"Dietari" von Tàpies - Ritualisierung und Revitalisierung des Alltags

Abstract

Summary: This essay deals with Dietari (2002), a cycle of five pictures dating from Tapies’ last creative period. In this work some central elements of his esthetics flow together within the frame of diary, producing a dimension of existential significance. The pictures show daily ordinary activities such as walking, eating, digesting and washing, which, after being transposed in an esthetic context and enriched by symbols and penetrating signs, expose features of a ritual. First, we identify the diary as a place of mediation between routine, art and ritual. Then we retrace the role of the process of integration and conversion of symbolic and linguistic signs on different levels. By contemplating each of the five paintings and their relations to one another, we can immerse ourselves in an interplay of associations and possible meanings. One can observe two central aspects: objects and signs reacquire their original gesture and their everyday context. As a matter of fact, the figurative signs cannot be removed from artwork, for they incite interactive participation, while mental and sensorial processes of synesthetic perception have to be seen as a unity. Tàpies does not limit himself to the artistic ritualization of the profane, but uses it as a way of influencing everyday acting by restoring its fully procedural meaning. [Keywords: Tàpies; diary; ritual; mediation; gesture; synesthetic perception; procedural ritualization]