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Dandy, magician, shaman, but also performer and philosopher. There are many names that James Lee Byars (Detroit, 1932 – Cairo, 1997) has earned with his unconventional art: certainly the creation of a glorious retrospective in Pirelli HangarBicocca of his most majestic international works from 1974 to 1997. The exhibition, curated by Vicente Todolì – director of the museum (and friend of the artist) – is full of contrasts right from the entrance: the anthracite gray of the severe industrial complex of the Hangar almost disappears in front of Byars’ opulent column, “ The Golden Tower”, twenty-one meters of imposing enchantment covered in gold leaf.
Nomadism
It is the magic of an artist who knows how to be versatile and multifaceted, thanks to the long periods of travel between Kyoto, New York, Los Angeles, Venice and Cairo. A nomadism that allowed him to open his mind and to weave a dense network of ties, contacts and beliefs – including the love for Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture – which remain in his works, undisputed and eternal memorabilia. Thanks to the use of different media, such as installation, sculpture, performance and drawing, Byars has given life to a mystical-aesthetic reflection on the concepts of perfection and cyclicality, taking inspiration from the symbols of oriental civilization and superimposing them on those Westerners. He thus created an exquisite unicum, made up of significant allegories that echo in the use of precious materials such as gold leaf, silk, velvet, crystals and marble; in the geometric shapes of prisms, moons, cubes, spheres and pillars; in the color palette such as gold, red and black.
They
Gold represents the display of the sublime and immortality, but also of pure semblance, red as a symbol of blood and life, while black represents the concept of death. After studying psychology and philosophy, Byars became greatly interested in the human condition, its limits and the very purpose of existence, creating works with theatrical tones, thanks also to the influence of Shintoism and Noh theatre. It can be seen in works such as “The Diamond Floor”, where five crystals are arranged in the shape of a pentagon on a black floor, recalling Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, or in creations with a real performative act such as “The Hole for Speech”, in which spectators are invited to approach the golden hole to verbally express their concept of perfection.
James Lee Byars in Pirelli HangarBicocca
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The ancient Buddhist sacred texts
Byars was in fact obsessed with the search for perfection and the fight against the ephemeral, investigated through the ancient Buddhist sacred texts: all visible things are illusions, temporary manifestations of reality which is indefinite. “The identity of human beings is not a predetermined value: it is like a dream, a bubble, a shadow, a look, a flash”. A fervent lover of cosmology, echoes of alchemical magic persist in his works in marble and sandstone, as in “The Moon Books”, where the moons are made of the finest Greek Thassos marble – often used in the most famous classical sculptures – or in the large amphora (which appears to be an archaeological find) in golden terracotta of “The Spinning Oracle of Delphi”, inspired by his numerous trips to Greece to investigate the cyclical nature of life and the concept of beauty. In ancient times amphorae also had an educational and narrative purpose, in fact they served to tell stories through mythological decorations.
Delphi
The reference to Delphi, one of the most important cult centers of the god Apollo, and the golden patina – a clear echo of the divine – make the amphora an incorruptible and rare element. “After years of thinking about the questions and their essence, and the nature of what I consider PHI, I realized that one question was enough. And a single question implies many things. Arouse interest. It indicates the search for perfection, which in itself is not very defined.” Remarkable and in line with his personal life path is “Red Angel of Marseille”, an ode to Venice and in particular to the master glassmakers of Murano, with whom he collaborated for the creation of the work. A thousand small red glass spheres recreate the metaphysical anthropomorphic figure of a ruby-colored angel or a flowering tree of life. Byars symbolically uses the sphere – eternal, perfect in itself and complete – and glass, a fragile and translucent material, to express transcendental beauty. An artistic life based on seeking answers to discover that “almost everything is a big question. Or at least, in everything there is a question.”