Art
Merz's maths
John McEwan
Mario Merz's exhibition, on public view at the Institute of Contemporary Arts till October 3, costs 40p admission and, because the gallery is totally viewable from outside in the passage, no one goes in. If they did go in they would be none the wiser as to what the work was about or who had done it. There is, it is true, a press release but it tells one nothing of Merz and discusses the work in terms only understandable to the half-initiated. Sensibly, of course, there should be no entrance fee, because the little the ICA is taking is quite disproportionate to the deterrent of its effect; and there certainly should be none of that dumb non-participatory art world arrogance which is still prevalent and usually masks nothing but embarrassed ignorance.
Mario Merz is an Italian of about fifty and a Marxist. A rather scraped-together selection from his work is on view, some glimpsed here before, some not, and all designed to make people see the power of numbers. Merz represents this by use of the Fibonacci series. Fibonacci, or Leonardo of Pisa, was born in 1170 and is the mathematician responsible for the introduction of Arabic numerals into Europe in place of the Graeco-Roman letters of the alphabet. In determining the probable offspring of two rabbits he discovered the natural rhythmic law of numbers: that each preceding number is included in the one following it — 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.and so on. If you draw a graph of this you get a spiral, the natural spiral from which we have derived our understanding of the hereditary chain.
Merz demonstrates this power of unity beyond the unit in various ways. There are paintings of tables — numbers of tables increasing in size to the Fibonacci — on raw canvas hung like tapestry, some covering some dis-covering the spiral in their configuration, and developing as far as the canvas allows; there are some drawings of cups outlined by sprayed red paint, with untranslated Italian notations and the series ennumerated into thousands; and, in the middle of
the room, two igloos of panes of glass clamped on bent frames, one enclosing a neon sign asking 'is space bent or straight?' the other some underbrush.
So far so good, but don't think Merz himself is unaware of the improbability of one of his table paintings adorning the platform of, say, the Durham Miners Gala, though perhaps in Bologna it might be different. No, his attitude is Italianate. High on the wall alongside one of the canvasses is a small stuffed crododile trailing the Fibonacci in blue neon from 1 to 21. Obviously there is a connection, but how? Well, apparently an iguana, which has a spinal crest of 21 spikes, was intended, but the closest thing available was a crocodile. But why have anything at all? Because in Italy whenever Merz hangs a canvas at home, there, inevitably, right alongside it on, the wall is a lizard! And, in much the same way, if you study the photographs you will soon see that beyond eight the figures only approximate as far as the drink would allow. Emphasising, of course, that this is a work within a work: the photographs merely document a live Fibonacci moment. But most Italianate of all, however much Merz disclaims an interest in the appearance of the work, which he does, it is very attractive: the pinks, mauves, greens and reds of the paintings, the lit neon, the modish precision and contrasted off-handedness of it all, even the derivation of something modern from something so ancient. Merz is becoming a fashionable artist, deep, therefore, in thrall to capitalism, but even this irony seems an appropriate extension of the work. Uccello painted a camel when there was no salamander to hand and Brunelleschi proved he could build his dome by standing an egg on its end. Like many good Italian artists before him, Merz. carried his coinvictions lightly.
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