Back in April 2009 a reader of my Blogs for AbsoluteArts posted the following comment:
“On the www.albertosughi.com website there is a very powerful painting called “Ruling class”. Would love to participate in a discussion on that piece.” Since then I committed myself to holding such a discussion and today I will try to maintain that promise. Possibly in order to understand The Ruling Class (“La Classe Dirigente, Oil on Canvas, 165×140cm, 1965) we need to place and read it in the context of another group of works also painted between 1964 and 1965. So let’s start by examining the Historic Moment (L’Ora Storica), a work I painted at the end of 1964 and that clearly is a prelude to The Ruling Class itself.
This is a triptych, 165 by 420 centimetres, one of the paintings that most reflect if not the world of Bacon, at least Bacon’s style, clawing at the canvas, his very open way of painting first on unprepared canvas, with a great sweep of background colouring, that had a strong influence on me. I felt most attracted to three painters: Degas, Munch and Bacon. In fact, I then felt an affinity between them, even if secretly, not from the thematic point of view, but as a way of confronting the canvas, a great affinity between Degas and Bacon.
In fact, Bacon was influenced by Sickert, who was influenced by Degas, and had a certain way of painting nudes that could also allude to the scabrous style of Munch. A painter who has no problems with poetics, because he is sure of always being himself, does not have any difficulty in stealing from others what can serve for his own paintings. I mean that painting derives from painting, but is continually modified when it meets an artist who is not contaminated by the poetics of someone else, but appropriates methods, techniques, ways of giving strength to his own imagination. This is a painting, a triptych. It has Bacon’s style, but does not represent anything that Bacon’s work represents. It is a painting inspired by the criticism of the Italian political world and the refusal of the ‘historic compromise’. We are afraid of governments, afraid that someone will stand at a black pulpit or on a black throne. When I painted the black of the desk I was even reminded of Malevitch’s black square. And then there is a figure without a face getting up, in the act of taking off his jacket in readiness for command. If we want to digress to consider the subject-matter, I could have stolen the title from Goya, ‘The sleep of reason generates monsters’.
Immediately after the Triptych I worked at a group of new paintings: Man at the window 1964 , Man with a dog 1965 and The Ruling Class itself.
In this group of paintings there is, in comparison with my previous work, the addition of a geometrization above the figures or imprisoning them, locking them in, as in a cage, or giving them greater prominence, as in Man at the window, who is looking out from the inside. Even in Man with a dog there are two lines, almost pointing to the door out of which the master is coming, and the dog goes towards him. Above all in The ruling class we see some geometrical shapes overhanging the figures. There is a geometrization that was previously absent and that is very clear during this period. In commenting on these paintings I can say that every time that I have faced the problem of The Ruling Class – even the Triptych faced that problem – I have always spoken of it as if the reason could be found there – the root of the discomfort of contemporary man – almost as if really the job of the managerial classes is to make life easier for everybody. Whoever has the job of redistributing wealth and power, of making the rules, is rather, in effect, a figure who doesn’t have anything to say to others, but only to himself.
Today we speak of a political caste. Every time that I have represented anything concerning politics, I have always spoken as if it is a caste. And it is strange that even in a painting that was painted much later, in the eighties, but that is connected with these themes, called Roman Sunset, we see politicians bowing, kissing a naked woman who represents corruption, representing everything that a powerful Rome manages in inconceivable ways. As if to say that those who represent us represent nothing more than themselves, and that we are therefore alone in dealing with something that will never arrive, like the man, like men standing at a window and waiting for something, a person or an event, that will never come.
Once the painter and novelist Dino Buzzati, speaking of my painting, said that it reminded him of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, men waiting for something that will never happen. He was perhaps thinking of his The Desert of the Tartars, but, in fact, I do have an idea that Man cannot find something that he knows could exist, but that is hidden who knows where. After all, if I wanted to describe these characters, I would say that they propose the figure of a man who would like to wait and believe, but who has lost the faith for believing.
Alberto Sughi
For more info on Alberto Sughi see. www.albertosughi.com
Created by Alberto Sughi On 07/09/09 At 11:22 AM
Phil and Kat Taylor are husband and wife art collectors. They live just outside Toronto, Canada which is a cool art city. One day, out of the blue, Phil emailed me and we started chatting about our common interest. I thought that he would make a great interview subject. He has a forthright, down to earth, yet very polite air about him. To me, this makes him “Clearly Canadian.” Read on and you’ll see. 
As photographer of details of architecture, I am conditioned to observe my surroundings carefully. I notice buildings, but I hone in on the line of a corner; the angle of a gable; a fashioned decorative vine on a wrought iron gate and the stone carvings on a façade. Fine tuning a bit more, I visually thrive on the textures used for building: grainy granite, polished marble, satiny wood, rough brick, smooth cold iron. These elements create an environment that promotes creativity for me. And above all the light that permeates the scene sets the tone of my photography. Rembrandt ’s art and the light of his world are the reasons that I recently went to Amsterdam. To know and to understand an artist ’s work on an intimate level, it is essential to see the light with which the artist worked. I believe that the light of Amsterdam defined Rembrandt ’s paintings, drawings, etchings. The way that the master saw his subjects, gave him the framework for the art he created.
Amazingly, in a world that is evolving with split second timing, Amsterdam welcomes the future to blend smoothly with the past. It is quite possible to imagine that you are walking along the canals with Rembrandt in the 1600 ’s. The city is criss-crossed with canals that reflect the soft misty light back into the sky. In late May, when I visited the city, the huge puffy clouds of Rembrandt ’s landscapes were just as low to earth as in his paintings. It seemed as if I could pull off a piece of cloud like cotton candy if I stretched out my arm. The marvelous billows of grays, whites, ochres, yellows, blues and many other colors were dotted with openings, big and small, to the soft sky beyond. Through these portals light drifted in soft shafts. Rays that lit fragments of a building, a tree or a face. The delicate way that the light illuminates in Amsterdam creates a mood of fluidity: seamless values.
