Francesco Clemente
Indianapolis Museum of Art
In this exhibition of Francesco Clemente’s Early Morning Raga, 1996-97, the artist elevates quotidian detail to the realm of cosmic symbolism. His procedure in the collection of eighteen watercolors assembled as an unbound book is disarmingly simple. With the strict schematic format of a grid, he apportions images of approximately the same size, nine per page, whose subject matter is a compendium of his migratory and cross-cultural calendar. Clemente and his family live in New York; Rome; and Madras, India, and the watercolors are emblazoned with representations of bicycles and soccer games,