Mission of Misinterpretation: Understanding the biographical information! 2 of 5

So, who exactly is Francesco Clemente?

Your response: I don’t know?


To start, Francesco Clemente is a self-taught Italian painter. He was born in Naples in March of 1952. He originally studied architecture. I read about him in the book Francesco Clemente, by Elizabeth Avedon, that when he was a child he use to write poetry. His mother would then unintentionally embarrass him by sharing his poetry, bragging about his creativity. As a child he felt uncomfortable with his mother's bragging because he didn’t always have as deep of an intention, for his work, that she was bragging to everyone about.

Francesco Clemente has traveled all around the world, spending most of his time in India, Naples, and New York City. Francesco Clemente’s work has explored different cultures in deep and imaginative means. He creates what he calls “unknown ideograms.” An ideogram is a pictorial symbol used to express a concept or an idea. In other words, it appears that Francesco Clemente attempts to create unknown or un-thought of symbols in his artworks, to represent his thoughts and ideas.


With all this biographical information, how does it help a viewer interpret his art? Biographical information about any artist can be either helpful or it might have no significance at all. In this case the only thing that seems helpful towards his artwork is the information that the artist provided, “unknown ideograms.”

What this tells us is about interpreting art is that we need to remain alert while listening to any information that does not specifically connect with the art. Listening to critics babble about the artist might distract you from the art. I find Francesco Clemente fascinating as a person, but if I only read things about him, and ignore his productions, I will have completely disrespected his work. All of that labor gone down the drain because of an infatuation with the artist. What a shame that could turn out to be! So words of advice, use your selective hearing when reading or listening to any information about an artist. Also be sure when you’re interpreting art to only consider info that directly connects with the work.