Lot Essay
"La contemplation des tableaux de Shiraga, agités et polysémiques, où s'entrecroisent tant de traces de pieds et de glissades, parfois sanglantes, parfois noires, peut, je crois, être riche d'enseignements. Qu'on le veuille ou non, pour une part, nous associons son travail aux va-nu-pieds, aux traces de pas de tant d'êtres humains qui luttent pour survivre, et que nous trouvons laids et gênants. Mais d'un autre côté, son art est suffisamment complexe pour évoquer d'autres pieds, volontairement nus, pour mieux toucher la terre, la nature, pour avoir un contact plus immédiat avec les choses essentielles capables de nous vivifier et de nous donner espoir."
"Contemplation of Shiraga paintings - wild and polysemous, criss-crossed with so many feet marks and slides, sometimes bloody, sometimes black - can, I think, be very informative. Whether we like it or not, we partly associate his work with beggars, the tracks of so many human beings struggling to survive and who we find ugly and a nuisance. But in another way, his art is sufficiently complex to evoke other feet, deliberately bare, so as to better touch the earth and nature, to have more immediate contact with those essential things capable of invigorating us and giving us hope."
Antoni Tàpies (introduction au catalogue de l'exposition Shiraga, Galerie Stadler, Paris, 1992).
"Contemplation of Shiraga paintings - wild and polysemous, criss-crossed with so many feet marks and slides, sometimes bloody, sometimes black - can, I think, be very informative. Whether we like it or not, we partly associate his work with beggars, the tracks of so many human beings struggling to survive and who we find ugly and a nuisance. But in another way, his art is sufficiently complex to evoke other feet, deliberately bare, so as to better touch the earth and nature, to have more immediate contact with those essential things capable of invigorating us and giving us hope."
Antoni Tàpies (introduction au catalogue de l'exposition Shiraga, Galerie Stadler, Paris, 1992).