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拍品专文
‘[Calzolari’s] works so often engage in a kind of alchemy, linking him to older, European traditions’ —J. Rondeau
‘Light has played a fundamental and varied role throughout the history of painting: in the Middle Ages light was a visual expression of the divine; during the Enlightenment, it was symbolically equated with reason; in the Romantic era it was thought that all living beings strove towards the light and yearned for its inherent spirituality; in the Modern age, there has been growing awareness that life, colors and the world of objects is revealed through light’ — C. Meyer-Stoll
One of Arte Povera’s most talented and innovative practitioners, Pier Paolo Calzolari takes his materials from the everyday world, bringing quotidian ritual to the realm of aesthetic experience as a means to focus on the fragility of objects and materials. Attempting to saturate the senses in order to reveal the nature of abstract thought and the essence of matter, Calzolari’s objects exhibit a poetic stillness and quiet, laced with an appreciation of the ephemeral. Pensive, rather than conceptual, Untitled (1975) exudes a formal boldness tempered by an undercurrent of melancholy as the candles melt elegantly down the surface of the lead sheets. A series of candles placed on a small altar and backed by a sombre metallic black support, Untitled combines the salvaged materials of Arte Povera with a cathartic, almost religious, means of meditative viewing, and the artist’s own alchemical quest for the reproduction of pure white.
A radical Italian art movement from the late 1960s to 1970s, Arte Povera, meaning ‘poor art’, explored a range of unconventional processes and nontraditional ‘everyday’ materials beyond the quasi-precious traditional modes of oil on canvas, cast bronze or carved marble. With a complete openness towards both material and process, the so-called poveristi employed throwaway materials in an effort to disrupt the values of the commercialized contemporary gallery system. The group was introduced by the Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant in 1967, whose pioneering texts as well as a series of key exhibitions provided a collective identity for a number of young Italian artists based in Turin, Milan, Genoa and Rome. Emerging from within a network of urban cultural activity, Arte Povera gathered its momentum as the Italian economic miracle of the immediate post-War years collapsed into a chaos of economic and political instability.
While sharing many similarities with his fellow poveristi, such as Mario Merz and Giovanni Anselmo, Calzolari’s art often veered in a much more eccentric direction, bringing elements of Renaissance painting and the Romantic movement into pieces that could at times seem rather ornate in comparison with much art of the postmodern era. ‘Calzolari, it seems to me, is always searching for the absolute, expressed through natural elements, like moss and lead, or natural phenomena, like fire and ice,’ explained James Rondeau, chairman of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. ‘His works so often engage in a kind of alchemy, linking him to older, European traditions’ (J. Rondeau, quoted in R. Kennedy, ‘Door Between Galleries Lets in an Artist’s Vision,’ The New York Times, 27 April 2012).
Indeed, the common use of fire, ice, salt, lead, tobacco, moss, burnt wood and oyster shells, the four alchemical elements, seem to reign supreme within Calzolari’s oeuvre. And while historically alchemists were fixated with the pursuit of transmuting base metals into gold or concocting the universal elixir for immortality, Calzolari has quested the task of reproducing the perfect white—or the ‘essence’ of white—within his art. Believing the perfect white cannot be recreated as pigment, the artist’s unique pursuit has lead him to his most defining materials—fire and frost. This realization arose from his youthful observation of light reflecting off white marble at the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice, as he has explained:
‘When I was a child I went to live in Venice, an isolated postwar city, where the light was still psychic. An invasive light, it possessed objects and physical realities, making them abstractly tactile. It gave the sensation that objects were made of light, physical but impalpable. Then I remember the lines of the Venetian bridges, the most ancient ones made of wood, which rest on, weigh down upon the streets with their soft and sensual outlines, almost abandoned between water and land. Then there were the examples, from museum to life, from Giorgione to Tancredi, with their ideas about light as painting, but I didn’t understand how to successfully translate this condition of extreme chromatic sensitivity, until I saw the benches along the Servi lagoon, illuminated, but impregnated with a rosy light that made them seem weightless, or as if they had a weight, that of the light, resting upon their planes. They had a weight, but they were without physicality’ (P. Calzolari, interview with G. Celant, ‘Toward the Sublime,’ in G. Celant, Pier Paolo Calzolari: Interview/Essays, exh. cat., Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, 1988, p. 7).
Indeed, it is an understatement to say that light—in particular fire—has played a significant role in human history since the dawn of man. From prerecorded history to the myth of Prometheus through the Age of Industrialism to the present day, fire and light have held the cornerstone of civilization. In art too, flames and candles have played a central role. In relation to Calzolari’s candle pieces, Christiane Meyer-Stoll, curator and conservator at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein has explained, ‘Light has played a fundamental and varied role throughout the history of painting: in the Middle Ages light was a visual expression of the divine; during the Enlightenment, it was symbolically equated with reason; in the Romantic era it was thought that all living beings strove towards the light and yearned for its inherent spirituality; in the Modern age, there has been growing awareness that life, colors and the world of objects is revealed through light’ (C. Meyer-Stoll, ‘Pier Paolo Calzolari: Senza titolo (Lumino), 1966,’ in F. Malsch, C. Meyer-Stoll, and V. Pero (eds.), Che Fare? Arte Povera - The Historic Years, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2010, p. 108). Combining the radical notions of Arte Povera with the rich history of light in painting, Calzolari’s Untitled is a highly contemplative work composed of nuanced and symbolically potent materials.
‘Light has played a fundamental and varied role throughout the history of painting: in the Middle Ages light was a visual expression of the divine; during the Enlightenment, it was symbolically equated with reason; in the Romantic era it was thought that all living beings strove towards the light and yearned for its inherent spirituality; in the Modern age, there has been growing awareness that life, colors and the world of objects is revealed through light’ — C. Meyer-Stoll
One of Arte Povera’s most talented and innovative practitioners, Pier Paolo Calzolari takes his materials from the everyday world, bringing quotidian ritual to the realm of aesthetic experience as a means to focus on the fragility of objects and materials. Attempting to saturate the senses in order to reveal the nature of abstract thought and the essence of matter, Calzolari’s objects exhibit a poetic stillness and quiet, laced with an appreciation of the ephemeral. Pensive, rather than conceptual, Untitled (1975) exudes a formal boldness tempered by an undercurrent of melancholy as the candles melt elegantly down the surface of the lead sheets. A series of candles placed on a small altar and backed by a sombre metallic black support, Untitled combines the salvaged materials of Arte Povera with a cathartic, almost religious, means of meditative viewing, and the artist’s own alchemical quest for the reproduction of pure white.
A radical Italian art movement from the late 1960s to 1970s, Arte Povera, meaning ‘poor art’, explored a range of unconventional processes and nontraditional ‘everyday’ materials beyond the quasi-precious traditional modes of oil on canvas, cast bronze or carved marble. With a complete openness towards both material and process, the so-called poveristi employed throwaway materials in an effort to disrupt the values of the commercialized contemporary gallery system. The group was introduced by the Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant in 1967, whose pioneering texts as well as a series of key exhibitions provided a collective identity for a number of young Italian artists based in Turin, Milan, Genoa and Rome. Emerging from within a network of urban cultural activity, Arte Povera gathered its momentum as the Italian economic miracle of the immediate post-War years collapsed into a chaos of economic and political instability.
While sharing many similarities with his fellow poveristi, such as Mario Merz and Giovanni Anselmo, Calzolari’s art often veered in a much more eccentric direction, bringing elements of Renaissance painting and the Romantic movement into pieces that could at times seem rather ornate in comparison with much art of the postmodern era. ‘Calzolari, it seems to me, is always searching for the absolute, expressed through natural elements, like moss and lead, or natural phenomena, like fire and ice,’ explained James Rondeau, chairman of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. ‘His works so often engage in a kind of alchemy, linking him to older, European traditions’ (J. Rondeau, quoted in R. Kennedy, ‘Door Between Galleries Lets in an Artist’s Vision,’ The New York Times, 27 April 2012).
Indeed, the common use of fire, ice, salt, lead, tobacco, moss, burnt wood and oyster shells, the four alchemical elements, seem to reign supreme within Calzolari’s oeuvre. And while historically alchemists were fixated with the pursuit of transmuting base metals into gold or concocting the universal elixir for immortality, Calzolari has quested the task of reproducing the perfect white—or the ‘essence’ of white—within his art. Believing the perfect white cannot be recreated as pigment, the artist’s unique pursuit has lead him to his most defining materials—fire and frost. This realization arose from his youthful observation of light reflecting off white marble at the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice, as he has explained:
‘When I was a child I went to live in Venice, an isolated postwar city, where the light was still psychic. An invasive light, it possessed objects and physical realities, making them abstractly tactile. It gave the sensation that objects were made of light, physical but impalpable. Then I remember the lines of the Venetian bridges, the most ancient ones made of wood, which rest on, weigh down upon the streets with their soft and sensual outlines, almost abandoned between water and land. Then there were the examples, from museum to life, from Giorgione to Tancredi, with their ideas about light as painting, but I didn’t understand how to successfully translate this condition of extreme chromatic sensitivity, until I saw the benches along the Servi lagoon, illuminated, but impregnated with a rosy light that made them seem weightless, or as if they had a weight, that of the light, resting upon their planes. They had a weight, but they were without physicality’ (P. Calzolari, interview with G. Celant, ‘Toward the Sublime,’ in G. Celant, Pier Paolo Calzolari: Interview/Essays, exh. cat., Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, 1988, p. 7).
Indeed, it is an understatement to say that light—in particular fire—has played a significant role in human history since the dawn of man. From prerecorded history to the myth of Prometheus through the Age of Industrialism to the present day, fire and light have held the cornerstone of civilization. In art too, flames and candles have played a central role. In relation to Calzolari’s candle pieces, Christiane Meyer-Stoll, curator and conservator at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein has explained, ‘Light has played a fundamental and varied role throughout the history of painting: in the Middle Ages light was a visual expression of the divine; during the Enlightenment, it was symbolically equated with reason; in the Romantic era it was thought that all living beings strove towards the light and yearned for its inherent spirituality; in the Modern age, there has been growing awareness that life, colors and the world of objects is revealed through light’ (C. Meyer-Stoll, ‘Pier Paolo Calzolari: Senza titolo (Lumino), 1966,’ in F. Malsch, C. Meyer-Stoll, and V. Pero (eds.), Che Fare? Arte Povera - The Historic Years, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2010, p. 108). Combining the radical notions of Arte Povera with the rich history of light in painting, Calzolari’s Untitled is a highly contemplative work composed of nuanced and symbolically potent materials.