Selector of Prestige
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- Selector of Prestige
- 1969
- colored pencil, felt-tip-pen on paper, mounted on cardboard
- 34 × 42 cm
The series of drawings and mobile objects entitled "Selectors of Prestige" or "Collectors of Merits or Computers" reflects Paul Neagu’s early interest in cellular structure and its energy, in fractal geometry, and in structuralist philosophy—all of which determined the appearance of mysterious box-like constructions made of precarious-seeming left-over materials. These works also show the significant early-career influences of constructivist and kinetic art on Neagu’s output, specifically the kinetic structures of Nicolas Schöffer and kinetic environments by Latin American artists. Functioning as preliminary research instruments that opened up a field later subsumed under the term Anthropocosmos, these abstract and compartmentalized forms explored “a new gestalt […] where all the senses would take part in a simultaneous totality (a Gesamtkunstwerk).” “Mov[ing] towards an organic and unified aesthetic that will make use of senses […],” as he announced in his 1969 PALPABLE ART MANIFESTO, Neagu allows the viewer to interact with his objects by touching them in a playful, sometimes unexpected way: during his filmed action Neagu’s Boxes from 1968, the artist placed his objects on a busy road in Bucharest, and at the Richard Demarco Gallery in 1969, during his first palpable art installation (Art in a Dark Room), he invited the audience to “feel their way around” in a semi-obscure space and discover the mysterious boxes. A.Se.