Francis Bacon, Dublin / Irlanda do Norte - arte informal contemporânea

The Theater of the Body,

Mith and Tragedy, Head VI, 1949

Mith and Tragedy, Study after Velasquez's

portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953

Mith and Tragedy, Study of Velasquez's
portrait of Pope Innocent X

Mith and Tragedy, Study of Velasquez's
portrait of Pope Innocent X

Mith and Tragedy, Study after Innocent X, 1962

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portrait I

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portrait II

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portrait III

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portrait IV

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portait V

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portrait VI

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portrait VII

Mith and Tragedy, Study for Portait VIII

Mith and Tradegy, Study for a Pope III

Mith and Tragedy, Study for a Pope III

Mith and Tragedy, Study for a Pope III

Mith and Tragedy, Study of red Pope

Francis Bacon was born in 1909, Dublin and died in 1992, Madrid.

British painter whose powerful, predominantly figural images express isolation, brutality, and terror.The son of a racehorse trainer, Bacon was educated mostly by private tutorsat home until his parents banished him at age 16, allegedly for pursuing his homosexual proclivities. Self-taught as an artist, he drifted in Berlin and Paris before settling in London in 1928, after which he worked as an interior decorator. He had also begun painting, though he did so without recognition until 1945, at which time the original and powerful style displayed in such works as “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion” (1944) won him almost instant notoriety. His mature style emerged completely with the series of works known as “The Screaming Popes” (1949–mid-1950s), in which he converted Diego Velázquez's famous “Portrait of Pope Innocent X” into a nightmarish icon of hysterical terror.Many of Bacon's early paintings are based on images by other artists, which he distorts for his own expressive purposes. Examples of such themes are the screaming nanny from Sergey Eisenstein's film Potemkin and studies of the human figure in motion by the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Most of Bacon's paintings depict isolated figures, often framed by geometric constructions, and rendered in smeared, violent colours. He was admired for his skill in using oils, whose fluidity and mysteries he exploits to express images of anger, horror, and degradation. His later portraits and figure paintings are executed in lighter colours and treat the human face and body in a style of extreme distortion and contortion.Bacon's devotion to his art stood in curious contrast to his subject matter and the eccentric squalor of his personal life. Because he destroyed many of his early works, only a few examples can be found, mainly in American and European museums.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

*

Crítica:

*
Francis Bacon, arguably the preeminent British painter of the twentieth century, was also for forty years the most controversial. Bacon's art often appears deliberately disturbing. His subject was the human form. Bacon reinterpreted the physical construction of the body with a new and unsettling intensity. To him it was something to be taken apart by the artist's penetrating gaze and then put back together again on canvas. He forces us to see, perhaps for the first time, the separate shapes and stresses hidden in the familiar human figure.
Bacon's treatment of the face could be especially challenging. In his portraits, generally of people the artist knew well, the subjects are sometimes shown screaming. Even in repose the features shift and reshape themselves before our eyes, yet they never become unrecognizable despite the swirling paint.
Often called an Expressionist or even a Surrealist, Bacon himself strongly rejected both labels. He insisted that in its own way his work was close to the world we see every day, remaining true to what he called "the brutality of fact."

*

The Theater of the Body
Perhaps the term that best describes Bacon's work is "realism," a classification that is often employed too loosely but which here is meant in a special sense. In this case, realism does not mean direct, straightforward representation—something Bacon dismissed as mere "illustration," and from which he felt as far removed as from abstract painting. Instead it means a fidelity to the vital experience of living inside the body, which for him is a fundamental theme of art. Like the realists of the nineteenth cen-tury, Bacon scrupulously recorded the mobile, shifting reality of the human form with the means that painting placed at his disposal. The difference is that by Bacon's time, a century later, the arsenal of resources for painting is much greater; naturalistic, imitative criteria are no longer sufficient. Bacon's realism is, therefore, radically modern, and his point of departure, as he freely admitted, was Pablo Picasso's work from the late l920s, which is sometimes considered Surrealist, though of an unusually tough-minded kind.
The drama in Bacon's painting arises from the fact that, inevitably, the viewer cannot help but identify to some extent with what a picture shows. The distortion of the body's ordinary appearance in a painting can make us cringe with a new and discomforting sense of how human flesh and bone are constituted. With Bacon, the figure often appears at the edge of dissolution, just prior to becoming unrecognizable. The painter concentrates all the violence of the brushstroke in the human form, using the agitated pictorial material to embody the convulsions of the flesh. To achieve this effect, Bacon at times hurls handfuls of paint against the canvas, forming it subsequently with his hands, the paintbrush, or other direct means. In these ways he affirms his presence in all its "brutality of fact."

*
Myth and Tragedy:
In the evolution of Francis Bacon's art, especially in its initial stages, several motifs are repeated frequently. Some of them come from specific paintings of the past, such as the portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velazquez, the Eisenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grtinewald, or the Crucifixion by Cimabue. Others come from myths recounted in literature, as with the themes taken from the Greek tragic poet Aeschylus or from T. S. Eliot. When Bacon uses such materials, it is not a question of retelling their stories or giving a literal re-creation of earlier pictures, but rather of stripping those original structures down to their essential human content. If Bacon used themes from those sources to surround his work with an aura of tragedy, he did so in order to suggest what evoked the primal scream shown in his early canvases—the intimate violence of real things. These recurrent motifs therefore function as meeting points between one's individual life experience and a larger sense of myth—that ancestral repository which has managed to preserve forms of representation appropriate to complex, difficult subjects throughout the ages. The Crucifixions, the bullfighting scenes, and the references to tragic literature selected by Bacon thus have in common an urge to deal with conflicting feelings and unknown forces—an urge, indeed, toward catharsis. Beyond the individual interest of each work, these canvases provide the key to the type of relationship Bacon sought to establish between viewers and his paintings, something similar to the attitude we might assume before a ritual whose meaning is unknown to us.

*

Head VI

The first trace in Bacon's work of the portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velazquez. The primal scream is the outstanding motif of these first canvases, where nearly the entire face disappears in shadow, leaving only the mouth that utters the cry. The background is a sort of curtain of shadows from which the figure emerges.

*

Study after Velasquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
The veil placed between the viewer and the figure of the Pope crying out derives from the textures of X-ray plates that Bacon often utilized in those years. The open mouth can be understood also as the result of a relaxing of the jaw that occurs in cadavers, which would well suit the spectral aspect of this figure.

*

Study after Innocent X

A later version of the Velazquez theme where the cry no longer appears. The color has become lighter, and the spatial arrangement already characteristic of Bacon is present in all its elements: the transparent cage, the perspectival space that leaves the foreground empty, drawing the viewer in. Finally, the papal throne has been synthesized into simple volumes.

*

Jose Maria Faerna,

Art of the 2oth century

Bill Viola, Nova Iorque / E.U.A. - arte conceptual contemporânea

III. Passage into night (2005),

video sound installation

II. Passage into Night (2005)

I. Passage into Night (2005)

Ocean without a shore (2007), video sound installation,

em exposição na Feira de Arte da Bienal de Veneza

IV. The Crossing (1996), video sound installation

III. The Crossing (1996)

II. The Crossing (1996)

I. The Crossing (1996)

Five Angels for the Millenium, I. Departing Angel (2001),

video sound installation

II. Birth Angel (2001)

III. Fire Angel (2001)

IV. Ascending Angel (2001)

V. Creation Angel (2001)

Going forth by Day, V. The First Light (2002), video sound installation

IV. The Voyage (2002)

III. The Deluge (2002)

II. The Path (2002)

I. Fire-birth (2002)

IV. The Messenger (1996), video sound installation

III. The Messenger (1996)

II. The Messenger (1996)

I. The Messenger (1996)

The Shape of Life in the Space after Death,

Isolde's Ascension (2005), video sound installation

The Shape of Life in the Space after Death,

Tristan's Ascension (2005)

Night Journey (2005), video sound installation

Night Journey (2005)

Emergence (2002), video sound installation

Becoming Light (2005), video sound installation

The Fall into Paradise (2005), video sound installation

The Surrender (2001), video sound installation

II Vapore (1975), video sound installation,

(em exposição no Museu Berardo, Lisboa)

Study for the Raft, Tempest (2005), video sound installation

*

* *

Bill Viola (b.1951) is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has beeninstrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art,and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology,content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes,architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic musicperformances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola’svideo installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image andsound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by theirprecision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleriesworldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channelvideotapes have been widely broadcast and presented cinematically, while hiswritings have been extensively published, and translated for internationalreaders. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as anavenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern andWestern art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, IslamicSufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughtsand collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowingviewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.

* * *

Of the work Bill Viola states: “Ocean Without a Shore is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in San Gallo become transparent surfaces for the manifestation of images of the dead attempting to re-enter our world.” “The video sequence describes the human form as it gradually coalesces from within a dark field and slowly comes into view, moving from obscurity into the light. As the figure approaches, it becomes more solid and tangible until it breaks through an invisible threshold and passes into the physical world. The crossing of the threshold is an intense moment of infinite feeling and acute physical awareness. Poised at that juncture, for a brief instant all beings can touch their true nature, equal parts material and essence. However, once incarnate, these beings must eventually turn away from mortal existence and return to the emptiness from where they came.”
Bill Viola website

* *

Crítica:

* *

Night Journey, a second projection piece, explores the relationship between the complementary elements of light and darkness, male and female, action and contemplation, with fire as the unifying force. The work is divided into two parts. First a man is seen approaching through the darkness, drawn by the light of a fire through which he must pass to reach the source of his desire. In the second part, a woman lights a bank of candles one by one, gradually filling the room with light and transforming her form into a silhouette. After a moment of reflection, she turns away from the light and walks into the darkness.

Becoming Light is a flat-screen piece that describes an erotic journey towards ecstasy and union in the form of a drowning. The lover's bodies float slowly together just below the surface of a dark pool, intertwined in a sensual embrace that is only interrupted by their gasps for air. Eventually they begin a long descent into the dark depths where their illuminated forms become joined together as a single point of light.

Emergence began with a passing idea for a piece called 'Woman Supporting Slumping Man'. Later, leafing through a book on the early Renaissance Italian artists Masaccio and Masolino, he came upon a color plate of Masolino's fresco showing the corpse of the dead Christ in his tomb, supported by his mother Mary and John the Evangelist.

Messenger video installation (originally done in 1996) was in St Paul's Cathedral feb 2004. A figure comes up from the depths of water to the surface. when he breaks the surface the sound and view is astonishing before he descends back to the depths. (Messenger 4) this is the moment where the messenger breaks the surface of the water.

The Crossing (1996) is one of the most powerful works on view. Two large screens mounted back to back simultaneously represent the violent annihilation of a man by opposing forces of nature: fire and water. On one screen, flames lick up from his feet until they appear to consume his entire body. On the other, water falls in a deluge from above until the form is obliterated. In the end, the man disappears entirely and only the flickering flames and lingering drops remain on each scarred floor where the figure stood. The cycle then begins anew, highlighting the purifying, transformative capacity of the elements. The Crossing recalls a line from the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi-whose works have greatly inspired Viola-who wrote: "You have seen the kettle of thought boiling over, now consider the fire."
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

*

* * *

Les vidéos de Bill Viola ont en général cette capacité magique à vous laisser sans voix, le souffle coupé, les yeux écarquillés, avec un sentiment d’hébétude et d’émerveillement au tréfonds de vos tripes. Comme toujours, chez Viola, la dimension religieuse, mystique n’est pas loin, sans référence à une quelconque église.

Fall into Paradise commence avec une minuscule lumière au fond d’une immensité aquatique. Peu à peu, cette lumière grandit et devient un couple enlacé se rapprochant de nous, et qui soudain crève la surface de l’eau violemment, puis flotte paisiblement. Becoming light est un ballet érotique sous-marin qui finit en noyade. Lovers’ Path montre les deux amants aux corps indistincts émerger de la forêt sombre, accéder petit à petit à la lumière, à la matérialité, et s’enfoncer main dans la main dans la mer, vers la noyade.

Passage into Night, une femme vêtue de longues robes et coiffée d’un voile, marche sur une terre surchauffée; dans un mirage, ses formes ondulent dans l’air déformé par la chaleur. Pendant 50 minutes, elle se rapproche, devient petit à petit reconnaissable, puis son corps occupe tout l’écran, sa robe noire obscurcit tout, on ne voit plus rien.

L’Ascension de Tristan et celle d’Yseult, la première est l’ascension d’un corps mort, étendu sur une pierre tombale et qu’une cascade d’eau ascendante projette vers le ciel: l’anti-gravité fait jaillir l’eau de plus en plus fort, le corps peu à peu se soulève, s’arrache à la pierre, se cambre et s’envole : ascension-résurrection. Le corps d’Yseult, lui, évolue sous l’eau, laissant derrière lui une traînée de bulles d’air, disparaissant dans les abysses.Des vidéos mystérieuses, envoûtantes, sur la vie et la mort, sur la passion et l’esprit. Pas de narration autre que celle de Wagner, c’est un travail presque abstrait sur la perte de l’autre. On y reste des heures, croyez-moi.
Blogue Amateur d'Arts, Le Monde

Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona / Espanha - arte informal contemporânea

Lligat (2006), técnica mista sobre madeira

*

Mur (2006), técnica mista sobre madeira

*

Muntanya Llac (2000), técnica mista sobre madeira

Arc, corda (2000), técnica mista e montagem sobre madeira

Heus aquí el cos (1997-99), técnica mista sobre madeira

Terra, manta (2000), técnica mista e montagem sobre tábua

Sabata (1995), técnica mista sobre madeira

Ventall I Ous (1996), bronze e montagem

Cara marró (2000), técnica mista sobre tela

Terra, écrits blancs (2000), técnica mista sobre madeira

Oida (2006), técnica mista sobre tela

Trapezi negre (2005), técnica mista sobre madeira

Terra, palla (2000), pintura, terra, palha e montagem sobre madeira

Esfera, cadena (1999), bronze e montagem

Peu I cistella (1999), bronze e pintura

Cames (2001), pintura, colagem e técnica mista sobre madeira

Symétrie blanche (1991), pintura e verniz sobre papel

Antoni Tàpies was born December 13, 1923, in Barcelona.

His adolescence was disrupted by the Spanish Civil War and a serious illness that lasted two years. Tàpies began to study law in Barcelona in 1944 but decided instead within two years to devote himself exclusively to art. He was essentially self-taught as a painter; the few art classes he attended left little impression on him. Shortly after deciding to become an artist, he began attending clandestine meetings of the Blaus, an iconoclastic group of Catalan artists and writers who produced the review Dau al Set.
Tàpies’s early work was influenced by the art of Max Ernst, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró, and by Eastern philosophy. His art was exhibited for the first time in the controversial Salo d’Octubre in Barcelona in 1948. He soon began to develop a recognizable personal style related to matière painting, or Art Informel [more], a movement that focused on the materials of art-making. The approach resulted in textural richness, but its more important aim was the exploration of the transformative qualities of matter. Tàpies freely adopted bits of detritus, earth, and stone—mediums that evoke solidity and mass—in his large-scale works.
In 1950, his first solo show was held at the Galeries Laietanes, Barcelona, and he was included in the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. That same year, the French government awarded Tàpies a scholarship that enabled him to spend a year in Paris. His first solo show in New York was presented in 1953 at the gallery of Martha Jackson, who arranged for his work to be shown the following year in various parts of the United States. During the 1950s and 1960s, Tàpies exhibited in major museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and South America. In 1966, he began his collection of writings, La practica de l’art. In 1969, he and the poet Joan Brossa published their book, Frègoli; a second collaborative effort, Nocturn Matinal, appeared the following year. Tàpies received the Rubens Prize of Siegen, Germany, in 1972.
Retrospective exhibitions were presented at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1973 and at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in 1977. The following year, he published his prize-winning autobiography, Memòria personal. In the early 1980s, he continued diversifying his mediums, producing his first ceramic sculptures and designing sets for Jacques Dupin’s play L’Eboulement. By 1992, three volumes of the catalogue raisonné of Tàpies’s work had been published. The following year, he and Cristina Iglesias represented Spain at the Venice Biennale, where his installation was awarded the Leone d’Oro. A retrospective exhibition was presented at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, in 1994–95. Tàpies lives in Barcelona.

Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

*

Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona

*

Pia Fries, Lucerne / Suíça - pintora contemporânea

Untitled Nr. K2 (2002), oil and silkscreen on paper

Untitled Nr. 24 (2000), oil on paper

Untitled Nr. 22 (2000), oil on paper

Monstand (2003), oil and silkscreen on panel

Boundary (2001), oilcolour and silkscreen on wood

Bellmund, oilcolour and silkscreen on wood

Sonloup (2002), oilcolour and silkscreen on wood

Vigneron (2002), oilcolour and silkscreen on wood

Lizard (2001), oilcolour and silkscreen on wood

Gambetta (2002), oil and silkscreen on panel

Palimpsest-LM (2005), oil and silkscreen on wood panel

Palimpsest-GG (2005), oil and silkscreen on wood panel

Palimpsest-SF (2005), oil and silkscreen on wood panel

Dover Book 1 (2005), oil and silkscreen on wood panel


Musselin 12 (2004), oil and silkscreen on panel

Musselin 7 (2004), oil and silkscreen on panel

Les Aquarelles de Leningrad, (series A), oil and

facsimile on wood panel

Les Aquarelles de Leningrad, (series B, III) 2005,

oil and facsimile on wood panel

Les Aquarelles de Leningrad (series B) 2005, oil

and facsimile on wood panel

Les Aquarelles de Leningrad (series B, II) 2005, oil

and facsimile on wood panel

Pia Fries nasceu em 1955, em Beromünstern, na Suíça e reside em Düsseldorf, na Alemanha.

Crítica:

* *

Sans doute l’amateur d’un langage pictural subtil sera-t-il irrité par l’élément de provocation que contiennent les tableaux de Pia Fries. Ces derniers — à l’inverse de la peinture « essentialiste » (1) qui est déploiement de nuances et de modulations délicates — confrontent le spectateur à l’opulence d’une prolifération d’empâtements qui, sous forme de bourrelets de peinture, décrivent d’amples mouvements devant le fond rigide et blanc du support de bois. Le support de bois n’absorbe pas la couleur comme le ferait la toile et, de ce fait, se comporte davantage comme une scène de théâtre sur laquelle évoluerait une peinture à tous égards ostentatoire. Aussi peut-on dire d’une manière générale, qu’il s’agit ici d’un art “extraverti”, dont le langage est à la fois directement physique et résolument sensuel. Mais, si Pia Fries maîtrise certes son médium avec un degré suprême de raffinement — sujet sur lequel il conviendra de revenir — le raffinement n’est aucunement sa préoccupation majeure. Le degré élevé d’organisation de ses tableaux — pour ne pas dire leur « composition sophistiquée » — sert de faire valoir à un concept que décrivent au mieux les qualificatifs de « physique », « triomphant » et « exhibitionniste ». Aussi peut-on dire que Fries met en scène la pleine volupté de la peinture avec une franchise qui vise moins à séduire le spectateur qu’à l’interpeller.

Marsyas

Dans la mythologie grecque, Marsyas — dieu phrygien du fleuve — a osé défier la déesse Athena dans un concours musical. Battu, le dieu du fleuve recevra une punition terrible : il sera écorché vif. Ce supplice de Marsyas a de tout temps été illustré en peinture ; il a notamment fourni à des artistes comme Rubens ou Titien l’ occasion par excellence de “peindre la chair à vif”, de se livrer en somme à une forme de peinture littérale, physique, non sublimée, régressive. Ces maîtres pouvaient ainsi, momentanément, oublier la fonction didactique, édificatrice de la forme. Et, cette liberté, des générations successives d’artistes s’en sont emparées comme allant de soi. Plus près de nous c’est avec Van Gogh et les Expressionnistes allemands que l’aspect physique — matériel — de la peinture fut réhabilité et considéré comme expression artistique à part entière. Le dépècement de Marsyas — ou plus exactement sa représentation — peut être interprétée comme revendication de liberté — voire libération — qui, à son tour, donna le jour à une peinture « crue », « à vif », physique et charnelle. Pia Fries fait sans aucun doute partie des adeptes d’une « peinture pure » ainsi définie. Née en Suisse, cette artiste élève de Gerhard Richter, fit ses premières armes au début des années quatre-vingt sous le signe de la figuration. A quelque temps de là implosait la couleur, sonnant en quelque sorte le glas de l’illusionnisme pictural ou si l’on préfère « peau » de la peinture. Aussi, depuis le milieu des années quatre-vingt les tableaux de Fries sont-ils devenus des tableaux-objets (Bildobjekte), qui sont l’empire de la pleine pâte. Ses crevasses et plissements géologiques ont, pour quantité d’interprètes, évoqué le paysage, association renforcée il est vrai par les couleurs telluriques de quantité de ses travaux. Mais à cette époque interprètes et spectateurs spéculaient sur un système de références dont la définition était encore très vague et que la décennie suivante, allait totalement escamoter. Car chez Pia Fries, les empâtements plus épais, associés à une palette elle aussi plus intense allaient désormais renforcer le solipsisme d’une peinture qui ne fait référence qu’à soi-même et veut, avant toute chose, être l’expression d’un art plastique tout de matérialité.

Mondrian

C’est pourquoi l’art de Pia Fries se définit, comme on l’a judicieusement remarqué (2), comme « peinture concrète » et résolument pas comme peinture « géométrique ». La peinture de Pia Fries s’est libérée du corset de la forme aussi le néoplasticisme de Piet Mondrian apparaît-il comme l’antithèse la plus radicale de sa position. Alors que Fries laisse la couleur proliférer, se répandre et se coaguler, Mondrian la dilue avant de l’emprisonner dans de lisses aplats géométriques, qui orchestrent la polychromie de la composition. Chez l’artiste hollandais la couleur est subordonnée à un graphisme linéaire qui en détermine la fonction spécifique. Jamais chez lui, le pigment ne revendique cette autonomie des empâtements de Pia Fries qui — peignés, découpés, écrasés au couteau à palette, travaillés à la spatule, puis de nouveau tailladés — sont domptés au prix d’un grand déploiement balistique, qui rend compte finalement de l’étonnante articulation de leur morphologie.

Cette synergie de la couleur et de la forme isole les tubérosités ou excroissances chromatiques et leur confère autonomie dans le tableau. Ceci pourrait très bien donner le sentiment, comme au reste quantité de travaux récents, d’un règne de l’anarchie car il n’est, de toute évidence, pas question de laisser ici triompher la forme ou la composition sur la fluidité musclée des masses de couleur.Cette démarche délibérée de l’artiste est illustrée par « bumiller », oeuvre peinte en l’an 2000. On voit dans la moitié droite de celle-ci une forme encadrée d’un jaune orangé. Au regard des cascades de couleur qui déferlent sur le tableau et des éventails crémeux de peinture à l’huile, ce rectangle approximatif n’est pas simplement un « rappel dans la marge » ou « footnote » ; il symbolise ironiquement l’échec d’une discipline formelle qui prétendrait vouloir subordonner l’autonomie articulée de la couleur, ou si l’on préfère l’autonomie du matériau peinture. A l’énergie de ce « matériau peinture », ce rectangle n’a pas grand chose à opposer. Il doit en conséquence se satisfaire du rôle secondaire de contrepoint silencieux des circonvolutions et de la formidable chorégraphie des grandes plages de couleur. Au lieu d’affecter ou limiter les énergies de ces dernières, la citation géométrique renforce par effet de contraste l’impression de générosité expérimentale que médiatisent les parcours diversement modelés de la couleur dans « bumiller ». La forme ne se donne plus ici comme une discipline imposée de l’extérieur, elle est davantage le fruit d’une quête expérimentale d’articulation autonome du « matériau couleur ».

Rodin

On attribue à Rodin ce mot célèbre : « la sculpture est un art de creux et de bosses» et la formule décrit bien l’orchestration des volumes plastiques qui caractérise les travaux de la maturité du maître. La sculpture — bien avant la peinture — s’est affranchie du primat de la forme pour donner la parole à la matérialité du médium. Qu’il s’agisse d’argile, de bronze ou de marbre, peu importe : tous ces instruments de l’expression artistique sont au départ matière, matériaux. A un stade ultérieur, ils deviennent artefacts et véhicules de messages spirituels. La peinture ne fonctionne pas différemment : elle possède elle aussi des qualités physiques et Pia Fries sait mettre celles-ci en valeur de façon magistrale. C’est pourquoi ses tableaux s’inscrivent dans l’entre deux qui sépare l’image du relief. Mais, comme le montrent ses œuvres très récentes qui ont simultanément recours à la peinture à l’huile et à la sérigraphie acrylique, ce domaine intermédiaire est également zone de transition entre l’illusion et la réalité.

« Dimrock »

« Dimrock » est le titre d’une œuvre qui vit le jour entre la fin de 2001 et l’aube de 2002 et que l’on peut considérer comme la meilleure illustration des dernières étapes franchies par l’artiste. Sur le fond blanc d’aggloméré figurent, ici et là, des images photographiques (sérigraphiées) identiques mais diversement colorées. Ces images représentent des amoncellements de couleur semblables aux amas de crépon adhésif que l’on a pu voir dans d’autres tableaux et dont la présence dans un atelier d’artiste n’a rien d’insolite. Pia Fries s’est emparée de cette icône et en fait un leitmotiv qu’elle traite avec le plus grand soin.C’est ainsi qu’avec la technique de la sérigraphie une citation picturale bi-dimensionnelle accède à son tableau où l’économie de la composition lui confère un rôle non négligeable. Plus exactement même, ces citations photographiques sont le point de départ d’un procédé formel dans lequel les empâtements de peinture à l’huile et la transparence de l’acrylique contrastent de façon intéressante avec l’impression photographique (dont la facture est élémentaire). Le procédé se révèle à l’évidence dans le tiers supérieur droit de “Dimrock” où l’on voit une forme jaune allongée agrafée de noir adopter la valeur chromatique de la sérigraphie jaune qui, elle, sort du décor par le bord supérieur du tableau. La direction de la forme allongée est infléchie par cette dernière. Cette configuration jaune (peinture et sérigraphie confondues) se lit comme un angle obtus dont l’axe gauche serait dirigé vers l’impression photographique d’un jaune plus clair, située dans la moitié gauche du tableau. Cette image photographique est à son tour enduite d’une lasure qui jette un pont entre le haut du tableau et la structure picturale complexe située dans l’angle inférieur gauche.

Ainsi conduit de droite à gauche dans le tableau, le regard du spectateur appréhende l’œuvre par étapes successives et non dans la simultanéité. Les œuvres de Fries, aussi expressives soient-elles, ne sont jamais l’aboutissement d’un projet délibérément prémédité. Elles sont le résultat de variations successives sur un thème initial ou préliminaire. Depuis peu ce sont les motifs, formes et couleurs de la sérigraphie qui constituent l’élément premier de la démarche et leurs inflexions chromatiques et formelles se prêtent à la paraphrase ou variation. C’est ainsi que voient le jour les plages colorées mentionnées plus haut, tantôt sous forme d’aplats, tantôt sous forme d’empâtements dont le dialogue anime les oeuvres. Si les circonvolutions et balafres circulaires sont ici majoritaires c’est que Fries se refuse à toute tentation tectonique — architecturale — géométrisante. La nécessité d’une composition rigoureuse fait loi, mais les tableaux qui inclinent parfois au baroque sont exempts de ces lois de la pesanteur qui régissent la statuaire et que l’on serait en droit d’attendre d’une construction figurative solide. A l’évidence il importe davantage pour Fries de montrer la genèse de l’œuvre, de souligner les étapes d’une évolution qui semble se suffire à elle-même, qui semble être une fin en soi. Ses œuvres refusent de se plier aux diktats d’un achèvement formel et, par conséquent, se définissent davantage comme “travaux en gestation” (“works in progress”). Elles procurent une impression de nouveauté et de fraîcheur telles semblent comme achevées à l’instant même. Les stigmates laissés par la spatule, le râteau, et le couteau à palette sont en effet des plus visibles, et témoignent d’un corps à corps avec le matériau dont la trace reste vivante dans l’œuvre achevée.

C’est de cette manière que les œuvres — en termes de création picturale et plastique — livrent simultanément au regard les étapes de leur genèse et l’aboutissement de celle-ci. Cette plasticité, au sens où l’entend Pia Fries, n’est pas le résultat du seul acte de “peindre” compris comme sensibilité chromatique et coordination d’éléments formels, mais consiste aussi bien à malaxer, taillader, gratter, coller et panacher les techniques. Sans cesse une entaille ou un nouvel énoncé chromatique vient s’interposer au courant engendré par la synergie des forces les plus diverses. A première vue, le regard est capté par cette crudité de la chair picturale décrite plus haut, par l’exhibitionnisme des couleurs. Un examen atttentif révèle le second degré “conceptuel” de l’œuvre : les subtilités structurelles auxquels Fries a recours pour mettre en scène cette peinture crue, cette matière à vif. Qu’il se détrompe celui qui est tenté de voir dans l’oeuvre de Pia Fries l’autel sacrificiel ou le champ de bataille sur lequel le médium « peinture » a rendu l’âme, car on est ici en présence d’un hommage. Un hommage à la force élémentaire d’une peinture qui s’est affranchie des conventions et contraintes extérieures.

Christoph Schreier,

Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels

Karel Appel, Amsterdão / Holanda - pintura moderna e contemporânea

Untitled (1976), oil on canvas

Two Heads (1964), gouache

Fallen Wings (1991), oil on canvas

Head (1979), oil on canvas

Sunflowers (2000), oil on canvas

Les Condamnés - Hommage à Rosenberg (1953)

Nude (1995), oil on canvas

Tête, oil on canvas

Untitled (1957), oil on canvas

The Storyteller (1983), oil on canvas

Figures, acrylic on canvas


Heads in Springtime (1989), acrylic on paper

Man with love (1983), collage, oil and pastel on paper

Orage annonciateur (1984), huile sur toile

Tête de Soleil, (1961)

Bird, oil on canvas

De Ruiter (1957)

The Crying Crocodile Tries to Catch the Sun (1956), oil on canvas

Untitled (1991), oil and pastel on cardboard

Sitting Person in the Right Garder (1997), oil on canvas

The Lute Player (1997), oil on canvas

*

* *

The Dutch expressionist Karel Appel studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Amsterdam (1940-1943). In 1948 he helped to create the Experimental Group in Amsterdam, which later formed the basis of CoBrA. He moved to Paris in 1950 and has lived in France ever since. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Appel captured the postwar mood of reconstruction and fresh beginnings by trying to see things with the eyes of a child. Like Jean Dubuffet (1901-), Appel painted monumental graffiti-like images of people, animals, and primitive carvings, in which influences of late works by Klee, Miro, and Nolde can be detected. About 1953 Appel's style became more painterly; the figures formed part of a vilently swirling mass of bright paint, like mythical creatures welling up from the unconscious. This surrealist-automatic approach gave way in the 1970s to a more decorative style.Karel Appel was born on April 25, 1921 in Amsterdam, Holland and died on May 3, 2006 at the age of 85 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Gallery Delaive, The Netherlands

*

* * *

* * *

Appel was a founding member of CoBrA, a short-lived post-war association of painters, writers, and poets, whose name is an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, the capital cities of the founders' countries. Emphasizing spontaneity and directness, some members, such as Appel, based their work on children's drawings and folk art, and the art of Paul Klee, often in bold colors.

*

* * *

** * *

Fundador do Grupo Experimental e co-fundador do Grupo CoBrA, Karel Appel desenvolve uma arte livre, que se opõe à repressão dos anos da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Suas pinturas, esculturas e gravuras são resultado da experimentação de novas técnicas, nas quais predominam a espontaneidade e o imediatismo do processo de criação; uma oposição ao excesso de teoria e de métodos presentes na arte européia da época. Principalmente no decorrer dos anos 50, o artista aparece como um dos grandes inovadores no contexto dos abstracionismos e da internacionalização das artes. Estudante da Academia de Belas Artes de Amsterdã entre 1940 e 1943, período no qual a Holanda está sob ocupação da Alemanha nazista, Appel sofre o desconforto da Guerra e da falta de liberdade artística. Seu país passa por uma crescente industrialização, perdendo muito de sua identidade cultural, o que faz com que o artista tente recuperar os elementos tradicionais, principalmente da cultura primitiva bárbara. Nos últimos anos da guerra, Appel e outros pintores holandeses viajam pelo país vendendo telas e conhecendo suas raízes, desenvolvendo uma arte com euforia experimental. A inspiração do artista vem das mais diversas experiências. Buscando "objetos-lixo" ou se aprofundando no descontraído mundo infantil, Appel mergulha na espontaneidade, abandona a distinção entre o belo e o feio e se utiliza de cores berrantes. Em uma afinidade com Pablo Picasso, abusa das formas primitivas; em uma afinidade com Henri Matisse, desenvolve a violência das cores no espaço. Muitas vezes, abandona o pincel para utilizar a bisnaga da tinta ou os próprios dedos, eliminando contornos e produzindo uma espécie de mosaico. Declara ódio à Piet Mondrian e Wassily Kandinski, que fazem uma arte abstrata não espontânea ou imediatista. Neste espírito de inovação, participa da fundação do Grupo Experimental, em 1948, unindo-o com o Grupo CoBrA no mesmo ano. O diálogo com outros pintores, principalmente com Constant e Asgar Jorn, incentivou sua produção artística, mas nem sempre foi um diálogo harmônico. Criticado pelo individualismo excessivo e pelas atitudes autoritárias, se afasta do grupo depois de um tempo, fixando-se em Paris na década de 50. Inicia, então, um período onde sua obra retoma um expressionismo de origem vagoghiana, consolidando seu nome entre os grandes da pintura não-figurativa. No Brasil, participa da II Bienal de São Paulo, em 1953, e ganha o Prêmio Internacional de Pintura na V Bienal de São Paulo, em 1959. (sic)