Page 28 - Studio International - July 1965

1 works differently. The power of the work to provoke our
Piccola Fol/a 'B' 1964
Bronze attention. to induce contemplation to draw us into its
15 x 36 cm. world. to make us a part of its action. derives from the
Marlborough Gallery, Rome
way the correspondence of tensions and the approxima­
2 tion of psychic states infuses the work with an extra­
Sospensione 1964
Bronze ordinary allusiveness. reaffirming the human values.
24 x 36 cm.
Collection: Michel Tapie hidden. thwarted and stunted by alienation. The work's
unswerving attachment to its own possibilities finds in
3
Crescita 1957 us an echo. our consciousness of our own humanity.
Lead Like the action painter. Gio' Pomodoro enacts in his
Collection : Carnegie Institute.
Pittsburg U.S.A. work his own psychic states so that the work is not the
representation of those states but the result of them as
they were expressed in the action. In this sense only can
one speak of the sculptures as signs. But they are signs
1
2 in the sense that a hunter sees the signs of his quarry.

tracks. bent twigs. hair on a thorn. None the less. they are
signs; but they are not invented signs nor are they
limited to the array of a conventional scheme.
Nevertheless. this admission that. after all. these
sculptures can still be read as signs. albeit a special
kind of non-verbal sign, the track or vestige of action.
might yet allow some value to the distinction between
form and content. or at least permit one to distinguish
between the sign and the 'thing· signified. Sign, in the
sense it was intended in the last paragraph. clearly does
not refer to some 'thing·. It does not. except in a very
special and circumscribed use of the word. belong to a
repertory. The sign of a thing is above all referential and
is a term in a repertory. In this sense the sign might exist
without the thing to which it refers ever having existed.
It is independent, whereas the sign which is the trace o.f
an action can only come into existence as a result of
that action to which it is inescapably bound in its
genesis. and of which it is a part. Action in the context of
a work of art involves the changing of the state of
materials. This altered state is the sign of action. From
the sign it is possible to imagine the thing in its entirety.
From the altered state of material which expresses
a tension it is only possible to find a matching tension.
12