Lucio Fontana's Teatrino at Gagosian is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
© Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan. Courtesy of the Fondazione Lucio Fontana and Gagosian Gallery. Private Collection, Switzerland
You can tell that Lucio Fontana – subject of all of this week’s Daily Pics – was a genius, because some of his images can’t have made sense in his day. This 1965 work, from the current survey at Gagosian in New York, is called “Concetto spaziale, Teatrino”. The reason I can’t imagine it making sense in the 1960s is because its cryptic, wonky mix of representation and abstraction would have looked good in the 80s, or 90s – or even now. (I see shades of Elizabeth Murray and Carrol Dunham and much younger goofball painters.) In its day, this piece must simply have seemed noncommital, or wrong-headed – or a weird attempt at melding Pop and Color Field.
For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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