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Lot Essay
‘The main concern in these works is the relationship between that which we call geometric and that which we call organic. Both being aesthetic descriptions of the physical world. The human figure is obviously an organic form but there are many geometries in it - our organs, bone structure, cells and molecules’ – Tony Cragg
Tony Cragg’s Good Face is twisting, writhing form, a fragmented being rising from a tempest of bronze. Created in 2007, the work is part of Cragg’s series Rational Beings, which probes the relationship between what is logically and mathematically constructed, and the fluidity of emotion. For Cragg, the human being is the clearest illustration of this opposition, at once expressive and capable of great pathos, and rigorously regimented by a biological determination. To create his abstracted forms, Cragg uses formulas to distort his figures so that only the vaguest hint of a face can be seen in the columnar sculptures. Part of the enchantment of Good Face lies in its rich tactility, and the darkened bronze almost glows. It seems an act of magic, to change bronze into a rich, liquid black, yet material transformation is characteristic for Cragg, who believes that ‘material is everything’. As he has noted, ‘We consist of material and … so I can’t think of any reality that isn’t material. That includes light and electricity as phenomena of the material, that includes the thought processes of our intellects which are also properties of material, that includes our emotions, which are also caused… by highly evolved material processes’ (T. Cragg, quoted in Tony Cragg, In and Out of Material, exh. cat., Akademie der Künste, Berlin 2006, p. 12). These material connections are what links the duelling forces of the Rational Beings, acutely felt in Good Face. Defying gravity yet governed by a centrifugal force, the life-size sculpture seems at once a chance product and a material’s destiny.
Tony Cragg’s Good Face is twisting, writhing form, a fragmented being rising from a tempest of bronze. Created in 2007, the work is part of Cragg’s series Rational Beings, which probes the relationship between what is logically and mathematically constructed, and the fluidity of emotion. For Cragg, the human being is the clearest illustration of this opposition, at once expressive and capable of great pathos, and rigorously regimented by a biological determination. To create his abstracted forms, Cragg uses formulas to distort his figures so that only the vaguest hint of a face can be seen in the columnar sculptures. Part of the enchantment of Good Face lies in its rich tactility, and the darkened bronze almost glows. It seems an act of magic, to change bronze into a rich, liquid black, yet material transformation is characteristic for Cragg, who believes that ‘material is everything’. As he has noted, ‘We consist of material and … so I can’t think of any reality that isn’t material. That includes light and electricity as phenomena of the material, that includes the thought processes of our intellects which are also properties of material, that includes our emotions, which are also caused… by highly evolved material processes’ (T. Cragg, quoted in Tony Cragg, In and Out of Material, exh. cat., Akademie der Künste, Berlin 2006, p. 12). These material connections are what links the duelling forces of the Rational Beings, acutely felt in Good Face. Defying gravity yet governed by a centrifugal force, the life-size sculpture seems at once a chance product and a material’s destiny.