.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘My works act as a signal for propagating what I have accumulated, by which I mean my theoretical and critical research. I write about things from which I call forth my paintings, which, in their turn, provide me with ideas for further research and writing…’
V. AGNETTI
‘Contradictions, paradoxes, tautologies help to cause language to short-circuit, to stop it from working, so that we may question ourselves about it’
V. AGNETTI
At the heart of Vincenzo Agnetti’s oeuvre lay his examination of the complex, shifting nature of language, its evolution and ambiguity when placed in different combinations and contexts, and the permeable, ever-changing, endless series of potential meanings which lay behind the words he used. The Milanese conceptualist began his career as a poet before becoming associated with Piero Manzoni and the Azimuth group. His involvement with the Italian avant-garde was interrupted by a voyage to South America in 1962, where he would remain for five years, living in Argentina with his family. While he maintained a correspondence with his colleagues in Italy during this time, Agnetti adopted a principle which he called ‘Art-no,’ in which he refused to make art, immersing himself in tedious, repetitive, manual labour instead, which he believed would provoke a greater awareness within him of the true freedom of being an artist. Instead, he channelled his creative energies into the obsessive creation of thousands of pages of writing, which he assembled in notebooks and called Assenza (Absence). Describing this project, Agnetti wrote: ‘Two thousand pages that bring together thoughts, ideas and plans developed between one chance event and the next in South America, Scandinavia, Arabia… These objects are reminders. And yet I will never read these pages again. The texts are so precipitous and relentless that revising and editing them would take me another six years. It’s better simply to review these notebooks from a closer angle. Simply as notebooks: partitive and abstract participation. A solitary reference: a ‘here they are’ and a ‘now they’re gone’…’ (Agnetti, quoted in G. Agnetti, ‘When I Saw Myself I Wasn’t There: A Biography of Vincenzo Agnetti,’ in M. Meneguzzo (ed.), Agnetti, a hundred years from now, exh. cat., Milan, 2017, p. 255).
Upon his return to Milan, Agnetti reached a dramatic turning point in his art, which would determine the trajectory of the rest of his career. He began to integrate his literary experiences, his interest in theatre and his critical writings into his visual art, using fragmented texts and tautological axioms to create enigmatic artworks which challenged the established, accepted systems of language. From his early sculpture Principia, to his revolutionary reprogamming of an Olivetti calculator for La Macchina drogata, his work delved into the rules and logic of language, revealing the mutable, highly subjective circumstances which determined our understanding of words, phrases and statements. This continued in the publication of his novel, Obsoleto, in 1968, which made radical use of textual syntax, punctuation, narrative, content and form to create a highly experimental novel that reads like a stream of consciousness, continually interrupting itself. Perhaps most importantly though, the artist developed his so-called Assiomi (Axioms) in which diagrams, graphs, symbols and circular, looping, often contradictory statements, were engraved into black Bakelite panels. ‘From a theoretical assumption I construct a discussion of two or more written pages,’ he explained. ‘Then, through logical decantation, I use an axiom to sum up the entire content that emerged’ (Agnetti, quoted in ibid, p. 15). In many cases the Assiomi achieve the appearance of tautologies, looping back on themselves to complicate our reading of the original statement, creating phrases that seem to make sense, yet, when examined further, fall apart and become tied up in a complex layering of potential meaning.
It is from this series that the present work, Considera - Trittico (Consider - Tryptic), evolved. Created in 1970 it builds on the central concept of the Assiomi - the presentation of a cryptic, elliptical phrase or statement – and pushed it to new levels of expression. Adopting a dynamic triptych format, Agnetti inscribes three separate panels with a series of seemingly interconnected statements that seem to relate back to one another. Each ‘verse’ begins with the word ‘Considera’ (consider), a visual device which tethers each section to the others and suggests a natural progression through the text. The presentation resembles the traditional formatting of a poem, a comparison further emphasised by the light colouring of the zinc, which appears like a blank page upon which the words have been typed or printed, while the hinges connecting the three panels suggests the triptych may be opened (and closed) like a book. An unusual material for Agnetti during this period, his choice of zinc was a clear departure from the black Bakelite surfaces of the Assiomi, and perhaps marked the beginning of the artist’s explorations into alternative materials, which would lead to the highly textured surfaces of his Feltri. The text itself is wonderfully poetic, folding in on itself like an origami crane, incorporating phrases which dissolve with uncertainty when examined closely. In this way Considera – Trittico introduces contradictions, paradoxes and loops to complicate our understanding of the text, challenging our perceptions of the unshakeable, immutable nature of language.
In comparison to his contemporaries who were also exploring language at this time, Agnetti always used his own words, statements and poetry in his explorations, rather than borrowing from others. While he was a voracious reader of philosophical treatises and literature, he saw writing as an essential element of his own creative expression, representing the developments of his intricate thought process as he grappled with the complex concepts and problems of his age, and distilled them into profound statements and poems. As Marco Meneguzzo has proclaimed, ‘Agnetti’s activity was paradigmatic because his use of words, and of statements using them, shows an interpretative richness and an evocative freedom that go far beyond the absolute determinacy, purposely impersonal, of the conceptual statements [of his contemporaries] … he aimed at establishing a new and radical syntax, not only in the field of art languages, but in that of languages tout court.’ (M. Meneguzzo, ‘Artists Gather Only Unripe Fruit,’ in ibid, p. 31). For Agnetti, the hesitation, uncertainty, and insecurity inherent in the comprehension of his texts was key to developing an autonomous, critical way of looking at the world. By interrupting our straight-forward reading of the words, he allows us to query our understanding of the text, attend to our perceptions, and question the rules and logic of the systems we follow.
V. AGNETTI
‘Contradictions, paradoxes, tautologies help to cause language to short-circuit, to stop it from working, so that we may question ourselves about it’
V. AGNETTI
At the heart of Vincenzo Agnetti’s oeuvre lay his examination of the complex, shifting nature of language, its evolution and ambiguity when placed in different combinations and contexts, and the permeable, ever-changing, endless series of potential meanings which lay behind the words he used. The Milanese conceptualist began his career as a poet before becoming associated with Piero Manzoni and the Azimuth group. His involvement with the Italian avant-garde was interrupted by a voyage to South America in 1962, where he would remain for five years, living in Argentina with his family. While he maintained a correspondence with his colleagues in Italy during this time, Agnetti adopted a principle which he called ‘Art-no,’ in which he refused to make art, immersing himself in tedious, repetitive, manual labour instead, which he believed would provoke a greater awareness within him of the true freedom of being an artist. Instead, he channelled his creative energies into the obsessive creation of thousands of pages of writing, which he assembled in notebooks and called Assenza (Absence). Describing this project, Agnetti wrote: ‘Two thousand pages that bring together thoughts, ideas and plans developed between one chance event and the next in South America, Scandinavia, Arabia… These objects are reminders. And yet I will never read these pages again. The texts are so precipitous and relentless that revising and editing them would take me another six years. It’s better simply to review these notebooks from a closer angle. Simply as notebooks: partitive and abstract participation. A solitary reference: a ‘here they are’ and a ‘now they’re gone’…’ (Agnetti, quoted in G. Agnetti, ‘When I Saw Myself I Wasn’t There: A Biography of Vincenzo Agnetti,’ in M. Meneguzzo (ed.), Agnetti, a hundred years from now, exh. cat., Milan, 2017, p. 255).
Upon his return to Milan, Agnetti reached a dramatic turning point in his art, which would determine the trajectory of the rest of his career. He began to integrate his literary experiences, his interest in theatre and his critical writings into his visual art, using fragmented texts and tautological axioms to create enigmatic artworks which challenged the established, accepted systems of language. From his early sculpture Principia, to his revolutionary reprogamming of an Olivetti calculator for La Macchina drogata, his work delved into the rules and logic of language, revealing the mutable, highly subjective circumstances which determined our understanding of words, phrases and statements. This continued in the publication of his novel, Obsoleto, in 1968, which made radical use of textual syntax, punctuation, narrative, content and form to create a highly experimental novel that reads like a stream of consciousness, continually interrupting itself. Perhaps most importantly though, the artist developed his so-called Assiomi (Axioms) in which diagrams, graphs, symbols and circular, looping, often contradictory statements, were engraved into black Bakelite panels. ‘From a theoretical assumption I construct a discussion of two or more written pages,’ he explained. ‘Then, through logical decantation, I use an axiom to sum up the entire content that emerged’ (Agnetti, quoted in ibid, p. 15). In many cases the Assiomi achieve the appearance of tautologies, looping back on themselves to complicate our reading of the original statement, creating phrases that seem to make sense, yet, when examined further, fall apart and become tied up in a complex layering of potential meaning.
It is from this series that the present work, Considera - Trittico (Consider - Tryptic), evolved. Created in 1970 it builds on the central concept of the Assiomi - the presentation of a cryptic, elliptical phrase or statement – and pushed it to new levels of expression. Adopting a dynamic triptych format, Agnetti inscribes three separate panels with a series of seemingly interconnected statements that seem to relate back to one another. Each ‘verse’ begins with the word ‘Considera’ (consider), a visual device which tethers each section to the others and suggests a natural progression through the text. The presentation resembles the traditional formatting of a poem, a comparison further emphasised by the light colouring of the zinc, which appears like a blank page upon which the words have been typed or printed, while the hinges connecting the three panels suggests the triptych may be opened (and closed) like a book. An unusual material for Agnetti during this period, his choice of zinc was a clear departure from the black Bakelite surfaces of the Assiomi, and perhaps marked the beginning of the artist’s explorations into alternative materials, which would lead to the highly textured surfaces of his Feltri. The text itself is wonderfully poetic, folding in on itself like an origami crane, incorporating phrases which dissolve with uncertainty when examined closely. In this way Considera – Trittico introduces contradictions, paradoxes and loops to complicate our understanding of the text, challenging our perceptions of the unshakeable, immutable nature of language.
In comparison to his contemporaries who were also exploring language at this time, Agnetti always used his own words, statements and poetry in his explorations, rather than borrowing from others. While he was a voracious reader of philosophical treatises and literature, he saw writing as an essential element of his own creative expression, representing the developments of his intricate thought process as he grappled with the complex concepts and problems of his age, and distilled them into profound statements and poems. As Marco Meneguzzo has proclaimed, ‘Agnetti’s activity was paradigmatic because his use of words, and of statements using them, shows an interpretative richness and an evocative freedom that go far beyond the absolute determinacy, purposely impersonal, of the conceptual statements [of his contemporaries] … he aimed at establishing a new and radical syntax, not only in the field of art languages, but in that of languages tout court.’ (M. Meneguzzo, ‘Artists Gather Only Unripe Fruit,’ in ibid, p. 31). For Agnetti, the hesitation, uncertainty, and insecurity inherent in the comprehension of his texts was key to developing an autonomous, critical way of looking at the world. By interrupting our straight-forward reading of the words, he allows us to query our understanding of the text, attend to our perceptions, and question the rules and logic of the systems we follow.