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拍品专文
A brilliant stretch of whiteness sweeps across Miquel Barceló’s 1988 painting Coprolithes I. Exemplifying the monochromatic paleness that dominates Barceló’s canvases from this period, the work seems to renounce the Western visual culture in which he was so heavily steeped in favour of a more contemplative, measured and primordial way of life. Barceló was deeply influenced by his extensive travels during the ‘80s, none more so than in West Africa, where he frequently returned to live for long stints of time. Here he could reflect on the slow-paced passing of time under harsh desert conditions, blinding sunlight, and barren, rocky landscapes. Enchanted by such extremities of circumstance, he noted how ‘The light in the desert is so intense that things disappear, and the shadows are more intense than the things themselves’ (M. Barceló quoted in Miquel Barceló: Obra sobre papel 1979-1999, exh. cat., Madrid 1999, p. iv). Positioned from above in Coprolithes I, as if gazing down from a birds-eye view, the viewer gains a vivid, almost visceral sense of such arid desert scenes, ablaze under a scorching and relentless sun.
In this work, Barceló’s dazzlingly stark canvas is interrupted only by the thick impasto paint and roughly textured surface, swelling and bulging from the pictorial plane at sporadic intervals. Created through an accumulation of paint and mixed media elements, the use of organic matter in his work, so evocative of coprolites and fossils from prehistoric times, fascinated Barceló. ‘For the white pictures,’ he explained, ‘I used anything from grains of rice to almonds, beans and chickpeas in order to cause irregularities in the surface. Later they were simply lumps of paint’ (M. Barceló quoted in Miquel Barceló 1984-1994, exh. cat., London 1994, p. 94). He delighted in the dust that would accumulate on his canvases in the hot African heat, filling them with a metaphysical quality that had hitherto been absent in his earlier works. From this period onwards, the act of painting became an act of will, defiance, and even necessity against the testing environment of African life. An affirmation of the artist’s own being, such existential, even cosmic, preoccupation is poignantly addressed in this compelling work.
In this work, Barceló’s dazzlingly stark canvas is interrupted only by the thick impasto paint and roughly textured surface, swelling and bulging from the pictorial plane at sporadic intervals. Created through an accumulation of paint and mixed media elements, the use of organic matter in his work, so evocative of coprolites and fossils from prehistoric times, fascinated Barceló. ‘For the white pictures,’ he explained, ‘I used anything from grains of rice to almonds, beans and chickpeas in order to cause irregularities in the surface. Later they were simply lumps of paint’ (M. Barceló quoted in Miquel Barceló 1984-1994, exh. cat., London 1994, p. 94). He delighted in the dust that would accumulate on his canvases in the hot African heat, filling them with a metaphysical quality that had hitherto been absent in his earlier works. From this period onwards, the act of painting became an act of will, defiance, and even necessity against the testing environment of African life. An affirmation of the artist’s own being, such existential, even cosmic, preoccupation is poignantly addressed in this compelling work.