10.54103/ai/20002
This contribution will focus on some aspects of the roots of environmental art in Italy, with reference to works created between the 1950s and 1960s by Lucio Fontana, to environments designed by members of Gruppo T and other artists (Giulio Paolini, Luciano Fabro) in the 1960s, and through reflections on the different uses of space that were defined with the exhibition Lo spazio dell’immagine held in Foligno in 1967. The approach is not, however, that of a historical review of well-known events, but of an investigation into the way to understand the relationship between outside and inside, the sense and value of the “passage,” the conception of the modifying factors, starting with light, which have acted on the definition of space as an element to be perceived, rather than a place to be in, emphasising the dynamics that define a dialectical, if not antithetical, relationship with respect to architectural and design qualities in the proper sense, leading to reading the environmental art intervention as an invitation to follow a path.
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2785-7433
20002
I
en
Francesco Tedeschi
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]
Lucio Fontana 
From inside to outside (and vice versa) 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon
2
Thematic Section
2023-12-28
2023-04-14
2023-12-28
2024-02-23
AN-ICON
Francesco Tedeschi
2023/12/28
10.54103/ai/20002
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
2785-7433
I
Lucio Fontana 
en
Tedeschi, F., Luoghi di transizione: forme e immagini di “passaggio,” fra arte e architettura (Brescia: Scholé-Morcelliana, 2020).
From inside to outside (and vice versa) 
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/article/download/20002/20024
2
           From Inside
           to Outside
(and Vice Versa)
by Francesco Tedeschi
            Outside-inside
                        Light
                        Grazia Varisco
                        Gruppo T
                        Lucio Fontana




                  Issue №1                Year 2023
                  → Immersions and Dives: From
                  the Environment to Virtual Reality
                  Edited by Roberto P. Malaspina,
                  Elisabetta Modena, and Sofia Pirandello
From Inside to Outsi
                1
                    de
(and Vice Versa)
FRANCESCO TEDESCHI, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8007-4258 https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/20002


Abstract                      This contribution will focus on some aspects
                 of the roots of environmental art in Italy, with reference to
                 works created between the 1950s and 1960s by Lucio Fon-
                 tana, to environments designed by members of Gruppo T
                 and other artists (Giulio Paolini, Luciano Fabro) in the 1960s,
                 and through reflections on the different uses of space that
                 were defined with the exhibition Lo spazio dell’immagine
                 held in Foligno in 1967. The approach is not, however, that
                 of a historical review of well-known events, but of an inves-
                 tigation into the way to understand the relationship between
                 outside and inside, the sense and value of the “passage,”
                 the conception of the modifying factors, starting with light,
                 which have acted on the definition of space as an element
                 to be perceived, rather than a place to be in, emphasising
                 the dynamics that define a dialectical, if not antithetical, re-
                 lationship with respect to architectural and design qualities
                 in the proper sense, leading to reading the environmental
                 art intervention as an invitation to follow a path.




Keywords         Outside-inside                    Light                       Grazia Varisco
                 Gruppo T                          Lucio Fontana

        1 The title of this contribute takes up the one elaborated for my essay in the catalogue of
        the exhibition M. Meneguzzo, ed., Grazia Varisco: Percorsi contemporanei 1957-2022 (Milan:
        Skira, 2022, exhibition catalogue), having at its end a reflection on a work by the same Grazia
        Varisco.
To quote this essay: F. Tedeschi, “From Inside to Outside (and Vice Versa),” AN-ICON. Studies in
Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433] 2, no. 1 (2023): 101-111, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/20002.

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                               101                                           AN-ICON
                            My paper addresses the question of the envi-
              ronment, a practice implemented in the art of the 1960s and
              1970s, focusing on the relationship between the position of
              the “observer” and the structural elements of the artworks,
              as well as the role reversal between subject and object in
              the work of art and its perceptual process.
                            A few of the contents I will present are derived
              from a course I held recently at Università Cattolica in Milan,
              focused on the relationship between the idea and realiza-
              tion of a certain type of “sites” in several forms of visual
              art that have moved from the representative dimension to
              that of an active participation in space, meant as the artic-
              ulation of relationship between different fields and subjects.
              Sites implying a “passage,” such as the window and, the
              door, the threshold, the labyrinth and finally the mirror. All
              of these sites could be defined as “transitional.”2 Among
              them, one with a peculiar symbolic (as well as practical)
              relevance is the “corridor:” an architectural space which
              essentially connects different rooms in an apartment and
              tends to be perceived merely as a service space, in some
              way devoid of a function of its own. In the royal palaces
              from past eras, it was often used to measure the distance
              from the outside – the realm of common people – to the
              inside – the place of power. So, it owns a strongly tempo-
              ral dimension, as demonstrated by Aleksandr Sokurov in
              the film Russian Ark (2002), along which the author relives
              Russian history as a journey through the corridors (and
              halls) of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
                            In such sense, the corridor is the form with
              which the purpose of a form of art qualified as “environ-
              mental” is best identified, through artworks addressing
              space as actual matter, and not an inert dimension; more
              specifically, the matter of a presentation both objective and
              subjective. As critics have consistently pointed out, most of
              the projects of this environmental kind tend to be perceived

      2 And so I defined them in the book derived by that course: F. Tedeschi, Luoghi di
      transizione: forme e immagini di “passaggio,” fra arte e architettura (Brescia: Scholé-
      Morcelliana, 2020). I would like to thank Andrea Pinotti and Elisabetta Modena, who asked me
      to take part in this publication on the basis of the topics I dealt with there.

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                            102                                        AN-ICON
              as “paths” and not as static or stable sites to contemplate.
              The corridor, as in the most crucial artistic proposals, is
              what lies in the middle, giving substance, sometimes in
              an impalpable and invisible way, to a space kept in conti-
              nuity between two conditions. It has to be considered – to
              borrow a term from the psychology of perception – as an
             “in-between.” It’s the “space between,” the subject matter
              for a distracted attention; an intermediate nature which can
              nonetheless constitute the very reason for its legitimization.
                            Let me begin with an emblematic image, an
              extremely suggestive painting by 17th Century Dutch paint-
              er Samuel van Hoogstraten, a follower of Rembrandt. It is
              known as View of a corridor (oil on canvas, 1662; Dyrham
              Park, Gloucestershire). It could be considered as the junc-
              tion between two cultural inheritances, that of perspective
              as a system for processing represented space, and that
              of the analytical investigation of the interiors of bourgeois
              houses in 17th Century Holland. What might catch the eye
              of today’s viewer is the sense of emptiness in the cen-
              tral part of the painting, immersed in a peculiar light, that
              could be considered as the actual subject of the work. Of
              course, the “void” is not absolute, given the presence of
              many decorative elements, as well as some humans and
              animals placed at the margins, qualifying the combination
              between anthropic and architectural dimensions. Yet, the
              void “fills up” the central part of the painting, infused as
              it is with light, reflections, shadows. With all of these ele-
              ments taking the viewers on a visual journey through the
              represented space, this uncluttered area holds the func-
              tion of questioning them, of bringing them inside, into the
              silence of an intimate place.3 Of course, this place attracts
              and intrigues the viewer precisely because of its domestic
              character, starting with the juxtaposition between the dog
              and the mop in the foreground. The most important feature
              of the painting, here, is that it is based on emptiness as a

      3 This painting is considered in several moments of V.I. Stoichita, L’instauration du tableau
      (Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1993). See also, for the concept of a space overturned from
      outside to inside, G. Bruno, Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts (Cambridge MA:
      MIT Press, 2007).

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                             103                                         AN-ICON
            way to deny any subject matter: at the same time, it can be
            considered as an anecdotical exercise, which goes beyond
            any narrative logic. For that, it is a very “modern” painting.
                          Looking at the opposite end of this elaboration
            of the theme of the “void,” we can immediately move to
            one of the light installations that reveal the sense of a “cor-
            ridor” characterized by light as the medium of the artwork.
            An absolute zeroing, if not for the effect produced by the
            substance of the light, is the specific object of Dan Flavin’s
            attention: for instance, in his project for a wing of the Litta
            Menafoglio Panza di Biumo villa in Varese, following the
            commission by Giuseppe Panza. The transition through
            the different connotations of light coming from the side
            rooms – as well as that produced by the lighting of the very
            corridor defining the space of the architecture in its depth –
            articulates a visual and physical “path” determined by the
            variability of its solutions, due to the effect of the design of
            the color-lights, generating a truly modern and apparently
            claustrophobic perception of space as pure architecture,
            measurement, time.
                          Thinking of a form of art based on space as a
            medium, however, we must mention the example of Lucio
            Fontana and his environments, possibly the most striking
            instance of an artwork progressively dematerialized by its
            tangible, material state. With Fontana, we are at the cross-
            roads of multiple impulses, such as the tension to overcome
            the distinction between different techniques, to imagine
            a proposal for an autonomous space, embodied by light
            itself and in its relationship with the architectural context.
                          In these three types of artworks – the van
            Hoogstraten’s painting and the environments by Flavin and
            Fontana – we encounter three different articulations of an
            ongoing journey through space, either literal or delegated
            to an imaginary subject, with his or her body and gaze. A
            space that is both objective and subjective, meant as it
            is to host a projection of the self in the place, and, at the
            same time, to constitute a manifestation of its own, a rea-
            son for the actions of a simultaneously active “I/you,” as

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                 104                              AN-ICON
               a kind of relationship between the inside and the outside
               that involves the subject in a shared perception.4
                             In his 1949 Ambiente spaziale a luce nera, Fon-
               tana equipped the space of Galleria del Naviglio with a
               particular light, which could appear futuristic at the time:
               a Wood’s lamp, surrounded by mobile fluorescent shapes
               cut out of papier-mâché, almost as if to justify the existence
               of an object to look at and perceive in a newly-configured
               space. Some of his subsequent structures would be even
               more radical, such as the one created in Amsterdam in
               1967, consisting of an intersection between five narrow
               corridors placed side by side, and completed by a perpen-
               dicular one: a T-shaped transit space bathed in red light.
               This installation was reenacted, with updated technological
               means, in the striking, accurate reconstruction of Lucio
               Fontana’s environments at Hangar Bicocca a few years
               ago. Even with this installation – one of the least celebrated
               among Fontana’s spaces, which explains why it was not
               reenacted until the 2017 exhibition, and then again as the
               only “environment” displayed in the 2019 retrospective at
               the Metropolitan Museum in New York – Fontana appears
               to anticipate some of the effects produced by a few Amer-
               ican artists, who reduced the investigation of space to a
               matter of perception. A practice exemplified by the work of
               Bruce Nauman, and particularly by his “corridors” and their
               constrictive, delocalizing effects. By shifting the focus from
               structure to perception (which is what distinguishes Nau-
               man’s works from Flavin’s), we actually question the very
               nature of space, at the same time introducing the notion
               of a somehow objectified ego. The observer is observed,
               and thus turned into a visual object, particularly in installa-
               tions featuring TV screens and cameras that reproduce – in
               alienated fashion – the actions performed by the viewers




      4 In this sense, this concept is close to the use of the definition of “avatarization” by Andrea
      Pinotti; see A. Pinotti, “Procuratori del sé. Avatar e avatarizzazione,” in T. Gatti, D. Maini, eds.,
      Visual studies: l’avvento di nuovi paradigmi (Milan: Mimesis, 2019): 27-40.

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                                105                                             AN-ICON
              themselves. The screen thus becomes a spying device or
              a “magic mirror.”
                           A center of such investigation of the inside-out-
              side relationship could be found in the questions on the
              origin of forms outlining space itself. These are extend-
              ed, then, to the relationship between internal and external
              space in a specific instance, and also to the questions
              about the subject and the object of the experience. For this
              reason, we shall address how Fontana approaches an im-
              portant phase in the development of his Spatial Concepts,
              concerned with the practical manifestation of an idea of
              space revealed in the apparent two-dimensional nature of
              the picture format.
                            In 1952 several canvases from the more spe-
              cifically “cosmogonic” series5 were used by the artist to
              demonstrate how they could be conceived as “fragments
              of space” or space generators, in the sense that their en-
              tity is manifested in a twofold way: as works to be looked
              at frontally or to be “pierced” by light, thus creating a new
              space modified by the luminous projection of the holes,
              and at the same time canceling out the pictorial surface
              on which they are actually located. This exploration – pre-
              sented through a series of photographs, one of which was
              chosen to illustrate the catalogue of the exhibition at Gal-
              leria del Naviglio that year – was followed up in the exper-
              iments carried out by Fontana with television, in the tests
              carried out at the RAI studios in Milan. In this case, as far
              as we can see, Fontana was even more focused on the
             “hidden” side of his works, foregrounding the light trails
              that occupied that “other space” represented by the pro-
              jection screen. Conceptually, this exploration can also be
              considered one of the roots of the recent elaborations of
             “VR” or immersive reality in the creation of virtual spaces,
              both from a technological philosophical perspective.
                            We can certainly trace this evolution from the
              light-pierced Spatial Concepts to the actual environment

      5 As they were categorized by Enrico Crispolti in his analysis of Fontana’s work. See E.
      Crispolti, Fontana: catalogo generale (Milan: Electa, 1986); see also E. Crispolti, Omaggio a
      Lucio Fontana (Rome: Carocci, 1971).

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                              106                                          AN-ICON
               in a few works created by the artist in the following years,
               such as that for the 1964 Triennale, the one displayed in
               Minneapolis in 1966, or the one included in the exhibit
               Spazio dell’immagine in Foligno, in 1967. It may be useful to
               elaborate briefly on the latter exhibition, due to its historical
               relevance, as it established two very different directions in
               exploring the relationship with space.
                            On the one hand, as in Fontana’s works, space
               is conceived as the very material of the work, an environ-
               ment to inhabit, in which those who pass through or linger
               become part of a perceptive condition (of a field).6 On the
               other hand, space is seen as the environment for an “im-
               age” or an “object,” either complete in itself or combined,
               according to specific forms of installation. Such distinction
               cannot be too rigid, as the two tendencies were intersected
               on several occasions. However, proposals such as that by
               Enrico Castellani can be recognized as deriving directly
               from Fontana’s example. Castellani’s White environment
               applies principles of design and architecture the artist had
               already identified in a singular “Albertian” derivation the
               previous year, in his room at the Venice Biennale. Again,
               Intercamera plastica by Paolo Scheggi, Blu abitabile by
               Agostino Bonalumi, Interpretazione speculare by Getulio
               Alviani, up to After Sctructures by Gianni Colombo, one of
               the environments with the decisive presence of light that
               varies the perception, are all to be considered as products
               of Fontana’s influence. At the crossroads with the condition
               of the object are the instances of a “space within space,”
               which can be exemplified by Mario Ceroli’s Gabbia or by
               Luciano Fabro’s In-cubo (to Carla Lonzi). On the other hand,
               leaving aside works of singular importance, such as the
               Pozzi-specchio by Pistoletto or Tubo by Eliseo Mattiac-
               ci, one could mention the staging by Tano Festa, Subito
               dopo il cielo (dedicated to Francesco Lo Savio), for its po-
               etic quality. This brief list serves to illustrate the different
               practices showcased in a project that explored both the

      6 An important presence in psychological, sociological and planning studies in that time is
      the so-called “theory of field,” proposed in Italy by Attilio Marcolli. See A. Marcolli, Teoria del
      campo (Florence: Sansoni, 1971).

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                                107                                            AN-ICON
               aforementioned directions, from the tributes to Lucio Fon-
               tana and Ettore Colla, which provided the respective points
               of departure, and somehow emerged clearly in the various
               texts in the exhibition catalogue.7 In some of them, we find
               an echo of the ideas put forward, on the occasion of the
               earlier exhibition Fuoco Immagine Acqua Terra (L’Attico,
               Rome, June 1967), by Maurizio Calvesi and Alberto Boat-
               to, and the origin of the definition of “Im-Space” which, a
               few months later, would be linked to the first appearance
               of “Arte Povera,” in the exhibition Arte Povera – Im Spazio,
               curated by Germano Celant at the La Bertesca gallery in
               Genoa (September-October 1967).
                            What I have said so far may provide a useful
               background for a work that I perceive as emblematic of an
               idea of space as a “path,” but with peculiar attention to
               light as substitute of gaze. This environment appears like
               a closed room; however, it produces, from the inside, a
               sense of passage, an immediate relationship between the
               physical eye and the virtual eye of a source of light that
               pushes on space as if to open it up. I am referring to the
               environment created by Grazia Varisco for the Schwarz
               gallery in Milan in October 1969 (Fig.1). The installation
               has been recreated on several occasions in recent years
               (Fig. 2).8 The room, conceived by the artist as an environ-
               ment designed in an extremely articulated way, covers an
               overall perimeter significantly larger than its actual size,
               expanding the sensation or perception of time, besides
               that of space. To make this sensation tangible, the author
               darkened the space, a frequent solution among the artists
      7 See the catalogue of the exhibition which took place in 1967 at Palazzo Trinci in Foligno: U.
      Apollonio, G.C., Argan, P. Bucarelli, eds., Lo spazio dell’immagine (Venice: Alfieri Editori d’Arte,
      1967).
      8 See the catalogue of the exhibition which took place at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna
      in Rome from December 14, 2005 to May 21, 2006: M. Margozzi, L. Meloni, F. Lardera, eds.,
      Gli ambienti del Gruppo T. Le origini dell’arte interattiva (Roma: Silvana, 2006, exhibition
      catalogue): 54-55, 32-35. For further information about this and other environments of the
      group see L. Meloni, Gli ambienti del Gruppo T (Roma: Silvana, 2004). More recently, Varisco’s
      environment has been exhibited in Vertigo: Op Art and a History of Deception 1520-1970,
      MUMOK, Wien, 25 May - 26 October, 2019 (the exhibition also travelled to Kunstmuseum,
      Stuttgart, November 23, 2019 - April 20, 2020), before the retrospective hosted at Palazzo
      Reale in Milan from June 2 to September 16, 2022; see the catalogue: M. Meneguzzo, ed.,
      Grazia Varisco: Percorsi Contemporanei 1957-2022 (Milan: Skira, 2022, exhibition catalogue); F.
      Tedeschi, “Dall’interno all’esterno (e viceversa). Il concetto di spazio ‘percorribile’ nell’opera di
      Grazia Varisco,” ibidem: 26-29.

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                               108                                            AN-ICON
                                                             Fig. 1. G. Varisco, model of the Dilatazione
                                                      spaziotemporale di un percorso / Spatiotemporal
                                                        dilatation of a path, 1969, reconstruction of the
                                                         environment for the solo exhibition at Galleria
                                                                                  Schwarz, Milan, 1969.




                                                               Fig. 2. G. Varisco, reconstruction of the
                                                      environment Dilatazione spaziotemporale di un
                                                       percorso / Spatiotemporal dilatation of a path,
                                                   1969, at the exhibition “Gli ambienti del gruppo T,”
                                                     Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, 2006.




              who, following the Fontana’s example, used light as a cre-
              ative and descriptive element of space. As a matter of fact,
              Varisco placed a “luminous eye” at the center, which, by
              means of a mechanical process, rotates progressively, in-
              dicating the trajectory of a path that pushed from the inside
              outwards, generating a visual and physical sensation at
              the same time. The light replaces, rather than following it,
              the gaze of the person undertaking the role of “bystander,”
              to quote Brandi:9 i.e. a presence experiencing space as a
              relationship between being and existing. This, as the artist
              observes, increases the complexity of an active participa-
              tion, as well as physical relationship, with the site, plunged
              as it is into the interiority of darkness: the viewer actually
              experiences two alternative spaces, that of the eye-line of

      9 See C. Brandi, Struttura e architettura (Turin: Einaudi, 1967) and Teoria generale della critica
      (Turin: Einaudi, 1974).

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                              109                                            AN-ICON
              light and that of the eye-physical presence of the viewer’s
              own body.
                             Perhaps, the very essence of the work lies
              precisely in its drive to overcome the constraints of the
              structure, without actually doing more than absorbing the
              enchantment of a suspended, outstretched time. The un-
              derlying character of the work is then a condition of “path”
              to be completed according to the twofold participation of
              an active movement and a virtual one. It should be noted
              that, about ten days before the inauguration of her solo
              show at the Schwarz gallery – on which occasion this en-
              vironment, Dilatazione spaziotemporale di un percorso /
              Spatiotemporal dilatation of a path, was proposed – Grazia
              Varisco had participated to Campo Urbano, an event pro-
              moted by Luciano Caramel in Como. Here, she made an
              intervention in a public space, immortalized by the photo-
              graphs by Ugo Mulas, who followed and documented the
              events of that memorable day. On that occasion, Varisco
              had appropriated a street in the town center, involving a
              large group of people to help here create a series of walls
              arranged in a meander, made up of cardboard boxes. By
              cluttering up the road, the work extended the time nec-
              essary to walk through it. This operation was also called
              Dilatazione spaziotemporale di un percorso / Spatiotempo-
              ral dilatation of a path, and in this case the perception of
              the “urban field,” experienced alternatively with amusement
              or annoyance, resulted in an immediate application of a
              principle of modification of reality, due to the presence of
              a structure that affects movement and, as a consequence,
              the psychological perception of the entire environment. As
              the artist writes in the short note later published in the cat-
              alogue of the Schwarz gallery exhibition, “I see and feel
              longer. The reactions of impatience or satisfaction change
              if I try the route again.”10




      10 G. Varisco, “Dilatazione spazio temporale di un percorso” in G. Accame, Grazia Varisco
      (Bergamo: Maredarte, 2001): 102.

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                            110                                        AN-ICON
                            As in other environmental works from a time
               imbued with a strong imagination of the future, the laby-
               rinth condition produced by these two operations can be
               seen as an experiment on a way of thinking and feeling in
               relation to objects and space. The echo of this attitude is
               evident in a series of works produced by the artist in the
               following years, titled Random walks by random numbers.
               In these screen-printed compositions, the combination of
               chance and design produce a virtual direction into which
               the viewers are supposed to get lost, and then rediscover
               themselves, as Varisco states: “And I play with imagina-
               tion: I imagine moving robotically, in a defined space with
               unpredictable steps – or with a pencil on squared paper
              – letting myself be guided exclusively by the sequence of
               numbers to which I have previously associated a direction.
               Chance and design. Not being able to predict my path, I
               don’t know if my movements will be contained in the space,
               on the sheet.”11
                            From the virtual space of painting to the real
               space of the built environment, from the virtual space of
               a projection that includes the viewer as a participant and
               an object, to that of a sheet that records movements, ei-
               ther made or imagined, the creation of an interior from the
               exterior and the reworking of an outside from the inside
               are exemplified here through a practice rooted in the drive
               to explore space, which has guided, up to this point, the
               experiments of several generations of artists.




      11   G. Varisco, “Random Walks – 1972,” in G. Accame, Grazia Varisco: 108.

FRANCESCO TEDESCHI                            111                                  AN-ICON
AN-ICON has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No. 834033 AN-ICON.
The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” – Department of Excellence at the State University of Milan.



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