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拍品專文
Created in Arizona in 1984, Cut Soul is a powerful large-scale nail painting by Günther Uecker. It takes the form of a diptych, with a rough-edged vertical split where the canvas on board has been hacked in two. Fields of hammered nails radiate out from the centre: streaks and handprints in white paint burst onto the smoky grey of the surface behind. Uecker’s bold, looping signature is inscribed at the lower right. Charged with spiritual and gestural energy, the work stems from an period in Uecker’s practice during which he travelled widely and expanded his creative horizons. In 1984 he was invited by the gallerist Riva Yares to spend the summer in Arizona and create works inspired by the desert state. Cut Soul was acquired by the present owner from the Riva Yares Gallery in Scottsdale that year, and has been unseen in public since. Uecker visited the owner’s home in San Francisco to help install the work and was hosted there for two nights, conducting his favourite classical and opera selections from the bar.
Uecker first started hammering nails into monochrome canvases in 1957. His Nagelbilder or ‘nail pictures’ straddled painting and sculpture, and transformed the humble nail into a vehicle for the poetics of space, light, time and motion. They became emblematic works of the ZERO group, which Uecker formally joined in Düsseldorf in 1961. Led by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, the ZERO artists rejected illusion in favour of pure and primary experiences, seeking to reinvent art from a blank slate in the aftermath of the Second World War. Even before the group disbanded in 1966, however, Uecker’s nails had begun to spread in new directions. He went on to explore actions, noise performances, kinetic sculptures and set designs, soon reaching an international audience. By the 1980s his Nagelbilder had taken on an increasingly operatic grandeur and emotion. Cut Soul belongs to a series of works from this period centred around the theme of Verletzungen (‘Injuries’), in which Uecker attacked the pristine perfection of his earlier nail-fields, forcing open the picture plane in an act of violence.
Uecker’s sister, Rotraut—the widow of his friend Yves Klein, who had died in 1962—had recently moved to Arizona, and Uecker stayed with her during his American visit. He also spent time in Sedona in the former studio of Max Ernst, who had lived there after the Second World War. He explored the nearby reservation of the Navajo Nation, and became fascinated by Native American history. He learnt that the Black Mesa, a mountain sacred to the Navajo people, was being desecrated by mining companies. In response, he created his Black Mesa cycle of knife sculptures and large cloth paintings (1984-1985). Expressing his compassion with the Navajo, he despaired at mankind’s self-destructive exploitation of the natural world, and the loss of transcendent spiritual values in an age of blind materialism.
As if split by a cataclysm, Cut Soul speaks to the same emotive themes. The nails invoke a sense of turbulent aggression, but also a protective impulse. They blossom around the vertical rupture and interact with the human trace of the artist’s handprints. Uecker saw his hammering as both a physical and spiritual act. The individual nails—each a simple marker of time and labour—accumulated into sensory fields that could conjure various meanings and emotions. Uecker furthered his engagement with humanitarian and environmental concerns throughout the 1980s, creating poignant ash-pictures in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. He also continued to explore the ‘injured’ diptych format seen in Cut Soul: in 1986, he created a closely-related work, Sturz des künstlerischen Genius (für Joseph Beuys), as a poignant tribute to the late Joseph Beuys.
Uecker first started hammering nails into monochrome canvases in 1957. His Nagelbilder or ‘nail pictures’ straddled painting and sculpture, and transformed the humble nail into a vehicle for the poetics of space, light, time and motion. They became emblematic works of the ZERO group, which Uecker formally joined in Düsseldorf in 1961. Led by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, the ZERO artists rejected illusion in favour of pure and primary experiences, seeking to reinvent art from a blank slate in the aftermath of the Second World War. Even before the group disbanded in 1966, however, Uecker’s nails had begun to spread in new directions. He went on to explore actions, noise performances, kinetic sculptures and set designs, soon reaching an international audience. By the 1980s his Nagelbilder had taken on an increasingly operatic grandeur and emotion. Cut Soul belongs to a series of works from this period centred around the theme of Verletzungen (‘Injuries’), in which Uecker attacked the pristine perfection of his earlier nail-fields, forcing open the picture plane in an act of violence.
Uecker’s sister, Rotraut—the widow of his friend Yves Klein, who had died in 1962—had recently moved to Arizona, and Uecker stayed with her during his American visit. He also spent time in Sedona in the former studio of Max Ernst, who had lived there after the Second World War. He explored the nearby reservation of the Navajo Nation, and became fascinated by Native American history. He learnt that the Black Mesa, a mountain sacred to the Navajo people, was being desecrated by mining companies. In response, he created his Black Mesa cycle of knife sculptures and large cloth paintings (1984-1985). Expressing his compassion with the Navajo, he despaired at mankind’s self-destructive exploitation of the natural world, and the loss of transcendent spiritual values in an age of blind materialism.
As if split by a cataclysm, Cut Soul speaks to the same emotive themes. The nails invoke a sense of turbulent aggression, but also a protective impulse. They blossom around the vertical rupture and interact with the human trace of the artist’s handprints. Uecker saw his hammering as both a physical and spiritual act. The individual nails—each a simple marker of time and labour—accumulated into sensory fields that could conjure various meanings and emotions. Uecker furthered his engagement with humanitarian and environmental concerns throughout the 1980s, creating poignant ash-pictures in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. He also continued to explore the ‘injured’ diptych format seen in Cut Soul: in 1986, he created a closely-related work, Sturz des künstlerischen Genius (für Joseph Beuys), as a poignant tribute to the late Joseph Beuys.