Matta-Duchamp

work – it does not imply the participation of the spectator
in any other sense, though this is sometimes how
it is now interpreted. Nor is Duchamp’s spectator quite
the same as Matta and Dreier’s.
“In order to be fully conscious of the phenomenon
which the image describes, we ourselves must first of all
fulfil the act of dynamic perception.
Marcel Duchamp was the first to paint the image
per se, to be completed by an act of consciousness of
the part of the spectator. Prior to this, the artist spoke
and the onlooker listened, for he was not called upon
to complete the work of art by his own conscious act. It
was statement – now it is a dialogue!” 57
Embedded here is a proposition that casts light on
the way Matta thought about his own paintings: “The
image is not a thing. It is an act…” Later he was to say to
his friend the painter Peter de Francia, “A picture is not a
canvas on a wall, it is the impact that hits the bull’s eye of
your mind. If art was only a representation of the “here
and there” hanging on a nail decorative craft would do
it, but there is in man the need to re-act in the endless
web on which we interplay with the world.” 58
Matta’s paintings are dynamic, full of energy, in a
57. Ferrari p 182
58. “Coïgitum, Conversation with Peter de Francia”, Matta Coïgitum
Arts Council of Great Britain Hayward 1977
( 63 )