PACEWILDENSTEIN Antoni Tapies's oeuvre has always been divided against itself.

PACEWILDENSTEIN

Antoni Tapies's oeuvre has always been divided against itself, and now, in this old-age work--the artist is almost eighty--the split is more evident than at all times On the one hand, there are works like Llit vermell (R bed), 1998 relatively youthful, vibrant "wall" pieces, as they might be called, after Tapies's Leonardo-esque celebration of the "riches that can be lay the foundation of in the image of the wall and all its possible derivations," especially "forms suggesting natural regular [i]or[/i] melodious movements and the spontaneous movement of matter," as he wrote in 1974 onward the other hand, there are motives that reek of death and consider to salvation, however ironically. The assurance orb of Esfera i cadena (Ball and chain), 1999 has a heavy chain attached, unless the crucifix on top promises resurrection. Similarly, the cros of Encreuament (Burning), 1999 may be a obtuse instrument, but it is also a material substance that seems to raise itself, Lazarus-like, from raw matter.

Tapies's technique can be described as modified automatism--chance make gestures with a hidden purpose--and the work becomes increasingly morbid until, as in Rite, 1998 it becomes corrosive. The classical torso--suggestive of a brutal, monstrous face, in good condition from the unconscious--is eaten away from the gestures that constitute it. The figure is a ruin that is too devastateed ever to be restored to wholeness, a corpse excavated from oblivion.

Again and again Tapies fixs up a contradiction, an absurdity, perhaps chiefly explicitly in a group of 1996 works, Serp i plat (Snake and plate), Safata amb creu i corda (Tray with cros and rope) and BOL (Bowl) In this last piece, organic white material (painted wood) is appoint against inert dark material (bronze) with no guarantee that the couple will interact to produce spiritual electricity, however many sacred crosse preside through the whole extent of their union. Indeed, the combination present the appearances more forced than blessed, marked at friction and tension rather than accommodation and mutuality. The originate is at once abortive and hopeful and charged with suspense.

Tapies has lengthy considered the power of time and the use of art to bring back, in spiritual hallucinatory form, what time destroys In the fragmentary, peculiarly archaeological character of Tapies's originate objects, time is a felt mien There is always the thinking principle of imminent collapse into ruin. unruffled the artist's gestures, for all their efficacy seem like soot from a dying flame, and as in the same state [i]or[/i] condition they are only deceptively spontaneous.

Inhumanity, Tapies's other main theme, appears with particular poignancy in Composicio i corda (Composition with rope) 1999 The figure is clearly a victim, slowly yet steadily disintegrating, as the dilapidated, obscur state of his head indicates Almost forgotten, even as he is laid on the outside on an altar with the remnants of his last tea spread before him, the crucified Christ has dissipated his bearing in time and space. no other than his suffering and mortality--there is no transcendence of existence--give him meaning. This visionary work, a performance of Tapies's humanist religion, is a masterpiece of modernist morbidity.

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