In a previous post this week we looked at the history of the Summer of Love in the UK and mentioned the prohibition of house music, defined as "sounds of wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". But what would art inspired by a repetitive rhythm look like? Among the artists who explored the power of repetitions there is Niele Toroni who can help us visualizing this concept.
Born in 1937 in Switzerland, Toroni moved in 1959 to Paris where he developed his visual concept, summarized in the title "Empreintes de pinceau n° 50 répétées à intervalles réguliers de 30 cm" (Imprints of a No. 50 Paintbrush Repeated at Regular Intervals of 30 cm). Toroni created indeed repetitive imprints of a flat 50 mm-wide brush meticulously positioned with an interspace of 30 cm one from the other (he used a compass to trace pencil crosses at the exact distance).
While every imprint is different since, though it is the result of a semi-mechanical activity, it is still a manual act, when combined together, the imprints form a perfectly unified pattern.
There is no narrative context behind Toroni's works and his style remained unchanged since 1965, even though there are a few variables – colour (one per work), support (canvas, paper, walls or floors, enamel plates, newspapers, diaries, or even a metro map or posters) and spatial or architectural location (he did installations directly on the walls of art galleries, but he also integrated his works on canvas or paper in rooms of historical mansions).
From the '60s on, Toroni took part in many international exhibitions and, in January 1967, on the occasion of the Salon de la Jeune Peinture in Paris, he was part of an initiative launched by the B.M.P.T. group. The acronym includes the initials of Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni. Rejecting the bourgeois nature of art and the art world and as a reaction to the art or expressionist movements, the group aimed at creating a more impartial kind of art, claiming they were not painters.
The artists in this group didn’t abandon the specifics of painting but refused to do exactly what tradition expected of a painter (whenever Toroni considers himself as a "painter", he means with this word somebody who applies paint to a surface, rather than an artist, a concept used to de-mythicize the figure of the artist-creator). Each member of the group came up with his own pattern: Buren painted vertical stripes, Parmentier horizontal ones, Mosset circles and Toroni made brush prints (it is also worth remembering that Buren adapts the space where he integrated his works to his purpose, Toroni leaves them unchanged).
In March the Fondation CAB in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, will present an exhibition - "723 empreints de pinceau n° 50" (from 22 March until 29 October) - dedicated to the works of Toroni that will featured 723 imprints of a n° 50 brush. The main aim of the exhibition is to show diversity in the painter's visual proposal and encourage visitors to spot the tiny differences in the 723 imprints on display.
Toroni can be inspiring for fashion designers as well for his concept of repetition, but also his variations. Actually this could be an interesting exercise for all the fashion students following this site: adopt a few variables (colours and materials for example) and create a collection based on a repetitive rhythm. But do it as soon as possible as, you can bet indeed that the fashion industry will at some point rediscover Toroni and use his imprints as patterns for a collection of garments and accessories.
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