The Old Milano or Milano the Old?

For sure Milan can be considered a fashion and design capital (from an Italian point of view) but I think that we are quite an old city. I'm not talking about the fact that there is very little place for young workers (another sad story). I just think it's fairly peculiar the fact we do have two "Museum of the XIX° century"!
It goes without saying that I had appointment in the private one, the so called "Gallerie d'Italia" (Via Manzoni, 10)  but I wrongly went to the public one, the so called GAM, located in Via Palestro.

Once solved the misunderstanding, I reached the correct location for my guided visit to the private collection of Fondazione Cariplo and Intesa Sanpaolo, two Italian banks. If you have the occasion, please visit both the Museums, because they really deserve a little time to be spent there, they are both of value.

Today I'll talk about the collection of almost two hundreds masterpieces from Canova to Boccioni guested in "Gallerie d'Italia". Two tremendous old palaces, Palazzo Anguissola (XVIIIth century) and Palazzo Brentani (XIXth century), contain treasures that really impressed me. The palaces are both completely restored and they are great examples of the best Milanese Illuminism with gorgeous ceilings and amazing walls.
To be honest with myself, they are too much restored (by Michele de Lucchi) to my taste; Palazzo Anguissola is like a doll house, but this is not the moment to bring out my "conservative" nature [restoration is not the same of conservation].
The original style was respected, that's all.

Once entered in Via Manzoni 10, near Teatro alla Scala, you are first welcomed with a sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro in Palazzo Anguissola.

Then the tour brings you room after room across the Lombard XIXth century. Starting with bas-reliefs by Antonio Canova (dedicated to the bourgeoisie favorite virtues) the visit is full of sections dedicated to Lombardy and Milan. The most appreciable thing about this collection is not  the single quality of the pieces; all the pieces are qualitatively good, but it's more it's interesting to have a complete view on the city in that century. Also for those not being that keen on this age painting. You'll be able to see a Milan now half disappeared, with revolutions and riots wonderfully picked, or landscapes from the plan of Po river and poor workers.

Palazzo Brentani, connected to the first Palace by the courtyard, was differently restored. Here De Lucchi followed a different strategy (see also Scuderie del Quirinale, Roma) pointing at a simplified classicity, with minimal details but strong colours. As the previous Palace, this is equally worthy of a visit. The collection continues there ending with a few  bright and colored Boccioni's, premise of Futurism.

I wish I were able to take pictures, but I couldn't. Those inserted here are taken from the Institutions website, or from online reviews. 

This means: you really should go there in person, to fully appreciate.

I would suggest Palazzo Anguissola also for the children: show them how Milano was, with the Navigli an the old streets!

Tiziano e il paesaggio moderno

Palazzo Reale is now hosting "Tiziano e il paesaggio moderno" (transl. "Tiziano and the modern landscape"). There is time until May, 20th 2012 to discover that Tiziano was the first to use the word paesaggio (landscape) in a letter to the the Emperor Philip II of Spain <giving proof of the consciousness of a great and resounding awareness>. It was the 1552…

There are 50 paintings by a lot of artists and, actually, Tiziano is not exactly the most represented in the Palace, even if all the reviews on the web seems not to notice this. Why?
I think the exhibition is a very good one, centered on the evolution of the landscape. Of course that's intended in a modern way, that means: Nature is not only intended to be exploited, but is finally recognized as a pleasant place to live, to longing for the return of a mythologic golden age, or to dream about an happy future. The woods are not only places to hunt or where gather firewood, but also magical backgrounds for myths and legends. Moreover, the presentation clearly show the passage from the inversion of the roles between landscape and human figures. The classical subjects start to be smaller and smaller, giving more importance to the "background" that becomes the main character of the composition.
Tiziano? There are beautiful paintings by him, but I think that Lambert Sustris is more representative of the main theme the curator Mauro Lucco wanted to highlight.

I think the title of the exhibition is not correct, but only because it focuses too much on Tiziano. It could have been only "The modern landscape" and collect even more success, avoiding a certain embarrassment of the guides trying to find Tiziano among others beautiful landscapes.
The exhibit is good, but just be prepared if you go there, and maybe ask for a guided visit anyway - that's the only way to get a meaning out of that.

AMoYA!

I've been to Prague for 3 days and I could see an exhibition like few others. I've never directly seen something like that; I could have heard about, but never found the will to spend money and time to visit. But after seeing only romantic streets and baroque buildings, pleasant shops and charming restaurants I really need something different. I found it exactly 10 steps before Karluv Most (Carlo's Bridge).

 

The exhibition name is Artbanka Museum of Young Art (AMoYA) and it's a strange place where selected artists can freely present their works. The Association, born in 2011, is described as follow: <AMoYA presents its vision to the public by offering a very bold programme taking place in the unique atmosphere of a Baroque palace in the most historical part of Prague, where visitors – floor after floor, room after room – familiarize themselves with the world of contemporary Czech and international art.>

But the most interesting idea is that all the masterpiece are for rent. Just check the website to learn more. Now my review.

The exhibitions wanted to be shocking and disturbing (if I well remember, that was exactly the purpose of the selection we could see). The location is a quite rotten building with a court, in Karlova street.  Half of that is Baroque style and the rest is obtained from a multi-restored working class condo. Just few words on the location: it's an interesting opportunity to see a true old building, not yet ready for a fable book as the rest of Prague tends to be. The Baroque part is made of big rooms, with stinky old tapestry, dirt floors and big stairs. Big lesson of architecture: do the magnificent stone stairs for the aristocratic floors and the wooden and simplest ones for the servants.

In the "newest part", until few years ago full of poor apartments for rent, you can see the empty dwellings filled with (wanna be) art. You should visit this even only to see the spaces: every square foot has a story to tell, and another to guess.

An then the works of art… so much stuff, all together! It was quite confusing and not all the artists' intents were clear or shareable. I'll do what I can starting with a rough classing:

1) "Wanna be famous" (but not too early)

2) "I can get no satisfaction" (sub. "and I try, I try, I try…")

3) "Buona la prima" (see: well done)

1) Here you can find a lot of angry artists trying to express their anxiety and irritation for what's society today.

You can recognize them for the massive use of tags, aerosol colors, graffiti, putrefaction of substances and a certain number of flying penis in search of the Promise Land -no way to find that in that chaos!

2) They try, they try a lot but they can get no satisfaction. I think their problem is the comparison with the world of Fine Arts, from which they come from. They want to reject it, but in the end it seems only an aestethic game, funny but not enough to convince me. Even those quoting more recents artists (quoting our Pietro Manzoni) cannot get farer then their "specific work" (a bad problem if you quote the shit can!).

* extra points for the shit representing little humans trying to get out of the can

 

* extra points for the artwork with wax - but silly and useless position, mere virtuosism

 

* underwear stuff made of mice fur and heads. Whiskers included. Extra points for choosing Chanel.



* Modernity tries to kiss Classicity, but closes the eyes! Superficial kiss.

3) Well done, guys… you got it!

Even if some could result quite annoying, I must approve the followings:

- Mega-Christ hanging on the rings

- Stuffed Rocking horse [even if the artist focused on her sweet dead friend, instead of looking at the classical fight between horse/body and man/spirit and at the fact of reducing the body/horse to a toy] 

- Four big guns crossing their shots [not new idea but well inserted in the romantic location of the courtyard]

- Scary and anguishing carpet covering "something" in a semi-dark room with frightening sounds [not new (see Duchamp) but very perturbing (according to A. Vidler definition)]

- Marble "classical" statue of the ideal today man: chubby and busy at wiping a plate with a kitchen sponge.

 

Once recognized that contemporary society is too often wrong bad and dirty, remembering that for decades everybody has been saying/picturing/drawing/carving/melting this, should' we try to say something new or at least different?

Given the global anxiety in the air as a fact, or we find a (serious) solution for that, or we completely change subject.

ps. we could only see parts A and B, C was closed. Damn!!!

Before and after the treatement

This is an old picture, taken in the 1992.

After 20 years, I gave it new life :D

Before

After

Horror Vacui

So I did it, for real! I visited the exhibition about Gustav and his frieze.
Again, I learnt and thought a lot, thanks to that.

I could not exploit any of my fidelity cards to obtain a reduction. Full price: 8 €! I'm afraid the price of culture is raising both with the one of petrol. We're very near to put oil barrels in Museums, too! (Maybe I'll soon review a visit to the oil station).

It's all based on the original frieze made for the Secession Building in Wien (here there is a made-in-Italy faithful reproduction).
Klimt made a lot of preparatory drawings for that masterpiece, almost 400, and the exhibit presents some of those, in semi-darkness. "For conservative reasons, the drawings cannot be light with more than 30 lumen" a notice was saying. The final effect is like seeing the private collection of Bruce Wayne in his Bat-Cavern.

The papers are very delicate but clear and powerful. Few lines to define the femininity of the luckiest Klimt models, or the tough muscles of the poor ones. The body is at the center of his research, seen from undisclosed points of view,  innovative and strongly criticized. Klimt was very touchy and got very angry with the "chaste" society of those days. His wife, on the contrary, was more compliant and open-minded towards that abundance of cheeks and "femininity".
These drawings, very simple, were very different from what I expected from Klimt (because everybody always expect something from the authors studied on school books).
I was used to rich paintings and mosaics "Klimt style", and here I made my first discover: line is the base for Klimt comprehension. You must first follow the lines to better discover the paintings, sometimes so full that one could risk to loose the smallest details in them. Follow the lines, then look at the portions of his drawings, then concentrate on the textures and finally discover the main characters.

(just an example, among hundreds, of Klimt research in drawings)

After this, I'm ready to talk about the frieze.
I had no idea of how it was. I only made a psychological mesh with what I expected from Klimt and the ancient Greek typical friezes. I was figuring on that image and I entered the dedicated room.
It took me 5 minutes to find the starting point of the frieze and 3 lectures of the explicative boards to understand the followings:

* the reproduction was 2/3 of the original
* the first part was not reproduced
* each character's name
* the logic of the frieze
* the connection with Beethoven n°9 symphony

but what really shocked me, was the fact the half of the 2/3 was… white! No paint on that! I thought of  a mistake, a missing, lack of time in the reproduction process…
I soon discovered that white was only a pause. Pause in the presented "story" and pause to guest (in the original first exhibition) Beethoven's statue.
It was just a pause, not a mistake!

(What I call a pause)

This made me think that, nowadays, we have a lot of difficulty in accepting a pause.
We are bounded by images, we are full of stuff, always connected and surrounded by any kind of information. No space for a pause, for a white page.
I initially couldn't accept a white part in the frieze, because I expected more. I'm used to see everything full of things.

Klimt's pauses, Gustav's breaks, are there to make you more concentrated on the main issues. They let you appreciate the story.
Listening to the symphony (played by a stereo) and enjoying the breaks, I could really understand all the frieze, step by step, pause by pause.
The frieze is very interesting, I would say even genial, but if you are not enough receptive, you could think to see "a little" exhibit, with too few things by Klimt (the preparatory papers are no more than 15/20).

An ancient Confucius' saying tells that it's the emptiness that gives value to full parts. We should always accept pauses and stop to concentrate on what is really important. And not only in art!



ps. If you google "Beethoven frieze", you'll mainly find only the "full parts" of that. Nobody seems interested in the white parts.

Before the next Exhibition

Today I'll go to Spazio Oberdan to see an exhibit @ Spazio Oberdan Milan. It's all dedicated to the "Drawings about the frieze of Beethoven" By G. Klimt.
For the moment I've only read something to be prepared, but I also noticed the following similarity.
In the dedicated (serious) review I'll write after my visit, I'll tell you more (serious) stuff about the frieze.
For the moment, let's have fun!

By Gustav Klimt:

From Monster&co:

 

I think this is totally weird...

Best Carnival Ever

 

Pics of the best festival in the world

First step: New Clothes for Pinocchio

This COULD BE his firts job: male model for... let's start with something easy, H&M...
H&M Tuscany collection!

Pinocchio

I don't know, for the moment, where this could bring me, but I've just decided to start working on Pinocchio. Pinocchio as an "icon". Let's see what I discover...

 

 

Ignorance and Prejudice - no more!

The best thing is starting the day with learning something. This is even better if you can completely change your mind and understand where you were wrong.
Today I went to Spazio Forma, Milan, because I wanted to see the expo of Robert Mapplethorpe work. I was completely ignorant about the man and the work. Moreover, I went there full of prejudice.
Even the first room, containing his first shots of his friends and lovers was not telling me that much. Not to talking about his self-portrait with whip rammed up in his you have clearly understand what.
But then, something happened -I don't know whether in his life or just in the exhibitions- and even the most pornographic shots started becoming -to me- the real research of perfection.

No matter for the numerous still-life about the male you have clearly understand what: that's perfection, and now I'm convinced about this.
He was born in 1949, in Queens. He got his first Polaroid in 1970. He died in 1989.
Everything stay in the middle of these dates. Perfection is the fil rouge of all his work.

He was looking for something that could be a sculpture, no matter for the subject (flowers, nudes, children, friends, actors…) the body is at the center. Even in his still-life research of flowers you can clearly see the power of the nature, that humanizes the subject. So flowers and you have clearly understand what do have the same weight in his work and for the results he obtains. Simply amazing… nothing to add.

 

this should be "Thomas" 1987

Spazio Forma is a wonderful center for Photography, obtained from part of a space once used by the Milan Public Transport Society. You can still see the modern part of that, still working, from a tall and narrow window in the main room. It's always a strange but interesting effect when you are brought back to reality by that. It's like a pause in your artistic walk through the pictures.

 

 

Good exhibition,
Good space,
Good morning - spent there!