Isamu Noguchi: Between East and West. The research of abstraction as a search for permanence [essay]

clarissa ricci

This essay endeavours to explore how Isamu Noguchi interpreted the concept of abstraction and how he defined it in one of the most poignant documents that remain on the artist’s thinking: his autobiography, A Sculptor’s World. Noguchi penned his life text in the latter stages of his artistic maturity when he had earned a certain recognition from the art world. Noguchi’s tome enables art historians to retrace the trajectory of the artist’s life through the first-hand narration of the most salient moments of his artistic pursuit and research. In fact, the word “research” is a term that recurs so frequently that it is undeniably the fil rouge into this enquiry. The artist identified himself as an explorer of matter whom, through the investigation of various techniques and numerous forms, from antiquity to modernity, attempted to perceive the meaning of sculpture. Numerous documents in the form of interviews, articles and statements provide a further corpus of Noguchi’s literary work and offer invaluable insights into the artist’s thoughts.

Abstraction Matters Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words Edited by Cristina Baldacci, Michele Bertolini, Stefano Esengrini and Andrea Pinotti Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words Edited by Cristina Baldacci, Michele Bertolini, Stefano Esengrini and Andrea Pinotti This book first published 2019 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2019 by Cristina Baldacci, Michele Bertolini, Stefano Esengrini, Andrea Pinotti and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1810-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1810-0 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ...................................................................................................... viii Andrea Pinotti Part I. Sensation Introduction ................................................................................................. 2 Michele Bertolini Chapter One ................................................................................................. 5 Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence Clarissa Ricci Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Yves Klein: All that is Solid Melts into Air Filippo Fimiani Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 32 Gianni Colombo: A Critique of Perception in a Mobile World Anna Detheridge Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 44 To Whom it may Concern: Richard Serra and the Phenomenology of Intransitive Monumentality Andrea Pinotti Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 59 Matthew Barney: The Semiotic Sculptural Body Angela Mengoni Part II. Idea Introduction ............................................................................................... 70 Stefano Esengrini vi Table of Contents Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 73 Vision, Perception, Openness: David Smith’s New Sculpture Stefano Esengrini Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 84 The Simplest Image: Tony Smith’s “Cubes” Georges Didi-Huberman Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 95 Donald Judd’s Specificity Elio Grazioli Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 102 The Experience of Sculpture in Robert Morrisʼs Notes on Sculpture Michele Bertolini Part III. Language Introduction ............................................................................................. 116 Cristina Baldacci Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 120 Impossible Objects: On Francesco Lo Savio’s Metals Riccardo Venturi Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 135 “Sculpture is Matter Mattering”: Spatialization of Matter and Visual Poetry in Carl Andre Giuseppe Di Liberti Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 146 Tensional Creation: Luciano Fabro’s Sculpture between Conceptualism and Abstraction Davide Dal Sasso Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 158 “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read:” Language as a Sculptural Material in Robert Smithson Cristina Baldacci Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words vii Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 168 Joseph Kosuth and The Play of the Unmentionable David Freedberg Abstracts .................................................................................................. 179 Contributors ............................................................................................. 186 PREFACE ANDREA PINOTTI Terminology in art theory, art history and art criticism appears to suffer from a chronic condition. Many of the fundamental notions and concepts that structure theoretical, historical and critical discourse are felt to be strongly inadequate because of their vagueness, polysemy, or the heavy semantic burden they bear from a century-long tradition, overloaded with its ideological and cultural prejudices. Yet despite all the comprehensive debates aiming to reject terms and substitute them with more proper designations, the language of the scholarly community – let alone everyday language – ends up returning to these keywords time and time again, forced to accept their indispensable role for research and interpretation. Paradigmatic examples of such controversial terms are the notions of “form” and “style”. Meaning both the perceivable phenomenon and the invisible structure, the image and the idea, “form” can be opposed both to content (subject) and to materiality. When opposed to content, form can absorb in itself material factors as well; when opposed to matter, it can be employed to identify the subject. As regards “style” (frequently associated with form), it can refer to a principium individuationis, that which makes every work by Picasso specifically “Picassian”. But it can also function as a principium dividuationis, enabling us to gather Picasso, Braque and other artists under one and the same general label, “cubism”. Moreover, style is deemed a positive character when a person or a work has style; a negative one, when something is in a style (implying it is just imitative). Notwithstanding all the ambiguities of these notions, and the repeated efforts to amend them or even get rid of them, they seem more alive and kicking than ever. “Abstraction” does not lag behind in this respect. A major problem seems to concern the preposition “from” that we always – either implicitly or explicitly – pronounce when employing the term. When we abstract (in any thought process, both in intellectual activities and in everyday experience), we abstract-from a series of elements that nevertheless belong to the object we are considering: from its weight, its form, its material and its dimensions, if we are, for example, focusing on the colour of a certain Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words ix thing. But this way of conceiving abstraction ultimately makes it dependent on the total object of which we decide to investigate only one single aspect. If we transpose this argument to the domain of visual arts, such a conception of abstraction would let in through the back door that which had apparently left through the front: the model or the external referent “from” which this or that particular property would be abstracted in order to obtain an abstract picture. But this is “stylization” much more than “abstraction”. This is why alternatives such as “non-objective (German gegenstandslos)”, non-representational and non-figurative, have been put forward to avoid this relapse into the paradigm of traditional figuration. And still, abstraction resists. Instead of fighting against this term, we had better be critically aware of its possible misunderstandings, and of its deep implications. What should abstraction consist of, once it is emancipated from the preposition “from”? Not of the iconic restitution of an already given reality, but of letting something come into being that can exist for the first time and only in that image. In this perspective, creation, invention, and all the cognate terms that art theory and history have elaborated over the centuries in order to characterize artistic production take on a new sense. At the same time, together with the preposition “from” associated with the expression “abstraction-from”, another preposition is radically questioned by this process. It is the preposition “of”, implicitly or explicitly pronounced when we speak of an image as of an iconic representation “of” something that exists before being represented by that image and continues to lead its autonomous existence. The German term for “model”, Vorbild, effectively illuminates the status of the model, which stands “before” (vor) the image (Bild) both in the spatial and in the temporal sense. Once we have understood it in its emancipation from the “from”, abstract art challenges a millennia-old tradition that might be called for the sake of brevity “Platonistic”: a tradition based on the idea that visual arts perform an iconic rendition of a model which is ontologically and gnoseologically superior to the rendition itself. A human being represented in a portrait or a piece of nature depicted in a landscape painting are entities independent from their being rendered by an image, which possesses less being and less truth than the model. The extent of being and truth of the image on the contrary depends on its being able to approach in a more or less faithful manner the external referent. The claim of the ontological and gnoseological inferiority of the image with respect to the model constitutes the core of Plato’s doctrine of mimesis as exposed in Book 10 of The Republic. As is well known, its x Preface author drew unfavourable consequences for artists: much like the sophists, they were to be banned from the ideal state for producing apparent realities and illusory knowledge. Such a ban inaugurated a powerful iconophobic, if not overtly iconoclastic, attitude that was destined to endure in the Western tradition down to our contemporary age. This attitude fed a pervasive suspicion towards images, which on account of their essentially illusory nature were considered incapable of delivering a clear and distinct knowledge of the real, and were thus opposed in this respect to the logical concept effectively expressed by language. If we prefer to call this cultural tradition “Platonistic” rather than simply “Platonic”, it is because Plato’s meditations on the status of the image are much more complex and sophisticated than the vulgarization that over the centuries consolidated a simplistic conception of mimesis as a mere reproductive imitation of what is already given: just think of dialogues such as the Meno and the Sophist, which offer – if a pun is allowed here – a totally different picture of the image. In spite of this complexity, it was nevertheless the “Platonistic” version of reproductive imitation that became the mainstream understanding of what visual arts aim to accomplish, and this could happen only by virtue of a fundamental inversion of the axiological condemnation expressed in The Republic: if the dialogue had judged such an imitation deceptive and delusive, it was only by reverting such a negative evaluation into a positive one that mimesis could become the fundamental task of the visual artist. This applies both to naturalism and idealism, to the extent that the representation of the ideal as an amelioration through art of what is given in nature is obtained by way of a combination of portions of natural components adequately imitated – as shown by the famous anecdote of Zeuxis and the five most beautiful virgins of Croton, each of whom lent the painter bits of beauty so that he could achieve the rendition of a perfect Helen. The legend is recounted, among other sources, by Cicero and Pliny the Elder. The latter also offers a version of a contest between two famous painters, Apelles and Protogenes, who competed on the same canvas to demonstrate their ability to draw the thinnest line. At the end, Protogenes admitted defeat, and displayed the work that had been the battlefield of their talents to the admiration both of laymen and artists: its large surface contained “nothing but almost invisible lines, so that alongside the outstanding works of many artists it looked like a blank space, and by that very fact attracted attention and was more esteemed than any masterpiece” (Natural History 35: 83). Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words xi Hence, during more or less the same period as when Plato was laying down the foundations of the mimetic theory, a painting was admired as the supreme masterpiece for being nothing but blank space and almost invisible lines – in other words, for representing nothing. One could have called this painting gegenstandslos many centuries before Kandinsky’s first abstract watercolour, painted in 1910 and conventionally considered the starting point of modern abstract art. Once we begin to look for starting points, the genealogical gaze immediately attracts us towards the abysses of an almost immemorial past, that of legendary anecdotes and of myth. Such a perspective reminds us that the non-representational drive has always been there, beside (behind? below? beyond?) the representational urge, before manifesting itself openly in the outburst of the 20th century. The present volume offers a rich panorama of this outburst, focusing on a specific kind of visual art – sculpture – which on account of its threedimensional and volumetric nature is constitutively “objectual”, “thingish”. It is in this respect much more difficult for a sculpture to undergo a process of abstraction than a two-dimensional picture, and therefore even more challenging. This volume, however, does not consist of a collection of interpretative essays devoted to the artistic production of some of the most prominent modern and contemporary sculptors, here listed in chronological order: Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988); David Smith (1906–1965); Tony Smith (1912–1980); Yves Klein (1928–1962); Donald Judd (1928–1994); Robert Morris (1931–); Francesco Lo Savio (1935–1963); Carl Andre (1935–); Luciano Fabro (1936–2007); Gianni Colombo (1937–1993); Robert Smithson (1938–1973); Richard Serra (1939–); Joseph Kosuth (1945–); Matthew Barney (1967–). Its particular and distinctive feature is to lend an attentive ear to the words uttered by the sculptors themselves. The authors we have chosen to be the subjects of the book are not only eminent artists who made their mark in the contemporary sculptural landscape: they are also sharp and insightful theorists, inclined to reflect intensely upon the sense of their own work in particular and upon the nature of abstract sculpture in general. Nevertheless, the ever more reflexive inclination of artistic expression (already observed as an ongoing and increasing phenomenon by Hegel in the first half of the 19th century) should not mislead the reader about the structural relationship instituted between artworks on one side and theoretical statements on the other. This relationship should by no means be understood as if an artist’s pronouncements contained the ultimate key to the comprehension of their art. Such a misunderstanding would lead us xii Preface to an erroneous reading of these texts for two main reasons: firstly, it would fail to acknowledge a golden principle of hermeneutics, in force at least since the 18th century, namely that the authors are not the best interpreters of their own work (also because they themselves are not always aware of what they put into the work). Secondly, it would adopt a substantially logocentric approach, in assuming that only conceptual assertions assigned to verbal language can offer a clear and distinct knowledge of what is rendered in an opaque and obscure manner through sculptural activity. Essays, articles, interviews, and all kinds of non-iconic sources should on the contrary be assessed and interpreted as expressive works beside the sculptural artworks, and correlated to them in an interconnection of mutual illumination. The three sections that make up the volume explore three of the main directions taken by abstract sculpture in the course of the 20th century: Sensation (Isamu Noguchi, Yves Klein, Gianni Colombo, Richard Serra, Matthew Barney); Idea (David Smith, Tony Smith, Donald Judd, Robert Morris); and Language (Francesco Lo Savio, Carl Andre, Luciano Fabro, Robert Smithson, Joseph Kosuth). Before inviting the reader to refer to the specific introductions to the three parts (written by my co-editors, respectively Michele Bertolini, Stefano Esengrini, and Cristina Baldacci, whom I warmly and gratefully thank here, together with all the contributors, for their intellectually stimulating cooperation in this project), I would like to say a few final words on how such notions relate to the overall concept of abstraction as illustrated above, namely in its emancipation from the “from”. Although each of these notions operates in its own different way (and differently for each artist collected under the corresponding category), their “abstract” nature entails a renegotiation of the relationship between the author, the beholder, the sculptural object and the space hosting it. The object is no longer conceived of as a material support for the representation of a sculptural subject to be contemplated by a spectator, but is rather understood as a trigger capable of sparking an experience (and experiencer would actually be a much better name than beholder or spectator for its public). This aspect is intuitively evident in the section Sensation, a part that thematizes the transformation of the sculptural object into a chronotopic and aisthesic experience, in which synesthetic perceptions and motor responses come to augment and radically metamorphose the traditional optical contemplation of a statue. But it is also addressed by the Section Idea, which elaborates the hypothesis that sculpture has to do with form: not in the sense of a given external shape that should be iconically Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words xiii replicated and aesthetically contemplated, but rather in the sense of an eidos or morphe, of structural properties that the sculptural act can bring to disclosure and identify as the truth-content of a knowledge process. Cognitive apprehension has traditionally been considered a task of conceptualization, ideally expressed in a transparent linguistic form: the last section, Language, reveals on the contrary the concrete materiality of language, its opaqueness, while at the same time hinting at the common figural origin of both language and image, two expressive domains too often and too simplistically opposed in their differences. Sensation, Idea, Language: three ways to understand why abstraction has mattered, and still does. CHAPTER ONE ABSTRACTION IN NOGUCHI’S OWN WORDS: IN SEARCH OF PERMANENCE CLARISSA RICCI This essay endeavours to explore how Isamu Noguchi interpreted the concept of abstraction and how he defined it in one of the most poignant documents that remain on the artist’s thinking: his autobiography, A Sculptor’s World. Noguchi penned his life text in the latter stages of his artistic maturity when he had earned a certain recognition from the art world.1 Noguchi’s tome enables art historians to retrace the trajectory of the artist’s life through the first-hand narration of the most salient moments of his artistic pursuit and research. In fact, the word “research” is a term that recurs so frequently that it is undeniably the fil rouge into this enquiry. The artist identified himself as an explorer of matter who, through the investigation of various techniques and numerous forms, from antiquity to modernity, attempted to perceive the meaning of sculpture. Numerous documents in the form of interviews, articles and statements provide a further corpus of Noguchi’s literary work and offer invaluable insights into the artist’s thoughts. 1. In search of abstraction Despite the fact that art critic Dore Ashton alludes to Noguchi’s tendency to storytell and mythmake (Ashton 1992, 5–9), the autobiography’s initial pages offer the first of the artist’s interpretations on abstraction. Even though his influence was somewhat peripheral compared to his contemporaries of the New York School. Noguchi displayed contradictory behaviour towards the art world, he both liked to stay at the margins and lamented his marginality. 1 6 Chapter One Noguchi only lived in Japan until he was thirteen years of age. However, the first pages of his account are exclusively identified with the country which, on the one hand, represented for him a lost paradise where he experienced his initial encounters with sculpture: My first recollection of joy was going to a newly opened experimental kindergarten […] where children were taught to do things with their hands. My first sculpture was made there in the form of a sea wave, in clay with a blue glaze”; “I learned the basic uses of wood tools. (Noguchi 1968, 11) On the other hand, Japan instilled in him an intimate bond with nature (“a typical Japanese boy, knowledgeable in the ways of nature” [Noguchi 1968, 11]) due also to what he learned from his mother (“She taught me botany” [Noguchi 1968, 12]). He therefore related his origins as a sculptor to the Orient in order to demonstrate the inextricable bond he felt to this certain figurative world and to an inherent awareness of nature (ApostolosCappadona, and Altshuler eds. 1994, 130–5). Noguchi’s initial years of training in New York at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School are barely acknowledged in his autobiography but for a few paragraphs. It is here in New York where he learned to sculpt well and was first noticed for his abilities. Yet Noguchi’s recollections in hindsight are incongruous: “Alas, all of this was false feeding: everything I learned I had later to unlearn” (Noguchi 1968, 15–16). Instead it is his encounter with the modern art of the first abstract avant-gardes – and most significantly with the works of Constantin Brancusi – which set Noguchi on his path towards the true possibility of “personal expression.” The first excerpt of A Sculptor’s World in which Noguchi refers to “abstraction” is his submission to obtain a three-year fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1926. In this document, abstraction was for the young Noguchi something to achieve and investigate; an artistic dimension where he envisaged the unity between man and nature. We can understand from Noguchi’s words that abstraction signified the possibility for an artist to access reality by “the study of inner surfaces and the life elements” (Noguchi 1968, 16). Abstract art is meant to represent an important evolution: a fundamental transition from the interest in the human figure (as an object of special veneration) towards nature, which he considered not only the expression of the vegetal and animal world but a receptacle for universal existence. In the world of abstract sculptural expression every element is a fine balance of spirit with matter where “flowers, trees […] as well as birds, beasts and man, would be given their due place” (Noguchi 1968, 16). Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence 7 For Noguchi, the ultimate artistic path was one immersed in nature; one that leads to “an unlimited field for abstract sculptural expression” and one in which the veneration of nature, not man, is paramount: “There must be unthought of heights of beauty to which sculpture may be raised by this reversal of attitude” (Noguchi 1968, 16). Noguchi’s words, inspired by Brancusi (“I was transfixed by his vision” [Noguchi 1968, 16]), are enlightened, almost religiously connotative. Furthermore, in saying “some sculptors today appreciate the importance of matter, but are too much engrossed with symbolism. Others […] Interested only in the interpretation of strictly human forms” (Noguchi 1968, 16), the artist singles out the form of abstraction that did not interest him even if, at times, his excellent ability in portraiture would constitute his livelihood (Grove 1989). The final part of the Guggenheim’s submission indicates also his destinations. The first is Paris, which Noguchi considered the place where one should be educated in modern art. Paris was an indispensable rite of passage for study and exchange for any aspiring modern artist of that period and Noguchi had a specific interest in learning in Brancusi’s studio (Duus 2006). The second place indicated by Noguchi to visit was the Orient (more specifically India, China and Japan) which he considered mandatory to fulfil his heritage. This is an intriguing part of the document because he doesn’t refer only to his bequeathed Japan as his cultural legacy, but to a broader concept of Orient; this sentiment is reconfirmed after a few sentences when he declares his desire to become, as his father was for poetry, an “interpreter for the West of the East.” Moreover, he emphasizes his volition to fulfil his heritage with a question mark and a directly interrogative sentence added to the original document. In doing so, Noguchi wanted to show the reader that his native belonging was to the Orient while the origin and the identity he was longing for went well beyond his biographical data. His initial interest in visiting Japan may have been motivated by his desire to encounter his father, whom he had previously met only through his poems, but his return ignited a vital search for pristine forms as well as a true and original relationship to matter. Subsequently, he spent all of his life searching for the Orient, although his approach was that of a western man. He was fundamentally a modernist (Altshuler 1994, 99–101; Linford 2013) involved with social issues, a man with a utopian vision and a predilection for discourse on matter. He explored not only the Orient but what was associated with the Orient such as the primitive and the archaic: 8 Chapter One The older it is, the more archaic and primitive, the better I like it. […] repeated distillation of art brings you back to the primordial […] earliest people tried to indicate their sense of significance, and even further back until you get to the fundamental material itself. (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 135) As stated in a memoir, such cogitation and respect for origin was reminiscent of Brancusi’s school of thought: “The notion came to him that his art, sculpture, could not go forward to be born without first going back to beginnings” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 114). During his oriental travels, Noguchi recorded his interest in the way the Chinese applied “the art of the brush, to learn how to be with nature” (Noguchi 1968, 20). In Japan he studied the copies of Tang and Haniwa figurines which he considered “simpler, more primitive […]in a sense modern” (Noguchi 1968, 20), while also showing interest in European prehistoric caves, menhirs and dolmens, ancient Greek art, the Khmer architecture of Angkor Wat, the Javanese Buddhist architecture of Borobudur and the Indian rock-cut architecture of Ellora. His interest lay in enduring forms that had a social significance, the archaism of roughly carved stones, figures and silhouettes. He searched the Orient for a past, a heritage of humanity, which he presented in an article explaining the bond between modern art and primitivism: “Here without any fuss is an immediate confrontation of the spirit. We are delighted to find and surprised at finding what we had forgotten we were looking for” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 43). The essence of Noguchi’s identity as part Japanese part American is pivotal for many historians and both paradigms are emphasized at the beginning and end of his autobiography. At the outset, his career was marked by the inextricable influences of both the East and the West, coexisting to the point that for Noguchi the modern way and the Orient were one single entity. Both these influences would characterize his artistic production. However, only towards the end of his career, was Noguchi also able to ride on the edge of East and West. He toiled over his “Japan”, that intimate link between man/matter/nature, after searching for it through numerous stage sets for Martha Graham, gardens, art works for American corporations, public monuments, and rough materials which allowed the artist to reflect upon the value and meaning of sculpture in space. Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence 9 His autobiography and, to a greater extent, the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum catalogue,2 were dedicated to demonstrating Noguchi’s undeniable Oriental attitude despite him rhetorically asking himself: “Why do I continuously go back to Japan, except to renew my constant with the earth?” (Noguchi 1968, 20). He found the answer to this question in searching the “inner reality […] of which sculpture is a reflection and sign” (Noguchi 1968, 20). In his Guggenheim application, Noguchi pointed out the method of this research, which he was certain would lead him to “unthought heights of beauty”: nature. But what does the word “nature” mean, exactly? (Inpik 2012). We can recognize three different interconnected ways of understanding it. At the time of his journey to Paris (1926–27) his idea of nature was definitely close to that of the first abstractists. However, forty years later, when writing his autobiography, by not transcribing the opening sentence of the application in which he stressed the opposition between man and nature,3 Noguchi tried to deny this period of his life. Instead, he opted to preserve the part in which he rejects a sculpture interpreted “as medium for the idealization and glorification of man”, favouring “nature” as it “offers many another subject.” In the wake of Brancusi, the young Noguchi saw abstract art as an essential and spiritual bond with nature as well as an originary source of meaning. Abandoning the human figure signified, effectively, abandoning the old way of sculpting “à la Rodin.”4 A second way in which Noguchi conceived nature was through the coincidence between nature and matter; an exploration of nature coincided with the investigation of material, its limitations and possibilities, to the point where all errors or faults, even cracks, become part of sculpture. Brancusi was “an apostle of the new view of the sculptor’s material” (Cort and Winther-Tamaki 2003), teaching the young Noguchi how to deal with the limitations of materials and how to manœuvre tools. The radicalism “This museum and catalogue attempt to define my role as a crossing where inward and outward meet, East and West. There already is a continuity by others and is my hope that this museum may expand to become a center for presenting related concepts and helping in their realization.” (Noguchi 1987, 12) 3 “It has long been my conviction that sculpture has been overly employed as a medium for the idealization and glorification of man and, while it may be granted that the interpretation of the human figure will always remain its chief objective, I am nevertheless of the opinion that nature offers many another subject which would lend itself to some strange and exquisite sculptural treatment.” (ApostolosCappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 16) 4 This is a feeling that was common to many artists at the time, but also of Brancusi. See Golding 1994, 187. 2 10 Chapter One Noguchi dedicated to this approach was, however, influenced by the American “honesty to matter” preached in the 1930s, with Bill Zorach’s perspective often cited by the artists as an example (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 145). In his autobiography, Noguchi expresses his bond with material as a key aspect, to the extent that the account of his life in the autobiography goes from the understanding of one material to another together with the new achievements he acquired through each medium. All of his rhetoric is built around the idea of the artist as an explorer of matter. His interest lies in any medium because, thanks to his honesty towards material, the scope of investigation is limitless, allowing the artist to access the realm of true artistic creation: “Everything was sculpture. Any material, any idea, without hindrance born into space. I considered sculpture. I worked with driftwood, bones, paper, strings, cloth, shell, wire, wood, and plastics; and magnetite” (Noguchi 1968, 26). The third way he considered nature was as a quasi-spiritual dimension, a world made of natural and artificial elements comprising an infinite space inhabited by man, something Dominika Glogowski calls “embodied nature” (Glogowski 2012, 169–83). This third consideration was already represented in the paper Noguchi wrote for the Guggenheim Foundation but it clearly developed over time and will be further discussed in the last paragraph of this text. 2. Abstraction vocabulary With the elision of the beginning of his paper for the Guggenheim Foundation what exactly did Noguchi want to distance himself from? The person who introduced the artist to abstraction and who, in his eyes, represented the artistic essence of “pure abstraction”, was Brancusi. Hence, it is in relation to his persona that we can understand what interested, attracted him or what he repudiated about abstraction. In the autobiography Noguchi recounts his apprenticeship at Brancusi’s studio, where the master introduced him to the correct use of tools, deep concentration and the search for the distillation and essence of a form. When he had finished his working day the young Noguchi would then practice other abstract forms more aligned to those of Picasso or the Constructivists. He also revealed his difficulty and incapacity to embrace the “abstract verb” and in secret, with a sense of guilt, he sculpted figures and small bronzes. Brancusi used to repeat to Noguchi how lucky he was to be a new-generation artist as he could go directly to abstraction without abstracting from nature, as Brancusi had had to do. Noguchi remembered this reflection several times and in the autobiography he wrote: “Pure Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence 11 abstractions, or at least those geometrically derived, left me cold, and I was always being torn between Brancusi’s admonition and my desire to make something more meaningful to myself” (Noguchi 1968, 18). Many years later, in 1979, in an interview with Paul Cunningham, Noguchi commented on Brancusi’s reflection revealing that to Americans it seemed absurd to think of art “in a puritanical way.” For him and his peers, sculptural art had to be “meaningful without being realistic, at once abstract and socially relevant” (Noguchi 1968, 21), it “had to be an important part of the living experience” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 138), showing how in the 1930s American art was a political issue, which called for direct workers and labour (ApostolosCappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 141). At the same time, he identified with the generation that did not need to abstract from nature in direct lineage with the purism of abstraction. Furthermore, in another text, he underlines that “abstraction is beside the point.” For Noguchi abstraction could only take place when everything had its due place and when the artist was able to see the unity of nature, or the unity between man, things and the space. The abstraction he was interested in was not pure geometry, but one with a certain morphologic quality, capable of showing a connection with life and signs of the “human touch.” Therefore, the research can be described as teleological, where the goals are unity and a synthesis of universal elements. In a passage he asks himself: “Was pure abstraction really an advance? There is no advance but rather a recognition of something that continues and permeates time” in which “all manifestations are extensions of geometry, more or less complex.” Noguchi’s arrival in Paris coincided with the end of a ten-year period diffusing many different forms of abstraction: Cubism, the geometrism of Mondrian, the essential forms of Brancusi, the tension of Constructivists. Noguchi learned all of them, although, as the artist himself specifies, his fascination was not philological, but his interest encompassed all “manifestations”, allowing his expression of abstraction to be populated by numerous forms that could be investigated collectively. In his artistic production he passed from morphologic quasi-human forms to cubes, pyramids and spheres. Abstraction was his vocabulary and he saw it as the language of modern art.5 Once back from Paris he spoke of not doing an abstract sculpture for a long time and he explained it by saying that it depended on: This interpretation is not peculiar to Noguchi; it transpires ideas of his time. Meyer Shapiro, for example examining Barr’s interpretation of Abstract art specifies that “nature and abstract forms are both materials for art, and the choice of one or the other flows from historically changing interests” (Shapiro 1937, 42). 5 12 Chapter One …a recognition of inadequacy on my part. I was poor and could not afford it. On the other hand, […] I felt too young and inexperienced for abstractions: I had to live first. (Noguchi 1968, 36) In this moment of his life, abstraction represented something to achieve and a way to connect with meaning, while in the writing of his autobiography his feelings were ambivalent. Noguchi recognized Brancusi’s approach in terms of unity with nature, his consideration of space, and in the importance of “being a child.” At the same time, in 1968, Brancusi held a specific position in time and in the history of art that, in Noguchi’s opinion, did not coincide with modernity. Narrating anexhibition he had held in 1959 at the Stable Gallery, paying homage to Brancusi, Noguchi later commented: “I was conscious at the time of having been denied modernity” (Noguchi 1968, 36). This episode is equitable with his decision to put all of his pieces most influenced by Brancusi in Area 12 in his Museum at Long Island where, curiously, the works he exposed at Moma in Fourteen Americans6 were also displayed. What Noguchi really treasured was not, as Brancusi thought, the use of pure forms, but a method of distillation: What Brancusi does with a bird or the Japanese do with a garden is to take the essence of nature and distil it – just as a poet does. That’s what I’m interested in – the poetic translation […] the fundamental question of art which is for me the meaning of a thing, the evocative essence which moves us. (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 131–2) When Noguchi refers to the process of sculpting he is not talking about the rough-cut of the essential, but of its concentration and distillation.7 The artist felt he was part of the new course of modern art – as he explained in the pages of Art News in 1949 – where all of the sculptors of the last century had been influenced by Rodin and could be divided into two branches: one more linked to mechanical aspects, interested in forms per In Area 12 we find works such as Leda (1928 and 1944), Death (Lynched Figure) (1934) but also Lunar Infant (1944) and Monument to Heroes (1943) shown in 1946 at MoMA, in the exhibition which gave him his first great recognition after the monument he designed for the Associated Press Building in 1938–1940. See Noguchi 1987, 230–58. 7 “To distill” is a frequently used verb by Noguchi in many instances including the costumes designed for King Lear: “distilled and fully attuned to the deeper meaning of Lear” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 79). “It’s a privilege of the artist to make his own translation, his own distillation of what moves him” (Kuh 1962, 133). 6 Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence 13 se, such as the Russian Constructivists; and the other a “more organic type” interested in “the transmutation of nature into the abstract […] based on the analytical simplification of natural images.” Old faces of the sculpting world – such as Picasso, Brancusi, Duchamp-Villon, Giacometti and Lipchitz – were now greeted by new faces, readying for “far greater challenges ahead” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 32–3). More involved with questioning the living spaces of existence, Noguchi belonged to a generation which was not preoccupied with abstracting forms from nature nor was he interested in abstraction as an issue; instead, as Noguchi said, “we are now more concerned with the relationship of things than with the things themselves”; “our reality is the space between” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 33). Hence, for a shape such as a triangle, the artist was not interested in the “form-triangle”, as the use of geometrical forms is always connected to the person who “charges them with vital associations”, but in the way it interacted in relation to us and with the space within. Noguchi was not interested in “new” forms, but in the “right” form. For instance, still utilizing the example of the triangle, we are able to list the different ways in which Noguchi chooses to employ the triangle: as a pyramid symbol of Pan-Americanism in Monument to the Plow project (1933–36), as a base for the tetrahedron which forms the Intetra fountain (1976), or as an element indicating a time on earth, in the past or another point in infinity in the Sunken Garden (1960–64) for Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale .8 The ease with which Noguchi adopted forms is deep-rooted in his idea that they pre-exist in nature, and the artist is the vehicle to bring forms into contact with man: “What is the artist but the channel through which spirits descend?” (Noguchi 1968, 40). Thus he was not dealing with forms conquered by a process of abstraction but more with a “recognition of something that permeates time” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 115). Noguchi’s abstraction was not searching for an infinity above but, more specifically, for a recognition of existential permanence. It is no accident when he states: We change in the historical sense, but though our interpretation changes, the universal truth remains. Sculpture and the other arts must forever change, the better to reflect the same changeless reality. (ApostolosCappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 34) For Monument to the Plow see Linford 2013, 26–38; for Intetra Fountain see Glogowski 2012; for the Marble Garden see Noguchi 1968, 170. 8 14 Chapter One 3. In the search of permanence: “If I succeed, I have transcended not just our time, but all time.”9 To further the understanding that abstraction was attractive for Noguchi not because it indicated the “pure form” but because it indicated the correct method to relate to nature, reality and human feelings, we need to take into consideration the notion of “space” which characterizes Noguchi to the point that he is remembered as the “sculptor of space.” Even if for artists of post-World War II it was a familiar issue, “space” is a concept that belongs to the third way in which Noguchi viewed nature and its deep interconnectivity with sculpting. At the end of his autobiography Noguchi depicted a type of sculpture that was able to connect one with the meaning of the world and of nature, setting a parallelism between world/sculpture and Japanese Gardens as symbols of the Universe: In Japan the rocks in a garden are so planted as to suggest a protuberance from the primordial mass below. […] rocks are joined way below. We are made aware of this ‘floating world’ through consciousness of sheer invisible mass […] the heavenly bodies floating in the firmament are all connected, by gravitational […] Earthbound though we are, we are free to move about its surface, like filings on a magnet. (Noguchi 1968, 40) The description Richard Buckminster Fuller gives of the structure of the Universe in Synergetics helps us understand this vision better: “Nature does not operate in parallel. She operates in radiational divergence and gravitational convergence.” In such a synergetic system men are embedded: “Humans have been included in this cosmic design as local Universe information-gatherers and social problem-solvers in support to the integrity of the eternal […] In support of their cosmic functioning humans were given their minds with which to discover and employ generalized laws governing all physical and metaphysical, omniinteraccommodative, ceaseless intertransformings of Universe.” Analogies between these quotes10 Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 145. Deeper investigation between Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller should be done even though many critics point out how this friendship was intellectually inspiring for both of them. The analogies I report here are only examples among many. See also how Noguchi regarded the importance of Buckminster Fuller’s thinking. “I should say that after returning to New York I was in a sense in revolt against his too-idealizing influence. Bucky was for me the truth of structure which circumvented questions of art. He taught me, but left me free to seek my own way” (Apostolos-Cappadona, and Altshuler eds. 1994, 117). See also Shoji 2011. 9 10 Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence 15 are evident and further reveal that Fuller perceived the “metaphysical” as part of the Universe to the point of stating: “Space is the inescapable awareness of unaccounted otherness” (Buckminster Fuller 2015). For Noguchi, the artist’s effort becomes an attempt to account for the otherness: “The promise of sculpture is to project these inner presences into forms that can be recognized as important and meaningful in themselves.” The visible world “is more than scientific truths. It enters our consciousness as emotion as well as knowledge.” The concepts’ interconnection clearly shows that the purpose of sculpture arises as a vocation, a calling which the artist must respond to offering a horizon of expression unaffected by specific provenance or language but by the world. In A Sculptor’s World, Noguchi describes the trajectory of his formation as designed and rooted in the Orient, subsequently growing outwards and addressing the world: “Our heritage is now the world” (Noguchi 1968, 40). It is, in fact, by saying “after each bout with the world I find myself returning chastened and contented enough to seek, within the limits of a single sculpture, the world” (Noguchi 1968, 40) that he simply yet poignantly ends his autobiography. Moreover, the world Noguchi searched for was connected with the perception of space in a way that made him speak of space, defined as “continuum or our existence”, as the essence of sculpture,11 showing how the permanent quality the artist is looking for in the world concerns immanence. This view is in stark contrast with Brancusi who perceived spirituality as something he saw far from himself, detached, to be reached for.12 On the contrary, in Noguchi’s concept of space, the human – both as sculptor and as spectator – stays central, activating both sculpture and space with his movements as a walking man to the point that: “The sculpting of space – sculpture which defines space – may even be invisible as sculpture and still exists as sculptural space” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 52). According to John Golding, for many other abstract artists this search for permanence concerns a personal artistic “path to the absolute” in which a spiritual pursuit is embedded in artistic research (Golding 2002). Noguchi’s peculiar experimentation sees an important coincidence between the idea of space and the world so that the search for permanence and meaning coincide with the aim of sculpture. The importance of this “The essence of sculpture is for me the perception of space, the continuum of our existence. All dimensions are but measures of it […] I say it is the sculpture who orders and animates pace, gives it meaning.” (Noguchi 1968, 28) 12 “I’m no longer of this world. I am far from myself detached from my body. I am among essential things.” (Geist 1983) 11 16 Chapter One theme was very much embedded both in Noguchi’s practice and in his literary production, making it possible to find definitions of its scope in many texts over the course of his life: For the artist there is the special duty of transmitting to posterity the tradition of art – to seek profoundly the imagination the truth and send its light into the darkness of men’s heart; (sculpture) it seeks to give an order and significance to living. Against the rising chaos […] a fence against the dark. (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 36, 39) The centrality of this thinking can also be traced in the title and structure Noguchi gave his exhibition at the 1986 Venice Biennale, What is Sculpture? Although, when writing his autobiography, it is probably while reflecting on the future mission of art in an electronic age that he best synthetizes the coincidence between permanence and the scope of sculpture, between art and spirituality: “Where all we see is change I like to think that sculpture may have in this a special role – as an antidote to impermanence.”13 Hence, as Roger Lipsey notes (Lipsey 2011, 299–302, 335–54), what remains of religion, in Noguchi as in many of his contemporaries, is a spiritual attitude with no orthodox religion in the background. Noguchi was totally fed by and aware of secularization, declaring more than once that art can substitute religion, which dies as a dogma. What endures is the “invocation to God” in the form of a “nonanthropomorphic deity” or the “spirit of longing” (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 33–4). References Altshuler, Bruce. 1994. Noguchi. New York: Abbeville Press. Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane, and Bruce Altshuler, eds. 1994. Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations. New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated. Ashton, Dore. 1992. Noguchi: East and West. Berkeley: University of California Press. Full quote: “Where all we see is change I like to think that sculpture may have in this a special role – as an antidote to impermanence – with newness yes, but with a quality of enduring freshness relative to that resonant void, without, not to end only as another phenomenon of our times. But this of course, is what art is” (Noguchi 1968, 40). 13 Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence 17 Buckminster Fuller, Richard. 2015. Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking; http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s00/p0000.html Cort, Louise Allison, and Berth Winther-Tamaki. 2003. Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth. Exhibition catalogue. Washington: Arthur M. Sackler, Smithsonian Institution. Duus, Masayo. 2006. Visions of the Modern: The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders. Oxford and Princeton: Princeton University Press. Friedman, Martin. 1978. Noguchi’s Imaginary Landscapes. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Walker Art Center. Geist, Sidney. 1983. Brancusi, a Study of the Sculpture. New York: Hacker Books. Glogowski, Dominika. 2012. “Embodied Nature. Isamu Noguchi’s Intetra Fountain.” In Meanings of Abstract Art: Between Nature and Theory, edited by Paul Crowther and Isabel Wünsche, 169–83. New York: Routledge. Golding, John. 1994. Visions of the Modern. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. —. 2002. Paths to the Absolute: Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, Pollock, Newman, Rothko and Still. London and New York: Thames & Hudson. Grove, Nancy. 1985. Isamu Noguchi: A Study of the Sculpture. New York: Garland Publishing. —. 1989. Isamu Noguchi Portraiture Sculpture. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Inpik, Andrew. 2012. “The complexities of ‘Abstracting’ from nature.” In Meanings of Abstract Art: Between Nature and Theory, edited by Paul Crowther and Isabel Wünsche, 255–69. New York: Routledge. Linford, Amy. 2013. Isamu Noguchi’s Modernism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lipsey, Roger. 2011. The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art. Dover: Courier Corporation. Noguchi, Isamu. 1968. A Sculptor’s World. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers. —. 1987. The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated. Shapiro, Meyer. 1937. “Nature of Abstract Art.” Marxist Quarterly, January/February. Extract printed in Lind, Maria, eds. 2013. Abstraction. Cambridge: Whitechapel and the MIT Press. 18 Chapter One Shoji, Sadao. 2011. Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends. Milan: 5 Continents. Torres, Ana Maria. 2000. Isamu Noguchi: A Study of Space. New York: Monacelli. ABSTRACTS Cristina Baldacci “Language to Be Looked at and/or Things to Be Read:” Language as a Sculptural Material in Robert Smithson Words and objects, “mind and matter”, are equivalent to Robert Smithson, who saw in nature – and in particular in rocks – the same “syntax of splits and ruptures” that characterizes language. In his writings, which sometimes appear as montages of written and visual elements, images are not mere illustrations, but an integral part of words. And, vice versa, many of his works both define and complete themselves through words. Even his Non-Sites, the famous withdrawals of land that for Smithson represent the part for the whole, are both matter and language. Actually, they refer to a stratification of places and experiences over time. Today, many of Smithson’s interventions are hardly visitable as actual “sites.” Geographically distant, and often hidden or eroded by atmospheric agents, they belong more to nature than to the art world. However, they persist both as visual documents as well as written and oral stories. Reworking the title that is usually attributed to his works, and, more generally, to the works by other land artists, one could say that what remains of Smithson are mostly “earthwords.” Michele Bertolini The Experience of Sculpture in Robert Morrisʼs Notes on Sculpture The essay focuses on Robert Morris’s theoretical writings, particularly on Notes on Sculpture, published in the 1960s. Morris epitomizes the historical and anthropological idea of sculpture, and his connection with the human body and the beholder’s place. The change of scale produces a perceptual alteration and a new experience of sculpture whose identity swings between the monument and the object. The contemporary abstract sculpture requires a complex experience and consciousness from the beholder, inciting a new reflection on space and time. 180 Abstracts Davide Dal Sasso Tensional Creation: Luciano Fabro’s Sculpture between Conceptualism and Abstraction Abstraction in art coincides with at least two different ways of working on forms: their geometrical structuring, and their expansion up to the formless. A third way reveals the close relation between abstraction and conceptualism in art, being contaminated by the reduction of forms, the expression of ideas, and the development of creative processes. The poetics of Italian artist Luciano Fabro, in his words and works, is a considerable example of this last way to create abstract works. The author’s attempt is to identify some of the main theoretical cores of Fabro’s poetics so as to clarify his idea of sculpture in light of this approach to abstraction. To this end, in this essay he examines in particular: the deep relation between thought and action; the search for a behavioural balance in creating works; the relation between the physical plane of the work and the metaphysical one; the role of ideas and interaction in his pragmatic approach supposing that it is based on the primacy of what Dal Sasso calls “planning process.” Anna Detheridge Gianni Colombo: A Critique of Perception in a Mobile World Through generations and with the echo of history in their ears, Italian artists, from Lucio Fontana to Gianni Colombo and Alberto Garutti, retain and nurture a real obsession for the built space. This inquiry into the nature of our perception of space and its relationship with the human beings who inhabit it, is the focus of Gianni Colombo’s research. Despite his few writings, scanty information and synthetic interviews, today Colombo is emerging as one of the first artists to fully understand the perceptual mutations of individuals in the media and mutant contexts of our contemporary society. Giuseppe Di Liberti “Sculpture is Matter Mattering:” Spatialization of Matter and Visual Poetry in Carl Andre Carl Andre’s works and writings offer a rare and fertile articulation between poetry and sculpture, which interact in an attempt to overcome their limitations: on the one hand, a visual poetry that escapes the linguistic phenomenon, on the other, sculptures that want to be nothing else than “specimens of matter”, and that, therefore, require organizational and structuring schemes that Andre identifies especially through his poetry. By going through some of the most significant pages of Andre’s Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words 181 writings (in particular, Matter Mattering, 1996; On Literature and Consecutive Matters, 1962; Poetry, Vision, Sound, 1975; Art Is Not a Linguistic Phenomenon…, 1976; Linguistic Terrorism, 1976; A Museum of the Elements, 1972; The Turner of Matter, 1980; Sculpture as Place, 1970; The Experience of Materials, 2000) and by considering his wide historicalcritical reflection on 20th century sculpture, this essay intends to present the specific ways through which poetry helps to build the sculptural work as a critical (and political) space that places at its centre the experience of matter. Georges Didi-Huberman The Simplest Image: Tony Smith’s “Cubes” What is a cube? An almost magical object, actually. An object delivering images in the most unexpected and rigorous way ever. Undoubtedly for the very reason that it does not imitate anything to begin with, that it is itself its own figural reason. It is then undoubtedly a prominent tool of figurativity. Somehow evident, as it is always given as such, immediately recognizable and formally stable. Non-evident in other respects, as far as its extreme manageability makes it suited to any game, hence to any paradox. The cube reveals, then, its complexity as soon as we grasp its character of simple element. For it is at the same time result and process; for it belongs to the universe of children as well as to the most learned thoughts, for instance, the radical needs to which contemporary art has devoted the realm of figures, after Malevich, Mondrian, or El Lissitzky. From the start, it leads, therefore, to failure any genetic or teleological model applied to images, in particular the images of art, inasmuch as it is not more archaic than any simple result of an ideal process of formal “abstraction.” The way the American Minimal Art of the 1960s calls upon the virtuality of the cube is still, in this respect, exemplary. The investigation of such a reference should start – or start again – with Tony Smith’s work, not only because of the inaugural value of Tony Smith’s early sculptures for other minimalist artists, but also because of the value of the theoretical parable that the very story of their invention conveys. Stefano Esengrini Vision, Perception, Openness: David Smith’s New Sculpture Dead before his time in 1965 in the climax of his creative life’s course, David Smith appears, together with Alexander Calder, Eduardo Chillida, and Anthony Caro, as one of the most decisive abstract sculptors of the second half of the 20th century. Evidence of all this is the extraordinary display given to his work on the occasion of the exhibition organized by 182 Abstracts Giovanni Carandente in Spoleto in 1962 entitled Sculptures in the city. Invited by the Italian Government to make one or two works at the Italsider factory in Voltri, in just one month, Smith was able to create an impressive series of twenty-six sculptures. The following year saw the advancement of the decisive series of the Cubi he had started in 1961, which sees the use of stainless steel as the material best suited to the plastic need of giving evidence to the encounter between man and nature, in which sculpture faces, by reflecting it, the vastness of celestial and terrestrial references as taken in their unceasing metamorphosis. A need, on the other hand, which had enlivened his willing to place in the two fields surrounding his studio almost ninety sculptures, in view of a more direct contact with reality, thanks to the intermediate action of the work of art, icon of that spiritual eye by which the artist corresponds to the world’s epiphany. The so-called Fields thus represent the most accomplished manifestation of the urgency which is fundamental in Smith’s work, as they define a real cosmos at a lower scale in which the artist’s existence takes place in his unexhausted challenge to himself and to the whole world to affirm his identity as a man and as a sculptor. Filippo Fimiani Yves Klein: All That Is Solid Melts into Air Freeing sculptures from their pedestal, making them dance like balloons in the cloudless sky and disappear from sight like space rockets towards the infinite, imbue them with transparent air like sponges and become all of a piece with the surrounding empty space: these idées fixes have for a long time been the order of the day in the Agenda of Yves Klein. Many projects, a few patents, few creations, in an unstable and ambiguous balance between utopia and irony, the sublime and the kitsch, the will to create art without works and the legend of the artist with a masterpiece. And a fable, in which the artist abandons the monument of himself to the world of art and becomes a worldly photo-reporter, and goes around recording everything that happens in the life world. David Freedberg Joseph Kosuth and The Play of the Unmentionable Kosuth has been producing mosaic-like juxtapositions in such a way as to produce new (or surplus) meanings that go beyond the individual texts and objects made by others. These mosaics of appropriated texts and objects become works in their own right, in which new meanings arise in the interstices between texts and texts, texts and objects. The Brooklyn installation (1990) was thus a work like any other by Kosuth. Fundamental Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words 183 to everything that he has done is the belief that meaning cannot reside in the object or the text alone and is in no sense autonomous. The meaning of a work of art depends wholly on its context and on its relations with the viewer. Meaning, as Wittgenstein himself declared, lies in use. The Brooklyn installation was about a remote category such as the unmentionable. If art is able to show, even to describe, that which cannot be said, it is even more capable of showing that which cannot be mentioned. The point of the Brooklyn installation was to enable, through the play of these unmentionables, the laying bare of what we are no longer allowed to mention (because of the coils of institutionality), or cannot bring ourselves to mention (because of repression). Elio Grazioli Donald Judd’s Specificity The conception of “specific objects” synthesizes Donald Judd’s contribution to the idea of abstract art. But what “specificity” does Judd talk about? How does he mean it and in what way is it different from the one already claimed and theorized by the previous and contemporary European abstract art and also, in particular, by Clement Greenberg’s Modernism? Accused of aporia, interpreted in a formalistic way by some or in a phenomenological or post-structuralist sense by others, Judd’s theory, deemed as the background of the Minimal Art movement, is indeed also different from Robert Morris’s or Carl Andre’s and then from the minimalist critical vulgate it has given birth to. For all these reasons, in order to verify the hypothesis on which it is grounded, rereading Donald Judd’s fundamental text becomes for us the occasion for re-discussing its theoretical result. Angela Mengoni Matthew Barney: The Semiotic Sculptural Body Matthew Barney often referred to his artistic practice involving heterogeneous media and materials − from film to photography, from installations to petroleum jelly artefacts − as sculpture. The sculptural status of his artistic practice resides in its capability to shape a common conceptual root in different material forms, beyond any hierarchical classification of artistic mediums or genres. The paper approaches Matthew Barney’s sculpture through the relationship between such a heterogeneous family of forms, figures and materials and the much more abstract diagrammatic semantic core by which it is generated. That is why in Barney’s sculptural system abstraction plays a prominent role, both in the usual meaning of non-figurative quality and as a characteristic of the 184 Abstracts general conceptual categories he has been constantly going back to in the ensemble of his work and that were drawn from the semantic domain of sport and biology. Andrea Pinotti To Whom it may Concern: Richard Serra and the Phenomenology of Intransitive Monumentality In an interview with Douglas Crimp in July 1980, Richard Serra rebelled against the tendency to interpret his sculptures in the sense of “monuments”: “When people see my large-scale works in public places, they call them monumental, without ever thinking about what the term monumental means […]. They do not relate to the history of monuments. They do not memorialize anything.” Yet, especially in front of his stelae it is difficult to avoid the impression of being faced at least with a form of monumentality: they are therefore “intransitive” in the sense that their apparently memorial gesture actually lacks the object as a referent of commemoration. From this problematic tension, we will attempt a parcours through Serra’s writings meant to single out the fundamental motives of his thinking about a certain idea of sculpture: site-specificity, the role of materials and scale, the relationship with architecture, cooperation and multi-authoriality, kinesthetic fruition, the relationship between sculpture and performance. Clarissa Ricci Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence “Research” is one of the most commonly used words in Isamu Noguchi’s texts, matching his continuous investigation of matter around the nature of sculpture. The artist’s biography, encompassing travels between the United States, Europe and the Far East, is characterized by a sole path aimed at the comprehension of what he calls the investigation of the “unlimited field of sculptural expression” through sculpture from all ages. The Far East, Japan in particular, plays a central role in the comprehension of his production on a formal level, identifiable with his fascination towards Zen gardens or Noh masks, but also of a more intrinsic form of expression, which can be detected in his conception of space and its relation in continuum with human and bodily experience. Hence, scholars pointed out how artistic practice in Noguchi can be viewed as the search for existential awareness through sculpture. Therefore, the main aim of the text is to highlight the characteristics of Noguchi’s abstraction, primarily intended as an existential predisposition, focused on identifying elements capable of lasting in time and space, merging together both Eastern and Western heritages. Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words 185 Riccardo Venturi Impossible Objects: On Francesco Lo Savio’s Metals This text reconsiders the figure of Francesco Lo Savio – a largely unknown Italian artist of the 1950s and 1960s – whose work remains enigmatic, fleeting, misunderstood, undoubtedly underestimated. In particular, it tackles his sculptural output, the Metalli (Metals), dark deflecting mirrors hanging in balance between painting and sculpture, craftsmanship and industrial design. These objects were and are still largely associated with minimalist aesthetics, although Lo Savio’s art was strongly rooted in pictorial abstraction, the Bauhaus and the utopian avantgarde. Through his distinctive transition from one medium to another (drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, design, urbanism), his clear-cut writings on the space-light relationship, and the recollections of other artists and critics, this essay attempts to shed light on the complexity of his work. Lo Savio’s industrial aesthetic was equally distant from modernist paintings flatness and neo-avant-garde readymades, closer, under this respect, to the Group ZERO. The Metals – two-dimensional surfaces leaning forward towards the three-dimensional space of reality – are finally a relevant and experimental example of the “extroflection” of postwar Italian painting and sculpture. CONTRIBUTORS Cristina Baldacci Cristina Baldacci is an affiliated fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, where she was previously fellow for the ERRANS, in Time core project (2016–2018). In 2011 she received her PhD in Art History and Theory from the Università Iuav di Venezia (in conjunction with the Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), where she spent two more years (2013–2015) as a postdoctoral research fellow. In addition to her research and teaching activities in Venice, she has regularly given lessons and seminars at: Università degli Studi di Milano, IULM–Università di Lingue e Scienze della Comunicazione, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Politecnico di Milano. She was a visiting scholar at both Columbia University (2009) and the City University of New York (2005–2006). Her research interests focus on the archive and atlas as visual forms of knowledge; appropriation and montage practices; strategies of reenactment, remediation and circulation of images; installation art and contemporary sculpture; visual culture studies and image theories; the relationship between art and new media. She has contributed to various journals, magazines, and essay collections, and co-edited, among others, the volumes Quando è scultura (with Clarissa Ricci, Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2010) and Montages: Assembling as a Form and Symptom in Contemporary Arts (with Marco Bertozzi, Milano: Mimesis International, 2018). She is the author of Archivi Impossibili: Un’ossessione dell’arte contemporanea (Milano: Johan & Levi, 2016), a monograph on archiving as a contemporary artistic practice. Michele Bertolini Michele Bertolini teaches Aesthetics and Art Criticism at the Accademia di Belle Arti “G. Carrara” di Bergamo. After a PhD in Philosophy (EHESS, Paris, and Università degli Studi di Milano), he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia (2014– 2015), and has been collaborating with the chair of Aesthetics at the Università degli Studi di Milano. His research focuses on the links between the verbal and the visual, on the aesthetics and ontology of moving images, on the aesthetics of spectatorship in the 18th century (particularly on Diderot). As well as numerous writings on aesthetics, art theory (Diderot, Balzac, Bayer, Cassirer, Malraux, Fried) and cinema Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words 187 (Bazin, Bresson, Lang, Tarkovskij, Tourneur, Welles), he is the author of: Quadri di un’esposizione. I Salons di Diderot (Roma: Aracne, 2018), L’estetica di Bergson. Immagine, forma e ritmo nel Novecento francese (Milano: Mimesis, 2002), La rappresentazione e gli affetti. Studi sulla ricezione dello spettacolo cinematografico (Milano: Mimesis, 2009), Deleuze e il cinema francese (with Tommaso Tuppini, Milano: Mimesis, 2002). He translated and edited: André Bazin, Jean Renoir (Milano: Mimesis, 2012), Diderot e il demone dell’arte (Milano: Mimesis, 2014), and co-edited: Entrare nell’opera: i Salons di Diderot (Firenze: Le Monnier, 2012), Paradossi settecenteschi. La figura dell’attore nel secolo dei Lumi (Milano: Led, 2010). Davide Dal Sasso Davide Dal Sasso obtained his PhD in Philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Torino. His research is focused on the relationships among philosophy, aesthetics, and contemporary arts, with particular interest in questions concerning conceptualism in art. He is a member of LabOnt (Laboratory for Ontology) and curator of Dialoghi di Estetica, the section of philosophy and art published in the magazine Artribune. He has edited the new edition of Ermanno Migliorini’s Conceptual Art (Milano – Udine: Mimesis, 2014). Anna Detheridge Anna Detheridge, founder and president of the non-profit research agency Connecting Cultures, is a visual arts theorist and critic. She was editor for the arts pages of the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore from 1985 to 2003. She has taught Visual Arts at the Politecnico di Milano and at the Università Bocconi di Milano and has curated several major exhibitions including the Biennale of Photography in Turin in 2003, the exhibition The Global Village at the Musée des Beaux Art in Montreal, and Arte Pubblica in Italia: lo spazio delle Relazioni in 2003 at Cittadellarte, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Art Factory near Turin. Giuseppe Di Liberti Giuseppe Di Liberti is assistant professor in Aesthetics at the AixMarseille Université. He graduated at the Università degli Studi di Palermo, where he studied philosophy and where he also obtained his PhD in Aesthetics in 2003, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the EHESS in Paris. He is a member of CEPERC–Centre Gilles Gaston Granger at the Aix-Marseille University. He has worked extensively on the history of aesthetics, mainly on the system of fine arts. His current work focuses on 188 Contributors the correlation between aesthetics and life sciences in Diderot’s thought and the notion of aesthetic fact. He is the author of Il sistema delle arti. Storia e ipotesi (Milano: Mimesis, 2009; translated in French as Le système des arts. Histoire et hypothèse, Paris: Vrin, 2016) and co-editor, together with Danièle Cohn, of Textes clés d’esthétique. Connaissance, Art, Expérience (Paris: Vrin, 2012). He has published several articles and book chapters, and is a member of the editorial board of Images Re-vues. Georges Didi-Huberman Georges Didi-Huberman, directeur d’études at the EHESS in Paris, is a philosopher and an art historian whose research spans the history and theory of images, psychoanalysis, the human sciences, and philosophy. He has been visiting professor in several universities and scholar in distinguished research institutes, and has been awarded prestigious writing and research prizes. Among his main publications, Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde (Paris: Minuit, 1992); Ninfa moderna (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); the six volumes of L’œil de l’histoire (Paris: Minuit, 2009–2016); in English translation, Invention of Hysteria. Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière (Cambridge, Mass. – London: MIT Press, 2004); Confronting Images. Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005), Images in Spite of All. Four Photographs from Auschwitz (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012); The Cube and the Face: Around a Sculpture by Alberto Giacometti (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2015); The Surviving Image. Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg’s History of Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2016); Bark (Cambridge, Mass. – London: MIT Press, 2017). Apart from his writing activity, Georges Didi-Huberman is also a curator of exhibitions (the latest is Uprisings at the Jeu de Paume in Paris; exhibition catalogue Paris: Gallimard, 2016), member of scientific committees in museums, and editorial member of various journals. Stefano Esengrini Stefano Esengrini graduated in Socio-Economic Disciplines at the Università Luigi Bocconi di Milano in 1993, and in Theoretical Philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Milano in 1997. In 2004 he completed his PhD in Philosophy at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen with a dissertation on philosophy, science, and politics in Martin Heidegger. Since 1998 he has been teaching Philosophy and History at undergraduate level. Since 2012 he has been collaborating with the chair of Aesthetics at the Department of Philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Milano and Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words 189 at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano. He is a member of the Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft. His research topics are phenomenology, hermeneutics, and art theory. He translated and edited several volumes by Adalbert Stifter, Yves Bonnefoy, Pierre Boulez, Auguste Rodin, Jean Beaufret, Eduardo Chillida, Sachiko Natsume-Dubé, François Fédier, Georges Braque, Paul Klee, Novalis, Mario Negri. Among his writings: “Heidegger legge Stifter. Per un’interpretazione fenomenologica della ‘Eisgeschichte’”, Studia theodisca, 14, 2007; “Heidegger e Chillida. Un dialogo sullo spazio”, Aisthesis – Rivista di Estetica Online, 2010; Dal silenzio l’immagine (Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2015). He is currently working on a book on the genesis of the work of art in 20th century painting and sculpture. Filippo Fimiani Filippo Fimiani, docteur en Lettres at Paris 8-Saint-Denis and PhD in Philosophy at the Università degli Studi “Federico II” di Napoli, is full professor of Aesthetics at the Università di Salerno. He has been visiting professor at the EHESS in Paris, at the Université Paris 7-Diderot, at the Université de Pau. He is member of the Società Italiana d’Estetica and of many academic centres: CRAL (Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage, EHESS/CNRS), among them ACTE (Structure de recherches en arts, créations, théories et esthétiques, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne-CNRS), LIRA (Laboratoire International de Recherches en Arts, Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3), CICADA (Centre Inter-Critique des Arts et des Discours sur les Arts, Pau), LAMO (L’Antique, le Moderne, Nantes), PUNCTUM (Centro Studi sull’immagine, Bergamo), and of the networks Atmospheric Spaces and ViStuRN (Visual Studies-Rome Network). Fimiani is co-editor of Aisthesis, contributing editor of WikiCréation, Figures de l’art and La Part de l’Œil. David Freedberg David Freedberg is Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art and Director of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. In the period July 2015–April 2017 he was Director of the Warburg Institute at the University of London. He is best known for his work on psychological responses to art, and mainly for his studies on iconoclasm and censorship (see, inter alia, Iconoclasts and their Motives, Maarsen: Schwartz, 1985; The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); although his more traditional art historical writing originally centred on Dutch and Flemish art (see for example: Rubens: The Life of Christ after the Passion, London: 190 Contributors Miller; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Following the success of his The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), his primary research now concentrates on the relations between art, history, and cognitive neuroscience – particularly on the correlations between vision, embodiment, movement and emotion. Freedberg has also been involved in several exhibitions of contemporary art (e.g. the main essay for the catalogue Joseph Kosuth: The Play of the Unmentionable, New York: The New Press, 1992). Elio Grazioli Elio Grazioli is a contemporary art and photography critic. He teaches Contemporary Art History at the Università degli Studi di Bergamo and at the Accademia di Belle Arti “G. Carrara” di Bergamo. He was member of the editorial staff of Flash Art from 1981 to 1989 and editor of Ipso Facto from 1998 to 2001. Since 1978 he has been organizing solo shows and collective exhibitions, especially of Italian and international young artists, and since 2007 he has been the artistic director of the annual festival “Fotografia Europea” in Reggio Emilia. Among his most recent publications, La polvere nell’arte (Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2004), Piero Manzoni (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007), Ugo Mulas (Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2010), La collezione come forma d’arte (Milano: Johan & Levi, 2012), Duchamp, Picasso e gli altri (Milano: doppiozero, 2012), Arte per ciechi (Milano: doppiozero, 2012), Davide Mosconi (Milano: doppiozero, 2014), Duchamp oltre la fotografia (Milano: Johan & Levi, 2017). He has translated and edited books by Alberto Giacometti, Paul Gauguin, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean-Christophe Bailly, and Rosalind Krauss. Angela Mengoni Angela Mengoni is researcher and teacher at the Università Iuav di Venezia. After a PhD in Semiotics (Università di Siena) she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Philosophy of Culture at the University of Leuven KUL and postdoctoral researcher at the Università di Siena. From 2009 to 2012 she worked as a full-time researcher at eikones, the Swiss NCR research program on “Iconic Criticism: The Power and Meaning of Images” at the University of Basel. Since 2010 she has taken part in the research group “ACTH – Art contemporain et temps de l’histoire / Contemporary art and historical temporalities” (EHESS, Paris – École de Beaux-Arts de Lyon). Her research interests concern the visual strategies of montage in contemporary art with special reference to the Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words 191 European art of the post-war period, the representation of the body in late modernity and its relationship with a biopolitics of the bodies (Ferite. Il corpo e la carne nell’arte della tarda modernità, Siena: SeB Editore, 2012), the plural temporality of the image and, more widely, visual semiotics and image theory. Among her recent publications: Sul mostrare. Teorie e forme del displaying contemporaneo (with Malvina Borgherini, Milano: Mimesis, 2016); Interpositions. Montage d’images et production de sens (with Andreas Beyer and Antonia von Schöning, Paris: MSH Editions, 2014); and the first monograph on the Flemish artist Berlinde de Bruyckere (Bruxelles/New Haven/Berlin: Mercatorfonds, 2014). Andrea Pinotti Andrea Pinotti is professor in Aesthetics at the Università degli Studi di Milano. His research topics are: German aesthetics in the 18th and 20th centuries; visual culture studies and image-theories; memory studies with particular reference to the questions of contemporary monumentality; the empathy theories; the morphological tradition from Goethe to the present day. He was fellow at various international institutions (The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University in New York; the EHESS and the IEA in Paris; the Warburg Institute in London; the ZfL in Berlin). He was directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and visiting professor at the Université Jean-Moulin Lyon 3. Among his publications the volumes: Il corpo dello stile (Milano: Mimesis, 2001); Estetica della pittura (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007; Spanish translation: Estética de la pintura, Madrid: Machado, 2011); Empatia. Storia di un’idea da Platone al postumano (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2011; French translation: Empathie. Histoire d’une idée de Platon au posthumain, Paris: Vrin, 2016); Cultura visuale. Immagini, sguardi, media, dispositivi (with Antonio Somaini, Torino: Einaudi, 2016). Clarissa Ricci Clarissa Ricci is a postdoctoral research fellow at Iuav University in Venice (IT) and editor of the academic journal OBOE: On Biennials and Other Exhibitions. She received her PhD in Art History and Theory in 2014, with a thesis dedicated to the Venice Biennale titled 1993–2003 Venice Biennale: The Exhibition as Platform. She was a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York, in 2009–2010. Her interests range from the methodology and history of exhibitions, with a particular emphasis on the Venice Biennale, to contemporary sculpture and art market studies. She has written numerous essays in academic journals such as Ricerche di 192 Contributors S/Confine and Journal of Curatorial Studies. She edited Starting from Venice: Studies on the Biennale (Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2011), a volume on the Venice Biennale, and co-edited Quando è scultura (with Cristina Baldacci, Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2010). She is part of TIAMSA, The International Art Market Studies Association. Riccardo Venturi Riccardo Venturi is pensionnaire in History and Theory of the Arts at the Académie de France–Villa Medici, Rome (2018–2019). He was previously postdoctoral scholar at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris (2012–2016). He has published Mark Rothko. Lo Spazio e la sua disciplina (Milano: Electa, 2007), Black paintings. Eclissi sul modernismo (Milano: Electa, 2008), Passione dell’indifferenza. Francesco Lo Savio (Milano: Humboldt Books, 2018). He recently co-curated the retrospective Francesco Lo Savio at the MART–Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. He is a regular contributor to Artforum, Alias–Il Manifesto (with the rubric entitled Cristalli Liquidi), and to www.doppiozero.com (Screen Tests blog). Abstraction Matters CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORS IN THEIR OWN WOROS EDITED BY Cristina Baldacci, Micne1e Bertolini Stefano Esengrini and Andrea Pinotti

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