Latest news with #GiuseppePenone
The Guardian
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots; José María Velasco: A View of Mexico
A tree towers upwards in Kensington Gardens, slender but unimaginably strong, grey boulders perched like vultures among its branches. Another gestures directly to the sky, twigs spreading in eloquent appeal. A third can be seen at great distance, shattered as if by lightning, its broken glory shining bright cold in the sunshine. For one exhilarating moment it seemed as if the acclaimed Italian artist Giuseppe Penone had come upon these trees and simply adjusted them, with poetic ingenuity, to emphasise their exceptional strength and beauty. Then, just as viewers were discussing how miraculous trees are – everyone stunned, everyone photographing this radiant glade – someone knocked on a trunk. And we heard the hollow ring of cast bronze. Penone's obsession with trees is lifelong. Born in northern Italy in 1947, the youngest of the arte povera generation, he has been praising the roots, twigs and branches, the sap, leaves and the magnificent anatomy of trees through his art for more than five decades. Inside Serpentine South are the latest offshoots of a series dating all the way back to the late 1960s, titled Alberi (Trees). Penone discovers the shape of a young tree in industrially cut beams of cedar, larch and fir, using his deep knowledge of wood growth, rings and knots. He carves away until a new sapling seems to grow out of the mature wood. A sawn treeis recut by the artist so that it turns back into a tree again – in this case emerging from a sheaf of beams spreading like pages across the gallery wall. Penone calls this marvellous sculpture Book Trees. If the sincerity of his passion has never been in doubt, the means of expression are oddly variable, however, in this show. It is as if the real trees outside, frothing with spring blossom, running in avenues all the way across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, have somewhat stifled his ambition. That trees give the world oxygen is such a wonder that the heap of privet leaves on the floor, upon which Penone once lay to breathe (his indentation of his presence scarcely detectable), feels like the merest homage. Nor can the long cloth that winds slowly from one gallery into the next, upon which he has written a long tract in Italian, convey even the smallest part of a sapling's beguilingly gradual growth. Trees are so sculptural, moreover, that the analogy seems almost superfluous. Cast-bronze figures twisting out of pots, wreathed with Green Man-style foliage, are alas borderline kitsch. And bark rubbings, interspersed with leaf prints, used to depict a vast unfurling forest in one gallery – trees making trees – is a beautiful idea but with underpowered results. At the heart of this show is a gallery devoted to the exceptional gift that trees confer upon the world, as upon the human race. You smell it before you even enter. Hundreds of thousands of laurel leaves are packed, behind twine, all over every inch of the central rotunda, like a vast green cell. The scent is fresh and familiar. And crowning the whole installation is a cast of a human lung sprouting a golden bough, a lyrical vision of the oxygen of life passing from the outer air through the body's blood. Penone can be so lyrical, and so epigrammatic, as this work shows. He can work on immense and intimate scales. There is a small tree in this exhibition, for instance, that is exactly matched to the artist's conceit. It is real: a young sapling thriving in a pot that holds a small black and white photograph of the artist in its branches. Or rather, the eyes in the photograph are speared through with fine twigs. Penone's gaze, you might say, is forever fixed upon – held by – trees. It is a perfect self-portrait of the artist. There is a fabled tree in the National Gallery's exhibition of the Mexican painter José María Velasco (1840-1912), its first show by a Latin American artist. Crowds of bright green arms rise sharply upwards, like stalagmites, towards the sky. Far below stands a small human figure for scale. This is the majestic giant cardón cactus the artist saw in the state of Oaxaca in 1887. It fills the frame, a botanical study that became an iconic painting for an independent nation. Velasco was a polymath: a trained painter and naturalist. His landscapes are so meticulously observed, you can rely upon them for data: the precise form of a gigantic rock in the valley of Mexico, the exact shape of a snow-capped volcano beneath blazing blue skies. Lake Chalco, seen through his eyes in 1885, has a foreground distractingly thick with the floating vegetation that was once home to native salamanders. His art appears indivisible from these landscapes. Velasco is not trying to impress you with his distinctive brushwork, or to impose his own idiom on the geography of Mexico. You would not necessarily recognise his style independent of these panoramic vistas of red rock, dry brush and soaring mountains. And, like Ruskin, painting the complex formation of gneiss rock at the same time, Velasco can be fastidiously geologically faithful. It would be hard to imagine him painting a portrait, for instance. Indeed there is no obvious goatherd in a small painting of that title, and in his celebrated Valley of Mexico, a massive vista stretching all the way across lakes and seas to high peaks beneath far-distant skies, the two figures in the foreground are all too easily overlooked. But at his best, Velasco has a gift for discovering the ancient in the modern, and vice versa. The most captivating work here is a small painting of what appear to be twin peaks – an Aztec pyramid, rhyming with the sun-baked mountain in the distance. Far away is a tiny plume of white smoke, as if a train was passing. Star ratings (out of five) Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots ★★★José María Velasco: A View of Mexico ★★★ Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots is at the Serpentine South Gallery, London, until 7 September José María Velasco: A View of Mexico is at the National Gallery, London, until 17 August
New York Times
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
With Nature as a Partner, an Artist Explores Humanity
The willow tree is a shadow of what it once was. Struck by lightning, it has neither leaves nor branches — just a slim trunk that stretches upward and splinters into sharp blades. To the casual observer, the willow looks much like the surrounding trees in the vast park that is Kensington Gardens. Yet it's actually a bronze sculpture: It was cast from a 100-year-old willow tree (and lined with gold leaf) by the Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, and it is part of his new solo show, 'Thoughts in the Roots,' at the Serpentine Galleries through Sept. 7. Penone, 78, makes art with, and about, nature. Trees, wood, leaves, plants and rocks are his principal materials. Inside the Serpentine, he has lined the walls of the central gallery with laurel leaves that give off a delicate scent. Standing against one wall is a sculpture made of timber beams whose outer layers have been stripped away to reveal what lies at their core: the tiny branches of the young trees that they once were. Penone was born into a farming community in the mountain village of Garessio, in northwestern Italy. He spent his first couple of decades far from the big city, surrounded by forests and rivers. Yet art was always a part of his life. He drew from an early age, encouraged by his mother — who had dabbled in art when she was younger — and grew up in a home that was filled with busts and figurines made by his sculptor grandfather. He later studied at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. Yet his first steps as a practicing artist were taken among the trees in his childhood village. In 1968, when he was 21, he made a mold of his hand and affixed a metal cast of it to the trunk of a tree; over time, the tree grew around it. He documented that and a few other bucolic interventions when he did them. The photographic series led the influential Italian critic Germano Celant to include Penone in his book 'Arte Povera' ('Poor Art') — and to associate him with one of the major art movements of the 1960s and '70s. In a recent interview at the Serpentine, Penone spoke of his relationships with nature, art and money. The conversation, translated from Italian, has been edited and condensed. Why did you make nature the basis of all of your artworks? For reasons having to do with identity. I thought to myself: If I want to express something with figurative art, I need to do something that is mine — an imagery and a practice that are personal. I need to work with the elements which I know best, which I feel most strongly about. There is no point in doing what others are doing. My art was born of that very simple intuition. That's where I got the idea of working with trees. The tree is not a fixed or rigid form: It's a form that is in motion. We see it as a solid form, but it's fluid in time. I went back to the places of my childhood. I drew inspiration from the relationship with nature, and from the farmer's life: the idea that you plant seeds and there's a harvest, that you put something in the ground which reappears as a crop. There is a waiting period — it's not an immediate process. Did you feel at home in the Arte Povera movement? You have to consider the situation of contemporary art in Italy at the time. There were collectors and artists, but there was no structure, no museums, no market, nothing. So the expression 'Arte Povera' became a structure, an identity which artists accepted and found that they could work with. Setting aside the economic considerations, artists accepted to put on exhibitions under that label, because they could retain their own distinctive identity while making work that threw into question the conventions of art. Was your career a consistent success, or were there ups and downs? I never noticed the ups or the downs. I continued to do my work even at times when the market was in a downturn. My work is not based on exhibitions: It's based on a relationship with the material. It's like writing. As long as you have a pen and paper, you can work. Yes, but you do have to survive. I found a way to survive. Somehow the work would sell. Something would sell. In the world today, there's a major concern for the environment, and a return to nature. Your works are very much in tune with the times. What are your thoughts? I am very pleased that there is a synchronicity between what I do and the times we are living in. But there's a fundamental contradiction in seeing nature as something that's extraneous to humankind. Human beings are part of nature. They are nature. They have to preserve nature for their own survival. So this is not about human beings loving nature: It's about human beings loving themselves. All of these debates around the environment are to do with the human ego, and they're focused on the survival of humanity. It's somewhat ridiculous to say that human beings need to be concerned about the survival of nature. Even if human beings are extinguished, nature will continue to exist. Another living being will come along and overtake humanity. Isn't there a contradiction in making work that is close to nature and to your rural roots, and being represented by Gagosian, the world's biggest commercial art gallery? The relationship with a gallery is two-sided. The gallery sells the work of the artist, but the artist also makes use of the gallery. There are benefits for both sides, especially when a gallery gives as much freedom to the artist as Gagosian does. Before I started working with Gagosian, I had a lot of doubts, because I heard critical comments about the gallery. But in all of the exhibitions that I have put on, the gallery has never asked me to produce a marketable work. The main purpose has always been for me to make interesting work. Larry Gagosian's vision is to put on shows that are museum quality, for which he requests museum loans. Obviously, he might also sell a work, and he might sell it well. But he plays a cultural role. What is the role of art and the artist in the world today, with all of the advancements of technology? What it has always been: to create emotion and surprise, stimulate the human imagination, and make individuals think and reflect when they're faced with the unforeseen and the unknown. The point is to preserve the sense of wonderment that children have. Art has to have a profound social function, not just an aesthetic function. It has to make people understand the reality that they are living through, and how that reality is transforming over time.
The Guardian
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Towering trunks, disturbing dolls and deep-sea daydreams – the week in art
Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the RootsThis veteran environmental artist has been celebrating trees for almost six decades. Does his bark still have bite? Serpentine, London, 3 April to 7 September Dormitorium: The Film Décors of the Quay BrothersCreepy dolls and east European atmosphere from the artists formerly known as the Brothers Quay. Watch out for the stag ejaculant. Swedenborg Society, London, until 4 April Textiles: The Art of MankindAmbitious global overview of textiles as art, from ancient times to our own era. Fashion and Textile Museum, London, until 7 September José María VelascoInformative and scientifically observant views of 19th-century Mexico – but Velasco doesn't rock. Read the full review here. National Gallery, London, 29 March to 17 August UnderseaImaginary worlds of the sea from premodern monsters to contemporary daydreams, with Paul Delvaux and Michael Armitage. Hastings Contemporary, 29 March to 14 September If you don't think this portrait looks much like Donald Trump, you and he are in agreement … bigly! With a laser-like focus on urgent domestic matters, the US president this week bemoaned that the painting hanging in the Colorado state capitol building didn't flatter him and demanded it be taken down. He even found time to insult its creator, saying: 'The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on [sic] me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older.' Full story here. SAD. Grayson Perry has a new alter ego, who has her own alter ego Spanish artist Joan Miró painted over his mother's portrait A new documentary about female war artists has a cringey title New York's Frick collection is reopening, and it's teeming with masterpieces Photographer and teacher Hicham Benohoud turned his students into art A book about Picasso's lovers might not be the feminist slam dunk it wishes Burmese political prisoner and painter Htein Lin befriended his guards so he could smuggle in paint American artist Thomas Kinkade was a proto-influencer who built a multimillion dollar brand The Avenue at Middelharnis by Meindert Hobbema, 1689Some of the most characterful trees in art soar above a road in this renowned landscape. These Dutch alders have a very distinctive appearance with their fluffy foliage crowns and branchless, but furry leaved, tall trunks. They resemble palm trees in Los Angeles, which might be one reason why David Hockney is fascinated by this work. What Hockney has spoken about and imitated in his own art, however, is Hobbema's complex perspective that he claims has two vanishing points. This is also a highly symbolic view of a humanised landscape. The new Dutch Republic in the 17th century relied for its success, and even survival, on land reclaimed from the sea. The low-lying flat vista here evokes a Dutch world where human intervention shapes nature. It would be barren without the tended, manicured avenue of alders that leads gently into town in a harmonious ideal of nature governed wisely by its human regents. National Gallery, London If you don't already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@
