Sublime garbage


At times the use of trash in art implies notions of self-awareness and political involvement, in the spirit of movements pioneered during the ’60s. At others it is an attempt to mitigate the randomness of human existence with the tangible proof that records it: trash is the palpable shadow of what has passed, it attests to the fact that we have been on this earth. Saving it from the incinerator, therefore, betrays a disoriented Self that searches through the tangible vestiges of life for a physical certainty, for the cathartic liberation of internal demons. Forgotten, used-up objects destined for the trash heap were employed for the first time in the collages of Picasso and Braque. These works triggered a destabilizing current that lead to a deconstruction of the traditional system of art values and, in time, to ever more extreme forms of expression, such as Manzoni’s use of his own excrement, and the violent nature of much of body art. The revolutionary urge and the desire to provoke have marked the vision of many artists since the ’60s...


The full text is published in "tema celeste" No. 83, January-February 2001.




Simona Vendrame