Carl Bucher
Traces and Signs

A counterpoint to the monument is the signature. On the one hand, we have the plastically fully developed picture, asserting its physical stature within a particular field -
the Zeus of Phidias, the Colleoni of Verrochio, the labourer of Meunier; on the other, we have a sign, half writing, half gesture, a nonphysical symbol -the Iberian bronze figures of warriors, Michelangelo's Pieta Rondanini, the Don Quixote of Germaine Richier.

These are not differences in style but points of view thróugh which reality presents itself. The torsion which dissolves the body into motional gestures wants to say something different from the compact stature of someone standing upright or striding along. The language of art does not exhaust itself in a dialectic of styles, but is also stratified into various grammars, just like verballanguage.