Exhibition Brochure, Antoni Tapies, the Resources of Rhetoric.Pdf
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Antoni Tapies The Resources of Rhetoric May 16-0ctober 19, 2009 Dia:Beacon Riggio Galleries 3 Beekman Street Beacon New York 12508 845 440 0100 www.diaart.org Antoni Tapies: The Resources of Rhetoric The work of Antoni Ta.pies does not fall neatly within the parameters of traditional art flatness of the canvas but instead folds back onto itself. Ta.pies explores the material history; for, customarily, it has been lodged between two worlds, that of the modern, ist basis of painting in an exceptional manner. His work reflects both the material of which was coming to a close when the Catalan artist began his career in the early the form and the form of the material, without annulling their differences as orthodox 1950s, and that of the postmodern, which had yet to manifest itself. Tapies's painting modernism would. Tapies's works maintain a structural ambiguity that complicates is perhaps too object-based for critics who sought an essential Greenbergian purity their assimilation into systems that gravitate toward normalization and commodifica and too gestural, expressionist, and constrained by the restrictions of the frame for tion. Split between object, painting, and writing, his works have sculptural and tactile those who focused on the aesthetic of the expanded field, as defined by Rosalind qualities that, while clearly engaging with the precepts of painting, avoid any form of . Krauss. However, the vivacious welcome his oeuvre enjoyed from critics such as idealism. As a result, despite the evidence of a certain inclination toward aestheticism, Michel Tapie, Giulio Carlo Argan, and the Spanish writer Juan Eduardo Cirlot might Tapies's paintings never fall into mere decoration nor could they be described as today seem excessively personal and mystical, remnants of a humanist past that are fetishistic. To the contrary, his virtuosity is instilled in the form of rhetoric-in a now distant, remote. material form of writing that cancels out the decorative. Heir to Spain's brilliant early avant-garde, whose most celebrated members included When Ta.pies is painting, he is actually writing. As a successor of Mallarme, he Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, and Salvador Dair, Ta.pies is unquestionably the lead- reinterprets "A Throw of the Dice" through Antonin Artaud's notion of abyssal experi ing figure in the country's art world of the second half of the twentieth century and ence. The passivity of the noun is thus replaced by the transitive nature of the verb: has remained an influential presence in Spain for over sixty years. In addition to his Ta.pies is not a painter, rather he paints; and by doing so he opens up fissures in our work as an artist, his numerous activities and initiatives (for example, he founded perception of a seamless world. His canvas is the sheet of paper, the skin through one of Barcelona's most active art centers) keep his name in the spotlight, public which we, the viewers, might experience the world and tease out our relationships to acclaim that has often masked his art. As a result, the discourse around his work it. Thus the action of writing constitutes the limitless ineffable element found in this has been reduced to cliche. More interested in responding to larger and more gen heterodox tradition of modernism. In contrast to works defined by Socialist Realism, eral issues than to those relating specifically to his own work, he has been relatively a popular narrative form of the 1940s and 1950s, Tapies's painting can never be silent with regard to his painting and, with the exceptions of his theoretical texts described as illustrative. Instead, his painting is political in its poetics. As Jacques "Communication on the Wall," "Nothing Is Mean," and "Art against Aesthetics," he Ranciere alleges, works of art are annunciations that transform our perception of has not offered sufficient keys to an understanding of his practice. the world. The more artistic they are the more political they are. What is unique about the work of Ta.pies? Why does it still continue to attract us? For Ta.pies, art is intrinsically linked to magic-magic more akin to the illusions con First, perhaps, because his paintings do not conform to any canon. To describe them jured by a fairground magician, however, than the shamanic rites invoked by Joseph as Abstract Expressionist or lnformalist is imprecise. It represents an attempt to view Beuys. Nonetheless, Ta.pies is aware of the cynicism of an era in which classifica the work through concepts that the artist had rejected by the time he had produced tion devours all and in which creative work is located at the center of our economic his mature work (the so-called matter paintings). While it is true that his acknowl system. In his practice, there is no room for the Romantic idea of the artist as demi edged references originate in Miro and Picasso and that his elective affinities are urge, as the possessor of universal and transcendent truths. The artist's attempt to found in Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, Ta.pies belongs by age and attitude to a bring about political change has been defeated time and again in the modernist era. generation in which the mark of the ephemeral and the use of writing is fundamental. Ta.pies knows that art is trickery, and what is important is not the final result but the Although he expounds opinions that contradict the views expressed here, a position game itself, the emotional relationship established between artist and viewer through that undoubtedly results from particular historical contexts, such as that of Spain the object. Herein lies the mystery of the artistic act; and that unmentionable secret under Franco, his work engages the fringes of the modernist legacy. While modernist allows us to exist or coexist with no functional requirements or imposed identities. painting was fundamentally nonnarrative, antirhetorical, flat, and painterly, Tapies's art is based in narrative and delights in rhetorical devices; it does not respect the Manuel Borja-Villel, Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid site map checklist of works 8 En forma de cadira On the Form of a Chair) , 1966 4 I Antoni Tapies: The Resources of Rhetoric Dia:Beacon, May 1 6-0ctober 19, 2009 Mixed me dia on ca nvas ( 51 1/4 x 39 1/4 inches ( 130 x 9 7 cm) 3 I C Private Collection, Barcelona Ni portes ni finestres (No Doors or Windows) , 1993 5 Mixed m edia on woo d 9 Pintura ocre (Ocher Painting), 1959 118 1/s x 983/s x 51/s inches {3 00 x 250 x 15.5 cm) 1 2 I Marble dust, sa nd, pigment, and latex on canvas mounted Private Collec tion, Barce lona on woo d 1. 95 x 74 7/s inches ( 241 .5 x 190 cm), unframed 2 Cos de materia i taques taronges (Body of Matter MACBA , Museu d 'Art C ontemporani d e Barcelona, and Orange Marks), 1968 Fons de l'Ajunt ament d e Barcelona Mixed media on canvas 6 7 8 I 53 3/4 x 51 1/4 inches (162 x 130 cm) 10 Gran materia amb papers laterals (Large Matter Private Collection, Barcelona Painting with Side Papers) , 1963 g I Mixed m edia o n canvas o n woo d 3 Palla i fusta (Straw and Wood), 1969 1 023/s x 75 3/4 inches ( 260 x 195 cm) Assemblage o n canvas Fundacio Ant oni Tapies, Barcelona 12 59 x 45 5/s inc hes ( 150 x 116 cm) 10 I Fundacio Ant oni Tapies, Barcelona 11 Roig i negre amb zones arrencades (Red and Black with Removed Areas), 1963-65 4 Gran vernis sobre fusta (Large Varnish on Wood), Mixed m edia on canvas 1982 64 x 64 in ches { 162 .5 x 162 .5 cm) 11 Mixed m edia o n wo od C c· Private Coll ection, Barcelona 13 I 763/4 x 133 7/s inches ( 195 x 340 cm) Fundacio n Telefonica; long-term loan to Mu seo 12 Quatre quadrats grisos sobre marr6 (Four Grey Nacional C entro de Art e Reina Sofia, Madrid Squares on Brown) , 1959 14 I Marble dust, sand, pigment, and l atex on canvas 5 Bra~ (Arm), 1985 on wood 17 Mixed m edia o n canvas 76 3/s x 661h inches ( 194 x 169 cm) 88 5/s x 118 1/s inches (225 x 300 cm) MACBA , Museu d 'Art Cont emporani d e Barcelona, 15 I Private Collection, Barcelona Fons de l'Ajunt ament d e Barcelona 6 Pintura-relleu (Painting-Relief) , 1945 13 L'escala (The Ladder), 197 4 16 I Oil on canvas Mixed m edia o n woo d 18 1/s x 15 in ches { 46 x 38 cm) 98 3/s x 1181/s inches ( 250 x 300 cm) MACBA , Museu d 'Art C ontemporani d e Barcelona, Fundacion Telefonica; long-t erm loan to Museo Nacional Fons d'Art de la Generalitat d e Catalunya 1'( Centro de Art e Reina Sofia, Madr id 7 Composici6 (Composition), 1947 14 Materia en forma de peu (Matter in the Form of a Oil on canvas 1l Foot), 1965 15 x 181/s inches ( 38 x 46 cm) Mixed m edia o n canvas MACBA , Museu d 'Art Cont emporani d e Barce lona, 51 1/4 x 53 3/4 inches { 130 x 162 cm) Fons d'Art d e la G eneralitat d e Catalunya; Former C C Fundacio Ant oni Tapies, Barcelona collection of S alvador Riera.