Tàpies, again and again

Abstract

Summary: In this article I try to comprehend and explain my thirty-year fascination with Antoni Tàpies’s work. In addition to the painter’s own references to Zen-Buddhism, I would like to refer to European philosophy, especially Heidegger and Adorno, for my line of argumentation to explain his painting. I point to the artist’s manner of muffing which he uses to unhinge the laws of logos and representing thought; I examine the concept of emptiness and establish a parallelism between music and gestural painting. I suggest a reading of Heidegger’s gesture of greeting as his turn against the habits of exchange principle and value judgment. I also touch on the vulnerability of man and material, the aesthetics of surface and the phenomenon of symmetry. [Keywords: Philosophy; social criticism; muffing; value judgment; symmetry]