There is something in the art of Francesco Clemente that is like the woman who prides herself on never sweating—a triumph of appearances over function. The ambient, limpid character of his frescoes and watercolors is fervent, even fevered at times. Ingestion and excretion, and their sexual, morphological possibilities, are his predominant themes. He is very often his own protagonist. Yet Clemente offers no bacchanalia, no Rabelaisian adventure. His work, rather, is a kind of gestating Decameron in which all components, all figures, all references and styles wend their way to an incomplete and