Lot Essay
Pierre Alechinsky showed himself to be an artist of extraordinary perception from his early works as one of the youngest yet most innovative participants of the acclaimed CoBrA movement. Whilst many others in the group failed to emerge independently, Alechinsky continued to work with increasing vigour establishing his own emphatic and valid contribution to Contemporary art.
Influenced by the childlike, suggestive pictorial language of Paul Klee, Alechinsky gathered further influences from the automatic line play of the surrealists and his study of Oriental calligraphy. In his focus on the gestural, Alechinsky was to develop the notion of 'spontaneity' and the 'concretion of the inner vision'.
In encouraging 'free association' from his rich and varied vocabulary of images, Alechinsky was not seeking to distance himself deliberately from content. Rather he believed that any concept too rigourously applied from the outset of a work would blind him to the ideas emerging from the work in progress. While Alechinsky placed importance on a free, 'automatic' unpredictability in his works, he also felt that an image was not always self-sufficient and at time required 'a specific body of reference to catch and hold the passing glance'. With this intention of 'clarifying' or enhancing activity within the central field of his works, Alechinsky introduced his use of marginal comments in predella panels that surround the main picture. This practice was to absorb him episodically throughout his later works.
Le Passé Inaperçu was a central work in Alechinsky's exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1988 entitled 'Margin and Centre' and dedicated to examining his use of boarders. In the works proceeding what must be Alechinsky's largest acrylic, he had begun increasingly to stress the rectangle, not only to focus on the composition within it but also to create an awareness of its borders, on the margins. In an interview with Michael Gibson entitled 'boardering on something central' Alechinsky refers to his use of 'marginalia' as deriving from modifications on printed text or marks on the edge of a lithographic plate which reveal 'the working process'.
In Le Passé Inapercu the viewer's eye, having merged itself in the activity of the central field, is drawn through a circular movement around the rectangles in the boarder in a way reminiscent of the cursive flow of calligraphy, the predella or Comic-Strip. Alechinsky's graphic idiom can be clearly detected in this manner of centering or organising a work. The border composed of black and white drawings confirms the subject of the central part in its repetition of the forms alluded to in the coloured field. In Alechinsky's notes on the associations suggested by his forms, he mentions "the feathered head-gear of the Gilles dancers so close to those of the Mayo", an image that can be clearly read in Le Passé Inapercu. However though this sequence suggests a narrative, the narrative itself has no singularly definable content. Alechinsky preferred to keep his images universal creating as Ionesco writes "a lunar landscape in metamorphosis, distorting and reshaping itself", which lends a vitality to his images that transcend time.
Influenced by the childlike, suggestive pictorial language of Paul Klee, Alechinsky gathered further influences from the automatic line play of the surrealists and his study of Oriental calligraphy. In his focus on the gestural, Alechinsky was to develop the notion of 'spontaneity' and the 'concretion of the inner vision'.
In encouraging 'free association' from his rich and varied vocabulary of images, Alechinsky was not seeking to distance himself deliberately from content. Rather he believed that any concept too rigourously applied from the outset of a work would blind him to the ideas emerging from the work in progress. While Alechinsky placed importance on a free, 'automatic' unpredictability in his works, he also felt that an image was not always self-sufficient and at time required 'a specific body of reference to catch and hold the passing glance'. With this intention of 'clarifying' or enhancing activity within the central field of his works, Alechinsky introduced his use of marginal comments in predella panels that surround the main picture. This practice was to absorb him episodically throughout his later works.
Le Passé Inaperçu was a central work in Alechinsky's exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1988 entitled 'Margin and Centre' and dedicated to examining his use of boarders. In the works proceeding what must be Alechinsky's largest acrylic, he had begun increasingly to stress the rectangle, not only to focus on the composition within it but also to create an awareness of its borders, on the margins. In an interview with Michael Gibson entitled 'boardering on something central' Alechinsky refers to his use of 'marginalia' as deriving from modifications on printed text or marks on the edge of a lithographic plate which reveal 'the working process'.
In Le Passé Inapercu the viewer's eye, having merged itself in the activity of the central field, is drawn through a circular movement around the rectangles in the boarder in a way reminiscent of the cursive flow of calligraphy, the predella or Comic-Strip. Alechinsky's graphic idiom can be clearly detected in this manner of centering or organising a work. The border composed of black and white drawings confirms the subject of the central part in its repetition of the forms alluded to in the coloured field. In Alechinsky's notes on the associations suggested by his forms, he mentions "the feathered head-gear of the Gilles dancers so close to those of the Mayo", an image that can be clearly read in Le Passé Inapercu. However though this sequence suggests a narrative, the narrative itself has no singularly definable content. Alechinsky preferred to keep his images universal creating as Ionesco writes "a lunar landscape in metamorphosis, distorting and reshaping itself", which lends a vitality to his images that transcend time.