My Favourite Object

Victor Grech

My favourite artwork sits daily in my own living room. It is a view of the Cottonera from the Upper Barrakka Gardens painted by the late John Borg Manduca (1934–2021). The painting is in his typical loose style, oil on canvas with painting knife, with faint touches of violet. I had bought some paintings from John to celebrate our children’s births over twenty years ago, and for an anniversary or two. When I turned forty, however, I was overcome by the overwhelming urge to paint—almost like a calling, one that consumed me, an urge that I cannot explain to this day since I had never painted or even sketched before. But I loved John’s style and subject matter—landscapes and seascapes of Malta and Gozo—so I decided to ask John to teach me. A doctor has little time for fixed lessons but John, always the gentleman, was very accommodating and accepted to give me informal lessons and advice whenever I could find time to go over to his studio on the Sliema front.

These lessons went on for years. John became almost like an uncle to me, and I befriended his wife, Josephine, and his two sons, Stefan and Juan. This painting was acquired during this period. Over the years, I continued to paint and explore the possibilities of the palette knife technique but John’s health, and eventually his demise, sadly separated us.

John’s work continues to inspire me, as it does many others, and for this reason, Stefan, Juan and I decided to create a book that would follow on Prof. Richard England’s own book about John (The Palette, 2004— Richard was John’s brother-in-law). The book is John Borg Manduca: Landscapes and Seascapes (2022) and was a fundraiser for two NGOs.1

I will forever remain indebted to John for teaching me how to paint, for his time and patience with me. He will be remembered for his lovely views of this archipelago, his memory enshrined in the strokes of the palette knife which make up his paintings. Id-daqqa kollox! was his constant admonition, followed by a cheery ‘and Bob’s your uncle!’. Missed but not forgotten, thanks again and always, John. Indeed, in the words of Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965): ‘At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.’

Notes

1 See http://www.maltaimpressions.com/John%20Borg%20 Manduca.html#features16-5f.

In the decades following the Second World War, the ArgentineItalian artist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) became singularly concerned with the creative possibilities of the hole or cut (taglio); a hallmark of his artistic career and with which he is almost exclusively and synonymously associated to this day. This crucial phase of Fontana’s artistic output coincides with a period of transition following the devastation of the war, a phase suspended between the reality of the threat of modernity to human freedom and fraternity and, on the other end, the promising reach of technological and scientific development.

As it were, the radical gesture of making a hole or cut in the canvas was, therefore, the necessary step after which, Fontana claims, ‘we are free to do whatever we want.’1 Or, in an eschatological sense, herein lies the knowledge that the gestureimage is not an end but, indeed, the beginning of something new, thus liberating the artist and the beholder in a human creative mission which ‘can now be carried on in tranquillity, detachment and freedom appropriate to the penultimate.’2

The acceptance that man’s creative gesture—as with destruction—is not absolute since it lacks total finality implies that art may be viewed as a continuous process of becoming precisely because of its inability to be final, even though it is nonetheless grounded in mortality—a distinction which Fontana and his peers were careful to make in the Primo Manifesto. Here the gesture was hailed as an eternal act which transcends matter and, effectively, all that is conceived in a particular time and space. The solution to the crisis of art in the mid-twentieth century was thus, according to this view, to be found in the integration of time and space through the unifying act of the gesture—as an act of progression towards totality.3

Excerpt from the entry on this artwork, written by Giulia Privitelli, in the exhibition catalogue of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti’s forthcoming exhibition, In Search of Line, opening to the public in late Spring at 275, St Paul’s Street, Valletta— Patrimonju’s new administration and gallery premises where a permanent collection of Victor Pasmore’s works will be displayed while also serving as a space for the setup of temporary exhibitions related to Maltese modern art .

Notes

1 Lucio Fontana quoted in Tommaso Trini, “The Last Interview Given By Fontana,” in W. Beeren and N. Serota, eds, Lucio Fontana, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1987), 34.

2 Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology, Death and Eternal Life, Aidan Nichols, ed., Michael Waldstein, trans. (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 170.

3 Cf. Joppolo Beniamino, Lucio Fontana, et al., Primo Manifesto dello Spazialismo (Milan: Galleria del Naviglio, 1947), par. 1.