“What we have here is, above all, the primacy of the material itself, exhibiting its own laws as a pure signifier… The result is an entity that spans the threshold between object and subject and ultimately finds itself alone, so that both conditions can exist simultaneously, poised in mutual solitude and independence.”
Beautifully typifying the artist's visionary practice, Achrome, from 1961-62, is a rare and pristine example from the most significant corpus of Piero Manzoni's groundbreaking and all-too-brief career. An enigmatic, singular brown paper parcel wrapped in twine and fastened red wax seals, set against a raw canvas, Achrome manifests Manzoni's theoretical quest to liberate art and artworks from the constraints of representation and contrived gesture. Achrome is one of only thirty-five extant 'parcel works' by the artist, each differing slightly from the next owing to the artist's choice of wrapping paper, the length of the string, and number of wax seals adorning their forms.
First devised in 1957, the year of his first solo exhibition at twenty-four, Manzoni continued his Achromes until his untimely death in February 1963, aged only twenty-nine. This highly acclaimed and seminal body of work seeks to consciously divorce the painted surface from active participation and artistic gesture with a mesmeric aesthetic impact. For Manzoni, ‘achrome' does not simply mean 'without color' but rather signals a shift in importance from color to form itself. In its place, materials and materiality were afforded primacy: it is the material that defines the painting as an object of physical existence, conceptually transformed into a pure signifier. The protruding, inscrutable object tantalizes us with the promise of what one might or might not find inside, toying with the suspense associated with the arrival of a package. Following the economic boom of the late 1950s in Italy, consumer consumption had soared. As a product that seeks to be opened but cannot be consumed, Manzoni's Achrome provides a wry critique of contemporary consumer culture in the post-war era.
"Art history is not the history of 'painters', but rather of discoveries and innovators."
Here, Manzoni extends his inquiry beyond the traditional support of canvas, as in his earlier Achromes, and towards ever more conceptual and readymade artistic vessels. By attaching an object to a pristine canvas, Manzoni blurs the lines between sculpture and painting. Akin to his contemporary Lucio Fontana's groundbreaking Tagli, Manzoni's Achromes explores the concept of the infinite, expanding painting beyond the limits of the canvas. This ostensibly simple artistic act takes Fontana's theory one step further towards a metaphysical understanding of space. This painting is thus not only transformed into an art object but also introduces an object into the realm of art. Echoing the artistic philosophy of his forefather Marcel Duchamp and his notions of the readymade, Manzoni stated that "art history is not the history of 'painters', but rather of discoveries and innovators." (Piero Manzoni cited in: Exh. Cat., London, Gagosian Gallery, Manzoni Azimut, 2011, p. 131). Representing the ultimate testament of Piero Manzoni's technically and conceptually complex practice, Achrome exemplifies one of the most aesthetically vital and conceptually rich series within post-war contemporary art.
