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Lot Essay
‘Why shouldn’t this receptacle be emptied? Why shouldn’t this surface be freed? Why not seek to discover the unlimited meaning of total space, of pure and absolute light?’
PIERO MANZONI
‘I am quite unable to understand those painters who, whilst declaring an active interest in modern problems, still continue even today to confront a painting as if it was a surface to be filled with colour and forms according to an aesthetic taste which can be more or less appreciated, more or less guessed at ... They paint a line, step back, look at their work with head on one side and half-closed eye; and these gymnastics continue until the painting is finished: a surface of unlimited possibilities is now reduced to a kind of receptacle into which unnatural colours and artificial meanings are forced’
PIERO MANZONI
Executed circa 1960, Piero Manzoni’s Achrome is an exquisite example of the artist’s radical series of the same name. Initiated in 1957 and abruptly cut short by Manzoni’s premature death in 1963, these deliberately colourless works redefined the parameters of art-making in the post-War era. Divided into twelve soft, cloudlike white cotton wool squares, Achrome is a self-defined material object purged of representational qualities. Focusing on the primacy of the material itself – employing media ranging from canvas to stones, fibreglass, felt and bread rolls – Manzoni sought to transform the picture plane from a field of illusion into an autonomous artwork in and of itself. Conceived during a period of immense change in Italy – one of modernisation, industrialisation and economic growth – these works take their place alongside Lucio Fontana’s tagli and Enrico Castellani’s Superficie as markers of a new, revolutionary ground zero in art. ‘I am quite unable to understand those painters who, whilst declaring an active interest in modern problems, still continue even today to confront a painting as if it was a surface to be filled with colour and forms according to an aesthetic taste which can be more or less appreciated, more or less guessed at’, Manzoni explained. ‘They paint a line, step back, look at their work with head on one side and half-closed eye; and these gymnastics continue until the painting is finished: a surface of unlimited possibilities is now reduced to a kind of receptacle into which unnatural colours and artificial meanings are forced’ (P. Manzoni, ‘Free Dimension’, Azimuth, no. 2, Milan, 1960, in Piero Manzoni: Paintings, Reliefs & Objects, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1974, p. 46). By stripping his works of narrative and semiotic content, Manzoni sought to free the pictorial surface of its historical baggage, allowing it to exist as a pure, unmediated material presence. With its elegant, intimate simplicity, the present work represents this ambition at its most concentrated.
Seeking to remove all trace of the artist’s hand, Manzoni’s earliest Achromes were created by soaking pieces of canvas in kaolin: a soft form of clay which, when left to set, formed natural layers, wrinkles and folds. By 1959, the artist had begun to join pieces of white canvas or white fabric together, creating a stitched, sequential grid-like structure. In 1960, the year of the present work, Manzoni had begun to incorporate other deliberately banal objects and materials into his practice. The highly tactile material of cotton wool, presented in neatly aligned rows, is here freed from its utilitarian function, existing solely as a vacant, haptic, textural entity. In works such as these, both artwork and material achieve a new degree of autonomy: forced into a new context and deprived of all symbolic association, Manzoni’s commonplace media become purely self-referential. The artist’s decision to drain his works of all colour served further to sever their ties with figurative reality. As he explained, ‘the question as far as I’m concerned is that of rendering a surface completely white (integrally colourless and neutral) far beyond any pictorial phenomenon or any intervention extraneous to the value of the surface. A white that is not a polar landscape, not a material in evolution or a beautiful material, not a sensation or a symbol or anything else: just a white surface that is simply a white surface and nothing else (a colourless surface that is just a colourless surface). Better then that: a surface that simply is: to be (to be complete and become pure)’ (P. Manzoni, ‘Free Dimension’, Azimuth, no. 2, Milan, 1960, in Piero Manzoni: Paintings, Reliefs & Objects, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1974, p. 46-7).
PIERO MANZONI
‘I am quite unable to understand those painters who, whilst declaring an active interest in modern problems, still continue even today to confront a painting as if it was a surface to be filled with colour and forms according to an aesthetic taste which can be more or less appreciated, more or less guessed at ... They paint a line, step back, look at their work with head on one side and half-closed eye; and these gymnastics continue until the painting is finished: a surface of unlimited possibilities is now reduced to a kind of receptacle into which unnatural colours and artificial meanings are forced’
PIERO MANZONI
Executed circa 1960, Piero Manzoni’s Achrome is an exquisite example of the artist’s radical series of the same name. Initiated in 1957 and abruptly cut short by Manzoni’s premature death in 1963, these deliberately colourless works redefined the parameters of art-making in the post-War era. Divided into twelve soft, cloudlike white cotton wool squares, Achrome is a self-defined material object purged of representational qualities. Focusing on the primacy of the material itself – employing media ranging from canvas to stones, fibreglass, felt and bread rolls – Manzoni sought to transform the picture plane from a field of illusion into an autonomous artwork in and of itself. Conceived during a period of immense change in Italy – one of modernisation, industrialisation and economic growth – these works take their place alongside Lucio Fontana’s tagli and Enrico Castellani’s Superficie as markers of a new, revolutionary ground zero in art. ‘I am quite unable to understand those painters who, whilst declaring an active interest in modern problems, still continue even today to confront a painting as if it was a surface to be filled with colour and forms according to an aesthetic taste which can be more or less appreciated, more or less guessed at’, Manzoni explained. ‘They paint a line, step back, look at their work with head on one side and half-closed eye; and these gymnastics continue until the painting is finished: a surface of unlimited possibilities is now reduced to a kind of receptacle into which unnatural colours and artificial meanings are forced’ (P. Manzoni, ‘Free Dimension’, Azimuth, no. 2, Milan, 1960, in Piero Manzoni: Paintings, Reliefs & Objects, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1974, p. 46). By stripping his works of narrative and semiotic content, Manzoni sought to free the pictorial surface of its historical baggage, allowing it to exist as a pure, unmediated material presence. With its elegant, intimate simplicity, the present work represents this ambition at its most concentrated.
Seeking to remove all trace of the artist’s hand, Manzoni’s earliest Achromes were created by soaking pieces of canvas in kaolin: a soft form of clay which, when left to set, formed natural layers, wrinkles and folds. By 1959, the artist had begun to join pieces of white canvas or white fabric together, creating a stitched, sequential grid-like structure. In 1960, the year of the present work, Manzoni had begun to incorporate other deliberately banal objects and materials into his practice. The highly tactile material of cotton wool, presented in neatly aligned rows, is here freed from its utilitarian function, existing solely as a vacant, haptic, textural entity. In works such as these, both artwork and material achieve a new degree of autonomy: forced into a new context and deprived of all symbolic association, Manzoni’s commonplace media become purely self-referential. The artist’s decision to drain his works of all colour served further to sever their ties with figurative reality. As he explained, ‘the question as far as I’m concerned is that of rendering a surface completely white (integrally colourless and neutral) far beyond any pictorial phenomenon or any intervention extraneous to the value of the surface. A white that is not a polar landscape, not a material in evolution or a beautiful material, not a sensation or a symbol or anything else: just a white surface that is simply a white surface and nothing else (a colourless surface that is just a colourless surface). Better then that: a surface that simply is: to be (to be complete and become pure)’ (P. Manzoni, ‘Free Dimension’, Azimuth, no. 2, Milan, 1960, in Piero Manzoni: Paintings, Reliefs & Objects, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1974, p. 46-7).