Abstraction Matters
Abstraction Matters:
Contemporary Sculptors in
Their Own Words
Edited by
Cristina Baldacci, Michele Bertolini,
Stefano Esengrini and Andrea Pinotti
Abstraction Matters:
Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words
Edited by Cristina Baldacci, Michele Bertolini, Stefano Esengrini
and Andrea Pinotti
This book first published 2019
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2019 by Cristina Baldacci, Michele Bertolini,
Stefano Esengrini, Andrea Pinotti and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-1810-8
ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1810-0
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ...................................................................................................... viii
Andrea Pinotti
Part I. Sensation
Introduction ................................................................................................. 2
Michele Bertolini
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 5
Abstraction in Noguchi’s Own Words: In Search of Permanence
Clarissa Ricci
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19
Yves Klein: All that is Solid Melts into Air
Filippo Fimiani
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 32
Gianni Colombo: A Critique of Perception in a Mobile World
Anna Detheridge
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 44
To Whom it may Concern: Richard Serra and the Phenomenology
of Intransitive Monumentality
Andrea Pinotti
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 59
Matthew Barney: The Semiotic Sculptural Body
Angela Mengoni
Part II. Idea
Introduction ............................................................................................... 70
Stefano Esengrini
vi
Table of Contents
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 73
Vision, Perception, Openness: David Smith’s New Sculpture
Stefano Esengrini
Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 84
The Simplest Image: Tony Smith’s “Cubes”
Georges Didi-Huberman
Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 95
Donald Judd’s Specificity
Elio Grazioli
Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 102
The Experience of Sculpture in Robert Morrisʼs Notes on Sculpture
Michele Bertolini
Part III. Language
Introduction ............................................................................................. 116
Cristina Baldacci
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 120
Impossible Objects: On Francesco Lo Savio’s Metals
Riccardo Venturi
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 135
“Sculpture is Matter Mattering”: Spatialization of Matter and Visual
Poetry in Carl Andre
Giuseppe Di Liberti
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 146
Tensional Creation: Luciano Fabro’s Sculpture between Conceptualism
and Abstraction
Davide Dal Sasso
Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 158
“Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read:”
Language as a Sculptural Material in Robert Smithson
Cristina Baldacci
Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words
vii
Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 168
Joseph Kosuth and The Play of the Unmentionable
David Freedberg
Abstracts .................................................................................................. 179
Contributors ............................................................................................. 186