Page 5 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters
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a sensibility that is energetic, not aggressive. This
is associated with a notion of pleasure, and to the Emphasis on is required to capture minute
idea of a “guarantee” within art, that of successfully sensations and thoughts. These artists are opposed
creating the minority reality of a personal image to the focus on the monumental and heroic that
deriving from the artist’s individual impulse. dominated the art of the Sixties. Detail is the
Mutability derives from the transient character of anchor of the temporary, the support of an art
style, which can never be guaranteed continuity that operates on the slope of sensibility and of
or stability. The young Italian artists in fact use the “state of grace”. The humble skill of technique
languages that are both different and differentiated, also dictates an anti-heroic and ironically domestic
references to cultures both remote in time and also behavior. It is no coincidence that these artists
close to our own. A fan-like sensibility promotes constantly resort to drawing, which allows a refined
images that surpass each other and move away and fleeting, dynamic and flowing expression.
from poetics and a traditional faithfulness to it. Drawing makes it possible to capture the rapid
Obviously, the image oscillates between figurative transitions of sensibility, its spread beyond the
and abstract, between reference to an excessive restrictions of matter and paint. The sign does not
figuration and the balanced reticence of the encounter obstacles; on the contrary it permits
abstract, decorative motif. understated images that are agile and open.
Drawing allows allusion without peremptoriness; it
The transience is in the creation of the work, which allows the expression of a state of mind without any
is never hampered by academic perfectionism, need for a definitive and categorical description.
but is always in transit between the creative drive
and the stability of the result. Moreover, the The drawing in the works by Chia, Clemente,
image always catches fleeting sensations, such Cucchi, De Maria and Paladino is sign, stroke,
as the witticisms in the work of Chia, the sense image, effigy, line, outline, scribble, doodle,
of matter in that of Cucchi, the suspension of landscape, map, diagram, profile, silhouette,
time in Clemente, the music of color in De Maria, sketch, illustration, figure, foreshortened
and multipurpose motifs in Paladino. Time as a figure, print, split, model, tracing, caricature,
relentless flow becomes the defining moment chiaroscuro, graffiti, engraving, map, lithography,
of works that contain the embryo of their own pastel, etching, woodcut. The tools may be:
supersedence. charcoal, pencil, pen, brush, compass, set square,
pantograph, slide-rule, ruler, stumping, stencil. The
Contradiction arises from the refusal to be confined procedure can be arabesque, tracing, composing,
within the geometry of a coherence tied to a copying, erasing, correcting, shining, drawing.
fixed, ideologically bunkered idea of the world. The result: field, contour, shade, decoration,
The images are the symptoms of an inexhaustible perspective, sketching.
reserve that is not held in check by a univocal
language. Ironic, dramatic images, bright, neutral Often in these artists the drawing produces intimate
signs continuously cross the surface of the work, and emblematic signs, it works through shadow
never characterizing and defining things that are and delicate shading, perceiving a “second soul”
intended to be mobile and open. in things, discerning elusive and unpredictable
WORLD of ART 5
