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Lot Essay
‘All that is important is the rule. Anyone who does not know it, will never recognise the prevailing order in things, just as somebody who does not know the order of the stars will always see confusion where an astronomer has a very clear view of things’ (A. BOETTI)
‘Beauty is an expression of thought, and of the urge to express it’ (A. BOETTI)
Executed over the course of several months in 1976 and 1977, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine (The Progressive Disappearance of Habit) comes from Alighiero e Boetti’s acclaimed series of ballpoint drawings (lavori biro) which explore the relationships between linguistic, numerical and visual systems of information and knowledge. Begun in 1972, these works utilise the simple medium of the ballpoint pen to create richly textured fields of colour, with each panel filled with delicate strokes of ink and subsequently punctuated by a number of small, bright white commas. Though seemingly dispersed randomly across the page, each comma is carefully placed so as to correspond to a particular letter of the alphabet, identifiable by tracing the order of their position and aligning them with the alphabetical key that lines the left hand side of the composition. Discussing this technique, Boetti explained: ‘A word turns into a sign, into a compilation of commas with a meaning. You see, that is a rule. You follow the thread of these commas. To follow the thread of a conversation is a tautology, and, quite apart from the rule, there is the structure of the transformation of the word into a sign. This is what you must make visible, you must render the comma as something that is not stable, that is unstable, and these small white points stand on a background hatched with pens by another hand’ (Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Frankfurt, 1998, p. 63). Reading from left to right, the viewer is able to gradually decipher the coded message by tracing the invisible lines between the commas and the letters, revealing a self-reflexive spelling of the title of the work. Involving the viewer in the process of ‘revealing’ the meaning of the artwork, Boetti creates a playful game that both deconstructs and celebrates the power of letters to convey information.
In each of the lavori biro Boetti employed a group of collaborators to realise his vision - while the artist developed the concept for each work, and planned and defined the basic grid pattern of the background, the actual execution of the composition was left to external craftspeople. A similar method was used in the artist’s Arazzi and Mappe series, which both relied on the technical skills of a group of Afghan embroiderers to achieve their finished look. By adopting this process, Boetti established a form of relational aesthetics whereby he could explore the role of the artist as a conceiver but not ultimate creator of a work of art, undermining the perception of the artist as supreme genius. In the case of the biro drawings Boetti drew his assistants from his local neighbourhood of Trastevere in Rome, and requested that each alternating panel was coloured by a member of the opposite sex. Armed with a clearly defined set of rules, these anonymous collaborators would spend countless hours carefully filling the large panels with intricate layers of cross-hatching, a time intensive process which Boetti felt was intrinsic to the very nature of the biro drawings: ‘The drawings in Biro are concentrates of time, they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (Boetti, quoted ibid, p. 59).
In each of the lavori biro Boetti employed a group of collaborators to realise his vision - while the artist developed the concept for each work, and planned and defined the basic grid pattern of the background, the actual execution of the composition was left to external craftspeople. A similar method was used in the artist’s Arazzi and Mappe series, which both relied on the technical skills of a group of Afghan embroiderers to achieve their finished look. By adopting this process, Boetti established a form of relational aesthetics whereby he could explore the role of the artist as a conceiver but not ultimate creator of a work of art, undermining the perception of the artist as supreme genius. In the case of the biro drawings Boetti drew his assistants from his local neighbourhood of Trastevere in Rome, and requested that each alternating panel was coloured by a member of the opposite sex. Armed with a clearly defined set of rules, these anonymous collaborators would spend countless hours carefully filling the large panels with intricate layers of cross-hatching, a time intensive process which Boetti felt was intrinsic to the very nature of the biro drawings: ‘The drawings in Biro are concentrates of time, they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (Boetti, quoted ibid, p. 59).
Made up of five individual panels, each painstakingly filled with rich, subtly gradated fields of royal blue ink, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine presents a shimmering vision of space, the white commas appearing like a mysterious astronomical constellation or a series of falling raindrops against a monochrome expanse. While the laborious process demanded a heightened level of attention from Boetti’s collaborators, to ensure the surface was filled as densely as possible without leaving any gaps or spaces, a number of subtle, textural shifts can be detected throughout. Indeed, each panel is imbued with the distinctive rhythm of its maker, their idiosyncratic approaches to the process resulting in fluctuating fields of colour which appear to undulate in a wave-like motion across the composition. These subtle variations are dependent on a number of different factors, from the quality of the ball-point pen used, to the varying amounts of pressure applied to the surface, the speed and length of each individual’s stroke to their temperament on a given day, and even the gradual loss of pigment that occurred as the pen began to run out of ink. Revelling in the unexpected results proffered by chance, error or the peculiarities of the maker, Boetti embraced the quirks this form of collaboration brought to his vision, as his instructions were interpreted and executed differently by each individual hand.
As with all of the lavori biro, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine is anchored by a simple, but highly specific code. Transforming the letters of the title into a series of commas, Boetti enciphers the enigmatic phrase of so that only those familiar with the artist’s highly particular system of image making are easily able to uncover its meaning. In this way, the artist disrupts the highly ordered linguistic system of the Latin alphabet, exposing it as a sophisticated but ultimately artificial system of communication, a man-made construct that may govern our lives but which is not a natural part of it. This drives the viewer to a new understanding of the arbitrary nature of its rules and systems, pointing to the essential, but ultimately inconsistent, role it plays in our lives. As such, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine can be seen to feed into one of the central concepts which lay behind much of Boetti’s work – ordine e disordine (order and disorder). This principle, based on the idea that the world is in a constant state of flux between the forces of order and disorder, appeared in numerous different permutations throughout Boetti’s oeuvre, and focused on the way in which these two divergent concepts permeated and interacted with one another to generate a harmonious unity. In revealing this fundamental duality of these two apparent opposites, Boetti believed he could heal the traumatic rifts that divide our contemporary world.
‘Beauty is an expression of thought, and of the urge to express it’ (A. BOETTI)
Executed over the course of several months in 1976 and 1977, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine (The Progressive Disappearance of Habit) comes from Alighiero e Boetti’s acclaimed series of ballpoint drawings (lavori biro) which explore the relationships between linguistic, numerical and visual systems of information and knowledge. Begun in 1972, these works utilise the simple medium of the ballpoint pen to create richly textured fields of colour, with each panel filled with delicate strokes of ink and subsequently punctuated by a number of small, bright white commas. Though seemingly dispersed randomly across the page, each comma is carefully placed so as to correspond to a particular letter of the alphabet, identifiable by tracing the order of their position and aligning them with the alphabetical key that lines the left hand side of the composition. Discussing this technique, Boetti explained: ‘A word turns into a sign, into a compilation of commas with a meaning. You see, that is a rule. You follow the thread of these commas. To follow the thread of a conversation is a tautology, and, quite apart from the rule, there is the structure of the transformation of the word into a sign. This is what you must make visible, you must render the comma as something that is not stable, that is unstable, and these small white points stand on a background hatched with pens by another hand’ (Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Frankfurt, 1998, p. 63). Reading from left to right, the viewer is able to gradually decipher the coded message by tracing the invisible lines between the commas and the letters, revealing a self-reflexive spelling of the title of the work. Involving the viewer in the process of ‘revealing’ the meaning of the artwork, Boetti creates a playful game that both deconstructs and celebrates the power of letters to convey information.
In each of the lavori biro Boetti employed a group of collaborators to realise his vision - while the artist developed the concept for each work, and planned and defined the basic grid pattern of the background, the actual execution of the composition was left to external craftspeople. A similar method was used in the artist’s Arazzi and Mappe series, which both relied on the technical skills of a group of Afghan embroiderers to achieve their finished look. By adopting this process, Boetti established a form of relational aesthetics whereby he could explore the role of the artist as a conceiver but not ultimate creator of a work of art, undermining the perception of the artist as supreme genius. In the case of the biro drawings Boetti drew his assistants from his local neighbourhood of Trastevere in Rome, and requested that each alternating panel was coloured by a member of the opposite sex. Armed with a clearly defined set of rules, these anonymous collaborators would spend countless hours carefully filling the large panels with intricate layers of cross-hatching, a time intensive process which Boetti felt was intrinsic to the very nature of the biro drawings: ‘The drawings in Biro are concentrates of time, they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (Boetti, quoted ibid, p. 59).
In each of the lavori biro Boetti employed a group of collaborators to realise his vision - while the artist developed the concept for each work, and planned and defined the basic grid pattern of the background, the actual execution of the composition was left to external craftspeople. A similar method was used in the artist’s Arazzi and Mappe series, which both relied on the technical skills of a group of Afghan embroiderers to achieve their finished look. By adopting this process, Boetti established a form of relational aesthetics whereby he could explore the role of the artist as a conceiver but not ultimate creator of a work of art, undermining the perception of the artist as supreme genius. In the case of the biro drawings Boetti drew his assistants from his local neighbourhood of Trastevere in Rome, and requested that each alternating panel was coloured by a member of the opposite sex. Armed with a clearly defined set of rules, these anonymous collaborators would spend countless hours carefully filling the large panels with intricate layers of cross-hatching, a time intensive process which Boetti felt was intrinsic to the very nature of the biro drawings: ‘The drawings in Biro are concentrates of time, they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (Boetti, quoted ibid, p. 59).
Made up of five individual panels, each painstakingly filled with rich, subtly gradated fields of royal blue ink, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine presents a shimmering vision of space, the white commas appearing like a mysterious astronomical constellation or a series of falling raindrops against a monochrome expanse. While the laborious process demanded a heightened level of attention from Boetti’s collaborators, to ensure the surface was filled as densely as possible without leaving any gaps or spaces, a number of subtle, textural shifts can be detected throughout. Indeed, each panel is imbued with the distinctive rhythm of its maker, their idiosyncratic approaches to the process resulting in fluctuating fields of colour which appear to undulate in a wave-like motion across the composition. These subtle variations are dependent on a number of different factors, from the quality of the ball-point pen used, to the varying amounts of pressure applied to the surface, the speed and length of each individual’s stroke to their temperament on a given day, and even the gradual loss of pigment that occurred as the pen began to run out of ink. Revelling in the unexpected results proffered by chance, error or the peculiarities of the maker, Boetti embraced the quirks this form of collaboration brought to his vision, as his instructions were interpreted and executed differently by each individual hand.
As with all of the lavori biro, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine is anchored by a simple, but highly specific code. Transforming the letters of the title into a series of commas, Boetti enciphers the enigmatic phrase of so that only those familiar with the artist’s highly particular system of image making are easily able to uncover its meaning. In this way, the artist disrupts the highly ordered linguistic system of the Latin alphabet, exposing it as a sophisticated but ultimately artificial system of communication, a man-made construct that may govern our lives but which is not a natural part of it. This drives the viewer to a new understanding of the arbitrary nature of its rules and systems, pointing to the essential, but ultimately inconsistent, role it plays in our lives. As such, Il progressivo svanire della consuetudine can be seen to feed into one of the central concepts which lay behind much of Boetti’s work – ordine e disordine (order and disorder). This principle, based on the idea that the world is in a constant state of flux between the forces of order and disorder, appeared in numerous different permutations throughout Boetti’s oeuvre, and focused on the way in which these two divergent concepts permeated and interacted with one another to generate a harmonious unity. In revealing this fundamental duality of these two apparent opposites, Boetti believed he could heal the traumatic rifts that divide our contemporary world.