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拍品专文
'I have never had an obsessive relationship, as some have said, with the materials I have worked with over the years. What I've sought to draw out of them is only their property. Iron, for example, suggested a sense of hardness, weight, sharpness. I was not interested in "representing" iron. It was immediately obvious that the material was iron. I wanted instead to explain what iron was capable of' (Burri, quoted in G. Serafini, Burri: The Measure and the Phenomenon, Milan, 1999, p. 160).
With its gnarled and blistered surface, Alberto Burri's Ferro, executed in 1958, is an early example of one of Burri's most celebrated and revolutionary series. Burri had only begun his Ferri the previous year. In these works, Burri took sheets of newly rolled metal - in stark contrast to the often more worn materials that had featured in his earlier works - and submitted them to a series of processes that allowed him to explore the nature of the metal itself. By soldering, blasting, folding and attaching pieces of metal, he created a composition that was at once abstract and which also allowed him to explore and expose the nature of the material itself. Through this use of metal sheets, Burri has created an aesthetic that at once pays tribute to the age of technology and industry while also tapping into the atmosphere of existential angst that characterised so much of the European avant-garde during this period.
In his Ferri , Burri continued to explore new means of finding an alternative to the traditional painterly marks that had been favoured by artists over the centuries. Indeed, Burri was also seeking an alternative to some of the gestures pioneered by his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, for instance the proponents of Art Informel in Europe and the Abstract Expressionists in the United States of America, where Burri often received such a warm reception. Burri's revolutionary markmaking in his Ferri was an evolution of his celebrated Sacchi, where he had stitched pieces of material together. That act of sewing, traditionally linked to handicrafts with associations of femininity and to the stitches of medicine, provided a stark contrast to the frenetic application of paint of many of his Action Painter contemporaries. The machismo of the Cedar Tavern and of Jackson Pollock's drips found an intriguing counterpoint in Burri's Sacchi, and likewise in Ferro. Here, those associations with stitching remain in the soldering that is so evident on the surface, which itself recalls scars and wounds, hinting at Burri's original medical vocation and perhaps too to his experiences in the Italian army, first in the mid-1930s and later in the Second World War, where he was captured and interned as a Prisoner-of-War in Hereford, Texas for several years. Burri has taken his metal and has twisted it, cut it, soldered it, nailed it, creating a new arsenal of artistic marks.
In a sense, Ferro provides a parallel development to that of another Italian post-war artist, Lucio Fontana. While Fontana, who had begun as a sculptor, later brought a sculptor's perspective to the act of painting by gouging open the surface, Burri instead brought the actual material and process of sculpture into his own paintings, resulting in jagged, immediate works such as Ferro, which jut into the viewer's space.
Many of Burri's works from the period after his return from captivity have been associated both with his wartime experiences and with the appearance of Italy after the end of the conflict. The landscape, wrought with damage and in desperate need of healing, found itself recreated in microcosm in Burri's Sacchi. In Ferro too the material has been shaped and treated in such a way that its twisted and scorched sheets of metal echo the tattered fabric of post-war Italy, recalling damaged buildings as well as the wrecked military hardware that had been a tragic feature of its landscape. In his Sacchi and in Ferro alike, though, Burri's purpose in taking his cue from the ruins that provided a backdrop to his return from the War was not criticism or indictment, but instead an incredible positivity. Both in his welding and in his sewing, Burri was enacting a healing process that found a more mystical parallel in the works of another former student of medicine who had seen action during the Second World War, Joseph Beuys.
The transformation that Burri has enacted in Ferro, where he has taken fresh metal and scarred and twisted it, appears in part destructive. Yet at the same time, it is a celebration of the material itself. By taking fresh metal, unlike the often-discarded materials that featured in many of his other works, and subjecting it to these trailblazing processes, Burri has revealed the iron to us in another guise, from another perspective. Crucially, where other artforms often involve the addition of material, especially in the case of the paint traditionally applied to a support, Burri has in many parts revealed the areas underneath his surface, exposing the raw metal through the lesions and abrasions of Ferro This is a process of reduction, yet one which adds to our understanding and appreciation of the material itself. While the political and historical background of Burri's development as an artist is impossible to ignore, it is the sheer objecthood of works such as Ferro that was truly revolutionary, the extent to which it stood on its own, as did his other works. They contain no references, but instead contain only themselves.
Like his Sacchi and Plastici, Burri's Ferro deliberately excludes the outside world, existing as an autonomous object. It comes as no surprise to find that Burri's example came to influence artists as varied as Robert Rauschenberg and those associated with Arte Povera. It was during his imprisonment that Burri had turned towards art. His initially figurative works had gradually evolved into abstract compositions whose appearance would provide the foundations for many of the works in different media that Burri would create during the rest of his life. Even in Ferro, there is a clear design: the near-vertical edges towards the left of the work appear more rigid than the hesitantly arcing forms that dominate the rest of the surface; all this is punctuated by the various nails, solderings and other marks that articulate the metal and lend it such a varied, fascinating appearance. In this way, Burri has used the building blocks of his early abstraction all the better to extract the essence of the material itself.
With its gnarled and blistered surface, Alberto Burri's Ferro, executed in 1958, is an early example of one of Burri's most celebrated and revolutionary series. Burri had only begun his Ferri the previous year. In these works, Burri took sheets of newly rolled metal - in stark contrast to the often more worn materials that had featured in his earlier works - and submitted them to a series of processes that allowed him to explore the nature of the metal itself. By soldering, blasting, folding and attaching pieces of metal, he created a composition that was at once abstract and which also allowed him to explore and expose the nature of the material itself. Through this use of metal sheets, Burri has created an aesthetic that at once pays tribute to the age of technology and industry while also tapping into the atmosphere of existential angst that characterised so much of the European avant-garde during this period.
In his Ferri , Burri continued to explore new means of finding an alternative to the traditional painterly marks that had been favoured by artists over the centuries. Indeed, Burri was also seeking an alternative to some of the gestures pioneered by his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, for instance the proponents of Art Informel in Europe and the Abstract Expressionists in the United States of America, where Burri often received such a warm reception. Burri's revolutionary markmaking in his Ferri was an evolution of his celebrated Sacchi, where he had stitched pieces of material together. That act of sewing, traditionally linked to handicrafts with associations of femininity and to the stitches of medicine, provided a stark contrast to the frenetic application of paint of many of his Action Painter contemporaries. The machismo of the Cedar Tavern and of Jackson Pollock's drips found an intriguing counterpoint in Burri's Sacchi, and likewise in Ferro. Here, those associations with stitching remain in the soldering that is so evident on the surface, which itself recalls scars and wounds, hinting at Burri's original medical vocation and perhaps too to his experiences in the Italian army, first in the mid-1930s and later in the Second World War, where he was captured and interned as a Prisoner-of-War in Hereford, Texas for several years. Burri has taken his metal and has twisted it, cut it, soldered it, nailed it, creating a new arsenal of artistic marks.
In a sense, Ferro provides a parallel development to that of another Italian post-war artist, Lucio Fontana. While Fontana, who had begun as a sculptor, later brought a sculptor's perspective to the act of painting by gouging open the surface, Burri instead brought the actual material and process of sculpture into his own paintings, resulting in jagged, immediate works such as Ferro, which jut into the viewer's space.
Many of Burri's works from the period after his return from captivity have been associated both with his wartime experiences and with the appearance of Italy after the end of the conflict. The landscape, wrought with damage and in desperate need of healing, found itself recreated in microcosm in Burri's Sacchi. In Ferro too the material has been shaped and treated in such a way that its twisted and scorched sheets of metal echo the tattered fabric of post-war Italy, recalling damaged buildings as well as the wrecked military hardware that had been a tragic feature of its landscape. In his Sacchi and in Ferro alike, though, Burri's purpose in taking his cue from the ruins that provided a backdrop to his return from the War was not criticism or indictment, but instead an incredible positivity. Both in his welding and in his sewing, Burri was enacting a healing process that found a more mystical parallel in the works of another former student of medicine who had seen action during the Second World War, Joseph Beuys.
The transformation that Burri has enacted in Ferro, where he has taken fresh metal and scarred and twisted it, appears in part destructive. Yet at the same time, it is a celebration of the material itself. By taking fresh metal, unlike the often-discarded materials that featured in many of his other works, and subjecting it to these trailblazing processes, Burri has revealed the iron to us in another guise, from another perspective. Crucially, where other artforms often involve the addition of material, especially in the case of the paint traditionally applied to a support, Burri has in many parts revealed the areas underneath his surface, exposing the raw metal through the lesions and abrasions of Ferro This is a process of reduction, yet one which adds to our understanding and appreciation of the material itself. While the political and historical background of Burri's development as an artist is impossible to ignore, it is the sheer objecthood of works such as Ferro that was truly revolutionary, the extent to which it stood on its own, as did his other works. They contain no references, but instead contain only themselves.
Like his Sacchi and Plastici, Burri's Ferro deliberately excludes the outside world, existing as an autonomous object. It comes as no surprise to find that Burri's example came to influence artists as varied as Robert Rauschenberg and those associated with Arte Povera. It was during his imprisonment that Burri had turned towards art. His initially figurative works had gradually evolved into abstract compositions whose appearance would provide the foundations for many of the works in different media that Burri would create during the rest of his life. Even in Ferro, there is a clear design: the near-vertical edges towards the left of the work appear more rigid than the hesitantly arcing forms that dominate the rest of the surface; all this is punctuated by the various nails, solderings and other marks that articulate the metal and lend it such a varied, fascinating appearance. In this way, Burri has used the building blocks of his early abstraction all the better to extract the essence of the material itself.