Antoni Tapies
dal 25/5/2000 al 13/8/2000
Segnalato da
25/5/2000
Antoni Tapies
Haus der Kunst, Munich
A Retrospective.
In collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
The retrospective organized by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia in Madrid is the most comprehensive exhibition of Antoni
TÃ pies' work to have ever been shown. With 90 works from public and
private collections from throughout the world, it presents a survey of the
artist's work from the mid-forties until today.
If one was to try to define Antoni TÃ pies' contribution to the aesthetics
of the 20th century with one term, one would have to refer to his
particular treatment of texture and material, which lends his paintings
the unmistakable character of a wall, Spanish: tapia. As TÃ pies himself
once wrote in an essay Communicacio sobre el mur, he early
recognized the expressive richness that lies in this motif. Although the
tapia, the wall, first blocks access and vision-the anti-Renaissance
image par excellence--it is also a background for graffiti and the effects
of the passing of time. TÃ pies' image of the wall with its name tapia
that was strikingly similar to his own, took on a magical character that
was to be evident in all his paintings.
There is no formal analysis of the aesthetic possibilities of matter by
TÃ pies: he continually searches for its magical qualities and its
potential to be transformed. It is not the walls' plasticity of texture or
harmony of color that is of major importance, it is TÃ pies' endeavor to
depict the continuity of physical matter: the difference between an
object and its substance becomes blurred. These paintings, these
walls indicate a constantly changing and transmuting world, which the
artist/alchemist has given a form at a particular chosen moment.
Painting a picture enables TÃ pies to extend himself, to tear down the
walls that separate people from his environment. His almost obsessive
use of the same few objects or motifs such as chairs, doors, windows,
slippers and feet reflect the artist's desire to impart familiarity to the
viewers and ready identification. The paintings often contain
characteristic calligraphic signs and letters, especially crosses and the
initials "A" and "T".
TÃ pies' works demonstrate the artist's self-image of the shaman.
Similar to an alchemist he is able to recognize materials, change
substances, and give life a meaning. Many of his works are
reminiscent of votive offerings from the Middle-Ages, which were to
have healing effects when one placed them on various parts of the
body.
The moment of the impossible is inherent to TÃ pies' oeuvre. He often
noted that art resembles a game, a trap, that the viewer must
recognize and accept if it is to work. This may explain why TÃ pies
draws a cross or some other kind of linear mark on his finished canvas,
annulling its "veracity". Although the exhibition was conceived as a
retrospective, it focuses on this element of ambiguity and the
impossible that dominates the Catalan artist's painting.
TÃ pies balances between two different historical and cultural situations:
his themes and obsessions, full of every-day elements such as
rubbish, are closer to the generation which revolted against Abstract
Expressionism; his aesthetic demands, however, are clearly related to
existential currents of thought. His principle of repetition is in fact a
constant questioning.
For TÃ pies art has a ritual character, it must change our
consciousness. In some of his writings he mentions that painting must
open the eyes to different perspectives of the world, and introduce rules
of conduct that give our lives more meaning and make our relationships
to other human beings and nature more loving. This condition of "deep
consciousness" can, according to the artist, only be acquired through
education and especially through a ritual of execution and
presentation--in other words, by reciting a series of pictures and
objects. These may just be banal elements belonging directly to the
world of the artist's life: a foot, a bed, a box, etc. According to the
teachings of Zen Buddhism highly regarded by TÃ pies, meaning is to
be found in contemplative experience particularly in everyday life, and
Nirvana, the state of absolute blessedness, blends with Samsara, the
eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth.
Always skeptical of a civilization that concentrates too much on Logos,
TÃ pies drew his inspiration from mystics. The artist pleads for a
contemplative and transcendental aesthetic whereby humor, irony and
play do not lose their importance.
This exhibition enables the visitor to trace the work of the artist from
the beginning of his career-the first self-portraits and collages-to recent
years (eg. Earth Picture, 1999, and Complement, 1990).
Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstrasse 1, 80538 Munich,
DE Germany
tel. 089-21127-0
fax 21 127-157
Opening hours
Daily 10.00 - 22.00