Alfred De Credico and the Tactility of Meaning
The paintings and drawings of Alfred De Credico are presented here as a palate cleanser for the intellect and an opportunity to consider the topic at hand from another perspective.
Anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan in his important book “Gesture and Speech” argued the hand and mouth guided the development of the human brain (Broca's area in particular) which intimately ties physical making to speech and writing. De Credico’s work exemplifies Leroi-Gourgan’s premise, fluctuating between legibility and animal action, figuration and material scribing.
The primal marks of De Credico’s paintings belie an underlying sophistication: a self-reflective dialogue between an inner voice and active hand, speech begetting gesture as gesture begets speech. De Credico's visceral dialogic marking, scratching, digging, pouring is a kind of calligraphic inscribing activity of the soul. A precursor to the tectonics of language, paralleling this journal's probing of tectonics and language, De Credico's work offers a glimpse of the connective pre-symbolism that binds making, material and language.
Artist’s Statement:
The images in my work are intended to function as visual hypertext. Umberto Eco best describes this concept as "a multidimensional network in which every point or node can be potentially connected with any other node." I use historic references, recognizable images, and real objects in my work as well as non-objective calligraphic marks and forms, which become meaningful when, placed in the context of "connection." These elements occupy a non-linear, non-representational, non-western spatial organization and are connected conceptually rather than literally or sequentially. In addition, I explore classical and mythical themes, seen through the filter of contemporary experience.
Drawing is a solitary activity during which the artist engages in the act of creating, not replicating, an experience. IT has the capacity for relevance beyond "aesthetic" – cannot distinguish between the painter or the architect, the sculptor or the designer of objects. IT allows for existence in a place of possibility, between the present and the future, where "knowing" and "discovery" collide and merge.
When I am making a drawing I am continually aware of the seductive nature of the materials I use – I am careful not to succumb to their seduction while allowing them to work their magic. If materials are allowed to take control of a drawing, or if the reason for a drawing is only to explore material means, then "the serious artistic point" of the activity is undermined.
Serious DRAWING is, by necessity, about the abandonment of will and ego as much as it is about embracing them. IT is about contending with the precarious balance that must exist between these aspects of the persona and the inventiveness of the conscious mind.
Alfred De Credico—1944 – 2009—was professor of Foundation Drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design for over thirty-years.