Edward Allington, Bibliography, TERRA MANIS ET VACUA, Page 1

TERRA MANIS ET VACUA

In 1980 Edward Allington completed one of his key works: « Ideal Standard Forms ». This piece is made of a set of regular volumes — a sphere, a cube, a cone, a parallelepiped — and more complex elements derived from combinations of these volumes. From the very start both the work and its title spell out the paradox contained in Edward Allington's artistic investigation. It implies that there is no such thing as « ideal forms », there are only « dominant forms ». Reference to Plato remains explicit as Allington himself has stressed ; however it would be reductive to perceive this initial piece only as a formal synthesis, a repertoire, to be later developed into a syntagmatic chain in which the outgrowths and distorsions of these primordial shapes would make up the actual work. What Allington essentially portends is that the « True », the « Beautiful » — the « Ideal» as qualified by Plato — arise from a consensus, a « standard ». the sole validity of which rests on its antecedence, a founding norm and an irrefutable axiom.

All of Allington's work consists therefore in prodding the « real ». in playing on the distance between the pureness of an idea and the coarseness of its representation, in stating this transition explicitly by stressing the process followed and the preponderance of its appearance, its decorum,

In an interview with Stuart Morgan, Allington recalls the importance of his studies and knowledge of Greek and Roman cultures in leading him to question to rigor of his puritanical education, based on the Bible as model and reference. The displacement of this truth and the discovery of new models will cause his adolescent ethics (and aesthetics) to shift from the Di-vine to the Di-verse, as Victor Segalen explained on his « Essai sur l'exotisme » (Essay on Exoticism).

A trip to Greece brings much desillusion with respect to what he had imagined the splendor of the monuments and the ruins in Athens to be, The metopes of the Parthenon turn out to be replicated ; These dubious traces, just like revealing clues, further affect the Real or the Subject, which is nothing but a pastiche and a parody,

In this altering — which is also a « dressing » that replaces or completes form — Allington perceives the relativity of a designation, wavering between reality and representation, intrinsically both « true » and « false ». As he writes later, the assurance this experience does provide is that what makes art is not the material but the rendering, the artifice, its transformation into image », In saying so Allington forsakes the dispute over representation as it is commented in the famous episode of the grapes of Zeuxis ; he also abandons the quarrels over the « paragon » on the excellence painting and sculpture, their mutual virtues in rendering the Idea most intelligently, the former by the artifice of drawing, the latter by the conformity of volume.

The dialectics of material and its representational capacity resounds in some of the teachings of English sculpture, particularly in the works of Barry Flanagan ; in them Allington perceived the infinite combinations of a syntax of constructional possibilities. Allington's early works, prior to the piece mentioned above, already show his interest in the logic underlying the emergence of sculptural shapes, volumes, their power of content and their containing capacity as well as their constructive and decorative properties. The anamorphic amphoras, the « repairs » and the fake restorations are the premises of an art of simulacrum, as it has been long understood that only through this new opening in contemporary artistic thought can Allington come closest to an ontological truth of the object. This truth could be seized in the overlapping, superimposing and ungluing Allington performs both materially and symbolically.

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TERRA MANIS ET VACUA In 1980 Edward Allington completed one of his key works: « Ideal Standard Forms ». This piece is made of a set of regular volumes — a sphere, a cube, a cone, a parallelepiped — and more complex elements derived from combinations of these volumes. From the very start both the work and its title spell out the paradox contained in Edward Allington's artistic investigation. It implies that there is no such thing as « ideal forms », there are only « dominant forms ». Reference to Plato remains explicit as Allington himself has stressed ; however it would be reductive to perceive this initial piece only as a formal synthesis, a repertoire, to be later developed into a syntagmatic chain in which the outgrowths and distorsions of these primordial shapes would make up the actual work. What Allington essentially portends is that the « True », the « Beautiful » — the « Ideal» as qualified by Plato — arise from a consensus, a « standard ». the sole validity of which rests on its antecedence, a founding norm and an irrefutable axiom. All of Allington's work consists therefore in prodding the « real ». in playing on the distance between the pureness of an idea and the coarseness of its representation, in stating this transition explicitly by stressing the process followed and the preponderance of its appearance, its decorum, In an interview with Stuart Morgan, Allington recalls the importance of his studies and knowledge of Greek and Roman cultures in leading him to question to rigor of his puritanical education, based on the Bible as model and reference. The displacement of this truth and the discovery of new models will cause his adolescent ethics (and aesthetics) to shift from the Di-vine to the Di-verse, as Victor Segalen explained on his « Essai sur l'exotisme » (Essay on Exoticism). A trip to Greece brings much desillusion with respect to what he had imagined the splendor of the monuments and the ruins in Athens to be, The metopes of the Parthenon turn out to be replicated ; These dubious traces, just like revealing clues, further affect the Real or the Subject, which is nothing but a pastiche and a parody, In this altering — which is also a « dressing » that replaces or completes form — Allington perceives the relativity of a designation, wavering between reality and representation, intrinsically both « true » and « false ». As he writes later, the assurance this experience does provide is that what makes art is not the material but the rendering, the artifice, its transformation into image », In saying so Allington forsakes the dispute over representation as it is commented in the famous episode of the grapes of Zeuxis ; he also abandons the quarrels over the « paragon » on the excellence painting and sculpture, their mutual virtues in rendering the Idea most intelligently, the former by the artifice of drawing, the latter by the conformity of volume. The dialectics of material and its representational capacity resounds in some of the teachings of English sculpture, particularly in the works of Barry Flanagan ; in them Allington perceived the infinite combinations of a syntax of constructional possibilities. Allington's early works, prior to the piece mentioned above, already show his interest in the logic underlying the emergence of sculptural shapes, volumes, their power of content and their containing capacity as well as their constructive and decorative properties. The anamorphic amphoras, the « repairs » and the fake restorations are the premises of an art of simulacrum, as it has been long understood that only through this new opening in contemporary artistic thought can Allington come closest to an ontological truth of the object. This truth could be seized in the overlapping, superimposing and ungluing Allington performs both materially and symbolically.