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Lot Essay
'[Mila] Schön remembered from childhood Jeanne Lanvin's feminine discipline, and she anticipated Jil Sander as an unsentimental reductionist. When she did do colour and pattern, she borrowed from the modern art she collected - Victor Vasarely, Kenneth Noland, Alexander Calder, Lucio Fontana' (V. Horwell, 'Mila Schön Obituary', The Guardian, 13 September 2008).
A vision of purity, the white canvas of Concetto spaziale, Attese sings of serenity. Within its very fabric, five elegant slashes articulate the surface, the vital interactions of the Spatial artist, Lucio Fontana. Painted in 1965, Concetto spaziale, Attese is one of Fontana's celebrated tagli, or cuts, a development from the 'holes' that he had previously pioneered. In the 'cuts', Fontana found a supremely poised and dignified visual language that allowed him to express his concern with space with calligraphic restraint and dignity. The act of puncturing the canvas has none of the sense of violence that appears in some of the more frenzied buchi, the holes. Instead, his sweeping incisions have a crisp understated quality to them.
Perhaps it was that elegance that led to Concetto spaziale, Attese forming a part of the collection of the celebrated fashion designer, Mila Schön. Indeed, Concetto spaziale, Attese appears to have been more than just a picture on the wall for Schön, but also found itself echoed in one of the dresses that she designed and showed in 1969, the year after Fontana's death. The dress that she designed featured long, elegant cuts in the material that clearly referenced Fontana's works; another outfit featured smaller apertures, inverted constellations in the white surface of the material that recalled the buchi.
Having been a keen wearer of the latest Parisian fashions when she was younger, and able to travel to have fittings with the greatest names of the day, it was after the bankruptcy of Schön's husband and their subsequent divorce that she turned her own hand first to recreating the French chic on a budget, and then to making her own designs. Within a very short time, she had a huge and highly prominent following and her work was internationally renowned by the time Fontana painted Concetto spaziale, Attese. This was in part due to the trailblazing thinking that was the foundation for Schön's work and which echoed that of Fontana's own innovations. Schön sought to escape the constraints of the structural assumptions which still underpinned so much couture during the late 1950s and the 1960s, when she came to prominence. Abandoning the old ways of tailoring, she created a new sense of line and retasked the materials in a new way. Her new thinking was perfectly encapsulated in her Fontana-themed, perforated dresses.
Fontana himself had similarly shed the constraints that other artists had taken for granted, piercing the flat surface of the picture. As he explained only a few years after painting Concetto spaziale, Attese, 'I make a hole in the canvas in order to leave behind the old pictorial formulae, the painting and the traditional view of art and I escape symbolically, but also materially, from the prison of the flat surface' (Fontana, quoted in T. Trini, 'The last interview given by Fontana', pp. 34-36, W. Beeren & N. Serota (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Amsterdam & London, 1988, p. 34).
Another similarity between Fontana and Schön was the amount of discreet attention that was paid in order to create works that appeared seemingly effortless. There was a great deal of knowledge, expertise and hard work that supported both her dresses with their crisp lines and his pictures. In the case of his tagli, this was in part perceptible in the actual paint surface. While the lines themselves may have been the result of a sweeping motion, the canvas had already been prepared in such a way as to reinforce its structure in order hold up despite the loss of tension caused by the cuts. In this way, support was provided for the incisions that he made (see P. Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist's Materials, Los Angeles, 2012, pp. 69-70).
Regarding the surface itself, Fontana deliberately added water to the paints that he selected in order to ensure that there were as few traces as possible of brushstrokes that might distract the viewer. Instead, in most of the Attese, the surface was a single unmodified field of colour. In the case of Concetto spaziale, Attese, this colour is white, which would be pushed to a new celebratory extreme in the following year when he exhibited a group of white paintings with single slashes in an installation at the Venice Biennale. Fontana would also shape the canvas in order to achieve the three-dimensionality that he required in his picture, for instance the gentle undulations that appear between the rifts of each of the slashes in Concetto spaziale, Attese. Even the backing, the black material that has been attached to the canvas in order both to support it structurally and also to emphasise the void-like darkness of the hole, reveals Fontana's incredible precision and process. Looking at Concetto spaziale, Attese, the process of execution - a number of cuts in a white canvas - appears deceptively simple. Yet in fact this is the result of the craft, showmanship and perfectionism that renders pictures such as Concetto spaziale, Attese so entrancingly elegant, with their sweeping slits. Fontana himself hinted at the difficulties and the complex mental processes that lay behind his tagli when he said,
'A while ago, a surgeon came to visit me in my studio, and he told me that he was also very capable of making "these holes." I responded to him that I too can cut off a leg, but I also know that the patient will die of it. If he cuts it, however, it's a different situation. Fundamentally different' (Fontana, quoted in ibid., p. 89).
A vision of purity, the white canvas of Concetto spaziale, Attese sings of serenity. Within its very fabric, five elegant slashes articulate the surface, the vital interactions of the Spatial artist, Lucio Fontana. Painted in 1965, Concetto spaziale, Attese is one of Fontana's celebrated tagli, or cuts, a development from the 'holes' that he had previously pioneered. In the 'cuts', Fontana found a supremely poised and dignified visual language that allowed him to express his concern with space with calligraphic restraint and dignity. The act of puncturing the canvas has none of the sense of violence that appears in some of the more frenzied buchi, the holes. Instead, his sweeping incisions have a crisp understated quality to them.
Perhaps it was that elegance that led to Concetto spaziale, Attese forming a part of the collection of the celebrated fashion designer, Mila Schön. Indeed, Concetto spaziale, Attese appears to have been more than just a picture on the wall for Schön, but also found itself echoed in one of the dresses that she designed and showed in 1969, the year after Fontana's death. The dress that she designed featured long, elegant cuts in the material that clearly referenced Fontana's works; another outfit featured smaller apertures, inverted constellations in the white surface of the material that recalled the buchi.
Having been a keen wearer of the latest Parisian fashions when she was younger, and able to travel to have fittings with the greatest names of the day, it was after the bankruptcy of Schön's husband and their subsequent divorce that she turned her own hand first to recreating the French chic on a budget, and then to making her own designs. Within a very short time, she had a huge and highly prominent following and her work was internationally renowned by the time Fontana painted Concetto spaziale, Attese. This was in part due to the trailblazing thinking that was the foundation for Schön's work and which echoed that of Fontana's own innovations. Schön sought to escape the constraints of the structural assumptions which still underpinned so much couture during the late 1950s and the 1960s, when she came to prominence. Abandoning the old ways of tailoring, she created a new sense of line and retasked the materials in a new way. Her new thinking was perfectly encapsulated in her Fontana-themed, perforated dresses.
Fontana himself had similarly shed the constraints that other artists had taken for granted, piercing the flat surface of the picture. As he explained only a few years after painting Concetto spaziale, Attese, 'I make a hole in the canvas in order to leave behind the old pictorial formulae, the painting and the traditional view of art and I escape symbolically, but also materially, from the prison of the flat surface' (Fontana, quoted in T. Trini, 'The last interview given by Fontana', pp. 34-36, W. Beeren & N. Serota (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Amsterdam & London, 1988, p. 34).
Another similarity between Fontana and Schön was the amount of discreet attention that was paid in order to create works that appeared seemingly effortless. There was a great deal of knowledge, expertise and hard work that supported both her dresses with their crisp lines and his pictures. In the case of his tagli, this was in part perceptible in the actual paint surface. While the lines themselves may have been the result of a sweeping motion, the canvas had already been prepared in such a way as to reinforce its structure in order hold up despite the loss of tension caused by the cuts. In this way, support was provided for the incisions that he made (see P. Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist's Materials, Los Angeles, 2012, pp. 69-70).
Regarding the surface itself, Fontana deliberately added water to the paints that he selected in order to ensure that there were as few traces as possible of brushstrokes that might distract the viewer. Instead, in most of the Attese, the surface was a single unmodified field of colour. In the case of Concetto spaziale, Attese, this colour is white, which would be pushed to a new celebratory extreme in the following year when he exhibited a group of white paintings with single slashes in an installation at the Venice Biennale. Fontana would also shape the canvas in order to achieve the three-dimensionality that he required in his picture, for instance the gentle undulations that appear between the rifts of each of the slashes in Concetto spaziale, Attese. Even the backing, the black material that has been attached to the canvas in order both to support it structurally and also to emphasise the void-like darkness of the hole, reveals Fontana's incredible precision and process. Looking at Concetto spaziale, Attese, the process of execution - a number of cuts in a white canvas - appears deceptively simple. Yet in fact this is the result of the craft, showmanship and perfectionism that renders pictures such as Concetto spaziale, Attese so entrancingly elegant, with their sweeping slits. Fontana himself hinted at the difficulties and the complex mental processes that lay behind his tagli when he said,
'A while ago, a surgeon came to visit me in my studio, and he told me that he was also very capable of making "these holes." I responded to him that I too can cut off a leg, but I also know that the patient will die of it. If he cuts it, however, it's a different situation. Fundamentally different' (Fontana, quoted in ibid., p. 89).