Destroy
to create
Lucio Fontana, the
founder of Spatialism, began in the 1940s piercing holes within the canvas.
Then famously ‘slicing the canvas open’ within his ‘spatial concept’ Tagli pieces 1958-68, expanding
perception into the space behind the canvas. Often lining the canvas with a
back gauge to increase a sense of depth of space not unlike the sculpture of
Anish Kapoor in e.g. Oracle, (1990-2002)
and obviously Malevich’s Black Squares.
Fontana’s work Trinity, (1966)
combines three punctured canvases within a theatrical setting. Changes
in context and a new ‘vision’ of the world resulted in psychological shifts of
expression within art visuals and message. In ‘The White Manifesto’ Fontana
highlights how, ‘Twentieth-century man,
shaped by materialism....The discovery of new physical forces, the mastery of
matter and space, have gradually imposed unprecedented conditions on
mankind...Man’s psychological makeup is transformed.’ He believed, ‘The new art requires that all of of man’s
energies be used productively in creation and interpretation. Existence is
shown in an integrated manner, with all its vitality.’ 1 Developments by
Einstein, Freud, Bohr, Edison and such as Sartre greatly re-moulded the
conscious and subconscious’s perceptive interpretation and interaction with the
world. This is highlighted also within Fontana’s Cyber-Spatialism works in
which he would insert computer connectors into the canvas to ‘open’ it up
spatially to the cyber dimension.
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13 Oracle, (1990-2002) Anish Kapoor.
Sandstone and
pigment. Anish Kapoor Studio
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13 Angela de la Cruz,
Super Clutter XXL (Pink and Brown), (2006),
Turner Prize Exhibition 2010.
Courtesy the artists and Lisson Gallery London.
Image:
Sam Drake and Lucy Dawkins, Tate.
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Lucio Fontana, James
Paradis and Angela de la Cruz display the approach to regenerate you must first
gradually destroy; analysing and assessing as it happens. Angela de la Cruz’s
pieces rightly deserved their shortlist for the Turner Prize 2010 shown opposite. They aim to shift our historical
vision and function of the canvas. In the above work Super Clutter XXL (Pink and Brown), (2006) Angela experiments with
the sculptural materials of the canvas and what possibilities they offer, still
mounting it on the wall but transmuted into wall sculpture. The work to the
left Clutter 1, (2003) lays flat on
the ground, a foreign context for the canvas which may explain why references
to a handmade raft occur. She also uses oil with acrylic on the looser
non-stretched canvas to activate more personality and air into the canvas.
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14 Angela
de la Cruz, Clutter I, (2003),
Turner Prize Exhibition 2010,
Oil and Acrylic on
Canvas.
Courtesy the artists and Lisson Gallery London.
Image: Sam Drake and
Lucy Dawkins, Tate
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James Paradis’s
pieces involve scrunching the canvas up, shrinking the size of the canvas and
transforming it towards sculpture, however he blurs categorising it completely
as sculpture as it’s painted as you would expect an abstract canvas would look.
He also titles some with environmental or landscape linked vocabulary conceptualising
them. Joan Mirò set fire to the canvas. Joining in the protests against
Franco’s rule when he lived in Mallorca he painted canvases, drowned them in
petrol and set them alight. He’d let one burn until it had a huge hole in it’s
centre while he was painting another to then repeat the burning process to
imprint his message stronger: Burnt
Canvases (1973).
1 Edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, (2003), Art in Theory 1900-2000, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford OX4 1JF, 2003. 'Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) 'The White Manifesto'', pg. 653.
13 & 14 Turner
Prize 2010 Tate http://www.tate.org.uk/
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