Bricolage
1967
Mixed media and doll's eyes, pearls on masonite
28 x 45 cm (11 x 17 11/16 in.)
Doll's eyes stuck to an agglomeration of beads and blue and red paintings observe the visitor. Wavering between figuration and abstraction, Carol Rama's painting Bricolage (“DIY”) is a veritable organic heap, like her studio apartment in Turin.
The artist created the Bricolage series, to which this work belongs, in the 1960s. She mixes coagulated paint, numerical formulas and debris such as corks, animal claws, rice, porcelain eyes and small beads. The name Bricolage (French for “do-it-yourself”) was attributed by the Italian poet and literary critic Edoardo Sanguineti in reference to The Savage Mind (1962) by the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who said that intellectual “bricolage” is at the heart of mythical thought.
One of the works in the Bricolage series was first exhibited by the Pinault Collection at the 2015 "Slip of the Tongue" show at the Punta della Dogana.
The artist created the Bricolage series, to which this work belongs, in the 1960s. She mixes coagulated paint, numerical formulas and debris such as corks, animal claws, rice, porcelain eyes and small beads. The name Bricolage (French for “do-it-yourself”) was attributed by the Italian poet and literary critic Edoardo Sanguineti in reference to The Savage Mind (1962) by the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who said that intellectual “bricolage” is at the heart of mythical thought.
One of the works in the Bricolage series was first exhibited by the Pinault Collection at the 2015 "Slip of the Tongue" show at the Punta della Dogana.
Exhibitions
Photo © Fulvio Orsenigo
Exhibiton view, Slip of the Tongue, curators Danh Vo & Caroline Bourgeois, Fondation François Pinault, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy, April 12 2015 - January 10 2016.
