|
As a Greek (he was born in Piraeus in 1936), he remains
questioning about the numerous assumptions through which one must
wade to get at the essential truths behind modern contemporary art.
There is a gravitas and a profound monumentality about a work such
as 'Untitled' (2004); the array of regularly disposed, criss-crossed
steel elements have the effect of taking one back to the Acropolis,
no less. It could certainly never have been Roman, for all the decades
he has lived in the city. Kounellis's art is about materiality and
its location and dispersal with a modicum of grace. Invariably,
his work imputes a discrete sense of history, even in these 100
girders, touching ground on numerous Turkish carpets. There is a
hint here of Gallipoli, but if anything is to remind us why we should
welcome Turkey wholeheartedly into the European Union, it is this
display by Kounellis the Greek, aware of how, eventually, Turkey's
erstwhile arrival into the EU may dismiss some of the proliferating
blandness of this increasingly smug community of nations. With such
works, Kounellis both projects history forward and at the same time
rediscovers our humanitarian roots.
I still have the masterly catalogue from 1981, composed by Rudi
Fuchs. In certain passages, Fuchs emphasises the nature of Kounellis's
engagement with Rome, plotting its atmospheric variations. Fuchs
also describes a journey he and Kounellis had made together in Russia
into the country outside Moscow, 'We enter Russia, the old country.
The first low wooden houses appear along the narrowing road, green
fields, flowers and birch trees: the land of the poets.' Apart from
the accompanying memories of icons and of the famous monasteries
of Andrei Rublev's time in the area of Sagorsk, Fuchs emphasises
such memories that also entranced the Greek. Kounellis found there
in Sagorsk, 'The dream, the enchantment, the mystery, the melancholy,
the past, the purity, the splendour, the future, the spiritual,
the order, the architecture. It was all there, north of Moscow.'
Fuchs uses Sagorsk, appropriately, as a model. He says, 'I think
the works of Kounellis operate, or articulate themselves in an area/aura
of similar mystery. One of the problems of Kounellis's work, taken
all together, is that like the priest/monk Andrei Rublev, he sees
fire as a necessary cleansing element in life.' Sadly, one can't
do that in galleries any more. The flaming bunsen burners that Kounellis
displayed in the past are no longer permitted, even at Modern Art
Oxford. So too have gone the representatives of life, in the form
of parrots, fish (although goldfish are still permitted) and even
myriad horses. Not infrequently, Kounellis still enacts metaphorical
'shrugs', such as the electric train model that repeatedly encircles
an existing gallery pillar, as if to download some of his own accumulated
gravitas. The horses, exhibited in Rome in 1969, were something
altogether more extensive. The 11 creatures were quite elegantly,
but gently juxtaposed with replica reliefs of the horses carved
on the Parthenon.
In the heyday and subsequent aftermath of Arte Povera, various memorable
tribute exhibitions have helped to substantiate the importance of
Kounellis. The exhibition organised in 1982 at the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam, under the aegis of Edy de Wilde, entitled '60s - 80s
Attitudes, Concepts, Images' was a case in point. It followed the
Kounellis travelling exhibition of 1981, curated by Rudi Fuchs.
For the Stedelijk show, it has to be said that although Fuchs had
already unlocked the mysteries of Kounellis, the most dramatic and
powerful works could not be included. Now, 22 years later, Modern
Art Oxford has provided an excellent resumé of our time,
capturing all the materiality and poetics of Kounellis's work.
Michael Spens
|
