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Lot Essay
'The youth who begins to feel the attraction of nature and art believes that a serious effort alone will enable him to penetrate their inner sanctuary: but the man discovers after lengthy wanderings up and down that he is still in the forecourt" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, cited by Sandro Chia in Sandro Chia, Amsterdam 1983).
Executed in 1983, Figures with Flag and Flute is an important painting that, typically for Chia, uses allegory to conjure a sense of a timelessness in a mythical landscape of the mind. Chia has said that he had Dürer's famous allegory Melancholia in mind when he created this work (conversation with Katharine Burton, September 2001). Like Dürer's masterpiece, Figures with Flag and Flute presents an allegory of the artist as a tragi-comic figure whose enthusiastic endeavours lead him nowhere. The enigmatic elderly sage and the younger man are lost together in the impenetrable forest, the artist valiantly playing his flute and the old man observing with the wisdom of the Greeks, but both are trapped by the dense wood from which no sound or sense can emanate. The men sit on and are surrounded by crumbling brickwork, a stark reminder of a contemporary reality and synonymous with the broken and useless tools of the artist's trade, reminiscent of Dürer's angel standing distraught, surrounded by his broken scientific apparatus. Pan is transformed into a redundant figure, robbed of his creative purpose. The painting is a poignant illustration of the frustrated attempts of the artist to find a meaningful place in the world, instead finding that his endeavours leave him isolated, angst-ridden and lost. The work is not just an allegory for the artist, but for art itself. In this painting, Chia seems to be asking the question 'Where do we go from here?.' But no answer comes echoing back through the forest.
Executed in 1983, Figures with Flag and Flute is an important painting that, typically for Chia, uses allegory to conjure a sense of a timelessness in a mythical landscape of the mind. Chia has said that he had Dürer's famous allegory Melancholia in mind when he created this work (conversation with Katharine Burton, September 2001). Like Dürer's masterpiece, Figures with Flag and Flute presents an allegory of the artist as a tragi-comic figure whose enthusiastic endeavours lead him nowhere. The enigmatic elderly sage and the younger man are lost together in the impenetrable forest, the artist valiantly playing his flute and the old man observing with the wisdom of the Greeks, but both are trapped by the dense wood from which no sound or sense can emanate. The men sit on and are surrounded by crumbling brickwork, a stark reminder of a contemporary reality and synonymous with the broken and useless tools of the artist's trade, reminiscent of Dürer's angel standing distraught, surrounded by his broken scientific apparatus. Pan is transformed into a redundant figure, robbed of his creative purpose. The painting is a poignant illustration of the frustrated attempts of the artist to find a meaningful place in the world, instead finding that his endeavours leave him isolated, angst-ridden and lost. The work is not just an allegory for the artist, but for art itself. In this painting, Chia seems to be asking the question 'Where do we go from here?.' But no answer comes echoing back through the forest.