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拍品专文
This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, under no. 2520.
'The greatest joy on earth consists in inventing the world the way it is without inventing anything in the process' (Boetti quoted in Alighiero Boetti, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt Am Main, 1998 p. 297).
This 'work of construction... is in fact 'test', the only rule being that of tracing everything. There are so many imaginable and possible ways of tracing the little squares differently. That is, having a space on which to act - and it can even be minimal, almost nothing, in other words a pencil and a piece of squared paper - you have to set yourself a rule, decide if you want to cover the whole surface or just half. This is where the 'test' comes in: because even if the space is small, the possibilities are vast. You could do it a 100, 000 different ways, each different from the other, and even in so limited a space it reveals how you felt and your state of mind while working. It is also a test of attitude. The mental state is inscribed in the drawing...everything conceivable has happened in these squares: I've inscribed both terrible and marvellous things into them.' (Boetti, 'Interview with Bonito Oliva', Milan 1973, in Alighiero Boetti, exh. cat., Vienna, 1997, p. 208).
Comprising of eleven large sheets of paper onto which a grid of squares has been hand-drawn by the artist in coloured pencil, Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (Contest between harmony and Invention) the second largest of the seminal series of works with this title that marked Alighiero Boetti's departure from a materialbased 'arte povera' aesthetic for a new conceptual direction.
'Until '68' Boetti recalled of the genesis of this series, 'I followed the direction of those well-known...('arte povera') exhibitions...then I started to doubt that direction. There had been too much focus on materials. In the end they had almost become more important than anything else. It had become like a grocery store. Therefore, yes, I remember that in the spring of '69 I left the studio I had in Turin, which had become a warehouse for materials, full of asbestos, lumber, cement, stones. I left everything exactly as it was and started again from scratch, with a pencil and a sheet of paper. I took a sheet of squared paper and made a picture, Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (Contest between harmony and Invention) . It consisted of re-tracing each square. This is what starting again meant for me.' (Boetti, quoted in G. Perretta 'L'art, gli artisti e il '68', Flash Art, no. 147, Milan, December 1988, p. 69).
The Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione works are the product of the artist's tracing in pencil on a paper laid over a sheet of printed graph paper the outlines of the squares visible beneath. The work is a seemingly dry, dispassionate construction made according to simple rules but which, in the end, on its completion conveys a powerful but also hidden sense of the intuitive, impulsive and distinctly human activity of the artist's hand contained within the cold rationality of the grid. In some respects the work could be considered as a typically post-Minimalist gesture. An intriguing combination of mind-numbing repetition (hence the contest against invention of the title) and meditative trance-like invention. It is also however, a work that gives a strong sense of a hidden disorder, making up the ordered grid in a way that hints strongly at an inherent mystery in the world, and reflects the interest in Eastern thought and religion that would so strongly emerge in Boetti's later creations.
As Boetti explained to Achille Bonito Oliva in 1973, this 'work of construction... is in fact a 'test', the only rule being that of tracing everything. There are so many imaginable and possible ways of tracing the little squares differently. That is, having a space on which to act - and it can even be minimal, almost nothing, in other words a pencil and a piece of squared paper - you have to set yourself a rule, decide if you want to cover the whole surface or just half. This is where the 'test' comes in: because even if the space is small, the possibilities are vast. You could do it a 100, 000 different ways, each different from the other, and even in so limited a space it reveals how you felt and your state of mind while working. It is also a test of attitude. The mental state is inscribed in the drawing. I could make psychoanalysis out of it all: everything conceivable has happened in these squares: I've inscribed both terrible and marvellous things into them.' (Boetti, 'Interview with Bonito Oliva', Milan 1973, in Alighiero Boetti, exh. cat., Vienna, 1997, p. 208).
Indeed, intrigued by the idea of concealing a secret within the grid of squares and also, ultimately, within plain view, Boetti found 'the experience of the small squares ... an incredible one, because I found myself in front of a completely new space, and with this support, or the idea of retracing it gave me tremendous freedom. All manner of things happened in those squares. I wrote some terrible or beautiful things, secret things which were then filled in because the only rule was to fill in, without any constraints of time or of reason, especially the first times.' (Boetti, quoted in A. Bonito Oliva, 'Alighiero Boetti', in Dialoghi d'artista. Incontri con l'arte contemporanea. 1970-1984, reproduced in Boetti, exh. cat., Turin, 1996, p. 211).
In what was perhaps in retrospect, an over-elaboration of this new way of working, aimed directly at conveying something of the hidden energy that went into the creation of these otherwise deceptively simple or even banal-looking works, Boetti's very first 'Cimento', which comprised of eight small sheets of paper, was also accompanied by a recording of the silence and soft noises made during the time it took to make the work. In respect of this, this work is also entitled this, 42 Ore (42 Hours). The title of the other 'Cimento works, 'Contest between Invention and Harmony' derives from the title of Antonio Vivaldi's Opus no. 8 - a series of twelve concertos published in 1725 of which the first four are the Four Seasons. As well as providing an appropriate title for these works' conceptual play between what would later become established as Boetti's concept of ordine e disordine (order and disorder) this music was of a type of played by Boetti himself.
As his first wife Anne Marie Sauzeau recalled of this period, at this time 'Alighiero played a lot of music, he played the tabla drums, practicing with compositions based on the proliferation of numbers as musical rhythms(and) interpreted 'Cimento' (contest) as meaning this type of exercise, how to do musical scales, which was also a 'contest' on paper.' (Anne Marie Sauzeau, interviewed by Francesca d'Alessio, quoted in J.C Amman, (ed.) Alighiero Boetti Catalogo generale, Milan, 2009, p. 82).
Indeed, in addition to being the first works of the new conceptual direction that laid the foundation for all Boetti's later work, the Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione works also mark the beginning of a graphic exploration of playing with systems of numbers and 'magic squares' that would also determine and define the form of much of the artist's later creations. 'Squares are always about time, Boetti once said, 'which is the only thing that is really magical, this incredible elasticity. Everything has its own time.' (Boetti, 'Interview with Bonito Oliva', op cit. 1997, p. 209). It is in this way that the pencil lines, making up the squares of the Cimento works can also be seen as the traces of Boetti's own temporal, human and mortal existence, tied to, but also infused in the work for the hours of the duration necessary to create it. This aspect of these works makes them also intensely autobiographical, yet, at the same time, there is no hint of the personal or intimate thoughts that Boetti made a point of putting into each work. These personal features, through the bland organised structure of the grid, have been eradicated but nevertheless create an intriguing tension between the hidden and the visible.
It is this tension and sense of duality, along with the duality of the notion of a 'contest' between 'harmony' and 'invention' that led to Boetti, in this extensive Cimento executed later in 1970 to use twin shades of red and blue pencil. In a move that anticipates both the colour and pairing system of his later biro works, the use of red lines and blue lines seemingly opposing or co-operating, partnering and/or pairing with one another in this work extends it further in the direction of Boetti's later working aesthetic of 'ordine e disordine' and what he believed to be the essentially twinned nature of everything.
His conceiving of this work as eleven sheets of paper also reinforces this notion. The number eleven, was Boetti's favourite number because it too was a twined number - the two '1's combing to form a unique single entity and identity in much the same way that he believed himself to be, and asserted himself as 'Alighiero e Boetti' (Alighiero and Boetti). Rooted in the extensive red-and-blue-generated grid of this large Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione therefore, the seeds of all of Boetti's later work can be discerned, somehow contained within the mysterious, puzzling and shimmering logic of its twin-coloured grid.
'The greatest joy on earth consists in inventing the world the way it is without inventing anything in the process' (Boetti quoted in Alighiero Boetti, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt Am Main, 1998 p. 297).
This 'work of construction... is in fact 'test', the only rule being that of tracing everything. There are so many imaginable and possible ways of tracing the little squares differently. That is, having a space on which to act - and it can even be minimal, almost nothing, in other words a pencil and a piece of squared paper - you have to set yourself a rule, decide if you want to cover the whole surface or just half. This is where the 'test' comes in: because even if the space is small, the possibilities are vast. You could do it a 100, 000 different ways, each different from the other, and even in so limited a space it reveals how you felt and your state of mind while working. It is also a test of attitude. The mental state is inscribed in the drawing...everything conceivable has happened in these squares: I've inscribed both terrible and marvellous things into them.' (Boetti, 'Interview with Bonito Oliva', Milan 1973, in Alighiero Boetti, exh. cat., Vienna, 1997, p. 208).
Comprising of eleven large sheets of paper onto which a grid of squares has been hand-drawn by the artist in coloured pencil, Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (Contest between harmony and Invention) the second largest of the seminal series of works with this title that marked Alighiero Boetti's departure from a materialbased 'arte povera' aesthetic for a new conceptual direction.
'Until '68' Boetti recalled of the genesis of this series, 'I followed the direction of those well-known...('arte povera') exhibitions...then I started to doubt that direction. There had been too much focus on materials. In the end they had almost become more important than anything else. It had become like a grocery store. Therefore, yes, I remember that in the spring of '69 I left the studio I had in Turin, which had become a warehouse for materials, full of asbestos, lumber, cement, stones. I left everything exactly as it was and started again from scratch, with a pencil and a sheet of paper. I took a sheet of squared paper and made a picture, Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (Contest between harmony and Invention) . It consisted of re-tracing each square. This is what starting again meant for me.' (Boetti, quoted in G. Perretta 'L'art, gli artisti e il '68', Flash Art, no. 147, Milan, December 1988, p. 69).
The Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione works are the product of the artist's tracing in pencil on a paper laid over a sheet of printed graph paper the outlines of the squares visible beneath. The work is a seemingly dry, dispassionate construction made according to simple rules but which, in the end, on its completion conveys a powerful but also hidden sense of the intuitive, impulsive and distinctly human activity of the artist's hand contained within the cold rationality of the grid. In some respects the work could be considered as a typically post-Minimalist gesture. An intriguing combination of mind-numbing repetition (hence the contest against invention of the title) and meditative trance-like invention. It is also however, a work that gives a strong sense of a hidden disorder, making up the ordered grid in a way that hints strongly at an inherent mystery in the world, and reflects the interest in Eastern thought and religion that would so strongly emerge in Boetti's later creations.
As Boetti explained to Achille Bonito Oliva in 1973, this 'work of construction... is in fact a 'test', the only rule being that of tracing everything. There are so many imaginable and possible ways of tracing the little squares differently. That is, having a space on which to act - and it can even be minimal, almost nothing, in other words a pencil and a piece of squared paper - you have to set yourself a rule, decide if you want to cover the whole surface or just half. This is where the 'test' comes in: because even if the space is small, the possibilities are vast. You could do it a 100, 000 different ways, each different from the other, and even in so limited a space it reveals how you felt and your state of mind while working. It is also a test of attitude. The mental state is inscribed in the drawing. I could make psychoanalysis out of it all: everything conceivable has happened in these squares: I've inscribed both terrible and marvellous things into them.' (Boetti, 'Interview with Bonito Oliva', Milan 1973, in Alighiero Boetti, exh. cat., Vienna, 1997, p. 208).
Indeed, intrigued by the idea of concealing a secret within the grid of squares and also, ultimately, within plain view, Boetti found 'the experience of the small squares ... an incredible one, because I found myself in front of a completely new space, and with this support, or the idea of retracing it gave me tremendous freedom. All manner of things happened in those squares. I wrote some terrible or beautiful things, secret things which were then filled in because the only rule was to fill in, without any constraints of time or of reason, especially the first times.' (Boetti, quoted in A. Bonito Oliva, 'Alighiero Boetti', in Dialoghi d'artista. Incontri con l'arte contemporanea. 1970-1984, reproduced in Boetti, exh. cat., Turin, 1996, p. 211).
In what was perhaps in retrospect, an over-elaboration of this new way of working, aimed directly at conveying something of the hidden energy that went into the creation of these otherwise deceptively simple or even banal-looking works, Boetti's very first 'Cimento', which comprised of eight small sheets of paper, was also accompanied by a recording of the silence and soft noises made during the time it took to make the work. In respect of this, this work is also entitled this, 42 Ore (42 Hours). The title of the other 'Cimento works, 'Contest between Invention and Harmony' derives from the title of Antonio Vivaldi's Opus no. 8 - a series of twelve concertos published in 1725 of which the first four are the Four Seasons. As well as providing an appropriate title for these works' conceptual play between what would later become established as Boetti's concept of ordine e disordine (order and disorder) this music was of a type of played by Boetti himself.
As his first wife Anne Marie Sauzeau recalled of this period, at this time 'Alighiero played a lot of music, he played the tabla drums, practicing with compositions based on the proliferation of numbers as musical rhythms(and) interpreted 'Cimento' (contest) as meaning this type of exercise, how to do musical scales, which was also a 'contest' on paper.' (Anne Marie Sauzeau, interviewed by Francesca d'Alessio, quoted in J.C Amman, (ed.) Alighiero Boetti Catalogo generale, Milan, 2009, p. 82).
Indeed, in addition to being the first works of the new conceptual direction that laid the foundation for all Boetti's later work, the Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione works also mark the beginning of a graphic exploration of playing with systems of numbers and 'magic squares' that would also determine and define the form of much of the artist's later creations. 'Squares are always about time, Boetti once said, 'which is the only thing that is really magical, this incredible elasticity. Everything has its own time.' (Boetti, 'Interview with Bonito Oliva', op cit. 1997, p. 209). It is in this way that the pencil lines, making up the squares of the Cimento works can also be seen as the traces of Boetti's own temporal, human and mortal existence, tied to, but also infused in the work for the hours of the duration necessary to create it. This aspect of these works makes them also intensely autobiographical, yet, at the same time, there is no hint of the personal or intimate thoughts that Boetti made a point of putting into each work. These personal features, through the bland organised structure of the grid, have been eradicated but nevertheless create an intriguing tension between the hidden and the visible.
It is this tension and sense of duality, along with the duality of the notion of a 'contest' between 'harmony' and 'invention' that led to Boetti, in this extensive Cimento executed later in 1970 to use twin shades of red and blue pencil. In a move that anticipates both the colour and pairing system of his later biro works, the use of red lines and blue lines seemingly opposing or co-operating, partnering and/or pairing with one another in this work extends it further in the direction of Boetti's later working aesthetic of 'ordine e disordine' and what he believed to be the essentially twinned nature of everything.
His conceiving of this work as eleven sheets of paper also reinforces this notion. The number eleven, was Boetti's favourite number because it too was a twined number - the two '1's combing to form a unique single entity and identity in much the same way that he believed himself to be, and asserted himself as 'Alighiero e Boetti' (Alighiero and Boetti). Rooted in the extensive red-and-blue-generated grid of this large Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione therefore, the seeds of all of Boetti's later work can be discerned, somehow contained within the mysterious, puzzling and shimmering logic of its twin-coloured grid.