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拍品专文
'For me the “destruction” element in form was my most important discovery, and the most authentic both in terms of myself and my times' (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York 1982, p. 52).
With its gleaming surface polished to sublime brilliance, Colonna a grandi fogli (per Mondadori) is an elegant example of Arnaldo Pomodoro’s celebrated sculptural columns. Executed in 1972, at the height of the artist’s early practice, the work was created as a study for a larger commission for the Milan headquarters of Mondadori, one of Europe’s largest publishing houses. Using the process of lost wax casting, Pomodoro plays with the dichotomy between solid and void, meticulously sculpting the areas that will subsequently become negative space before filling the mold with bronze. Like a mysterious relic of a past era eroded by time, or a gleaming beacon of a future technological age, the work is both an organic form and geometric structure, simultaneously natural and mechanised, governed by the complex interplay of light and texture. The work’s inner erosions are shrouded in mystery; a labyrinthine realm of interlocking facets. Like parts of a machine or the characters of an ancient language, these intricately conceived structures seem to form a logical pattern, yet one that can never be read or fully comprehended. Reconciling the brutality of the industrial present with the beauty of the classical past, Colonna a grandi fogli (per Mondadori) expresses Pomodoro’s anxiety about the viability of sculpture in the age of technology.
Pomodoro’s practice is founded on the relationships between creation and destruction, past and present. On a trip to New York in 1959, the artist had been struck by an exhibition of Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art. On viewing Brancusi’s work, Pomodoro had an artistic epiphany, and was deeply affected by the wholeness and purity of the Romanian sculptor’s work, its absolute perfection of form and luxuriant, immaculate surfaces. Inspired to move away from two-dimensional sculpture, Pomodoro increasingly began to experiment with solid geometric forms: cubes, columns, disks and spheres. In contrast to Brancusi’s abstract forms however, Pomodoro wanted to reveal what was inside the solids, exposing their interiors; ‘I imagined them in my mind’s eye full of worm holes and corrosion, and then the idea came to me of setting all of my particular signs in the interior of these geometric solids, turning the abstract … inside out’ (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, ‘Monuments and Anti-monuments’, in F. Gualdoni (ed.), Arnaldo Pomodoro, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Milan 2007, p. 59).
For Pomodoro, the complete perfection and impenetrability of Brancusi’s sculpture was no longer feasible in the context of the contemporary, technological world. Pomodoro explained, ‘The perfection of form in Brancusi was so beautiful and mysterious; what can one do after Brancusi… Then at a certain moment I said to myself, really this perfection of the form in our time is inappropriate; it has to be destroyed. For me the “destruction” element in form was my most important discovery, and the most authentic both in terms of myself and my times’ (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York 1982, p. 52). The destruction inherent in the fissures and corroded surface of his sculptures was a reflection of the anxiety about the destructive powers that new forms of technology possessed. While technology had allowed astronauts to soar into space in futuristic rockets, it had also unleashed a new form of warfare with the atomic bomb, and the threat of nuclear war loomed in the consciousness of the world. In Pomodoro’s sculptures, the interplay between positive and negative space – between presence and absence, effusion and erosion – exquisitely captures this psychological tension.
With its gleaming surface polished to sublime brilliance, Colonna a grandi fogli (per Mondadori) is an elegant example of Arnaldo Pomodoro’s celebrated sculptural columns. Executed in 1972, at the height of the artist’s early practice, the work was created as a study for a larger commission for the Milan headquarters of Mondadori, one of Europe’s largest publishing houses. Using the process of lost wax casting, Pomodoro plays with the dichotomy between solid and void, meticulously sculpting the areas that will subsequently become negative space before filling the mold with bronze. Like a mysterious relic of a past era eroded by time, or a gleaming beacon of a future technological age, the work is both an organic form and geometric structure, simultaneously natural and mechanised, governed by the complex interplay of light and texture. The work’s inner erosions are shrouded in mystery; a labyrinthine realm of interlocking facets. Like parts of a machine or the characters of an ancient language, these intricately conceived structures seem to form a logical pattern, yet one that can never be read or fully comprehended. Reconciling the brutality of the industrial present with the beauty of the classical past, Colonna a grandi fogli (per Mondadori) expresses Pomodoro’s anxiety about the viability of sculpture in the age of technology.
Pomodoro’s practice is founded on the relationships between creation and destruction, past and present. On a trip to New York in 1959, the artist had been struck by an exhibition of Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art. On viewing Brancusi’s work, Pomodoro had an artistic epiphany, and was deeply affected by the wholeness and purity of the Romanian sculptor’s work, its absolute perfection of form and luxuriant, immaculate surfaces. Inspired to move away from two-dimensional sculpture, Pomodoro increasingly began to experiment with solid geometric forms: cubes, columns, disks and spheres. In contrast to Brancusi’s abstract forms however, Pomodoro wanted to reveal what was inside the solids, exposing their interiors; ‘I imagined them in my mind’s eye full of worm holes and corrosion, and then the idea came to me of setting all of my particular signs in the interior of these geometric solids, turning the abstract … inside out’ (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, ‘Monuments and Anti-monuments’, in F. Gualdoni (ed.), Arnaldo Pomodoro, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Milan 2007, p. 59).
For Pomodoro, the complete perfection and impenetrability of Brancusi’s sculpture was no longer feasible in the context of the contemporary, technological world. Pomodoro explained, ‘The perfection of form in Brancusi was so beautiful and mysterious; what can one do after Brancusi… Then at a certain moment I said to myself, really this perfection of the form in our time is inappropriate; it has to be destroyed. For me the “destruction” element in form was my most important discovery, and the most authentic both in terms of myself and my times’ (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York 1982, p. 52). The destruction inherent in the fissures and corroded surface of his sculptures was a reflection of the anxiety about the destructive powers that new forms of technology possessed. While technology had allowed astronauts to soar into space in futuristic rockets, it had also unleashed a new form of warfare with the atomic bomb, and the threat of nuclear war loomed in the consciousness of the world. In Pomodoro’s sculptures, the interplay between positive and negative space – between presence and absence, effusion and erosion – exquisitely captures this psychological tension.