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Biography
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Maurizio NANNUCCI
Born in 1939, Florence, Italy.
One day Maurizio Nannucci visited a man who had retired to a house by the sea. All this time, the man had kept himself busy observing the ships that sailed through the strip of sea right in front of his home, jotting down the name and everything concerning each and every one of them. He kept a neat and detailed notebook which he kept up to date and showed his visitors. At one stage Maurizio asked him: ”What about the ships passing at night?” The question had been asked and it was much too late to realize that the man had not thought about that until then. After this encounter Nannucci made the work “Shipsthatpassinthenight”. Nannucci's sentences hit you where you never thought of anything.
(Pier Luigi Tazzi Maurizio Nannucci/To cut a long story short. De Vleeshal. Middelburg. 1982)
Biography
Maurizio Nannucci (born in Florence in 1939) lives and works in Florence. He studied art in Berlin and Florence between 1959 and 1962, creating close connections with contemporary trends such as concrete poetry and the Fluxus. With respect to experimental art, Nannucci has explored an astounding number of techniques, studying the structure of language, the use of mass media, and electronic and computer-produced music, among other things. As an artist and publisher he has realised a number of publications, magazines, books, and records. Nannucci has taught in many art schools in Europe and the USA, including the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.
Bibliography
Maurizio Nannucci. To cut a long story short. Middelburg: De Vlees-hall, 1982.
Flaminio Gualdoni: Taiteen kieli ja ekstaasi. Sukupolvi italiaisessa taiteessa. Jyväskylä: Alvar Aalto-Museo, 1985: Pori, Porin taidemuseo, 1985.
Porkkana-kokoelma. Nykytaiteen museon puolesta. Helsinki: Porkkana ry., 1988.
Varrella virran 4. Toim. Hilkka Kuusijärvi, Marketta Seppälä, Timo Valjakka. Pori: Porin taidemuseo, 1986.
Maurizio Nannucci. provisoire & definitif 1964/1992. Nice: Villa Arson, 1992.
Works in the Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art
More than meets the eye, 1991
neon light work
17 168 6 cm
More Than Meets the Eye, sketch for the neon-work, 1988
Drawing; pencil, paper
Three sheets of paper, size A4
Article
Images and verbal images
Maurizio Nannucci is very aware of the fact that his work as an artist completely depends on signs and their interpretation. Nevertheless, his work has never been orthodox conceptual art focused on language and concepts, but rather a never-ending adventure among countless forms of expression. Nannucci's art often comes close to the social dimensions of art, and may be distributed by mail or as letters printed on billiard balls. His lack of preoccupation is best demonstrated by the text in a 1973 poster: Always endeavor to find some interesting variation . Nannucci emphasises that all his crossover experiments have been based on the viewpoint of a visual artist, i.e. dealing with the issues of visual communication in novel contexts.
Writing has been a central theme in Nannucci's art ever since his first works, but for him writing is a unique method of visual siginification rather than a substitute for speech. In the early 1960s Nannucci used a typewriter to create a series of prints, "dactylogrammes", in which he went through all the primary colours, for example a red piece of paper filled with the word 'red' written in red ink. When a single word or letter is repeated often enough, it begins to form shapes on the paper. The colour and the form become the focus of attention and the words lose their significance.
In 1967 Nannucci took up making works of art of text consisting of bent neon tubes, which enabled him to write directly in light and colour: "Writing in neon gives me a chance to illuminate thoughts and words, to colour them with the colours of my imagination". His first neon sculptures dealt with colours as did many of his earlier works. In the installation This side is red, this side is blue (1978) one of the walls has "This side is red" written on it, while on the opposite wall the text in blue neon stating "This side is blue" colours the entire wall blue. The writing reproduces the space and the colour that have already been perceived and words appear to lack any significance. But is a read red the same as a perceived red?
Sentences written in neon hover between image and writing, while the viewer hesitates between reading and seeing. The glimmering neon line draws decorative figures, which sometimes adopt the code of writing and concepts, and sometimes gleam as ornaments in light against the wall and create the surrounding space anew with their light. The works open up as intermediate forms of perception and thinking, which is more than the mere conveying of a preconceived message.
Blending the Invisible with the Visible (1992) or More than Meets the Eye (1991) from the Museum's collections are actually based on imagining meanings that are completely invisible. Reading and understanding writing that is glimmering in neon colours requires the viewer to figure out the sounds and words that are nowhere to be seen. In the spirit of the 1960s neon sculptures, the works can be seen as tautological statements on the essence of writing, the blending of the invisible with the visible.
Nannucci also tests the borders of writing and image in what the sentences of his works mean. The Missing Poem is the Poem (1969) expresses something that language cannot convey, but whose absence can be verified only through language. Words provide us with a possibility of talking about matters that cannot be depicted with an image. Blending the Invisible with the Visible uses words to summon invisible images that an image-maker can only dream about. The works clear out more space for viewing through naming invisible areas with words, areas that require more time and imagination than usual to sense. By juxtaposing writing and image, Nannucci extends the possibilities of interpretation for both.
Moreover, the neon works depict the viewing of art: each viewer reads the same text but understands it in a different way. Public language is transformed into layers of personal images. Nannucci writes most of his sentences in English as he feels it is suitably void of exact cultural and historical associations and makes things sound authoritatively valid generalisations.
You Can See That Not All the Texts are Possible (1990) emphasises the differences between seeing and reading. Language always conforms to the user, but it also guides thoughts and perceptions, making us understand things that there are words for. The realm of images offers more personal freedom, as it has no established, common grammar.
The most famous work by Nannucci may well be the work displayed in the Venice Biennale in 1978, which he realised through sending a great, deep blue text across the sky, reading "Image du ciel" ('the image of sky'); the text was pulled by an aeroplane. The experience of the viewer looking up at the sky was mixed with the language describing the very same experience, and the perception was distanced and made into an image of perception.
More than Meets the Eye (1991), belonging to the collections of the Museum was Nannucci's reply to the appeal made by the Carrot association in 1988 on behalf of the project for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland. The association consisted of young artists, critics, and art historians, who in the 1980s asked artists to make comments and donate works of art in order to collect a "carrot" for the decision-makers discussing the destiny of the museum project. When the Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 1990, the Carrot collection was donated to it. More than Meets the Eye was made to order in 1991 on the basis of drawings that the artist had donated.
Jyrki Simovaara