Page 58 - Studio International - May 1968

Baruchello's handwriting on the wall

Henry Martin

Gianfranco Baruchello sprinkles miniscule draw-
ings of schematic trees, imaginary monsters, non-
existent machines, arrows, words, sentences and
paragraphs (in various languages), tiny represent-
ations of the various organs of the body, patches of
hair, diagrams of football plays and electrical
circuits, articles of clothing, splotches of numbers,
conventions of fleas and erudite references to a host
of personal mysteries over the wide white or blue
or unpainted surfaces of aluminium sheet metal. He
has said that he 'works in the zone of the virtuali-
ties'.
Baruchello's work begins as autobiography, and
the problems encountered in understanding it are
the problems encountered with any radical auto-
biography. Autobiography is understandable
(innocuous) and useful (useless) to the extent that
the reader's lives can recognize themselves in the
life and aspirations of the author. But an auto-
biography written by a dissenter from the com-
munity like Baruchello cannot be understood from
inside the community, except on the level of form
and structure, and to understand it on the level of
form and structure is the community's way of
escaping from the real danger that it presents. The
good autobiographer, like Baruchello, attempts to
write his life in such a way as to prevent it from
being understood aesthetically; Baruchello turns
the aesthetic understanding of his works into a
trap. The subject matter of Baruchello's paintings
is in the logic of the forms he uses and in their
disposition on the canvas. To understand them (if
they are understandable) on one level would be to
understand them on all levels, and to understand
them would be to be changed by them, and this is
precisely what Baruchello wants. It was once said
that the White Goddess is a book designed to destroy
the minds of its readers; the same is true of Baru-
chello's paintings. He has expressed the conviction
that 'the bombs placed under society by my cham-
ber Guernica will, if all goes well, explode in the
hands of inexperienced grandchildren.'
In telling us that his work is not for us but for our
grandchildren Baruchello assumes the role of the
prophet; he knows, though, that the best prophets Were the quality of this silence different, Baru- language is left up to us, however, and the paintings
are those who make no explicit prophecies. We chello's techniques might be compared to those of have, above all, the power of suggestiveness. They
have been told too often that the world is about to Henry James. Baruchello presents us with con- are a way of approaching knowledge in an age in
end, and apocalyptic dates no longer frighten us nundrums so as to make our ignorance instinctively which knowledge is no longer believed to be
into changing our ways. If these paintings are not lead us into that area where intuition turns into possible. Andy Warhol alchemizes banality into
meant for us, it would be absurd to pretend to knowledge. sophistication; Robert Morris and the Cool
understand them, and Baruchello does his best Everything that should be significant in Baru- Academy transform the static into the awareness
to make sure that we do not understand them. He chello's paintings is not. They are a series of of time; Baruchello turns inarticulateness, well-
contents himself with creating the impression that camouflages, structures of misleading traffic signs, honed and finely phrased, into lyrical intuition.
there is something 'Immense' within his canvases. intentionally false directions, and studiedly vacuous His paintings grow up out of a sense of desper-
He draws us into his canvases with promises, but rhetoric. They become tours de force in the creation ation—an awareness of existential problems—and
once there we find ourselves more confused than of multilevel confusion—logical confusion, verbal the solution of the existential problems is what,
illuminated. We search for a message and do not confusion, and, if one wants to count an impromtu hypothetically, they aim to attain. One of his
find it, and yet we cannot shake the feeling that it recital in which he once sang his paintings to a paintings is entitled How to survive. The title can be
must be there and that we have simply mistaken group of friends, one might add musical confusion. read either as a question or as the preface to a
the road for arriving at it. Alain Jouffroy has talked The only thing that is not confused is the clarity lesson. It implies that survival is difficult, and it
about the way in which all of Baruchello's state- and finesse of their surfaces, a clarity that would evidences the faith that survival is possible. There
ments and assertions seem to float upon a sea of seem to imply that all of the other confusions are are many of Baruchello's works in which the image
silence. What Baruchello does best of all is to give illusory and that the paintings become a kind of of a broken safety pin occurs. Where there is no
the sense that this silence is a very profound silence. meta-language that organizes and unifies all the safety there is danger. Ko(no)scienza disperata is
The closer one looks at these paintings, the more subsidiary, incomplete languages that make up the built around a field of signals of distress. The chic
profound, the more delirious this silence becomes. bulk of human experience. The reading of this self-confidence that is to be found in so much of
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