Art: The Black Prince

Most discussed young painter of 1959 is Barcelona’s Antoni Tàpies, who won the top prize at last year’s Carnegie International (TIME, Dec. 15). To see what the shouting is about, Manhattanites last week were flocking to a Tàpies exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery. A few of those who came to praise remained to scoff, and vice versa, for Tàpies does not fit the abstract-expressionist fashion. Though fiercely independent, his art is more cool than hot, more gloomy than exuberant and more calm than wild.

Tàpies begins each picture with a cloudy idea, possibly just a word, such as “serpent” or “tree.” In working, he may decide to paint only the skin of the serpent, or the texture of wood. This usually involves mixing marble dust or sand with his dark pigments: the result is like a shallow bas-relief with muted colors suggestive of the earth’s own crust. Tàpies confesses to “struggling” with his materials, then intently observing the outcome: “I am the first spectator before my canvas. I am a normal man. If it touches me, it will touch you.”

At 35, Tàpies (pronounced Top-ee-ess) has the proud bearing of a bullfighter, has been called the black prince of contemporary art. Urged to follow his father in the practice of law, he turned to art when a serious bout with tuberculosis ended his career at the University of Barcelona. Hospitalized for two years, he learned exquisite draftsmanship, developed a consuming interest in the devious disciplines of surrealism.

Surrealism requires ideas of some sort, as abstract expressionism does not, and it still helps give weight and variety to Tàpies’ now wholly abstract art. He finally abandoned recognizable images because, he explains, “abstraction can touch many springs in the human spirit, whereas realism can touch only one.”

Tàpies studies philosophy, tries to express something of “its tranquility and austerity” in his dark art. The predominantly grey coloring of his pictures does not give a colorless effect but, like a pebble in a stream bed, hints at a glistening multitude of hues. Grey Borders (see cut) reminds Tàpies of a “well-raked garden in a Zen Buddhist temple,” but he is quick to point out that he saw a photo of such a garden only after finishing the picture. Certainly it is both austere and serene; if it also seems pretty empty, it is the emptiness of contemplation, of waiting for enlightenment.