Lot Essay
"Art is eternal as a gesture, but it will die as matter...What we want to do is to unchain art from matter, to unchain the sense of the eternal from the preoccupation with the immortal. And we don't care if a gesture, once performed, lives a moment or a millenium, since we are truly convinced that once performed it is eternal." So wrote Fontana in his 2nd Spatial Manifesto of 1951.
With one sweep of the razor blade over a blank canvas in 1958 Fontana achieved this aim. For this one simple and direct gesture effectively turned a painting into an object free from all conventional associative meaning and at the same time opened up painting to new worlds of spatial possibility. Working from a basic intuitive impulse, what Fontana achieved with his now famous slashes is what his friend and critic Guido Ballo has called "a gestural sign that bristles with energy as a manifestation of pure existential vitality."
Fontana's cuts are "signs" that point the way to a new dimension. They are both a representation of man's limited awareness as well as being gateways to another reality. As pure gesture they are a creative act that expands the boundaries of art while at the same time they are a destructive act that by breaking up the canvas plane opens it up to a wider interpretation concerning the relationship between space and time. Through the device of the cut and his punctured holes, Fontana sought to explore the creative possibilities of this new dimension. Beyond the perforations he believed, " a newly gained freedom of awareness awaits us, but also just as inevitably, the end of art."
It is rare to find at auction a work with quite so many cuts, twelve in all. In this picture, Fontana is clearly experimenting with the notion of repeated gesture - creating a rhythm to his work that like calligraphy forms a dancing pattern on the canvas surface while at the same time underpinning his ultimate aim of breaking through the picture frame to that hidden dimension on the other side.
With one sweep of the razor blade over a blank canvas in 1958 Fontana achieved this aim. For this one simple and direct gesture effectively turned a painting into an object free from all conventional associative meaning and at the same time opened up painting to new worlds of spatial possibility. Working from a basic intuitive impulse, what Fontana achieved with his now famous slashes is what his friend and critic Guido Ballo has called "a gestural sign that bristles with energy as a manifestation of pure existential vitality."
Fontana's cuts are "signs" that point the way to a new dimension. They are both a representation of man's limited awareness as well as being gateways to another reality. As pure gesture they are a creative act that expands the boundaries of art while at the same time they are a destructive act that by breaking up the canvas plane opens it up to a wider interpretation concerning the relationship between space and time. Through the device of the cut and his punctured holes, Fontana sought to explore the creative possibilities of this new dimension. Beyond the perforations he believed, " a newly gained freedom of awareness awaits us, but also just as inevitably, the end of art."
It is rare to find at auction a work with quite so many cuts, twelve in all. In this picture, Fontana is clearly experimenting with the notion of repeated gesture - creating a rhythm to his work that like calligraphy forms a dancing pattern on the canvas surface while at the same time underpinning his ultimate aim of breaking through the picture frame to that hidden dimension on the other side.