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拍品专文
"A picture is nothing, it is a door that leads to another door...The truth we seek will never be found in a picture: it will only appear behind the last door that the viewer succeeds in opening by his own efforts" (Tàpies Exh. cat. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1995, p. 36).
For Tàpies, whose name means "wall" in both Spanish and his native Catalan, his paintings are all physical objects that like walls or doors stand between him and an alternate dimension of reality. A long time devotee of much eastern philosophy and religion, particularly Zen Buddhism and the teachings of the Vedas, his paintings represent a physical manifestation of a series of unconscious actions that combine with the materials of the painting to form a path of understanding . "I have never believed in the intrinsic value of art." Tàpies once observed, "In itself it seems to me to be nothing. What is important is its role as a spur, a springboard, which helps us attain knowledge. I also find it ridiculous that some people want to "enrich" it by an overabundance of colours, of composition, of work...The work of art is a simple support of meditation, an artifice serving to fix the attention, to stabilize or excite the mind; its value can only be judged by its results."(Ibid, p. 56).
Given this aesthetic, the role of materials for Tàpies becomes all important for it is with them and within them that the nature and record of his unconscious actions is contained. Tàpies' art explores the possibility, as he once observed, that "in an insignificant piece of clay one may see the whole universe."
Executed in 1956 Figura -Paisaje en Gris ("Figure-Landscape in Grey") is one of Tàpies' first mature paintings and displays within its delicately textured charcoal grey surface the record of a multitude of varying and separate actions by the artist who has smeared, pasted, scrawled, scratched and incised a wealth of detail into the seemingly ancient surface of the painting. Formerly in the collection of the gallery belonging to Martha Jackson - a close friend of Tàpies and the first to promote his work in the United States - Figura -Paisaje en Gris is ostensibly a landscape. It is however, both a mental as well as a physical landscape. The title explains the dual nature of the painting by linking the word figure with landscape. Both are interchangeable with one another because, as Tàpies' art always makes clear, the interaction between man and and his environment causes changes in both. Here the artist has created a landscape that can also be read as a figure, yet this figure/landscape is also the field of the artist's creation and a record of his creative actions. In this respect it reflects both himself and his attempts at creation and of attaining a wider understanding of the universe in which he lives.
A sense of equilibrium is also expressed in the work by contrasting a small heavy cream paste that seems to bleed red into the upper half of the painting with the vast flat grey panorama of its surroundings. The surface of the painting has been incised and scrawled in the top half of the canvas in a manner that suggests Tàpies has clawed at the surface as if trying to dig his way through the painting. This area can also be read as a vague and somewhat obliterated head. "When I draw a head," Tàpies recalled, "I immediately feel an urge to destroy it, to erase it, because the drawing only captures the outward appearance, and for me, the vital issue is what lies behind the visible form of the head." (Converstaions with Antoni Tàpies, B. Catoir, Munich 1991, p. 79). This seemingly thinned area is counterbalanced in relief by the bottom of the work with its large pasted surface of sand taking the form of a cross that can also be read as a rough outline of the figure's body.
In merging the forms of the human figure with the demands and unconscious prompts of his materials, Tàpies' creates a work that acts as a two-way mirror between reality as we see it and a wider, mystical dimension to which art forms a bridge. Tàpies' arrived at this manner of working intuitively in 1955 after much time experimenting with the automatism advocated by the Surrealists. Looking back a few years later he was delighted to discover "that my pictures for the first time had turned into walls" and were connected to "so many things that seemed to link me proudly with the philosophies and wisdom I loved so much. What a great surprise it was to discover later that the work of Bodhidharma , the founder of Zen, was entitled Contemplation of the wall of the Mahayana and that the Zen temples had gardens of sand forming strips or grooves similar to the furrows of some of my pictures and that the orientals had already defined certain elements or surface in my spirit." (cited in Tàpies R.Penrose, London 1978, p. 59).
For Tàpies, whose name means "wall" in both Spanish and his native Catalan, his paintings are all physical objects that like walls or doors stand between him and an alternate dimension of reality. A long time devotee of much eastern philosophy and religion, particularly Zen Buddhism and the teachings of the Vedas, his paintings represent a physical manifestation of a series of unconscious actions that combine with the materials of the painting to form a path of understanding . "I have never believed in the intrinsic value of art." Tàpies once observed, "In itself it seems to me to be nothing. What is important is its role as a spur, a springboard, which helps us attain knowledge. I also find it ridiculous that some people want to "enrich" it by an overabundance of colours, of composition, of work...The work of art is a simple support of meditation, an artifice serving to fix the attention, to stabilize or excite the mind; its value can only be judged by its results."(Ibid, p. 56).
Given this aesthetic, the role of materials for Tàpies becomes all important for it is with them and within them that the nature and record of his unconscious actions is contained. Tàpies' art explores the possibility, as he once observed, that "in an insignificant piece of clay one may see the whole universe."
Executed in 1956 Figura -Paisaje en Gris ("Figure-Landscape in Grey") is one of Tàpies' first mature paintings and displays within its delicately textured charcoal grey surface the record of a multitude of varying and separate actions by the artist who has smeared, pasted, scrawled, scratched and incised a wealth of detail into the seemingly ancient surface of the painting. Formerly in the collection of the gallery belonging to Martha Jackson - a close friend of Tàpies and the first to promote his work in the United States - Figura -Paisaje en Gris is ostensibly a landscape. It is however, both a mental as well as a physical landscape. The title explains the dual nature of the painting by linking the word figure with landscape. Both are interchangeable with one another because, as Tàpies' art always makes clear, the interaction between man and and his environment causes changes in both. Here the artist has created a landscape that can also be read as a figure, yet this figure/landscape is also the field of the artist's creation and a record of his creative actions. In this respect it reflects both himself and his attempts at creation and of attaining a wider understanding of the universe in which he lives.
A sense of equilibrium is also expressed in the work by contrasting a small heavy cream paste that seems to bleed red into the upper half of the painting with the vast flat grey panorama of its surroundings. The surface of the painting has been incised and scrawled in the top half of the canvas in a manner that suggests Tàpies has clawed at the surface as if trying to dig his way through the painting. This area can also be read as a vague and somewhat obliterated head. "When I draw a head," Tàpies recalled, "I immediately feel an urge to destroy it, to erase it, because the drawing only captures the outward appearance, and for me, the vital issue is what lies behind the visible form of the head." (Converstaions with Antoni Tàpies, B. Catoir, Munich 1991, p. 79). This seemingly thinned area is counterbalanced in relief by the bottom of the work with its large pasted surface of sand taking the form of a cross that can also be read as a rough outline of the figure's body.
In merging the forms of the human figure with the demands and unconscious prompts of his materials, Tàpies' creates a work that acts as a two-way mirror between reality as we see it and a wider, mystical dimension to which art forms a bridge. Tàpies' arrived at this manner of working intuitively in 1955 after much time experimenting with the automatism advocated by the Surrealists. Looking back a few years later he was delighted to discover "that my pictures for the first time had turned into walls" and were connected to "so many things that seemed to link me proudly with the philosophies and wisdom I loved so much. What a great surprise it was to discover later that the work of Bodhidharma , the founder of Zen, was entitled Contemplation of the wall of the Mahayana and that the Zen temples had gardens of sand forming strips or grooves similar to the furrows of some of my pictures and that the orientals had already defined certain elements or surface in my spirit." (cited in Tàpies R.Penrose, London 1978, p. 59).