Trained as an architect, Clerici was a skilled draftsman, and he used his academic technique to convey flights of the imagination with convincing precision. Here, the harmony of a duet between two string musicians is envisioned as a grotesque doubling. This combination of illusionism and theatricality led one critic of the time to remark, "Of all the artists working today, Clerici is the most attached to the Baroque." Indeed, the influence of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian art is visible in this drawing's exaggeration of the instruments' ornamental filigrees. Clerici repeats these forms in a play of corporeal curves—overly attenuated fingers and an octopus-like array of limbs.
Gallery label from Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, March 14–July 9, 2012 .
