拍品專文
In the early 1980's, Francesco Clemente's art and that of his peers Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, and Mimmo Paladino was first seen in New York at Sperone Westwater Gallery. Coming as they did, on the heels of a decade of exhibitions of Minimalist and Conceptual Art, the Italians created a sensation with their figurative paintings. Their mysterious, mythopoetic art work was dubbed "Transavantguardia" by Italian critic Achille Bonito Oliva who, "[pointed] out the movement's belief in the freedom to form a 'nomad creativity' between cultures and forms" (M. Auping "Primitive Decorum: Of Style, Nature, and the Self in Recent Italian Art," Affinities and Intuitions: The Gerald S. Elliott Collection of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1990, p. 164).
Central to Clemente's life and work is his belief in an uncensored discourse between, and ultimately the merging of, diverse cultures. For Clemente, all manner of natural and spiritual forms co-exist. He intuitively depicts this great mix of cultures and creatures in a context of timelessness, without scale or hierarchy. In Untitled, 1983, Clemente vividly portrays himself on several simultaneous levels of evolution. "...We see Clemente's boyishly transcendent features [giving] themselves over to canine ears and a snoutlike nose. Clemente ascends to the image of a wolf... He has abandoned himself to his animal side" (ibid, p. 173). It is a powerful and dramatic image of birth, death and transmutation. In overlapping self-portraits, the artist is in motion: he seems to signal us as he falls in one, and mutates into an animal in the other. The motion serves as a metaphor for the momentariness of culture and the ephemerality of life. In the background, a tangle of bodies are engaged in an erotic fantasy.
Clemente's self-portrait is a central aspect of his imagery... the contortional character of Clemente's portraits is likely a reflection of what he means when he remarks, in speaking of philospophy and literature, 'I trust all those who have "thought" with their bodies...' (M. Auping, "Fragments", Francesco Clemente, New York 1985, p.14).
Central to Clemente's life and work is his belief in an uncensored discourse between, and ultimately the merging of, diverse cultures. For Clemente, all manner of natural and spiritual forms co-exist. He intuitively depicts this great mix of cultures and creatures in a context of timelessness, without scale or hierarchy. In Untitled, 1983, Clemente vividly portrays himself on several simultaneous levels of evolution. "...We see Clemente's boyishly transcendent features [giving] themselves over to canine ears and a snoutlike nose. Clemente ascends to the image of a wolf... He has abandoned himself to his animal side" (ibid, p. 173). It is a powerful and dramatic image of birth, death and transmutation. In overlapping self-portraits, the artist is in motion: he seems to signal us as he falls in one, and mutates into an animal in the other. The motion serves as a metaphor for the momentariness of culture and the ephemerality of life. In the background, a tangle of bodies are engaged in an erotic fantasy.
Clemente's self-portrait is a central aspect of his imagery... the contortional character of Clemente's portraits is likely a reflection of what he means when he remarks, in speaking of philospophy and literature, 'I trust all those who have "thought" with their bodies...' (M. Auping, "Fragments", Francesco Clemente, New York 1985, p.14).