|
Pisa, February 21, 1983
Dear Papasso,
I am very grateful to you for what, although unconsciously,
you have done for me. You have driven me far away from my steady
habit of contemplating a work of art as an “accomplished” object. On the contrary,
you have involved me into the concept of experimentation, which today’s
artists adopt in wide terms. You have, in fact, realized, on a practical basis,
the ancient desire of several Masters. This was the constant survival of the
author within his work of art, which does not become separated from the artist
but continues to live with him in a creative process. This process keeps intact the
essential nature which generated it.
The concept of workshop derives from this circumstance, which I believe inseparable
from the understanding of your art and marks the overcoming of categories. These used to
enchain the artist to the building of images made by drawing and painting. However, the
concept of a workshop for experimentation is extremely humble and highly proud, at the
same time. In fact, while it stimulates the author to perform an operation of craftsmanship,
it imposes on him a creative potentiality. This attitude has more existential vigor than strictly
relying on traditional colored pigments: it multiplies the expressive power, by prohibiting the
mentioned detachment.
The matrix, for example, is not a tool for a simple mechanical reproduction: it
survives the mirror-like image, maintains intact its expressive peculiarity and imposes
itself as archetype of an open and evergreen vitalistic process.
Whereas the sign is more visible, that the sheet presses without mechanical imposition
and acquires almost through an osmosis process, here the whiteness of the page prevails. This
whiteness becomes self-confident and bare, to be perceived on the background of a respectful silence,
where some imperceptible chromatic objects display a remote musical echo. This echo is surely not
dissimilar from the "harmony of celestial spheres" , which were, perceived in the vast
cosmic peace, by the ancient Pitagora’s alumni via musical outfit and mathematical clarity:
their minds were not yet paralyzed by the tangles of syllogism.
Let us now turn our glance over the papiers froissés which still save, with the heat of the hand, the creative flavor: they combine and store their vital impulses, by combining with some randomness, as it always occurs within living organisms.
I believe that YOU gave an elegant answer to the concept of "poor art", which involves so much of the contemporary artistic production, strongly alien from richness and emphasis.
Everything I have said up to now must be integrated, with your consent, with a judgment of your quality as an artist which Art must reveal and Criticism must make accessible to the observers.
I may be wrong but the fundamental content of your art, or at least what I feel mostly
congenial with you and beside the elegance I have already mentioned, is that condition of suspension
and internal sensitivity rarefaction. This has been noted by other critics and induces me to talk of
your deep moral and artistic chastity which leaves out the seduction of form and color. This choice,
with the purpose of reaching decantation , invites us to stand still in front of your art works, where
every zone has the breath of ever-changing life, placed softly in subtle and light sheets, as if they
possess the chance of flying away at the first presence of wind.
Under this respect, I feel united with your fragile and elegant constructions, more than
with the cuts, uselessly aggressive, by Lucio Fontana.
Yours faithfully,
Luigi Ferrarino(*)
|
