.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
This work is registered with the Archivio Mario Merz under no. 341/TL/1977.
As an animal that secretes its own shell, the snail, is one that had particular resonance for Mario Merz. In addition to making its own house - and one with which it can and does travel - the snail's shell, like that of all the other animals that he has made use of in his art, (the nautilus shell, the iguana's tail or the crocodile's tail for example) - is a naturally evolved form that grows in accordance with a numerical sequence of expansion, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 onwards (potentially) to infinity. This sequence, in which each number is the sum or resolution of the previous two, is a 'magical' mathematical sequence of expansion, often found in nature and known as the Fibonnaci sequence ever since it was first discerned by the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in 1202. From around 1970 onwards, the Fibonacci series also became a guiding principle for the expansive logic of much of Merz's art.
Executed in 1977, this untitled painting is one of a series of paintings of a Fibonacci spiral incorporating snails that Merz made in the mid-1970s. It refers directly to one of the artist's first demonstrative expressions of the Fibonacci series operating in nature - the film he made in collaboration with Gerry Schum in 1970 entitled Lumaca (Snail). Lumaca came about, Merz recalled, 'because I had once got hold of a snail, and, using a magnifying glass, I noticed that its shell had the spaces in spiral form, so I took a sheet of glass and placed a snail on top of it, and from the snail, I drew the spiral, once again using the Fibonacci sequence.' (Merz quoted in Mario Merz, exh. cat., Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2005, p. 50).
The spiral - formed according to an expanding sequence of proportions that grow according to the Fibonacci sequence - is indicative of a natural law of expansion without limits. In contrast, although their forms reflect this spiral, the snail shell in the film and in Fibonacci-sequence form here in this painting, represent an enclosed spiral that serves as a nomadic house in much the same way as Merz's igloos - another form of naturally built and nomadic housing that Merz also used as expression of man living harmony and accordance with the eternal laws of nature. It is in this way that this painting of a numerical proliferation and expansion of snails appears to represent a harmonious union of microcosm and macrocosm through an elegant conjunction of mathematical, natural and graphic form.
As an animal that secretes its own shell, the snail, is one that had particular resonance for Mario Merz. In addition to making its own house - and one with which it can and does travel - the snail's shell, like that of all the other animals that he has made use of in his art, (the nautilus shell, the iguana's tail or the crocodile's tail for example) - is a naturally evolved form that grows in accordance with a numerical sequence of expansion, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 onwards (potentially) to infinity. This sequence, in which each number is the sum or resolution of the previous two, is a 'magical' mathematical sequence of expansion, often found in nature and known as the Fibonnaci sequence ever since it was first discerned by the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in 1202. From around 1970 onwards, the Fibonacci series also became a guiding principle for the expansive logic of much of Merz's art.
Executed in 1977, this untitled painting is one of a series of paintings of a Fibonacci spiral incorporating snails that Merz made in the mid-1970s. It refers directly to one of the artist's first demonstrative expressions of the Fibonacci series operating in nature - the film he made in collaboration with Gerry Schum in 1970 entitled Lumaca (Snail). Lumaca came about, Merz recalled, 'because I had once got hold of a snail, and, using a magnifying glass, I noticed that its shell had the spaces in spiral form, so I took a sheet of glass and placed a snail on top of it, and from the snail, I drew the spiral, once again using the Fibonacci sequence.' (Merz quoted in Mario Merz, exh. cat., Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2005, p. 50).
The spiral - formed according to an expanding sequence of proportions that grow according to the Fibonacci sequence - is indicative of a natural law of expansion without limits. In contrast, although their forms reflect this spiral, the snail shell in the film and in Fibonacci-sequence form here in this painting, represent an enclosed spiral that serves as a nomadic house in much the same way as Merz's igloos - another form of naturally built and nomadic housing that Merz also used as expression of man living harmony and accordance with the eternal laws of nature. It is in this way that this painting of a numerical proliferation and expansion of snails appears to represent a harmonious union of microcosm and macrocosm through an elegant conjunction of mathematical, natural and graphic form.