What is a head?
What is a head?
Yeah. It's apparently the simplest question in the world. A staunch sphere with an elongated bottom, flattened on the back, protruding onto an inclined pyramid with two concavities on each side of the tip, and finally extruding in an opening maw.
Why, instead, can't it be this?
Alexander Archipenko has spent years dissecting this very question: why do we define things only according to our senses?
Why shouldn't we try to extend them through time?
This Ukrainian-American artist is one of the most inspiring figures of the Avant-guard movements blooming at the turn of the XX Century - he's in the limelight of the delightful exhibit Archipenko and the Italian Avant Guarde, until September 4th (I know, not much time left) at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London.
In his exploration of how sculpture and painting can break the boundaries of how our understanding of space and time, he tried to give depth and, potentially, a sense of poetry to our sensory experience. What's inspiring about his work is how this investigation led him back to the very beginning of art: aesthetics and storytelling.
The most exciting thing about contemporary art is why it exists. Long story short, it stemmed as a reaction to the established way of accepting the world around us as we usually perceive it. Once the concept of relativity entered into their mindset (and the parallels and interconnections between what was happening in science and art in the 19th and 20th century are just stunning), artitts were bogged down no more by the straight-forward attitude of "I paint what I see", but dedicated themselves to "I paint HOW I see".
Archipenko has evolved the same principles into the realm of sculpture -- although it's not that simple. Alongside the curved edges and controlled spiralling of his works, he has tapped into the liminal space between 2D and 3D with his sculpto-paintings, and propelling his aspirations even further to 4D and the linearity of time itself as we experience it.
Let’s take for instance this work, The Violinist.
This sculpture represents the paramount example of this urge: in just one compact piece of metal, in a shape that looks undecipherable at a glance, there's the story of performance, of all performances, practising and rehearsal included, of all violinists of all time. And just three intersecting lines - the ones at the top of the figure - are enough to achieve just that.
It all comes down to this: Archipenko has conveyed questions that still define the boundaries of art. And, despite all his influence of Boccioni and Balla, he basically was forgotten by art history despite the very public acknowledgment of his work by De Chirico, Modigliani, Sironi, Thayath and so many others-
Archipenko saw art as an instrument of pure knowledge, for it connects storytelling, empathy and perception in its broadest sense - that is, as a means of sensory interaction of the world and has a process strictly linked to the senses. You can tell a specific, very tiny story while compounding all the stories in the world, and still put into question how and why the spectator is subconsciously able to unravel this knot of meaning and emotion.
There is not much I can add. You can find out more about this extraordinary artist and his artistic offspring in the lovely Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London until September 4th.
Archipenko and the Italian Avant Guarde - September 4, estorickcollection.com