Marc Chiassaï
http://chiassai.blogspot.com/
https://www.fondazionegiuliasillato.it/
Marc Chiassai, a unique sculptor
Few traces of contemporary sculpture worthy of interest remain in world production since this Anglo-Saxon and North American trend, which I call "savage", which consists of giving the status of a work of art to any object, entered into the most common habits of artistic practice.
We only need to think of the global case of Damien Hirst, from Bristol in England, considered to be the richest artist in the world: he could do nothing other than present us with a series of gloomy formalin aquariums containing animal carcasses, but, for this provocation (at a time when provocation should be considered as having been amortized), he monopolizes the first places in the sales rankings of the most renowned auctioneers' offices worldwide..., of course all this thanks to a friend, a famous art collector and advertiser.
Faced with these "expressions" of a so-called "Contemporary Art", cleverly staged by the media, we say to ourselves that Sculpture, Painting, the latter moreover practiced, and without particular imagination, by this same Hirst, are exposed to the risk of being reduced to lower ranks, even if we do not understand the reason, in the eyes of collectors and gallery owners but especially of the Institutions complicit in this game of interest and, something quite serious and alarming, that one can only approach the Pantheon of the Arts if one has special knowledge, which would allow one to implement any madness which would be taken seriously, so seriously to the point of bringing in millions of dollars.
Such an overall picture, now sadly consolidated, unfortunately casts a shadow on the true authors of pictorial and sculptural practice who, far from cloning the models of a past, moreover recent, are dialectically oriented towards by regenerating it with contributions of real originality, by going beyond their own artistic research. But to the extent that they do not develop Hollywood plays, they do not address themselves to clever managers who see the possibility of substantial gains, they are destined for silence... the silence of ignorance. This is how Art is crushed by power: not political power, but by a higher power: that of advertising.
Today global communication allows us to think of the English and American shores as being located at a relative distance… even compared to me who works as an Art critic in Italy, attracted, and who am attracted only, only by an Art… which is a true Art and which can be transmitted indifferently by a painting, a sculpture, or even by a set of elements, provided that the latter are produced by an authentic creative force and not by an advertising set-up.
Looking closer, at the heart of old Europe and also in Italy - why not? - my healthy critical mind, supported by experience, but especially by knowledge, was quick to identify artistic realities of unsuspected charm, even if they are still formally motivated by a traditional manner... and even, precisely because they are traditional, rooted, like the act of painting or sculpting, so and eternally current beyond fashions and trends.
This is the case of Marc Chiassai, a unique sculptor of the very beautiful Caen stone who, while born in Nice, has significant Tuscan origins and, today lives and works precisely in Caen in Lower Normandy, Chiassai, as a good Italian-French, cannot not be anchored in this modernity, and therefore still current, concept of sculpture as the expression of a single plastic of a pure plastic, exactly as Henry Moore, also an Anglo-Saxon from Yorkshire, demonstrated.
Two English models facing opposite, Moore and Hirst, both separated from Chiassai only by the coastal beaches of the English Channel, the first represents European Art as it has evolved since Modigliani, Picasso, Brancusi, the second closer to us in time, denies any form of temporal transmission, jumps over the Cubist heritage, which has invested the heart of Europe for decades, subverts the canons of Art and by audacious performances destroys its universal cultural identity.
The choice that Chiassai may have made, inclined to maintain a more French, therefore more conservative position, in addition to coming from a History of Art of secular tradition, that of the Tuscan Renaissance, constitutes the most correct choice, to remain faithful to Art by respecting its canons, principles and methods.
This does not mean that the artist expresses himself in old-fashioned terms, or worse and again, already seen: I want to make it clear that following the Brancusi-Moore line, from the coast of Caen, is not in reality so expected and agreed upon and it is even less an indication of lack of originality.
What is originality in fact? Hirst pursues novelty, not originality: "new" is not a synonym for "original". Hirst exhibits himself with eccentricity: “eccentric” is not a synonym for “original”.
One can be original and innovative even if one is content to reread the models with one’s personal grid, not necessarily and overlapping them to confine them to an attic full of cobwebs: this is in fact the sensation that certain fashionable “artistic” forms want to produce, the sensation that the ancient Art of Painting and Sculpting have definitively plunged into a deep sleep… from which they can nevertheless always emerge.
Chiassai respects tradition without being traditional, he inserts a personal and singular reading grid that brings together Italian classicism – the use of Caen stone evokes white Tuscan marble – and French Cubism, reread in its various European journeys, a fusion accomplished by means of a minimalist intersection that illuminates the white and polished surfaces of the stone Norman.
Delicate and slightly porous, Caen stone exalts a centuries-old history of artistic inspiration: think of the majestic Westminster Cathedral, made entirely from the same material.
Fleeting planes under the light, located in such a way that we can only observe one at a time, rounded edges in search of eternal harmony, shapes with soft geometry, musical to the eye, man at the center of the theme, exactly as in classical thought (“Man at the center of the Universe”)… And many other mysterious aesthetic and conceptual conquests… But we will have the opportunity to talk about it again because Marc Chiassai has a particularity: in his search for the essential, he is inexhaustible
Few traces of contemporary sculpture worthy of interest remain in world production since this Anglo-Saxon and North American trend, which I call "savage", which consists of giving the status of a work of art to any object, entered into the most common habits of artistic practice.
We only need to think of the global case of Damien Hirst, from Bristol in England, considered to be the richest artist in the world: he could do nothing other than present us with a series of gloomy formalin aquariums containing animal carcasses, but, for this provocation (at a time when provocation should be considered as having been amortized), he monopolizes the first places in the sales rankings of the most renowned auctioneers' offices worldwide..., of course all this thanks to a friend, a famous art collector and advertiser.
Faced with these "expressions" of a so-called "Contemporary Art", cleverly staged by the media, we say to ourselves that Sculpture, Painting, the latter moreover practiced, and without particular imagination, by this same Hirst, are exposed to the risk of being reduced to lower ranks, even if we do not understand the reason, in the eyes of collectors and gallery owners but especially of the Institutions complicit in this game of interest and, something quite serious and alarming, that one can only approach the Pantheon of the Arts if one has special knowledge, which would allow one to implement any madness which would be taken seriously, so seriously to the point of bringing in millions of dollars.
Such an overall picture, now sadly consolidated, unfortunately casts a shadow on the true authors of pictorial and sculptural practice who, far from cloning the models of a past, moreover recent, are dialectically oriented towards by regenerating it with contributions of real originality, by going beyond their own artistic research. But to the extent that they do not develop Hollywood plays, they do not address themselves to clever managers who see the possibility of substantial gains, they are destined for silence... the silence of ignorance. This is how Art is crushed by power: not political power, but by a higher power: that of advertising.
Today global communication allows us to think of the English and American shores as being located at a relative distance… even compared to me who works as an Art critic in Italy, attracted, and who am attracted only, only by an Art… which is a true Art and which can be transmitted indifferently by a painting, a sculpture, or even by a set of elements, provided that the latter are produced by an authentic creative force and not by an advertising set-up.
Looking closer, at the heart of old Europe and also in Italy - why not? - my healthy critical mind, supported by experience, but especially by knowledge, was quick to identify artistic realities of unsuspected charm, even if they are still formally motivated by a traditional manner... and even, precisely because they are traditional, rooted, like the act of painting or sculpting, so and eternally current beyond fashions and trends.
This is the case of Marc Chiassai, a unique sculptor of the very beautiful Caen stone who, while born in Nice, has significant Tuscan origins and, today lives and works precisely in Caen in Lower Normandy, Chiassai, as a good Italian-French, cannot not be anchored in this modernity, and therefore still current, concept of sculpture as the expression of a single plastic of a pure plastic, exactly as Henry Moore, also an Anglo-Saxon from Yorkshire, demonstrated.
Two English models facing opposite, Moore and Hirst, both separated from Chiassai only by the coastal beaches of the English Channel, the first represents European Art as it has evolved since Modigliani, Picasso, Brancusi, the second closer to us in time, denies any form of temporal transmission, jumps over the Cubist heritage, which has invested the heart of Europe for decades, subverts the canons of Art and by audacious performances destroys its universal cultural identity.
The choice that Chiassai may have made, inclined to maintain a more French, therefore more conservative position, in addition to coming from a History of Art of secular tradition, that of the Tuscan Renaissance, constitutes the most correct choice, to remain faithful to Art by respecting its canons, principles and methods.
This does not mean that the artist expresses himself in old-fashioned terms, or worse and again, already seen: I want to make it clear that following the Brancusi-Moore line, from the coast of Caen, is not in reality so expected and agreed upon and it is even less an indication of lack of originality.
What is originality in fact? Hirst pursues novelty, not originality: "new" is not a synonym for "original". Hirst exhibits himself with eccentricity: “eccentric” is not a synonym for “original”.
One can be original and innovative even if one is content to reread the models with one’s personal grid, not necessarily and overlapping them to confine them to an attic full of cobwebs: this is in fact the sensation that certain fashionable “artistic” forms want to produce, the sensation that the ancient Art of Painting and Sculpting have definitively plunged into a deep sleep… from which they can nevertheless always emerge.
Chiassai respects tradition without being traditional, he inserts a personal and singular reading grid that brings together Italian classicism – the use of Caen stone evokes white Tuscan marble – and French Cubism, reread in its various European journeys, a fusion accomplished by means of a minimalist intersection that illuminates the white and polished surfaces of the stone Norman.
Delicate and slightly porous, Caen stone exalts a centuries-old history of artistic inspiration: think of the majestic Westminster Cathedral, made entirely from the same material.
Fleeting planes under the light, located in such a way that we can only observe one at a time, rounded edges in search of eternal harmony, shapes with soft geometry, musical to the eye, man at the center of the theme, exactly as in classical thought (“Man at the center of the Universe”)… And many other mysterious aesthetic and conceptual conquests… But we will have the opportunity to talk about it again because Marc Chiassai has a particularity: in his search for the essential, he is inexhaustible
