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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.
The works that Michelangelo Pistoletto made with rags in 1968 in many ways form the essence of the concept of Arte Povera - the term that Germano Celant used to describe the emerging new tendency in Italian art in the mid-1960s. Pistoletto's rags are, as the artist himself described, ' the emblem of the ephemeral, of everyday life, of wear and tear, of the infinite transformation of things; in a word, of eternal changes in behaviour.' (M. Pistoletto cited in exh. cat., L'Elémentaire, le vital, l'energie : Arte Povera in Castello, Vence, 2004, p. 83).
Pistoletto began making works with rags in 1968 as a counterpart to his earlier work with mirrors. Undeniably physical and a part of the real world of the viewer, his piles of rags were another kind of reflection - a more politicised reflection of a vast collective of disparate and diverse outsiders, who collectively could be utilised and ordered into a beautiful and functional unity. 'The rags' Celant wrote, 'represent the confusion and multivalence of marginalized people, the totalities of random and disparate communities of social rejects, such as perverts, convicts, racial minorities, women, and prisoners, that is, the 'rags' of society. We are dealing here not with an ideal unity, but with a multiplicity of actors and persons who, in the madness and desire of continuous redressing, cross-dressing (again the rags, as a residue of a spectacular disguise) see the realisation of their own subjectivity.' (G. Celant, 'Per un firmamento di stracci', in Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p. 26.)
In his Venus in Rags Pistoletto created a fascinating work in which the unity and beauty of the past was contrasted with the multifarious diversity and chaos of the present. In his perimeter of rags made in Amalfi and his later Small Wall of Rags Pistoletto built a defensive unity from this multivalent material. Here, in Pavone, he has created a spectacular if also somewhat self-mocking vehicle for change and modern symbol of beauty.
The works that Michelangelo Pistoletto made with rags in 1968 in many ways form the essence of the concept of Arte Povera - the term that Germano Celant used to describe the emerging new tendency in Italian art in the mid-1960s. Pistoletto's rags are, as the artist himself described, ' the emblem of the ephemeral, of everyday life, of wear and tear, of the infinite transformation of things; in a word, of eternal changes in behaviour.' (M. Pistoletto cited in exh. cat., L'Elémentaire, le vital, l'energie : Arte Povera in Castello, Vence, 2004, p. 83).
Pistoletto began making works with rags in 1968 as a counterpart to his earlier work with mirrors. Undeniably physical and a part of the real world of the viewer, his piles of rags were another kind of reflection - a more politicised reflection of a vast collective of disparate and diverse outsiders, who collectively could be utilised and ordered into a beautiful and functional unity. 'The rags' Celant wrote, 'represent the confusion and multivalence of marginalized people, the totalities of random and disparate communities of social rejects, such as perverts, convicts, racial minorities, women, and prisoners, that is, the 'rags' of society. We are dealing here not with an ideal unity, but with a multiplicity of actors and persons who, in the madness and desire of continuous redressing, cross-dressing (again the rags, as a residue of a spectacular disguise) see the realisation of their own subjectivity.' (G. Celant, 'Per un firmamento di stracci', in Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p. 26.)
In his Venus in Rags Pistoletto created a fascinating work in which the unity and beauty of the past was contrasted with the multifarious diversity and chaos of the present. In his perimeter of rags made in Amalfi and his later Small Wall of Rags Pistoletto built a defensive unity from this multivalent material. Here, in Pavone, he has created a spectacular if also somewhat self-mocking vehicle for change and modern symbol of beauty.