That is Alighiero Boetti as himself, posed as twins. His hair and expression are a little different in each photo. This photo and his other works are at MOMA until the end of the month. I liked all of his 'stuff' with one reservation-question that I will get to later. Boetti was a member of the Italian art movement known as Arte Povera with Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Boetti's and the movement's purpose was stated as making art from common objects. They wanted to not invent but bring preexisting materiel into their work. One of his first pieces was material such as wires and coils from a hardware store placed on paper in 2 columns. Twins, two, duality, became a theme of his. he changed his professional name to Alighiero e Boetti. Two of the artists. He has a wonderful piece of about 50 squares named 'Ordine e Disordine' - order and disorder. Every letter is colored and each letter is the same color in one panel to be changed in another. He uses shades of two colors throughout. The postcard above is illustrative of another technique that he used. He intended to not just use common objects but common institutions. He sent postcards to family and friends at the wrong address to have them returned to sender. He sent postcards to one friend, a fellow artist that was addressed to Boetti's last address, to show that his friend was always behind him. The piece [19 of 25 were sent back] is titled Viaggi Postali. In the center of the piece is a return to sender that was addressed to Marcel Duchamp.
A number of modern exhibitions of other artists have made reference to Duchamp. I can see the relationship between Boetti and Duchamp in their focus on duality. Another piece: "Gli ammi della mia' is a large piece of ballpoint pen on paper. On one end he has written the alphabet from top to bottom. The lines of ink are of varying shades so the whole looks like a topographical map. Along the piece are commas placed to coincide with a letter of the alphabet that spells out one of our senses. There are six because he includes thinking as one of the senses.
The last piece I want to mention is 'Mappa', large embroidered maps of the world. He was a world traveler [photos of him with native people of Guatemala are also good] and found that embroidery was an ancient skill and practice in Afghanistan. They estimated that he hired over 1000 afghans to embroider Mappa. There are 150 Mappa, all different and all very large. The ones at the museum are about 8 feet by 10 feet. He also has abstract embroidered pieces about 10 by 12. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan he moved his work to Pakistan.
He was fascinated by dates. He said if you write 1970 on a wall it means nothing in 1970 but in 30 years it has meaning. He focused on two dates and has them incorporated into a number of his works and a specific work titled '16 decembre 2040 11 luglio 2040'. The second date would be his 100th birthday if he lived to be 100 but he believed he would die on the first date. He was wrong he died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 53 in 1994.
My issue, confusion, curiosity is why modern artists use repetition. Warhol's soup cans, etc. Boetti has 150 Mappa, each one just slightly different. Order and disorder over and over again just colored differently. Maybe when I get to reading that book I have on Marcel Duchamp I'll find the rational, but right now I'm enjoying a great novel: 'A Long Long Way' by Sebastian Barry. I'll blog about it later and then read the one on Duchamp.
