Several cases of actually “unrolled” or “scrolled” paintings and drawings may be detected around 1960, a year that can be considered as the very topical turning point from modern to contemporary art. In 1959 Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio presented his seventy-four metres long roll of Industrial Painting in his renowned exhibition, The Cave of Antimatter, at the René Drouin Gallery in Paris. In the same year, at the Paris Biennale, Jean Tinguely exhibited Méta-Matic n. 17, a motorized machine made out of assembled scraps, which was able to draw on a continuous strip of paper, which was automatically unrolled and threw to the audience. In the same 1959, Piero Manzoni began to paint single black lines on several metres long strips of paper, which subsequently were rolled up and put in specific tube-cases (numbered and signed by the artist). In 1960 Manzoni could realize his dream about an almost endless line, scrolling and painting a line on a seventy-two metres long paper in Herning, Denmark. In the above mentioned coeval but nevertheless different artistic expressions, the meaning and even the artistic role of the roll, as well as the scroll, radically diverge from other well known forms of rolled-up languages. Beyond the medium used (may it be the parchment or the papyrus), the ancient rolls share with the virtual scrolling of our contemporary touch-screen tools an elementary function: both provide the human being with the best solution to quickly store and visualize thousands of information in a narrow space. During the catholic ceremonies in the Middle Age, the Exultet codes were showed the audience by scrolling parchments rolls, painted with figures and characters from the Bible. On the contrary, the Gallizio’s brutal industrial paintings were created with the purpose to spread and expand on the daily life space, in order to contaminate the established culture and language by means of an explosion (scrolling) of chaotic energy and spontaneous creativity. On the other hand, Tinguely pointed out the chaos underlining the post-war massive society, putting even visual arts out of the artist’s control; while Manzoni challenged the whole art system playing with the “disappearance” of his artworks, even though they were hand-made, signed and commercialized.
Manzoni’s Line: From the Roll to the Infinite Painting
L. Bochicchio
2020-01-01
Abstract
Several cases of actually “unrolled” or “scrolled” paintings and drawings may be detected around 1960, a year that can be considered as the very topical turning point from modern to contemporary art. In 1959 Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio presented his seventy-four metres long roll of Industrial Painting in his renowned exhibition, The Cave of Antimatter, at the René Drouin Gallery in Paris. In the same year, at the Paris Biennale, Jean Tinguely exhibited Méta-Matic n. 17, a motorized machine made out of assembled scraps, which was able to draw on a continuous strip of paper, which was automatically unrolled and threw to the audience. In the same 1959, Piero Manzoni began to paint single black lines on several metres long strips of paper, which subsequently were rolled up and put in specific tube-cases (numbered and signed by the artist). In 1960 Manzoni could realize his dream about an almost endless line, scrolling and painting a line on a seventy-two metres long paper in Herning, Denmark. In the above mentioned coeval but nevertheless different artistic expressions, the meaning and even the artistic role of the roll, as well as the scroll, radically diverge from other well known forms of rolled-up languages. Beyond the medium used (may it be the parchment or the papyrus), the ancient rolls share with the virtual scrolling of our contemporary touch-screen tools an elementary function: both provide the human being with the best solution to quickly store and visualize thousands of information in a narrow space. During the catholic ceremonies in the Middle Age, the Exultet codes were showed the audience by scrolling parchments rolls, painted with figures and characters from the Bible. On the contrary, the Gallizio’s brutal industrial paintings were created with the purpose to spread and expand on the daily life space, in order to contaminate the established culture and language by means of an explosion (scrolling) of chaotic energy and spontaneous creativity. On the other hand, Tinguely pointed out the chaos underlining the post-war massive society, putting even visual arts out of the artist’s control; while Manzoni challenged the whole art system playing with the “disappearance” of his artworks, even though they were hand-made, signed and commercialized.
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