610 Function of 15, 1971/1989
- Medium
- Newspapers, glass, and neon
- Dimensions
- 20 x 34 x 272 3/4 in. (50.8 x 86.4 x 692.8 cm)
- Accession Number
- 2005.68
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Margo Leavin and Wendy Brandow
The
neon numerals atop bundled stacks of newspapers in Mario Merz’s610 Function of 15follow the Fibonacci series
of numbers. Each succeeding number is the sum of the two previous numbers.
Devised by Fibonacci of Pisa, an early thirteenth-century Italian monk and
mathematician, to calculate the offspring produced by a pair of rabbits, the series
extends rapidly, widening like the growth of a living organism. For Merz the
significance is that the numbers go into infinity, while objects are finite,
and he was after an art that would do more than produce mere static objects. Not
wanting art to be just another luxury commodity object, he used newspapers,
which are valueless by day’s end. Merz’s ambition was to make art that matched
nature’s organic growth, transformation, and flow; hence, his use of neon, the
light of which traverses and connects the structures of his sculpture in an
energetic flux.