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El Anatsui“Metal Cloth”
By El Anatsui
The composition of the ebullient project, titled “Metal Cloth,” was created specifically for it and does not exist in any other form. As is customary in so many of the artist’s internationally celebrated works of art, “Metal Cloth” engages in numerous dichotomous themes. Aesthetic boundaries are blurred, and often exceeded, as the variegated patterned imagery, which shares with Andy Warhol’s pop masterpieces of Marilyn Monroe from the 1960s a palette, appears to extend out in all directions. This connects the project to the “allover,” “polyphonic” approach that was championed by Clement Greenberg, whereas the monolithic rigidity of modernism’s grid is interrupted by amplified draping that goes across the surface of the piece from one side to the other.
