, the blacks, the yellows, and so forth. And I work more like a sculpture and a painter put together, because the concerns of the sculptor and painter are what I am grappling with as well'
(E. Anatsui, quoted in 'El Anatsui in conversation with Chika Okeke-Agulu', El Anatsui, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, 2011, p. 10).
With a luminous presence that radiates beyond the parameters of the work itself, El Anatsui's Energy Spill is a vast intricate web of burnished golds and reds, woven together in a dazzling display that enchants the eye and invites closer inspection. From the artist's celebrated 'cloth series', Energy Spill is an intricately woven tapestry of bottle caps emblazoned with a host of various liquor brand names and logos. From a distance, Anatsui's chain-mailed works appear to be a bejeweled encrusted expanse; however, upon closer inspection, the individually wrought bottle caps present themselves and their labels from a past function for the viewer's contemplation, reveling in a deeper, more thoughtful beauty than initially thought possible. Anatsui's expanse of glittering chainmail revels in its makeup of thousands of found liquor bottle caps, tin can lids and other detritus, all connected by filaments of copper wire. Once woven his sheets take on a pliability and yielding quality which allows them to be adapted to specific surfaces and imbued with a sense of undulating movement. Indeed the sheer scale of shimmering material presented in Anatsui's works, combined with their tesserae -like quality recalls the great Byzantine mosaics throughout Europe which inspired spiritual enlightenment. Through an opulent palette of silver and gold, Anatsui choreographs a rhythm of pure colour with strident bands of black and white, and most notably in the composition of Energy Spill a radiating orb of crimson, diffusing out to the edges of the sheet. The composition of Energy Spill is informed by the traditional patterns of West African kente cloth - a weaving style practiced by members of the artist's family. Through Anatsui's particular material choice, the result is a sculpture which invokes the aesthetic grandeur of colour field painting, the rhythm created in the bottle cap colours along with the play of light off their metallic surfaces imbues his sheets with a lyrical abstraction that is near transcendent.
Coming on to the international platform at the 2007 Venice Biennale curated by Robert Storr, Anatsui exhibited a majestically draped metal large-scale outdoor metal sheet sculpture at the Palazzo Fortuny. Anatsui's monumental works have most recently been celebrated at a celebrated solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and here in London at the Royal Academy where his TSIATSIA - searching for a connection is now adorning the façade.
With Anatsui's art deeply rooted in his personal and cultural history, it is no surprise then, that he is drawn to materials which represent his country. Anatsui's bottle caps advertising cheap African liquor from Romatex to Castello to First Lady Brandy act as both aesthetically pleasing building blocks and commentaries on the role of both liquor and cloth in the European slave trade on the West African coast. As Anatsui explains of his choice of material, 'The bottle caps I use are linked to liquor, the earliest contact between Africa and Europe. The caps I use are all from local brands of liquor. The act of stitching them into sheets is to me like melding different circumstances of these continents together into an indeterminate form' (E. Anatsui, quoted in L. Leffler James, 'Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand - An Interview with El Anatsui', Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 2, Summer 20008, p. 48). Anatsui first came across bottle caps by chance in 1998 when he found a discarded heap of milk-tin lids in the bushes near his studio. 'When I saw the bottle tops, what struck me was that they are from bottles that have been used, and therefore human hands have touched them... People have really drunk from these bottles, and therefore human hands have left a charge on them' (E. Anatsui, quoted in L. Leffler James, 'Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand - An Interview with El Anatsui', in Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 2, Summer 20008, p. 38).
To create the pieces, Anatsui gathered hundreds of liquor-bottle tops and painstakingly flattened and pierced them in order to weave them together with copper wire. Creating his vast compositions on the floor through a labor-intensive technique conceived by the artist specifically for the execution of these works, Anatsui employs various motifs, twisting and flattening the bottle caps according to his carefully conceived composition. Of his process Anatsui explains, 'I get these things [bottle caps] and I intervene by cutting them and opening them up and bolting them together in order to create very huge sheets that are so big that they give you the freedom to play around with them. Initially these were purely sculpture, but as time went on I saw that there was a need for me to consider so many other elements, like the colors that show the brands of drinks - like the reds, the blacks, the yellows, and so forth. And I work more like a sculpture and a painter put together, because the concerns of the sculptor and painter are what I am grappling with as well' (E. Anatsui, quoted in 'El Anatsui in conversation with Chika Okeke-Agulu', El Anatsui, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, 2011, p. 10). Anatsui should add architect as well to his list, for, once hung on the façade of buildings, his works take on a dynamic architectonic quality.
Belonging to a generation of African artists who came of age in the 1960s when fundamental ideological upheaval was a successor to the political independence occurring throughout Africa, Anatsui's practice is intimately connected to the impact of globalization and consumerism on the West African cultural landscape. Yet with an attachment to the found object and its connection to the human hand, Anatsui's art speaks beyond Africa, to universal truths and connections. 'You've touched it, and I've touched it. There is now a kind of bond between you and me' Anatsui explains, 'and this is an idea which is very much related to religious practice, spiritual practice, in many parts of Africa and, I believe, in many cultures of the world' (E. Anatsui, quoted in L. Leffler James, 'Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand - An Interview with El Anatsui', in Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 2, Summer 2008, p. 49).
(E. Anatsui, quoted in 'El Anatsui in conversation with Chika Okeke-Agulu', El Anatsui, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, 2011, p. 10).
With a luminous presence that radiates beyond the parameters of the work itself, El Anatsui's Energy Spill is a vast intricate web of burnished golds and reds, woven together in a dazzling display that enchants the eye and invites closer inspection. From the artist's celebrated 'cloth series', Energy Spill is an intricately woven tapestry of bottle caps emblazoned with a host of various liquor brand names and logos. From a distance, Anatsui's chain-mailed works appear to be a bejeweled encrusted expanse; however, upon closer inspection, the individually wrought bottle caps present themselves and their labels from a past function for the viewer's contemplation, reveling in a deeper, more thoughtful beauty than initially thought possible. Anatsui's expanse of glittering chainmail revels in its makeup of thousands of found liquor bottle caps, tin can lids and other detritus, all connected by filaments of copper wire. Once woven his sheets take on a pliability and yielding quality which allows them to be adapted to specific surfaces and imbued with a sense of undulating movement. Indeed the sheer scale of shimmering material presented in Anatsui's works, combined with their tesserae -like quality recalls the great Byzantine mosaics throughout Europe which inspired spiritual enlightenment. Through an opulent palette of silver and gold, Anatsui choreographs a rhythm of pure colour with strident bands of black and white, and most notably in the composition of Energy Spill a radiating orb of crimson, diffusing out to the edges of the sheet. The composition of Energy Spill is informed by the traditional patterns of West African kente cloth - a weaving style practiced by members of the artist's family. Through Anatsui's particular material choice, the result is a sculpture which invokes the aesthetic grandeur of colour field painting, the rhythm created in the bottle cap colours along with the play of light off their metallic surfaces imbues his sheets with a lyrical abstraction that is near transcendent.
Coming on to the international platform at the 2007 Venice Biennale curated by Robert Storr, Anatsui exhibited a majestically draped metal large-scale outdoor metal sheet sculpture at the Palazzo Fortuny. Anatsui's monumental works have most recently been celebrated at a celebrated solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and here in London at the Royal Academy where his TSIATSIA - searching for a connection is now adorning the façade.
With Anatsui's art deeply rooted in his personal and cultural history, it is no surprise then, that he is drawn to materials which represent his country. Anatsui's bottle caps advertising cheap African liquor from Romatex to Castello to First Lady Brandy act as both aesthetically pleasing building blocks and commentaries on the role of both liquor and cloth in the European slave trade on the West African coast. As Anatsui explains of his choice of material, 'The bottle caps I use are linked to liquor, the earliest contact between Africa and Europe. The caps I use are all from local brands of liquor. The act of stitching them into sheets is to me like melding different circumstances of these continents together into an indeterminate form' (E. Anatsui, quoted in L. Leffler James, 'Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand - An Interview with El Anatsui', Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 2, Summer 20008, p. 48). Anatsui first came across bottle caps by chance in 1998 when he found a discarded heap of milk-tin lids in the bushes near his studio. 'When I saw the bottle tops, what struck me was that they are from bottles that have been used, and therefore human hands have touched them... People have really drunk from these bottles, and therefore human hands have left a charge on them' (E. Anatsui, quoted in L. Leffler James, 'Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand - An Interview with El Anatsui', in Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 2, Summer 20008, p. 38).
To create the pieces, Anatsui gathered hundreds of liquor-bottle tops and painstakingly flattened and pierced them in order to weave them together with copper wire. Creating his vast compositions on the floor through a labor-intensive technique conceived by the artist specifically for the execution of these works, Anatsui employs various motifs, twisting and flattening the bottle caps according to his carefully conceived composition. Of his process Anatsui explains, 'I get these things [bottle caps] and I intervene by cutting them and opening them up and bolting them together in order to create very huge sheets that are so big that they give you the freedom to play around with them. Initially these were purely sculpture, but as time went on I saw that there was a need for me to consider so many other elements, like the colors that show the brands of drinks - like the reds, the blacks, the yellows, and so forth. And I work more like a sculpture and a painter put together, because the concerns of the sculptor and painter are what I am grappling with as well' (E. Anatsui, quoted in 'El Anatsui in conversation with Chika Okeke-Agulu', El Anatsui, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, 2011, p. 10). Anatsui should add architect as well to his list, for, once hung on the façade of buildings, his works take on a dynamic architectonic quality.
Belonging to a generation of African artists who came of age in the 1960s when fundamental ideological upheaval was a successor to the political independence occurring throughout Africa, Anatsui's practice is intimately connected to the impact of globalization and consumerism on the West African cultural landscape. Yet with an attachment to the found object and its connection to the human hand, Anatsui's art speaks beyond Africa, to universal truths and connections. 'You've touched it, and I've touched it. There is now a kind of bond between you and me' Anatsui explains, 'and this is an idea which is very much related to religious practice, spiritual practice, in many parts of Africa and, I believe, in many cultures of the world' (E. Anatsui, quoted in L. Leffler James, 'Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand - An Interview with El Anatsui', in Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 2, Summer 2008, p. 49).