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拍品專文
Francis Alÿs is a draughtsman, a film-maker, a painter, a patron of billboard artists, an installation artist but also-- and most importantly of all-- a performance artist. In The Last Clown, many of these strands are evident. These show a filmic narrative-- against an almost blank background and from an elevated position, the viewer (and originally the artist, it is implied) looks down upon a figure who is progressing along a path. The viewpoint follows the figure, who occupies, in each of the pictures, the same central position. But, as he walks, lost in thought, a dog is shown in almost stop-motion action approaching him; they collide, he catches his foot in its tail, stumbles, falls, and then picks himself up and carries back on... Because of the deliberately washed-out tones that Alÿs has evoked in this series of images, they convey a mood that is far from the slapstick implied by either the action or the title. The palette insists on this act being presented in a deadpan manner, although the film version captured the Marx Brothers-style humour, not least in the perpetual looping of the action. Here, though, Alÿs presents the action as something surreal, atmospheric and even tragic, reminiscent of a Beckett play in its humdrum inevitability.
The Last Clown shows a genuine episode in the life of the artist and a friend of his, Cuauhtémoc Medina, an art critic with whom Alÿs was walking when he tripped on a passing dog and fell. This apparently led to a discussion of humour and laughter, and later led to a group of works now in the Tate that is related to these images and which includes a video of the now-solitary Alÿs walking and falling. These origins show the ambiguous relationship that Alÿs himself plays out with his own art and with reality. He is central to his own works, not least his performances. Here, he has edited himself out of the events depicted, and yet retains, as the artist and as the friend of the falling man, a central position. He cannot remove his distance from the work and its contents, but is willing to stretch it to breaking point, just as he did with his commissions of billboard painters in Mexico City in other works. Authorship, identity, humour, reality all these issues are raised in The Last Clown, as ultimately is the question, 'Who is the last clown?' Is it Medina, stumbling in a faded public arena in a moment that has now been perpetuated in international galleries, or is it the artist himself, with his works on display, his performances conspicuous, all too often under the public eye and subject to public scrutiny?
The Last Clown shows a genuine episode in the life of the artist and a friend of his, Cuauhtémoc Medina, an art critic with whom Alÿs was walking when he tripped on a passing dog and fell. This apparently led to a discussion of humour and laughter, and later led to a group of works now in the Tate that is related to these images and which includes a video of the now-solitary Alÿs walking and falling. These origins show the ambiguous relationship that Alÿs himself plays out with his own art and with reality. He is central to his own works, not least his performances. Here, he has edited himself out of the events depicted, and yet retains, as the artist and as the friend of the falling man, a central position. He cannot remove his distance from the work and its contents, but is willing to stretch it to breaking point, just as he did with his commissions of billboard painters in Mexico City in other works. Authorship, identity, humour, reality all these issues are raised in The Last Clown, as ultimately is the question, 'Who is the last clown?' Is it Medina, stumbling in a faded public arena in a moment that has now been perpetuated in international galleries, or is it the artist himself, with his works on display, his performances conspicuous, all too often under the public eye and subject to public scrutiny?