Mario Guderzo - Gianfranco Paulli Sculptor
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Mario Guderzo
Exhibition
“LETTING MATTER EXPRESS ITSELF”
culptures by Gianfranco Paulli
Review by Professor Mario Guderzo
(Director of the Antonio Canova Museum and Collection of plaster casts)
September 2008
The Greek word “α γ α´ λ μ α τ α” [aga'lmata], which literally means "statues", used to signify "beautiful things" in ancient times. And beautiful things were intended for the gods. When a sculptor represented the body of a god or hero he was simply offering the god an extraordinary gift, a gift of beauty. Thus, semantics reveal that in Greece, and in all other ancient cultures, sculpture was a means of reaching a god and representing it in a votive offering made of marble.
In the Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, Emperor Hadrian states "The human was my equal, in him I found everything, even divinity". Thus, the naturalistic representation of the human form beomes the sculptor's favourite subject, his absolute reference model, and sculpture discovers its own reason for existence in portraying it.
Down through the centuries, sculpture has always been a noble art that has evolved in time. In the early Middle-Ages and during the fall of the Western Roman Empire no real form of sculpture is known of, apart from elementary expressive forms such as graffiti and engravings. The Romanesque period experienced a revival of great plastic sculpture: reliefs and figures in the round stood in portals, pulpits and capitals of churches and baptistries. The Gothic period regarded sculpture both as a way of decorating and completing architecture and as an individual and independent artistic expression. Wood carving (statues, furniture, carved polychrome and gold architectural decorations) greatly developed alongside stone sculptures and a revival of the casting technique. During the Renaissance, sculpture was no longer closely linked to architecture but became an independent art in its own right. Statues took on a very realistic apperance due to continuous studies on human anatomy. Many Treatises were written on techniques, such as the one by Leon Battista Alberti (1404 - 1472) and Benvenuto Cellini (1500 – 1571). Nevertheless, the sculpture of this period is best represented by Michelangelo (1475- 1564) who embodied the actual essence of sculpture – even though he was also a painter and architect – to the extent of declaring that any idea could be expressed in marble. Nobody could compete with him in bringing matter to life: he chose the white Carrara marble he wanted to work on by himself, without the help of stone-cutters. He wanted to do everything by himself, at the risk of his own life. His ancient and new Classicism achieved perfection thanks to vigorous forms, haughty glances and pure lines. His Moses is thought to be the greatest statue of modern times. Subsequently, Mannerism appeared as a more virtuoso style with more complex forms. In the next century, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680) bestowed this art with a new language: he decorated churches and buildings with his spectacular, Baroque forms consisting of figures moving in the space surrounding them. In his opinion, sculpture had to be extremely dynamic and the solemn basilicas had to reflect the pomp and power of the Church.
The other style that developed towards the end of the 18th century was Neo-classicism. There was a revival of classic art: scultptures were simple, regular and lacking any superfluous detail. The famous artist Antonio Canova (1757-1822,) to whom we owe the most superb neoclassic sculptures, appeared in this period.
This Neoclassicism should not be interpreted as an academic imitation of antiquity, the consequence of a fleeting fad, but as an in-depth study of ancient art. "The only way for us to become great..... is the imitation of the Greeks" wrote the neo-classical theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Of course, by "imitation" he did not mean "slavish copying" but putting "extraction and distillation" into practice to "achieve the authentic simplicity of Nature".
Many artists revolutionized European plastic tradition between the 19th and the 20th century. The most renowned was Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) who caused an authentic commotion by breaking into the French and European sculptural scene at a time dominated by Romantic and Neo-Classical academic art. In this sense, Rodin was the talent that freed form so that it could open up to every possibility of vision through fascinating, stormy sculptures in which light is absorbed and reflected by the alabastrine splendour of marble to reveal the endless wonders of plastic art.
Rodin replaced the structural order of sculpture with "hubris" i.e. Dionysian fury, a Greek category that had its aesthetic and philosophical transference in Nietzsche's vitalism. Suspended between Impressionism and Symbolism, power and languor, his plastic vision generated figures in which unfinished surfaces softened into polished parts, in a sensual rippling that marked the unmistakable path of Eros, of Baudelair's 'petite mort', the orgasmic release of the flesh. Like a final exorcism, art's great romantic season comes to an end with Rodin.
After him, Bourdelle, Maillol, Brancusi, Medardo Rosso, Alberto Giacometti, Moore and others dedicated themselves to the great archetype and became the most important interpreters of modern sculpture. Each of these artists developed their style after having performed extensive research at an artistic and personal level. Such an assortment of artistic expressions lead to experimenting with different methods and materials.
Moods, feelings and emotions were the basis of an artistic project although they couldn't be considered as art or figurative expressions in their own right. Art, and in particular sculpture, was the outcome of a long process of technical and psychological research. It was a collection of learned, tried and tested concepts and, at the same time, a method, a technique and the ability to understand, interpret and reinvent things.
Arturo Martini said: "An artist is a labourer. He has no special qualities other than a poet's bag: when he delves in it, things come out".
This is what Gianfranco Paulli does in an artistic period in which the magic of, and search for, new forms leads to experiences that are more than exciting. He lives his relationship with materials in a passionate and physical way, prefering bronze and marble yet not disdaining clay.
If art is the outcome of a long path of learning it is also, at the same time, it also marks the outset of another path made of creativity, imagination and search for taste.
His ability to instil his soul into lifeless matter, to make his figures come alive in pureness and beauty, is stunning. It is precisely the personal taste of the artist, applied to his own product, that marks the difference between a commonplace work and a good one, between ordinary handicraft and a work of art. This type of choice requires a more profitable combination of knowledge, situations and techniques that leads to the creation of a good artistic work capable of expressing, communicating or even of just existing as such.
Thanks to in-depth, passionate personal research Paulli has managed to develop a style distinguished by signs, strengths, movements and originality. His path includes all the experiences considered to be the most congenial and relevant to a sensitivity attracted by naturalistic iconography. His works and Nature look as if they are swapping roles, just like the artist's actions and those of the elements end up mingling their properties and faculties. Water and the Wind, as time goes by – not incidentally defined by Yourcenar in one of her most significant writings as the "great sculptor"- and Time itself - a great artist that re-shapes and corrodes - may have moulded and honed works clearly influenced by ancient authorities instead of the sculptor's hand.
Paulli frequently refers to the most hidden drives of the human mind, founding his works on a world which, in turn, is deeply-rooted in the study of the past and does not pursue the attractions of current trends. The artist follows the inspiration of classic, Greek and latin art. The influences behind Paulli can be found in great sculptors and are evident in the refined and polished human forms, amazing for the beauty they have handed down to us, almost as if female and male bodies have become forever set in time through the work of the artist's hands.
Antonio Canova declared: "Pity the Nymph doesn't talk, said an English man, and the Ebe doesn't take flight!... I do not presume to deceive anyone with my works: it is clear that they are made of marble, that they are inarticulate and motionless: I am content if it is clear that I have in part conquered my material with my art, making it look similar to the real thing. If my work were to be mistaken for the real thing, why should I be praised for my efforts? For it to look like marble is more beneficial to me, so that I can be forgiven the defects by virtue of the difficulty: my only aim is to create an illusion".
This is also true of Paulli, whose inclination dictates the rules of a very personal plastic concept that seems to outdo itself sculpture after sculpture, period after period. Lately, it has achieved its loftiest poetry, always and unfailingly linked to the plastic story of man studied from a historical viewpoint, like an unrepeatable individual at the centre of a universe dominated by rules almost as inflexible as those that govern sculpture.
Paulli commits his soul to his works, and these rob him of it when they are finished. He is in a bond of prolonged, passionate and hard-fought intimacy with his creations. He feels a natural, physical need to understand sculpture, in which emotions, spontaneity and experience become the essential conditions underlying his work.
How many and which movements these sculptures conceal within them can be clearly seen; all of them seem to be waiting for something, all of them want to move, go, progress. There is a horizon or fate waiting for each of them. Just as if the sculptor's aim were to add his personal myth to the myth, a hidden drama matured in his innermost self, in that unknowable and intricate kingdom that is inside each and every one of us and that never fully reveals itself but appears through narrow slits or for brief instants, making the mystery even more seductive.
The artist's constant concern is to "remove" every oppressive resistance to increase the vital tension and release the inner energy contained in a continuous challenge, an ongoing research, a process that attempts to answer the constantly new formal questions that are typical of authentic poetic tension.
His work aims at a broader accomplishment: to find the "form" that represents his deep, sincere heart, his emotional and artistic whole in a perfect symbiosis of ideas and representations, of inspiration and end results.
The artist is inclined to continuously outdo himself in search of a modernity that is an authentic child of its time without becoming obsessed by originality. If one observes his passionate and romantic disposition on the one hand, and classicism on the other, he seems to be constantly aiming at the Absolute in an inexhaustible sequence of expressive events that are sometimes compressed and sometimes explosive. But his intention is not so much to express strong, violent and restless moods, and to achieve dynamic and twisted forms, but to instil love, calm and serenity in his sculptures. Rounded, well-polished surfaces are predominant in his works; light does not collide against them but glides over the material slowly, unhindered. The chiaroscuro effects do not create contrasts but blend together in a broad harmony of tones.
He produces very elegant works by concentrating his art on the main problem, i.e. its form, that seems to continuously evolve from one sculpture to another, as if each work prompted and produced the next in a process following a natural, evolving flow of continuous transformation of matter. Gianfranceo Paulli continues to seek clean formal lines, letting the allusiveness of languages and the forms hidden in marble come to the surface, knowing he can penetrate rock to allow bodies and shapes – that live their own autonomous lives – emerge, ridding themselves of the burden of matter, almost taking deep breaths in a metaphysical, almost enigmatic silence in which immobility and movement permeate each other. Light plays on these forms, stopping them in the unity of a gesture, of space, of time, of tension consisting of vitality and enthusiams that alternate shrill notes and melodious pauses.
When he follows the greatest tradition of 20th century plastic art represented by Martini, Messina, Manzù and Marini, upholding without hesitation the myth of grace and elegance, Paulli's sculpture can be defined as fully finished. But it can also be considered as non-finito (unfinished) when, mindful of the teachings of Giacometti and of the disorientations of immateriality, from Rodin to Medardo Rosso, he alternates different finishes on the same subject, perfectly fashioning bodies and faces while barely refining garments and merely rough-hewing other parts.
This non-finito style vibrates thanks to corrosions, light effects, ruptures and porosities that, in its simple portrayal, seem to empty the figure of its meaning. The absolute energy of the forms sallies forth from this tension that seems to dissolve at the very last minute, easing the opposing forces, letting the figures appear shrouded in a sort of stern sacredness, or quiet grace.
In his sculptural creations, he manages to let space seep into apparently impenetrable immobility, making the plastic volumes look as if they are flowing freely in sinuous lines, legible from various angles that broaden spaces to include the allusively mysterious inner essence that becomes pure movement. The art of sculpture can reach such heights, as declared by Canova, in his "Pensieri sulle Belle Arti" (Thoughts on Fine Arts): "Sculpture, I once heard worthy men say, is just one of many languages by which the eloquence of the Arts represents nature. This is an epic language, as is tragedy in poetic languages".
Mario Guderzo
(Director of the Antonio Canova Museum and Collection of plaster casts)
September 2008
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