BEAUTY issue
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ONLINE content
ARBITERS
Questions for Stephen Knoll
A Girl's Best Friend
BON APPÉTIT
Questions for Nobu Matsuhisa
Questions for Tony Esnault
the new Le Cirque interview Iké Udé
BUSINESS OFF THE WALL
Questions for Nicholas Callaway
Questions for John Hunt
FASHION
Chinatown photography Norman Watson
Passions of Rihanna photography Iké Udé
KULTURE & ART CINEMA
Dominique Swain Lolita Has A Tattoo interview Brandon Judell
Jared Leto My Bashed-up Life On Screen interview Brandon Judell
Zoe Saldana No Regrets interview Brandon Judell
KULTURE & ART PHOTOGRAPHY
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders portraits backstage at Olympus Fashion Week interview Valerie Steele
Francesco Clemente Impermanence of The Self interview Johan Falkman
Roger Szmulewicz Looking at Pictures interview Parker Stephenson
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beauty_issue_fclemente.php
ONLINE content
ARBITERS
Questions for Stephen Knoll
A Girl's Best Friend
BON APPÉTIT
Questions for Nobu Matsuhisa
Questions for Tony Esnault
the new Le Cirque interview Iké Udé
BUSINESS OFF THE WALL
Questions for Nicholas Callaway
Questions for John Hunt
FASHION
Chinatown photography Norman Watson
Passions of Rihanna photography Iké Udé
KULTURE & ART CINEMA
Dominique Swain Lolita Has A Tattoo interview Brandon Judell
Jared Leto My Bashed-up Life On Screen interview Brandon Judell
Zoe Saldana No Regrets interview Brandon Judell
KULTURE & ART PHOTOGRAPHY
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders portraits backstage at Olympus Fashion Week interview Valerie Steele
Francesco Clemente Impermanence of The Self interview Johan Falkman
Roger Szmulewicz Looking at Pictures interview Parker Stephenson
Francesco Clemente impermanence of self
interview Johan Falkman
Francesco Clemente photography Iké Udé click image to enlarge Entering Clemente's vast Broadway-loft is like opening the gates to an old grave-chamber in which time is dissolved; the invisible barriers that normally separate past and present, the feeling of then and now, are pulverized like old newsprint, leaving but a musty scent of decomposition, mixed with the smell of oil mediums, turpentine, and various toxins, cigarette-smoke, dust and lacquered wood.
This Broadway loft, his studio, is the embodiment of Clemente's sensitive response to life, to literature, to religion, philosophy and mysticism. This, in turn, echoes his yearning for the harmony created when balancing opposing elements and phenomena that are contained within the human constitution: the physical and the metaphysical intertwined. His latest series of paintings that are attached to the columns supporting the ceiling – huge canvases – deal primarily with physical and metaphysical bonding, received through mental and sexual interventions.
I choose to focus on a series of drawings and paintings that were created for the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany, and exhibited in 1985, in which Clemente, almost exclusively, deals with the definition of self, defined by one's sexual desires and the yearning for harmony, security and "protection," as Clemente would term it, against the grain of society, and against Satan, as described by Blake: The unprolific and opaque whose realm of obscurity devoid people of their speech.
Johan Falkman:In your work from the early eighties one senses a feeling of alienation. There seems to be a dialogue - a silent lovemaking - between the two opposing sides of your inner self: the unhampered warrior and the unborn mystic. How would you describe these two sides of yourself and their relationship?
Francesco Clemente: I don't know if I can describe any aspect of myself, but I can definitely look at the strategy of my own work and describe what that strategy has been. My goal has always been to treat what is harsh with tenderness and what is tender with harshness.
JF: Could this be seen as a reversed love-relationship between the two opposites, or is there a silent war going on between the two aspects?
FC: The two aspects of myself, the unhampered warrior and the unborn mystic, were the very source of my endeavor. It is best described by a metaphor called Symbolon. The original meaning of Symbolon is a broken coin that is split between two friends at the time of their separation. This in turn is a metaphor for giving and receiving, penetrating and being penetrated, a theme that you will find in all of these images.
click image to enlarge JF: In the painting "Unborn" you have depicted yourself asleep inside the body of a tiger. To me the tiger seems to represent uproar, strength and the offensive side of your personality. I also see it as a challenge to the surrounding world. Could you tell us about the tiger? Who is this creature that seems impermanence of the self to protect your slumbering alter ego?
FC: You neglect to mention that the tiger is encaged (longer pause). A painting is always a meeting-place of many stories and various emotional pictures. Very often the excuse for a painting will come from something one heard, like a poem. In this case, I happen to remember what the poem was. It is written by Sandro Penna, a very tormented bohemian figure in Rome during the 1950’s. The poem says:
I wish I was living
in the heart of the world
and never
to have been born
There is also an element of humor, I hope, in what I have been making. To declare yourself a tiger and then to declare yourself an encaged tiger and to declare yourself as this urban creature that is asleep in the heart of this inexpressible violence, may seem like a contradiction. But they all make sense to me (laughter).
JF: Behind us is one of your later self-portraits that was exhibited in New York a few years ago; you are depicted inside the vagina – the painting makes one think of Courbet's the origin of the World - and it appears as though you are finally allowing yourself to be delivered into world, having matured for close to 23 years. Is this a correct interpretation, or are you perhaps still encaged inside the tiger?
FC: I don't believe in maturity. There is always room for the next mistake. The focus of this work should rather be seen as dealing with the "gate" that separates the outside world from the inner world. Actually, we don't really know if we are being born or if we are being absorbed anew, into the inner world. We are standing on a threshold, not sure in which direction the stream is taking us.
My goal has always been to treat what is harsh with tenderness and what is tender with harshness.
JF: That's a wonderful metaphor for life and death.
Would you describe your relationship to death? What
are your thoughts on death, and I don't specifically
speak of our physical death?
FC: Death is really the impulse that has led me to returning, over and over again, to the self-portrait as a reflection of impermanence, the impermanence of the self rather then the continuation of the self.
JF: Our impermanence is something most of us find hard to accept. Recognition of the fact seems to contradict our nature. You are not only talking about the impermanence of the flesh - our bodies - but you are talking about the impermanence of the self, the seizing of thought, feeling and awareness. To make this a primary issue in one's work demands an acceptance of the way of nature that many find hard to reconcile with. It demands strength. How would you define strength?
FC: Strength to me is the feminine side of the world in terms of adaptability. To be able to adapt to change is a feminine quality. The quality of movement, conferred to the stability of the male side.
JF: So the male is weaker?
FC: The male is weak because he cannot move.
JF: You have depicted Purgatory-hell-in several of your paintings; perhaps the "underworld" is a better term. Wouldn't you say that hell is a place within you, to which you can retreat? Hell is generally perceived of as a place for the rejected, and according to your perception of Hell, it can offer acceptance to those alienated; it's a place for the outcasts. Do you see yourself as an advocate for the rejected, for the outcasts, not embraced by society?
FC: But who is the outcast? The outcast is a person who has been stripped of his means of expression. In that sense, we are all outcasts.
JF: Who then, deprives us of our means of expression?
FC: It is Satan, in the sense of the opaque. William Blake talked about Satan as the unprolific and the opaque. The social dynamics of those who are under the influence of Satan have no heads, no tails, no beginning and no end. They create this obscurity that devoid people of their speech.
JF: You are embraced by the American art-scene - viewed by many as an American icon - but also looked upon as the man who turned the development of art in the "wrong" direction, back to figurative painting. Why do you think that some American art-critics were so against your work?
FC: America is the land of the great visionary poets, like Whitman and Ezra Pound; it is the land of wonderful prophets. If somebody rejects my work it has to do with the simpler elements of vulnerability in the objects that I make. You see, this goes against the grain of product, and "product" as you know, is the respectable thing in our time. Vulnerability and weakness are viewed with suspicion.
JF: Wouldn't you say that your friend and collaborator Andy Warhol was then in fact an opponent of yours, going, as he did, with the grain of product?
FC: Warhol mimicked Satan, as suggested by Blake, by adopting the language of advertising and by doing so, he gave it fragility. This is something I can relate to. Basquiat, on the other hand, came from that wonderfully literary Caribbean background that is filled with poetry and storytellers. And I could relate to that, too.
click image to enlarge JF: You collaborated on several canvases with both Warhol and Basquiat. Did you grow and develop from this collaboration or did it minimize your true expression - your unique voice?
FC: Since I am a believer in the multiplicity of the self, I can easily include others in my endeavors without feeling threatened. I am already more than one person when I do what I do. Our collaborative experience was very rewarding.
JF: Your visualization of sexuality, an eerie combination of your physical desires and your inner vision of your sexual desires, creates an underworld fantasy. Would you explain this relationship?
FC: There are countless traditions that have adapted lovemaking as the metaphor of spiritual quest and spiritual fulfillment. It's a tradition of image making that has been there from the very beginning, starting in the East. But you don't necessarily have to look at the East to find out that the flame of heaven and the flame of sexuality are the same. It is just in our perception that we have to choose. My images also go against the grain of the classification and determination of sexual preferences and attitudes.
JF: Are we happy with that?
FC: No. Aren't there countless occasions when we don't know who we are and we don't know what we want, and we don't know what triggers us? There are countless expressions that have no name in our vocabulary, and paintings don’t give names to these experiences either. They just remind us that they exist. I believe that the artist is always right even when he or she comes across as inadequate due to the limitations of our vocabularies. What an artist does is to offer a path of expression to the willing. Art doesn't go straight against the dogmas of your age. It just goes around it, not against it.
interview Johan Falkman
Francesco Clemente photography Iké Udé click image to enlarge Entering Clemente's vast Broadway-loft is like opening the gates to an old grave-chamber in which time is dissolved; the invisible barriers that normally separate past and present, the feeling of then and now, are pulverized like old newsprint, leaving but a musty scent of decomposition, mixed with the smell of oil mediums, turpentine, and various toxins, cigarette-smoke, dust and lacquered wood.
This Broadway loft, his studio, is the embodiment of Clemente's sensitive response to life, to literature, to religion, philosophy and mysticism. This, in turn, echoes his yearning for the harmony created when balancing opposing elements and phenomena that are contained within the human constitution: the physical and the metaphysical intertwined. His latest series of paintings that are attached to the columns supporting the ceiling – huge canvases – deal primarily with physical and metaphysical bonding, received through mental and sexual interventions.
I choose to focus on a series of drawings and paintings that were created for the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany, and exhibited in 1985, in which Clemente, almost exclusively, deals with the definition of self, defined by one's sexual desires and the yearning for harmony, security and "protection," as Clemente would term it, against the grain of society, and against Satan, as described by Blake: The unprolific and opaque whose realm of obscurity devoid people of their speech.
Johan Falkman:In your work from the early eighties one senses a feeling of alienation. There seems to be a dialogue - a silent lovemaking - between the two opposing sides of your inner self: the unhampered warrior and the unborn mystic. How would you describe these two sides of yourself and their relationship?
Francesco Clemente: I don't know if I can describe any aspect of myself, but I can definitely look at the strategy of my own work and describe what that strategy has been. My goal has always been to treat what is harsh with tenderness and what is tender with harshness.
JF: Could this be seen as a reversed love-relationship between the two opposites, or is there a silent war going on between the two aspects?
FC: The two aspects of myself, the unhampered warrior and the unborn mystic, were the very source of my endeavor. It is best described by a metaphor called Symbolon. The original meaning of Symbolon is a broken coin that is split between two friends at the time of their separation. This in turn is a metaphor for giving and receiving, penetrating and being penetrated, a theme that you will find in all of these images.
click image to enlarge JF: In the painting "Unborn" you have depicted yourself asleep inside the body of a tiger. To me the tiger seems to represent uproar, strength and the offensive side of your personality. I also see it as a challenge to the surrounding world. Could you tell us about the tiger? Who is this creature that seems impermanence of the self to protect your slumbering alter ego?
FC: You neglect to mention that the tiger is encaged (longer pause). A painting is always a meeting-place of many stories and various emotional pictures. Very often the excuse for a painting will come from something one heard, like a poem. In this case, I happen to remember what the poem was. It is written by Sandro Penna, a very tormented bohemian figure in Rome during the 1950’s. The poem says:
I wish I was living
in the heart of the world
and never
to have been born
There is also an element of humor, I hope, in what I have been making. To declare yourself a tiger and then to declare yourself an encaged tiger and to declare yourself as this urban creature that is asleep in the heart of this inexpressible violence, may seem like a contradiction. But they all make sense to me (laughter).
JF: Behind us is one of your later self-portraits that was exhibited in New York a few years ago; you are depicted inside the vagina – the painting makes one think of Courbet's the origin of the World - and it appears as though you are finally allowing yourself to be delivered into world, having matured for close to 23 years. Is this a correct interpretation, or are you perhaps still encaged inside the tiger?
FC: I don't believe in maturity. There is always room for the next mistake. The focus of this work should rather be seen as dealing with the "gate" that separates the outside world from the inner world. Actually, we don't really know if we are being born or if we are being absorbed anew, into the inner world. We are standing on a threshold, not sure in which direction the stream is taking us.
My goal has always been to treat what is harsh with tenderness and what is tender with harshness.
FC: Death is really the impulse that has led me to returning, over and over again, to the self-portrait as a reflection of impermanence, the impermanence of the self rather then the continuation of the self.
JF: Our impermanence is something most of us find hard to accept. Recognition of the fact seems to contradict our nature. You are not only talking about the impermanence of the flesh - our bodies - but you are talking about the impermanence of the self, the seizing of thought, feeling and awareness. To make this a primary issue in one's work demands an acceptance of the way of nature that many find hard to reconcile with. It demands strength. How would you define strength?
FC: Strength to me is the feminine side of the world in terms of adaptability. To be able to adapt to change is a feminine quality. The quality of movement, conferred to the stability of the male side.
JF: So the male is weaker?
FC: The male is weak because he cannot move.
JF: You have depicted Purgatory-hell-in several of your paintings; perhaps the "underworld" is a better term. Wouldn't you say that hell is a place within you, to which you can retreat? Hell is generally perceived of as a place for the rejected, and according to your perception of Hell, it can offer acceptance to those alienated; it's a place for the outcasts. Do you see yourself as an advocate for the rejected, for the outcasts, not embraced by society?
FC: But who is the outcast? The outcast is a person who has been stripped of his means of expression. In that sense, we are all outcasts.
JF: Who then, deprives us of our means of expression?
FC: It is Satan, in the sense of the opaque. William Blake talked about Satan as the unprolific and the opaque. The social dynamics of those who are under the influence of Satan have no heads, no tails, no beginning and no end. They create this obscurity that devoid people of their speech.
JF: You are embraced by the American art-scene - viewed by many as an American icon - but also looked upon as the man who turned the development of art in the "wrong" direction, back to figurative painting. Why do you think that some American art-critics were so against your work?
FC: America is the land of the great visionary poets, like Whitman and Ezra Pound; it is the land of wonderful prophets. If somebody rejects my work it has to do with the simpler elements of vulnerability in the objects that I make. You see, this goes against the grain of product, and "product" as you know, is the respectable thing in our time. Vulnerability and weakness are viewed with suspicion.
JF: Wouldn't you say that your friend and collaborator Andy Warhol was then in fact an opponent of yours, going, as he did, with the grain of product?
FC: Warhol mimicked Satan, as suggested by Blake, by adopting the language of advertising and by doing so, he gave it fragility. This is something I can relate to. Basquiat, on the other hand, came from that wonderfully literary Caribbean background that is filled with poetry and storytellers. And I could relate to that, too.
click image to enlarge JF: You collaborated on several canvases with both Warhol and Basquiat. Did you grow and develop from this collaboration or did it minimize your true expression - your unique voice?
FC: Since I am a believer in the multiplicity of the self, I can easily include others in my endeavors without feeling threatened. I am already more than one person when I do what I do. Our collaborative experience was very rewarding.
JF: Your visualization of sexuality, an eerie combination of your physical desires and your inner vision of your sexual desires, creates an underworld fantasy. Would you explain this relationship?
FC: There are countless traditions that have adapted lovemaking as the metaphor of spiritual quest and spiritual fulfillment. It's a tradition of image making that has been there from the very beginning, starting in the East. But you don't necessarily have to look at the East to find out that the flame of heaven and the flame of sexuality are the same. It is just in our perception that we have to choose. My images also go against the grain of the classification and determination of sexual preferences and attitudes.
JF: Are we happy with that?
FC: No. Aren't there countless occasions when we don't know who we are and we don't know what we want, and we don't know what triggers us? There are countless expressions that have no name in our vocabulary, and paintings don’t give names to these experiences either. They just remind us that they exist. I believe that the artist is always right even when he or she comes across as inadequate due to the limitations of our vocabularies. What an artist does is to offer a path of expression to the willing. Art doesn't go straight against the dogmas of your age. It just goes around it, not against it.
