I recently came across this UK Guardian slide-show (Saatchi artists at the Michael Hoppen gallery) on artists who manipulate photographs, or otherwise involve them in their art. All of this work’s interesting – and I particularly liked the work of Maurizio Anzeri, two examples of which are below.
Maurizio Anzeri
Giovanni and Leo 1953
Found photographs and coloured thread
There’s autobiographical information about the artist at Furini Contemporary Art and three more large images at art splash.
I’ve been thinking about the mask formed by the threads on these portraits – concealing yet always allowing us a possibly more intimate connection with the eyes (and often with the mouth) of the subject than what we might have had without that mask.
Then there’s the chords formed by the threads – a musical aspect that has me thinking of the scroll paintings of the Dada artists Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter, in which they tried to determine the principles of “rhythm in painting”. (To the left, stills from Viking Eggeling’s 1924 Symphonie Diagonale).
As Luca Tanzini says in this rich Music to Colours selection from the University of Siena:
the rhythm images hit the eye
like the rhythm of sounds reach the ear
Scroll down on the Music to Colours page for more on Viking Eggeling. And his Symphonie Diagonale is on YouTube.)
