Page 42 - Studio International - September 1969

Penetrable
Amsterdam
2
Penetrable
Amsterdam
3
Umberto Boccioni
Stati d'animo : Quelli che restano (first version) 1911
Oil on canvas
Photo Robho
4
Sculpture penetrable 1957
Caracas
Collection: Alfredo Boulton

shoulders. 'I want', he declared, 'to create a
bridge between exterior plastic infinity and
interior plastic infinity.'
The history of sculpture was to develop from
these simple propositions. Transparent (Gabo,
Archipenko, etc), holed (Pevsner), and mov-
ing (Gabo, Calder, etc), it is increasingly inte-
grating with space right up to the point where
energy systematically encroaches upon static
forms with light-moulded, undulating sculp-
ture (Moholy-Nagy and Vantongerloo), mag-
netic forces (Takis), and so on. Thus the
internal and the external, blended in a general
dematerialization, have become indivisible.
A second paint made by the Futurists which
is in fact implicit in the logic of the first, has
also had wide repercussions: 'Painters have
placed subjects of various kinds before us.
Henceforth we will place the spectator in the
middle of the picture' (Technical Manifesto of
Futurist Painters, 1910). And, two years later,
`Our powerful lines must so encircle and in-
volve the spectator that he is obliged, as it
were, to fight the people depicted.'
The hitherto under-stressed spectator was
suddenly brought to the fore. Whereas he had
previously been expected to observe in
silence, he was now being invited to participate.
The Cubists' fusing of subject and environment was
no longer enough: the public must be brought into
the aesthetic debate.
Futurist ideas were in fact mere pious wishes.
There was no more participation in a Boccioni
painting than in a Cézanne. The tumult
depicted in The noises of the street penetrate the
house (1911) or in Elasticity (1912) remains
foreign to our experience because it is im-
prisoned within an aesthetic fiction. We are
not in a Boccioni. We are on the outside,
looking at a picture.
To overcome this division was the aim of a
section of the next generation of modern
artists. In 1918 Duchamp made a singular
demand on the spectator. He suggested look-
ing at a picture 'through one eye for about an
hour'. With Dada, notions of respect for the
work were purged. It could be touched and
burned (Man Ray, 1939), have smoke blown
over it (Man Ray, Smoking device, 1959), com-
posed of a single adjustable mirror (Man Ray,
Self-portrait, 1944), destroyed (Tinguely),