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Lot Essay
Executed in 1959, Achrome appears almost like a Zen garden, its ripples the source for contemplation of the infinite, of the universe. And it is the universe that has formed Achrome, not Manzoni alone: he merely drenched the canvas in kaolin, a slow-setting form of clay, set it into rough pleats and allowed them to slowly dry, a process during which they have moved around, determining their forms. In this way, Achrome has eloquently defined its own final appearance. It is an autonomous work of art, and in containing nothing on the part of the artist, becomes universal.
Manzoni wanted not only to preside over the creation of a work of art that created, as it were, itself, but also sought to remove any extraneous details, any sense of the painterly, the narrative, in fact, anything that could result in meaning or interpretation. Even the kaolin that he selected as a medium had been chosen because he considered it 'colourless,' and therefore devoid of meaning, avoiding another potential source of distraction. On the removal of symbols and theories from his works in order to create something that is, precisely, universal, Manzoni explained:
'There comes a point where individual mythology and universal mythology are identical.
'In this context it is clear that there can be no concern with symbolism and description, memories, misty impressions, of childhood, pictorism, sentimentalism: all this must be absolutely excluded. So must every hedonistic repetition of arguments that have already been exhausted, since the man who continues to trifle with myths that have already been discovered is an aesthete, and worse.
'Abstractions and references must be totally avoided. In our freedom of invention we must succeed in constructing a world that can be measured only in its own terms.
'We absolutely cannot consider the picture as a space on to which to project our mental scenography. It is the area of freedom in which we search for the discovery of our first images.
'Images which are as absolute as possible, which cannot be valued for what they record, explain and express, but only for that which they are: to be' ('For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', reproduced in Piero Manzoni: Paintings, reliefs & objects, exh.cat., London, 1974, pp.16-17).
Manzoni wanted not only to preside over the creation of a work of art that created, as it were, itself, but also sought to remove any extraneous details, any sense of the painterly, the narrative, in fact, anything that could result in meaning or interpretation. Even the kaolin that he selected as a medium had been chosen because he considered it 'colourless,' and therefore devoid of meaning, avoiding another potential source of distraction. On the removal of symbols and theories from his works in order to create something that is, precisely, universal, Manzoni explained:
'There comes a point where individual mythology and universal mythology are identical.
'In this context it is clear that there can be no concern with symbolism and description, memories, misty impressions, of childhood, pictorism, sentimentalism: all this must be absolutely excluded. So must every hedonistic repetition of arguments that have already been exhausted, since the man who continues to trifle with myths that have already been discovered is an aesthete, and worse.
'Abstractions and references must be totally avoided. In our freedom of invention we must succeed in constructing a world that can be measured only in its own terms.
'We absolutely cannot consider the picture as a space on to which to project our mental scenography. It is the area of freedom in which we search for the discovery of our first images.
'Images which are as absolute as possible, which cannot be valued for what they record, explain and express, but only for that which they are: to be' ('For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', reproduced in Piero Manzoni: Paintings, reliefs & objects, exh.cat., London, 1974, pp.16-17).