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Lot Essay
‘A white that is not a polar landscape, not a material in evolution or a beautiful material, not a sensation or a symbol or anything else: just a white surface that is simply a white surface and nothing else (a colourless surface that is just a colourless surface). Better than that: a surface that simply is: to be (to be complete and become pure).’ – Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni’s delicate quilt of canvas squares, Achrome, 1959, is a serene example from his series of white monochromes. The Achrome series was born out of a visit to Yves Klein’s 1957 exhibition Proposte monochrome, epoca blu at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan. Although Manzoni’s earliest white works can be placed within Modernist discussions around colour and abstraction, he quickly rejected this lineage and instead sought to ‘create an integrally white surface (yes, integrally colourless, neutral) which is completely unrelated to any pictorial phenomenon or to any element that is extraneous to the value of the surface’ (P. Manzoni, ‘Libera dimensione’, Azimuth, no. 2, 1960, n. p.). For Manzoni did not envisage his Achromes to be paintings, but instead surfaces of neutrality where all metaphor and subjectivity was removed, a theoretical underpinning which placed him firmly within the Conceptual art movement. The word achrome, itself an invention, is derived from the Greek chrôma meaning colour, but it can also be translated as skin or body. Placed in front, the a speaks to Manzoni’s attempt to negate the chromatic and physical expectations that had long been associated with painting, particularly the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s who glorified subjective and gestural content. His interest instead was in harnessing infinity even if infinity itself can never be rendered within a discrete object. Accordingly, his Achromes are open to indefinite replication. Manzoni drolly tested out various materials in his quest to ‘liberate the surface’ of his canvases: infinitely reproducible patterns of Polystyrene pellets, fibres, or loaves of bread. Seriality and repetition were fundamental to both the individual works themselves and the concept of the Achromes as a unified body of work, destined to be both eternally unfinished and ever expanding. In doing so, Manzoni’s Achromes preceded future debates around serialization, central to practices such as those of Agnes Martin or Donald Judd. Unlike his Minimalist successors, Manzoni endeavoured to discover if a work of art could ever be free from its expressed existence altogether.
Piero Manzoni’s delicate quilt of canvas squares, Achrome, 1959, is a serene example from his series of white monochromes. The Achrome series was born out of a visit to Yves Klein’s 1957 exhibition Proposte monochrome, epoca blu at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan. Although Manzoni’s earliest white works can be placed within Modernist discussions around colour and abstraction, he quickly rejected this lineage and instead sought to ‘create an integrally white surface (yes, integrally colourless, neutral) which is completely unrelated to any pictorial phenomenon or to any element that is extraneous to the value of the surface’ (P. Manzoni, ‘Libera dimensione’, Azimuth, no. 2, 1960, n. p.). For Manzoni did not envisage his Achromes to be paintings, but instead surfaces of neutrality where all metaphor and subjectivity was removed, a theoretical underpinning which placed him firmly within the Conceptual art movement. The word achrome, itself an invention, is derived from the Greek chrôma meaning colour, but it can also be translated as skin or body. Placed in front, the a speaks to Manzoni’s attempt to negate the chromatic and physical expectations that had long been associated with painting, particularly the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s who glorified subjective and gestural content. His interest instead was in harnessing infinity even if infinity itself can never be rendered within a discrete object. Accordingly, his Achromes are open to indefinite replication. Manzoni drolly tested out various materials in his quest to ‘liberate the surface’ of his canvases: infinitely reproducible patterns of Polystyrene pellets, fibres, or loaves of bread. Seriality and repetition were fundamental to both the individual works themselves and the concept of the Achromes as a unified body of work, destined to be both eternally unfinished and ever expanding. In doing so, Manzoni’s Achromes preceded future debates around serialization, central to practices such as those of Agnes Martin or Donald Judd. Unlike his Minimalist successors, Manzoni endeavoured to discover if a work of art could ever be free from its expressed existence altogether.