Panchina Rudi Fuchs
After emerging from the eternal gloom and air of death in Hell this is the light that Dante and Virgil saw before their eyes: The gentle hue of oriental sapphire / in which the sky’s serenity was steeped. Thus the poem reminds us of the joy of seeing the richness and variety of the living world and the splendor of dawn—when fair Aurora’s white and scarlet cheeks / were, as Aurora aged, becoming orange. In the Divine Comedy 1 there are occasionally patient observations of the spectacle of light after darkness. At night the shapes of things are fuzzy and colorless and dark until dawn. Then at sunrise the light brightens the world with color. My own early morning light, by the North Sea, was cool grey and silvery. The translucent colors seen at dawn with such sweet joy by Dante were the colors of the Tuscan sky. The poet saw these dainty colors and now we can see them. Every morning again watching the world unfolding like a bulging flower into a glorious brightness of color is indescribable magic. It is that kind of sensation and splendor that artists seem to emulate. In art, the opposite of nature, everything is organized and all effects are orchestrated. Thus Domenico Bianchi has developed a particular motif that he always uses to get things going. The basic design of it was enigmatic on purpose so it cannot easily be described. It is a capricious entanglement of linear swirls. As they bend and curl the lines continually vary in thickness and pace. Maybe the figure looks like a fluent floral ornament. There is no particular center. If it is a loose knot one sees it tightening and loosening at the same time. The point is that this endlessly volatile figure avoids description and resembles nothing else. Not a knot or entanglement or floral ornament but all those things together and many more, as far as our imagination goes. Years ago, when Bianchi began, he made one or two drawings by hand of such an impulsive, mercurial pattern. The drawings became the basic scheme. Now whenever he begins a new work a computer invents a new version of the scheme. Therefore the motif is always unique and never repeats itself.
I look now, for instance, at Panchina by Domenico Bianchi, situated on a lawn by a dry-stone wall, overlooking the slow Hudson river. An idyllic scene, showing a seductive display of light carried along by slender swirling shapes that seem to curl like a long pennant in the wind. It is a bench I see but on the top of the bench I see some confusing ornament of linear curls. The flat slab of grey stone, pietra cardosa, is mounted on two pedestals. At the long side the edges of the slab are smoothly rounded while at the same time its shape is gently curved. It is not an ordinary straight bench. That mild bending makes the shape look lighter. It seems to hover in the air. From underneath its polished, gleaming skin we sense light softly shining —a wonderful luminosity resembling the elusive transparency in still dark water. Because of such delicate translucence the surface of Panchina offers the perfect lightness for the swirling motif made of glittering Portoro marble to unfold and swing brightly. Does the bench then serve as the horizontal support for a still life? Usually one looks at the puzzling motif in a painting upright on the wall, its figure embedded in the layered surface of soft wax. That is the material Bianchi uses for his paintings. Seeing the motif like that, somewhat in the middle of a panel, the figure looks very light – as light as drifting leaves in the wind. It behaves visually like a complex entanglement of capricious lines and movements. As these do not describe definitive shapes their random moving and turning around suggest an unpredictable course of events—as if one is looking at a long pennant fluttering in gusts of wind. What we then look at is how the energetic and unsettled figure of the motif may begin to change shape and formulation and come to life, magical like a metamorphosis. That is what we want to unravel when we look at these images. That is their narrative. We look at how these figures move like snakes or like leaves drifting erratically down from a tree. We have to look because such is our nature: to watch out for things changing. In the Olnick Spanu Panchina, the volatile motif, flat on simple grey pietra cardosa stone, is of gilded Portoro marble inlaid using the classic intarsia method. We look down on it, most likely from an angle.
In general one can read such a motif as essentially restless. At the same time however, as all this is illusory anyway, we can see it as a nervous image about to settle down to rest. That would be fitting for a bench. But when I look at it—towards it from some distance—I see reflected light flicker in the swirls of lustrous gilded marble. That unstable glittering of sparkling light along the looping lines of the figure loosen and interrupt the flow of the figure and its visual consistency. The slender, tangled lines of Portoro marble glitter with more luster than the softly gleaming grey stone of the bench’s surface. Left nonchalantly over the edge is a loosely pleated jacket in the same grey stone. By contrast that full and whimsical volume of light and shade makes the flat gilded figure look even frailer. At times the fragile figure seems to tremble like patches of light on grey rippling water. Thus, what we are seeing continues to be profoundly elusive. It reminds me of what the poet Wordsworth saw when looking at a butterfly: I’ve watched you now a full half hour / Self-poised on that yellow flower / And, little Butterfly, indeed / I know not if you sleep, or feed. The poet saw a butterfly quivering. In the poem he transforms that visual subtlety into an image that is unforgettable forever. That is what artists do for us. They make us pause and see things that we never saw before.