Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, under no. 7968 and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
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Mettere al Mondo il Mondo: A Collecting Journey in the World of Alighiero Boetti
ALIGHIERO BOETTI (1940-1994)
Aerei
Details
ALIGHIERO BOETTI (1940-1994)
Aerei
watercolor and ink on photographic paper laid down on canvas, in three parts
each: 57 7/8 x 39 ¼ in. (147 x 99.7 cm.)
overall: 57 7/8 x 117 ¾ in. (147 x 299.1 cm.)
Executed in 1989.
Aerei
watercolor and ink on photographic paper laid down on canvas, in three parts
each: 57 7/8 x 39 ¼ in. (147 x 99.7 cm.)
overall: 57 7/8 x 117 ¾ in. (147 x 299.1 cm.)
Executed in 1989.
Provenance
Lucas Schoormans Gallery, New York
de Pury & Luxembourg Art, Geneva
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 2001
de Pury & Luxembourg Art, Geneva
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 2001
Exhibited
Zurich, Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Alighiero Boetti. Cieli ad Alta Quota, 2006.
Further Details
“I made [the Aerei] because today everything seems simultaneous and superficial to me.” Alighiero Boetti
Executed in 1989, this large, vibrant, azure triptych made in watercolor and ink on paper laid down on canvas is a major example of Alighiero Boetti’s celebrated series of Aerei (Aeroplanes) made between 1977 and 1991. In 1977, Boetti had told the critic Maurizio Faggiolo dell’Arco that he “would like to do a collaborative drawing on paper of thousands of aeroplanes set against a deep blue background. Precisely rendered planes all seen in different perspective and at different angles so that they provoke desire. It must be an explosion,” the artist said. (A. Boetti, “Interview with Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco,” in Il Messaggero, 23, March, 1977).
Like Boetti’s famous Mappe, the Aerei were conceived as an extensive and ongoing series of collaborative pictures that were intended to articulate the principle that the artist called ordine e disordine (order and disorder). Boetti’s concept of ordine e disordine was a Heraclitan-derived idea of the world as an holistic entity existing in a perpetual state of flux and division and yet also unified by an inherent conjunction of opposites in the form of the twin, interconnected and underlying organising forces of order and disorder.
It is within this context that Boetti’s series of Aerei assert themselves as fascinating aerial counterparts to the terrestrial Mappe which the artist had begun to make only a few years earlier. In direct contrast to the Mappe, the Aerei are images of a light, open, airy, alternate world above the ground – one no longer fixed and determined by the national borders or insignia so indicative of the geopolitical world map. While Boetti’s Mappe depict a world paradoxically fixed and yet also united by its divisions, the Aerei portray a different paradox in the form of an open and apparently infinite expanse of blue sky packed full with a dense multitude of different modern aircraft all flying schizophrenically in alternate directions. Looking like an air-traffic controller’s worst nightmare in this regard, the inherent ‘order and disorder’ of the Aerei is, however, manifested by the fact that none of its various aircraft ever overlaps with another. They are sustained in a fascinatingly complex and febrile balance by the miraculous laws of pictorial composition.
At once both dreamy and frenetic images that are in some respects also indicative of Boetti’s own innate wanderlust and love of travel, the Aerei offer a visual paradox expressive of both speed and stasis. Like Boetti’s series of Tutto (Everything) and Lavori postali (Postal works) the Aerei suggest a unity of infinite variation and, in their evocation of travel, its cyclical nature of perpetual departure and return.
The Aerei originated as a series in 1977 through a collaboration Boetti made with Guido Fuga. Fuga is an Italian graphic designer best known for his work with Hugo Pratt on some of the Corto Maltese stories and for his collaborations with the Italian artist (and close friend of Boetti’s), Mario Schifano. It was Fuga who helped design the schema for the Aerei, tracing each craft in great detail and precision from a variety of popular magazine sources collected by Boetti to create the works’ near-encyclopaedic visual typology of modern and historical aircraft.
Forming the basic structure of the Aerei, this schema was then sent out to a variety of other collaborators to be hand-colored so that, as in so much of Boetti’s oeuvre, a constant diversity of different touches—none of which are ever the artist’s own—would comprise the surface-image of the final work. This sense of infinite variation being expressed within a fixed and unified concept was also extended to the various media used to create the Aerei. The very first of the series was a large, azure watercolor triptych similar to the present work, but this was followed by several works of differing size and formats often hand-colored using blue, red or black biro.
This nearly ten-foot long Aerei from 1989 is one of the largest, most ambitious and elaborate of the series. Here, in a rare move, special attention has been paid to the loose, flowing and liquid nature of the watercolor medium. Executed with a broad brush, the washes of blue and turquoise have here also been spotted, sprayed and splashed in places to form a surface that, like an abstract painting, provocatively asserts its fluctuating, animated and organic nature as a direct contrast to the fixed mechanical precision of its constellation of carefully-drawn planes.
Emphasizing the contrast between the fluid, hand-crafted background of the work and the precise, mechanical-like tracing of the aircraft, the way in which the picture has been made also reinforces the Aerei’s central theme of showing the forces of order and disorder coming together in a febrile but ultimately harmonious balance. Looking more like the sea in places than the sky which it purports to represent, the fluid painterliness of the background of this work with its spiral-like sprays and different tonal fields of color also seem to suggest, not inappropriately, the fluctuating presence of the wind.
“The shapes created by wind are always ones of energy, of movement... But its image remains one of lightness, even mentally: words that are light, that are airy.” Alighiero Boetti
Boetti would no doubt have appreciated this aspect of the work as, for him, the presence of the wind was always “…a moment of grace. The shapes created by wind are always ones of energy, of movement. Wind furthermore, makes things temporary, and also conveys a sense of time, because through it succession, instant after instant, is rendered in shapes…it is a. real force, alive, like the sun’s rays, but lighter, even if its energy at times can be extremely violent. But its image remains one of lightness, even mentally: words that are light, that are airy” (A. Boetti quoted in Alighiero e Boetti exh cat. Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1999, p. 24).
Executed in 1989, this large, vibrant, azure triptych made in watercolor and ink on paper laid down on canvas is a major example of Alighiero Boetti’s celebrated series of Aerei (Aeroplanes) made between 1977 and 1991. In 1977, Boetti had told the critic Maurizio Faggiolo dell’Arco that he “would like to do a collaborative drawing on paper of thousands of aeroplanes set against a deep blue background. Precisely rendered planes all seen in different perspective and at different angles so that they provoke desire. It must be an explosion,” the artist said. (A. Boetti, “Interview with Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco,” in Il Messaggero, 23, March, 1977).
Like Boetti’s famous Mappe, the Aerei were conceived as an extensive and ongoing series of collaborative pictures that were intended to articulate the principle that the artist called ordine e disordine (order and disorder). Boetti’s concept of ordine e disordine was a Heraclitan-derived idea of the world as an holistic entity existing in a perpetual state of flux and division and yet also unified by an inherent conjunction of opposites in the form of the twin, interconnected and underlying organising forces of order and disorder.
It is within this context that Boetti’s series of Aerei assert themselves as fascinating aerial counterparts to the terrestrial Mappe which the artist had begun to make only a few years earlier. In direct contrast to the Mappe, the Aerei are images of a light, open, airy, alternate world above the ground – one no longer fixed and determined by the national borders or insignia so indicative of the geopolitical world map. While Boetti’s Mappe depict a world paradoxically fixed and yet also united by its divisions, the Aerei portray a different paradox in the form of an open and apparently infinite expanse of blue sky packed full with a dense multitude of different modern aircraft all flying schizophrenically in alternate directions. Looking like an air-traffic controller’s worst nightmare in this regard, the inherent ‘order and disorder’ of the Aerei is, however, manifested by the fact that none of its various aircraft ever overlaps with another. They are sustained in a fascinatingly complex and febrile balance by the miraculous laws of pictorial composition.
At once both dreamy and frenetic images that are in some respects also indicative of Boetti’s own innate wanderlust and love of travel, the Aerei offer a visual paradox expressive of both speed and stasis. Like Boetti’s series of Tutto (Everything) and Lavori postali (Postal works) the Aerei suggest a unity of infinite variation and, in their evocation of travel, its cyclical nature of perpetual departure and return.
The Aerei originated as a series in 1977 through a collaboration Boetti made with Guido Fuga. Fuga is an Italian graphic designer best known for his work with Hugo Pratt on some of the Corto Maltese stories and for his collaborations with the Italian artist (and close friend of Boetti’s), Mario Schifano. It was Fuga who helped design the schema for the Aerei, tracing each craft in great detail and precision from a variety of popular magazine sources collected by Boetti to create the works’ near-encyclopaedic visual typology of modern and historical aircraft.
Forming the basic structure of the Aerei, this schema was then sent out to a variety of other collaborators to be hand-colored so that, as in so much of Boetti’s oeuvre, a constant diversity of different touches—none of which are ever the artist’s own—would comprise the surface-image of the final work. This sense of infinite variation being expressed within a fixed and unified concept was also extended to the various media used to create the Aerei. The very first of the series was a large, azure watercolor triptych similar to the present work, but this was followed by several works of differing size and formats often hand-colored using blue, red or black biro.
This nearly ten-foot long Aerei from 1989 is one of the largest, most ambitious and elaborate of the series. Here, in a rare move, special attention has been paid to the loose, flowing and liquid nature of the watercolor medium. Executed with a broad brush, the washes of blue and turquoise have here also been spotted, sprayed and splashed in places to form a surface that, like an abstract painting, provocatively asserts its fluctuating, animated and organic nature as a direct contrast to the fixed mechanical precision of its constellation of carefully-drawn planes.
Emphasizing the contrast between the fluid, hand-crafted background of the work and the precise, mechanical-like tracing of the aircraft, the way in which the picture has been made also reinforces the Aerei’s central theme of showing the forces of order and disorder coming together in a febrile but ultimately harmonious balance. Looking more like the sea in places than the sky which it purports to represent, the fluid painterliness of the background of this work with its spiral-like sprays and different tonal fields of color also seem to suggest, not inappropriately, the fluctuating presence of the wind.
“The shapes created by wind are always ones of energy, of movement... But its image remains one of lightness, even mentally: words that are light, that are airy.” Alighiero Boetti
Boetti would no doubt have appreciated this aspect of the work as, for him, the presence of the wind was always “…a moment of grace. The shapes created by wind are always ones of energy, of movement. Wind furthermore, makes things temporary, and also conveys a sense of time, because through it succession, instant after instant, is rendered in shapes…it is a. real force, alive, like the sun’s rays, but lighter, even if its energy at times can be extremely violent. But its image remains one of lightness, even mentally: words that are light, that are airy” (A. Boetti quoted in Alighiero e Boetti exh cat. Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1999, p. 24).
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