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拍品专文
For Appel, an artist who wished to paint through the eyes of a child, the cat was a favourite subject. He found it a particularly good vehicle through which he could express the condensed vitality and primal energy that he saw inherent within all life forms. As Herbert Read has written, "Though Appel's paintings may be said to stream with the blood of animals, they are not patches from the floor of an abbatoir; they represent the physical substance of life itself. Their colours are living, moving, never coagulated or faded. They stream through the field of vision as natural forces, conveying life to hearts that are invisible only because they are hidden within our own beasts" (Appel in H. Claus, Karel Appel: Painter, New York 1962).
This work of 1955 dates from a period when Appel, confident about his artistic future following his move to Paris in 1952, was allowing the freedom of expression he had developed in his work of the late forties to become more vibrant and deliberately pronounced. In the mid 1950s, Appel became preoccupied with the material of the paint itself, struggling to convey the image through a spontaneous and gestural application of the paint. "What counts for me," he said, "is impulse, energy, speed, action. That's when the really unexpected things happen; the true expressive image that rises undefinably out of the mass of matter, speed and colour" (ibid., p. 164).
The Cat is a particularly clear example of Appel's achievement at this time. Surrounded by passive grey tones, the image explodes with life in the middle of the canvas, asserting its living presence. Its form is outlined by sweeping brushstrokes of a vibrant red - the colour that for Appel "shouts freedom, life, blood, violence". Within the radiating energy of the red brushstrokes, splashes of colour convey the animal's energy and features - most notably the swirling eyes that stare directly out from the canvas, fixing the viewer's gaze in what Hugo Claus has described as "the most direct relation with their creator; eye to eye" (Ibid.., p. 72).
The varied and quickly-made brushmarks bounce off one another with such energy that there can be no doubt that this is a live and perhaps dangerous animal. As Christian Dotremont has commentated, "Appel captures the beast, but he's on the beast's side. He doesn't kill it" (C. Dotremont in A. Frankenstein, Karel Appel, New York 1980, p. 14).
Appel himself once reflected, "To paint is to destroy what preceded. I never try to make a painting, but a chunk of life. It is a scream; it is a night; it is like a caged tiger" (Appel in K. Stiles and P. Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, University of California Press, Berkeley 1996, p. 209).
This work of 1955 dates from a period when Appel, confident about his artistic future following his move to Paris in 1952, was allowing the freedom of expression he had developed in his work of the late forties to become more vibrant and deliberately pronounced. In the mid 1950s, Appel became preoccupied with the material of the paint itself, struggling to convey the image through a spontaneous and gestural application of the paint. "What counts for me," he said, "is impulse, energy, speed, action. That's when the really unexpected things happen; the true expressive image that rises undefinably out of the mass of matter, speed and colour" (ibid., p. 164).
The Cat is a particularly clear example of Appel's achievement at this time. Surrounded by passive grey tones, the image explodes with life in the middle of the canvas, asserting its living presence. Its form is outlined by sweeping brushstrokes of a vibrant red - the colour that for Appel "shouts freedom, life, blood, violence". Within the radiating energy of the red brushstrokes, splashes of colour convey the animal's energy and features - most notably the swirling eyes that stare directly out from the canvas, fixing the viewer's gaze in what Hugo Claus has described as "the most direct relation with their creator; eye to eye" (Ibid.., p. 72).
The varied and quickly-made brushmarks bounce off one another with such energy that there can be no doubt that this is a live and perhaps dangerous animal. As Christian Dotremont has commentated, "Appel captures the beast, but he's on the beast's side. He doesn't kill it" (C. Dotremont in A. Frankenstein, Karel Appel, New York 1980, p. 14).
Appel himself once reflected, "To paint is to destroy what preceded. I never try to make a painting, but a chunk of life. It is a scream; it is a night; it is like a caged tiger" (Appel in K. Stiles and P. Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, University of California Press, Berkeley 1996, p. 209).