Word: burris
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Italy's Alberto Burri, who began by charring panels of wood, now creates haunting images by scorching skeins of plastic; after all, since nature is in a state of constant metamorphosis, fire, which transmutes plastic's clarity into murk, is a legitimate artist's tool. Philip McCracken offers a long, narrow Plexiglas case, with five light bulbs lined up inside, four of them shot to bits and bullet holes piercing the case on either side of them. The piece seems to ask the question "When?" as the eye canvasses the damage already done and the mind awaits...
...Burri, 50, is a late starter who began making art while detained as an Italian army doctor in a U.S. prisoner-of-war camp. He stood eminently in line for his medal, since he had won minor prizes at the Carnegie International in 1958 and the Venice Biennale in 1960. One of the many European art brut abstractionists who explored the beauties of raw texture after World War II, Burri makes a sort of mad Braille with collages of blistered burlap (called sacco), charred wood (combustioni), and lately, slashed and melted sheets of colored plastic. How to make an esthetic...
...soft-edge abstractionists, were conceded to be out of the race anyway, since Americans won both the last São Paulo and Venice biennials. The Grande Prémio (a gold medal, shorn by poverty of its usual cash bonus) was split between Italy's Alberto Burri and France's Victor Vasarely...
Hungarian-born Vasarely, 57, shares only one thing in common with Burri-he is also a onetime medical student. But, as a grand poppa of op art, he and a group to which his son Yvaral belongs have pioneered the complete opposite of a concern for surface texture with high-key colors and razor-cut patterns that baffle the eye. Significantly in terms of São Paulo, two of his son's Paris-based Groupe are South Americans with whom Vasarely has great popularity...
Decorative Futility? Although this split decision was diplomatically designed to please everybody, those few people who still think art prizes mean more than pumpkin pie awards at a county fair were hardly satisfied. Rio's O Globo labeled Burri's latest "the mere decorative futility of burnt holes in transparent plastic." Correio da Manha simply called the prizes "a scandal." Surely exaggerated, but the overall impact of the São Paulo Bienal was like that of most conventions-fatigue and confusion...