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pittura
Giovanna Strano, "Parlami in silenzio Modì"
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Parlami in silenzio Modì
Giovanna Strano
Aiep Editore, 2020
pp 272
14,00
Un’altra bella biografia romanzata a firma Giovanna Strano. A parlare in silenzio è Amedeo Modigliani, scultore e pittore livornese, ebreo sefardita, artista bohemienne maledetto, morto precocemente dopo una vita di eccessi tutta dedita all’arte, all’affinamento della ricerca, allo studio dei volumi e dei colori. Lasciarsi ritrarre da Modigliani equivaleva a farsi spogliare l’anima, metterla a nudo, ma anche avere uno scambio con il pittore, fondersi con lui persino fisicamente.
Il romanzo ripercorre la sua vita, dalla nascita - nel letto che la partoriente condivideva con gli oggetti ammassati per evitare il pignoramento - alle numerose donne che lo hanno accompagnato e alle quali ha dato amore ma anche tormento. Donne belle, forti, indipendenti, che per un periodo gli hanno fatto da muse ispiratrici e da sostenitrici, per poi arrendersi all’impossibilità di vivere con un alcolista, un drogato, un fedifrago devoto solo alla sua arte, anarchico e libertario nel profondo. Donne che, alla fine, lo hanno abbandonato, tranne la dolce e sfortunata Jeanne, la più giovane, la più innamorata, la più ingenua, di cui tutti conosciamo la tragica fine.
Una vita minata dalla malattia, bruciata in fretta, consapevole della propria brevità, ardente di passione umana e artistica, vissuta in luoghi sordidi ma fervidi di cultura e arte.
Più che un resoconto di fatti, il romanzo della Strano è due cose: una splendida ricostruzione d’ambiente - la belle époque, Parigi, i quartieri di Montmartre e Montparnasse, il crogiolo di avanguardie letterarie e fermento artistico all’ombra della prima guerra mondiale - e una carrellata di dipinti e sculture, studiati nella loro plasticità ma soprattutto nel loro significato filosofico e umano, perché fra modello e pittore s’intuisce una corrente di comprensione e di scandaglio che va oltre il rapporto artistico. Ogni figura è interpretata nell’animo ma anche riportata alla sua essenza storica, alle sue origini culturali.
Il testo mi ha ricordato il film I colori dell’anima di Mick Davis, perché anche qui una vicenda che potrebbe essere carica di pathos viene invece vivisezionata nel suo contenuto intellettuale, di riflessione sull’arte, e questo si rispecchia nei dialoghi viziati da un didascalismo che li fredda, ma che trova il suo riscatto nella commovente e bellissima analisi finale dell’autoritratto di Modì. Uomo, artista, donnaiolo, bevitore, bruciato dalla passione, mangiato dalla tubercolosi, ma immortale, per noi, per tutti, per l’eternità.
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Intervista con l'artista: KEITH HARING
Disegno di Walter Fest
Welcome back, readers of signoradeifiltri, here we are for a new appointment. For this occasion, after meeting many old artists, today I introduce you to a young man.
Unfortunately, we still have a problem with our means of locomotion, in this last period we are not very lucky, but in our blog we have the most powerful antivirus in the world and, therefore, Matteo Gentili, the great writer lent to motoring, gave back to us the 600 by minibus, borrowed from the pacifist nuns, perfectly in order, just missing the engine. On the other hand, he installed a pedal, so now, assisted by my Libereria team of pedalers, pedaling we will go to get the young Keith Haring.
I introduce them, they are all passionate writers with a loose verb, today they will pedal for you: Marta Bandi, author of Parlami di un fiore, Roberto Inzitari, author of Se rinasco m’impegno di più, Roberto Stasolla, author of Il Valore del peccato Alessandro Mazzà, author of Ne varietur and Laurent Verken de Vreuschmen author of Qualcuno inadeguato.
But you look carefully, stop to imagine, between the lines you will see hearts full of love, the names are the cradles of the questions that I protect, that I am afraid, that I contain, so much missing, nothing is missing who saves your heart has saved you whole . @ libereria2017
Come on guys, you have the mini bar, color TV, a giant picture of Totti, pastries, chocolates and the vanilla-scented environment, so now we pedal, we are late.
For those who have not understood, this car goes by pedal, on the other hand it does not pollute and does not consume fuel. Excellent for athletic training, you will soon see similar ones going normally on all national and international roads. Guys, don't complain, there are those who pay to go to the gym, aren't you happy? But here, I see Keith Haring at the end of the avenue. Very well, I call him.
- Hi Keith!
- Hi everyone, nice this bus!
- Keith, can I introduce you to my friends?
- Of course, what are you doing?
- We are writers.
- Writers? Interesting ... Guys, where are you taking me?
- We can go to Pisa and then take a ride to the sea, would you like to pedal?
- Oh yes, good idea. On a wall of that city there is a piece of my heart.
Keith Haring (Reading, May 4, 1958 - New York, February 16, 1990)
Keith Haring can be considered a predestined artist because, thanks to the influence of his father, passionate about comics and graphics, he has shown great interest in the world of comics since childhood. After the first school phase, his father made him continue his studies in the field of advertising graphics, very fashionable at that time, but Keith's personality led him to go outside the box. He could not stand the cold tools typical of graphics, the sitting at a table keeping his imagination in check. The limits of the advertising standards were not for him and so he abandoned his studies. To support himself, like many young people, he practiced many different jobs, a situation that did not prevent him from drawing and reading. At twenty years of age, in his enthusiasm and creative strength, he organized his first exhibition. From Pennsylvania he moved to New York, the big apple was the capital of American art, he enrolled in the art academy and started an exciting new life, he made contact with new friends and the fun was guaranteed, the maximum for a promising young man.
But the school, the walls of the school building, are like a prison, the didactic rules of artistic learning once again a loop in the throat, cuffs for the wrists and a sleeping pill for his imagination. So he still leaves school and goes out into the street, every corner is a source of inspiration, freedom of expression is total and Keith Haring is not alone. There is an air of pictorial anarchy among young people, no myth to follow, no master to imitate, street art is fire and flames of colours, a whirlwind of novelty among young people.
In 1980 the first underground exhibition took place in which Keith Haring participated with great enthusiasm. Street art was now his home and the other art writers were his brothers, the subway, probably because it was sheltered from the weather, the safest place to do a laboratory.
Keith Haring did not take long to succeed and so, thanks to a gallery owner who had had a forward-looking eye, in 1982, with his personal exhibition in which some established artists intrigued by Keith's inspiration participated as visitors, he began his climb.
His originality took him around Europe and by the end of the 1980s he had become a star. Unfortunately New York could have been heaven but also hell, the artist in those years contracted the unfortunate disease of the century. While his state of health progressively worsened, he managed to create his last great work Tuttomondo in Pisa, Italy. Upon returning to New York, on February 16, 1990, still very young, he died. The art world lost one of its most talented figures.
- Keith, drawing for you was like the voice for a singer, how did you feel when you drew?
- Walter, it was so easy for me, the pencil, or any of my tools, was one with my arm. I drew effortlessly - the lines, the curves, the features with which I created my figures - for me it was like dancing, floating with the fantasy on the sound waves of my happiness, inside me I felt invisible music and my hand went alone on the rhythm that made me feel good. Did you ask me how I felt? I felt light, almost transparent but still with great strength. In those moments I had the strength of Popeye.
- When you moved to New York, were you afraid? You left the province for a megacity.
- At home, of course, I was feeling well, even if, with a pencil in my hand and a stylus, I turned into a super hero, with my round glasses, a few dishevelled hairs on my head, my slouchy walk, like a comic always with the usual sweatshirt. In short, I felt a little out of place, on the one hand I was a weak boy, as an artist I was in ecstasy on another dimension and, at that moment, only New York could give me the opportunity to make my dreams come true.
- Keith, what was your relationship with people?
- I liked people, I have never been a lone wolf, I loved working in crowded places where everyone could enjoy my imagination, anyone could ask me what I was doing and I loved to answer, explaining and laughing with them, in short, mine artist life was alive, lively and fun.
Arte al bar: Edouard Manet
Rreaders of the blog, whose pages are like spring, today we will have a great protagonist of the Impressionist movement. But before I reveal his identity to you, I confess to feel excited because, probably, of all the Impressionists he was the most important and, if he had not been so stubborn as to reject all the aspirations of the father who wanted him employed in something else, we would never have had an exstraordinary artist.
I'm going to pick him up on our 500. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen: Edouard Manet.
- Hi Edouard, come on.
- Hi Walter, thanks for inviting me, where are we going?
- How about Piazza Navona? We sit in front of Borromini and look at Bernini's fountains (then we go to Pasquino).
- I accept, I trust you, I like your means of locomotion.
- Would you like a coffee? A sweet treat? A prosecchino?
- I'd really prefer a cappuccino.
- Fasten your seat belts, we'll be at the bar in five minutes.
- Matteo Gentili has installed a one hundred thousand watt solar panel and has put two pistons of a Lamborghini Miura, who knows where he will have found them.
- Edouard, here we are, do you know that we had other distinguished guests in this bar?
- I am pleased to. Come on, let's not talk about artists of the past, what is your first question?
- What do you think of modern art?
- Modern art does not exist, or rather, it would be good not to give it a classification. Art must be constantly evolving, which does not mean ignoring the production of the past but working on the continuous search for new languages. And users do not have to side with one style or another but only enjoy and assimilate the wind of passion transmitted by a piece of art.
Edouard Manet (Paris, 23 January 1832 - Paris, 30 April 1883)
As a young man he had the luck / misfortune of living in front of the Academy of Fine Arts, a fundamental point of reference for every artist. Lucky because he had his destiny at hand, unfortunate because in the family they stubbornly disapproved of his natural talent. Only a maternal uncle, who had recognized innate qualities in him, encouraged him to pursue his dreams. But his father wanted him to be a magistrate, and so Manet, at sixteen, thought of rebellion before enrolling in the Naval Academy, from which he was also rejected, then embarking as a deckhand on a commercial ship. The father accepted, Manet could do anything but the artist.
But the father had not considered the tenacity of the son. On board and on land in Brazil, after four months of sailing, Edouard filled notebooks and notebooks with notes and sketches.
On his return he tried again to enroll in the Naval Academy, rejected again. At this point the father, convinced that he had a failed son, exhausted by the obstinacy of the future prince of Impressionism, left him free to study art.
At this point Manet begins a new life, his only life, the one in which he could demonstrate his value and his true essence. After his studies, six long years of apprenticeship with an established artist, and after traveling to Holland and Italy, temple of art, in 1856, intolerant of his mentor's schemes, slamming the door, he left the atelier where he was employed.
Paris at that time is the paradise of art, realist art is supplanting painting linked to classical and mythological schemes, and Manet manages to refine and personalize his technique.
He shares the philosophy of Gustave Courbet and is appreciated by Delacroix. While recognizing their ideals, he prefers to keep away from the group of realist artists. He is too well educated to frequent the usual meeting places with them. Manet knows all the most popular artists but does not socialize, selects his friends carefully and, probably, thanks to Charles Baudelaire he finds the strength and courage to wander with his talent on canvases of great beauty which, however, presented in public are not appreciated.
But by now he has become a revolutionary. Breakfast on the grass and Olympia are his calling card, he is proving to be a great artist but he is unpopular with the public and all the critics who consider him mad. In this case the saying "for better or for worse as long as you talk about it" is appropriate. The more they speak ill of it, the more he is artistically on everyone's lips.
Manet is too sensitive. Not resisting the pressure, he leaves for Spain, where he does not find the inspiration he seeks. He returns home, now labeled a provocateur and nonconformist.
He has the support of writers and artists but he is alone against everyone, so he decides to team up with young emerging artists, rebels against official painting, among which, Pizarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Degas who give life to the Impressionist movement .
Manet is the leader but, having no phisique du role, nor the ambition to put any medal on his chest, he is the theorist detached with the headlights off, remaining in the shadow of the nascent successful movement. In the meantime, opposition to his modern art has gradually diminished, and he has regained credit on the art scene. Stopping on his theories, Manet paid a heavy price for his resisting attacks.
His physique debilitated by always going against the current, first against his father and subsequently against criticism, is weakened and exhausted. Between 1881 and 1882 he made the one piece of art emblem of his great talent and his last existential state: The bar of the follies Berger.
He died in Paris on April 30, 1883, now deceased, he receives great honours and recognition for his value.
This is how Edouard Manet expresses himself towards one of his latecomer admirers: "It could have been he who decorated me. He would have given me luck, now it is too late to repair twenty years of failure." Furthermore, ironically and bitterly, he told a critic who did not have the courage to tell the truth and admit his immense skill: "I would not mind finally reading, alive, the amazing article that will consecrate me after death".
- Edouard, why have you never tried to be a "genius and unruly" artist? It would have avoided you many sorrows.
- Walter, surely I would have overcome obstacles by acting crazy, instead I was taken for crazy by behaving in a formal and civil way. I had to raise my voice but I wasn't capable of it. Why scream and take my opponents by the collar when my art was so clear and natural? Actually, I was an honest and good person, but shy and reserved.
- Of course, the world in all eras is not for gentlemen, I believe that they did not see you favourably for an unconscious envy, a sort of jealousy. You proposed real life when the right-thinking people hid their mikschieves masked with respectability, double-faced hypocrites.
- Yes, but luckily art walks, walks, over the centuries it has always been like this, art walks and goes on overcoming the temporal barrier of ordinary mortals. Common mortals perish, art survives forever.
- Edouard, what do you think that flying thing is?
- It looks like a paper airplane hovering in the air.
- That looks like a pirouette.
- The round of death too.
-It comes towards us. It glides gently on this table.
- There are words written on it, Edouard, do you want to read them?
- I think fate made it fly, they are very intense words and written with true love, who is the author?
- It is written at the foot of the page ...
"Edward runs towards the bench and immediately recognizes the pink note from a notebook that he had given him and his writing, always so orderly and clear as to seem printed, caresses him, as if that sheet could transmit that fear and that affection, and he reads all in one breath ". Signed Mariateresa Scionti 1 + 1 = 1 Libereria editions
- What we have read and what has come to us from heaven is from a book and the author is called Mariateresa.
- Walter, I think this book is about a suffered love. Do you know that sometimes suffering depends on too much love? For example, my father loved me and wanted the best for me, his desire for love was so great that it blurred his sight, he didn't see that I was attracted to art, he loved me and he was afraid for me. My father knew that at his departure he could not protect me and therefore, following his standards, he preferred a peaceful and rewarding life for me. Instead he didn't understand that he hurt me, his was too much love, he certainly didn't want to harm me, he just wanted my good and I didn't have time to thank him and tell him that being an artist was what I wanted and that made me happy. Although I was misunderstood in my career, when I was painting I was happy and this was enough for me. Heaven sent these words to me, I want my father to read them too and maybe he will smile.
- Or weep.
- Sincere love agrees to laugh and also to cry, I think this is what Mariateresa Scionti means in her 1 + 1 = 1. In the end it is only the confirmation that this feeling is a simple and only word ... love ... Walter, I'm going to tell my father. Come on, let's get back in the car I have to reach him.
- Okay, that would be a nice happy ending. By the way, now here at the bar there would be a small bill to pay.
- Let's run, there is no time, leave it to the next artist, who will he be?
- I think a penniless young man.
- Don't worry, his art is worth gold.
- It is better that we leave. So, after the flight with Picasso, here at the bar they are resigned.
Readers of Signoradeifiltri I, Edouard Manet and Mariateresa Scionti greet you and look forward to seeing you at the next appointment and it will always be a pleasure.
Intervista con l'artista: Mimmo Rotella
Disegno di Walter Fest
Amici lettori della signoradeifiltri, bentornati al nostro blog che, grazie alla cultura, vince lo stress da virus. Eccoci per una nuova intervista, solo un attimo che chiamo il mio amico Matteo Gentili, lo scrittore prestato all'automobilismo, il quale dovrebbe aver modificato il motorino d’avviamento della 500 sostituendolo con quello di un trattore, che a sua volta ha preso in prestito sostituendolo a quello del trattore di Antonio lo Frate che non se ne accorgerà perché con la fantasia è da una settimana che sta’ sognando la California.
Readers of signoradeifiltri, welcome back to our blog which, thanks to culture, overcomes the stress of viruses. Here we are for a new interview, just a moment, I call my friend Matteo Gentili, the writer lent to motoring, who should have modified the starter of the 500 by replacing it with that of a tractor, which in turn he took by replacing it with that of Antonio Lo Frate's tractor, who will not notice it because with fantasy he has been dreaming of California for a week.
- Hello Matteo, then can we be quiet tonight?
- Walter, calm as a fisherman from Lake Trasimeno, I'll bring you the 500 in ten minutes.
- Perfect, I'll wait for you with Majlinda in the square.
Majlinda Petraj, aka Mishel, will go out at night to meet a very important Italian artist.
- Majlinda are you worried?
- Well, I have made our story safe among the lines of thousand-year-old poems, so for millennia everyone will know how much I loved you.
- But then you love me!
- But no, I wasn't saying to you, it is the overture of my book Planet hear".
- I almost believed it, ah, here comes Matteo.
- Guys, you see I’m early? So where are you going?
- Yeah, Walter, where are we going?
- We are going to interview Mimmo Rotella but I promised him we would help him out.
- To do what?
- To tear the posters off the walls. Lately our artist is a little short of material., Now advertising is television, virtual, subliminal, telephone and digital, in short, the advertising channels have amplified, even the election posters, due to the crisis, have shrunk and, there are also many plastic billboards around. In short, for traditional paper posters there is no room anymore and so tonight we have to go around Rome in search of the torn poster.
- But I'm a writer!
- Majlind, the night is a source of inspiration and then, on board the 500, we have coffee, mini bar and super tech music.
- Then may I come too?
- Matteo, could you look out?
- Triple sandwich with porchetta?
- Yeah. Come on, let's start. Mimmo Rotella is waiting for us at the Trevi Fountain
Mimmo Rotella, (Catanzaro, 7 October 1918 - Milan, 8 January 2006)
If we think about the date of birth of this artist, it would seem a time so far away that we could ask how such a modern and revolutionary character could have been born in an era so close to the 1800s. The explanation is in the fact that Mimmo Rotella was naturally endowed with an intense intellectual liveliness and with a creative enthusiasm such as to overcome any preconceived scheme. Immediately after the war, after first studying and then teaching art in Catanzaro, he moved to Rome, where he joined the groups of young rampant artists, to bring art out of the ashes of the war drama. But it was during the 1950s and 1960s that Mimmo Rotella bravely left for Europe and the United States to expand his artistic experience. This impact with new exciting realities, as far away as a galaxy, will illuminate him on his being an artist. They will be intense years of meetings and contacts with the most propulsive artistic environment of the moment, and the eclectic Calabrian artist will space, with his talent and his art, between painting, decollage, photography, typographic technique, audio recordings and experimental poetry. Precisely for this reason Mimmo Rotella will not bask in enjoying success but will take a running, always ready to experiment with new techniques in search of a new language.
He puts aside brushes, canvases, tubes of colour, tools that are no longer enough for him and, in 1953, after returning to Rome he discovers, as electrocuted by the god of art, that world, his world, which will make him famous and protagonist of pop art. From that moment on, he worked closely with the artists of like him who, around the world, invented a new realism, a steady point of modern art for which Mimmo Rotella could be considered the Italian answer. In 1980 he settled in Milan and until 8 January 2006, the day of his death, he worked tirelessly and left a significant mark on the art world.
- Mimmo, we are happy to meet you, I brought the reinforcements with me.
- Me too, but four of us won't be a little tight inside this 500?
- But no, fantasy broadens horizons, let me introduce you to my friends, they are two writers: Majlinda Petraj and Matteo Gentili.
- Nice to meet you, did you bring gloves?
- We have everything: books to read, coffee, sandwiches, whiskey & soda, chocolate and cigarettes, indeed no, cigarettes not because they seriously harm health. Not art, Mimmo?
- You can swear to it but, I said ... did you wear gloves?
- Mimmo I have to be a back guard.
- And I will look out at Matteo.
- But I brought the uniforms from fake dustmen.
- Then Matteo and Majlinda look out, you and I dress up as scavengers and get the artistic material.
- Okay, let's get busy. Now that we are talking about these expired ex-election posters, I like to imagine you when, in the silence of the Roman night, you wandered alone on the streets to tear the posters from the walls, to give them new life. I can see you happy as a boy, with bundles of posters tied and held in your arm. I see you load the car driven by your creative enthusiasm, an impossible courage for ordinary mortals. I dare not think of the comments of the people of the nightlife of that time, "La dolce vita". Groups of people intoxicated with cheerful and excited frenzy, while meeting a man from behind who had his eyes full of fantasy, in the act of recovering precious material because it was still alive in the colours and original in the form. Of course you had to have an unprecedented resistance and strength of character in order not to hear the jokes and the boos of the people who perhaps mistaken you for an old fool.
- Walter, to be an artist you have to be a little crazy, or rather a reasonable madman, a madman who knows how to isolate himself and see the invisible who then materializes in art. At that moment you are on another dimension and everything around you does not exist. However, I didn't have time to worry about others, art for me was the factory of my dreams.
- Hey, guys, there are people coming. They look at us, what do we do?
- Let's be what we are, street artists. Majlinda, wouldn't you have a poem to act?
- Yes Mimmo, of course.
- Please, put a lot of emphasis on it! Like on a stage!
Majlinda puts on her glasses, messes a little, becomes serious, takes a breath and ...
The girl looks at Matteo with tender and dreamy eyes, she would like to kiss him, he approaches her, puts a chewed gum in her hat. A little snobbish, she slips away with the others into the darkness of the Roman night illuminated by suffused street lamps.
- Guys, what do we do then?
- Cappuccino and hot croissants?
- And the posters to tear?
- Enough for this night. Matteo, throw that chewed gum in the trash, load the posters and get in the car.
- Mimmo, where did all your energy come from?
- From hunger.
- From hunger? And why?
- If you want to fly you have to stay light, light without ballast in the head, without feeling swollen with your ego that distracts you and makes you lose love. Instead, you have to love your art, with love you have to work the matter with which you mix yourself, your soul becomes matter made of love, the same love that your two writer friends sing. Theirs is a delicate, passionate, intense, suffered love, a love that you desire, pursue and achieve only if you are hungry. Is it true that you poets too are hungry for love?
- Mimmo, we are always looking for it. If you knew how hard it was to find the right words.
- It's easy, just take a pen and write without being smart.
- That's all?
- Eh! ... Okay, I'm sure that you two, with those clean faces, are real poets, but, speaking of cunning, I understand that lately a rich drink at the bar has been paid with a can of shit.
- It was an artist's shit that of Piero (Manzoni).
-Ah so what are we going to pay with now? With the torn posters with these trou du cul faces printed on them?
- Mimmo they would be a bit bulky.
- And then what?
- Once with Picasso we g drank and ran off on a Vespa.
- Aren't you crazy?
- Majlinda and Matteo, do you have any of your books?
- I have Planet Heart.
-I The Tales of a Stranger.
-It would be a lot of stuff ... Ok, very well, I have a caricature of Mario er benzinaro. Let Mimmo Rotella sign an autograph. We go to the bar, we drink, we leave what we have and then we leave.
- Well, what if the bartender doesn't accept?
- We tell him to let Edouard Manet's pay the bill because he knows about the bar, he is one of us .
- Mimmo, the last question.
- You are welcome.
- If you hadn't been an artist, what would you have done?
- The farmer, because nobody wants to do it anymore and I would still be an original visionary. I would grow salad and tomatoes, grapes and apricots, every day I would be happy to live in contact with nature, our sister, friend, lover. Like a good farmer I would see the sun and the moon with attentive and spontaneous eyes, caress the earth and then paint the sky with my fingers. Nature among artists is the most authentic, the best.
- And the torn posters?
- That was a legacy of unbridled consumerism, it was the fall of the gods, the demystifyzation of vanity. As a farmer in the countryside I would not have needed it.
Readers of signoradeifiltri, we would like to take you with us for breakfast but it is night and maybe you are sleeping. I, Mimmo Rotella, Majlinda Petraj and Matteo Gentili greet you, and it will still be a pleasure to see you again at the next meeting with a new surprise artist.
Intervista con l'artista: Giacomo Balla
"Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio" di Giacomo Balla e l'omaggio di Walter Fest
- Giacomo, ora vorrei parlare con te di un'opera, un monocolore importante e rivoluzionario per quei tempi, Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio.
- Giacomo nel 2080 siamo diventati automi infelici?
Readers of Signoradeifiltri, welcome back to my appointment with art and with the blog always in orbit in the galaxy of culture. This must be an unfortunate period, because I have to go get the artist I will interview today. Unfortunately my means of locomotion are still broken down, we had to return the 600 bus to the pacifist nuns, we could not take advantage of their generosity, so today I just have to take the old 500, which starts only if it is pushed and, in these cases, who do you ask for help? But yes, you ask for help from a friend, wait a moment for me to call him.
- Hello Laurent.
- Hi Walter.
- I have a problem, you have to help me.
- What should we do?
- There is a 500 to be started, the starter does not go.
- Wait for me, I'm coming.
Dear readers, I am sorry for this setback, I realize that we are in 2080, in full science fiction, in full modern and super evolved era, but to us poor artists, if we want to move, all that remains is to push this small car miserably by hand. Luckily a friend of mine is coming: the poet Laurent.
- Here I am, what do we do?
- We push, come on, I get in the car and you push. I turn on, the engine starts, with the right hand I open the door and you, with a jump, enter.
- I begin to catch the catch: is that why you called me?
- Come on, it's a little help. And then, afterwards, I introduce you to a friend artist, we interview Giacomo Balla.
- Is he your friend?
- Laurent, I have a lot of high-ranking friends with fantasy. Come on, let's hurry up.
And with a snap of your fingers, the two @libereria artists start the 500 and go to meet Giacomo Balla.
- Laurent, with the famous artist from Turin we will make a return to the past, we will go back in time to talk about the present which is then the future. I know that this is a confused concept but, through fantasy, we will explain what will happen in 60 years. Here he is, in the company of his dog on a leash.
- Giacomo, welcome on board, I introduce you to a friend of mine, Laurent Vercken de Vreushmen.
- Hallo!
- Boy, just call me Giacomo. In short, Walter we are in the post futurist era, why did you come with this prehistoric car?
- Giacomo, that's what's available.
- Ah, I understand! That's why you went to Dalì with the nuns' minibus.
- Giacomo, that's another story. But you're right, we are in 2080 and technology is part of our life, it has facilitated our daily lives. What cinema had always anticipated as stage fiction has now become reality. Fortunately, in 2080, before we ran the risk of becoming slaves, we had time to take a few steps back. Virtuality, automation cannot replace us, this planet was born to be the home of every form of natural existence with a human dimension, technology must remain only a tool. Giacomo, are we talking about the Futurist movement?
- Walter, we were first of all men with a head, a heart, two arms and two hands to forge and shape the material. The myth of speed was the application of our theories, art has always been the forerunner of new languages, breaking the patterns of the past was our strength, our illusion. Futurism, like all artistic avant-gardes, had limited time to make way for new trends. See how everything turns? There never remains a situation of stainless static, it is the dynamic energy of our existence that moves together with the terrestrial globe, in an infinite vortex, at such a speed as to make everything seem invisible, in the almost loss of time cognition. There is only one thing that compacts us and harmonizes us with nature: color, an infinite range of shades, an intrinsic part of our DNA. Color is the heart of everything. Do you know that Italy is the most colorful country in the world? It is by its natural conformation, it is by its history, naturally by its art, there is no country in the world more colorful than ours.
Giacomo Balla, in 1895, left Turin for Rome and to experience the new Italian Divisionism of which, together with a group of young artists, his students, was an important promoter.
The early 1900s were years of great modernization, despite the belligerent period, art was very active.
Giacomo Balla, an unstoppable personality never tamed, laid the foundations of the Futurist movement. In those years, through an exceptional creative liveliness, he also created theatrical sets, furnishings, various accessories for daily use. All this with the new Futurist language, a dynamism above all, and more "colorful", to affirm a 360 ° universe projected towards the future. Giacomo Balla in this was one of the major protagonists.
Unfortunately, during those years, if on the one hand living tasted of modernity and relative well-being, on the other hand war drums were rolling. The artist could not help but get involved. Power has always used art and printing as communication tools. In 1937 G.B. felt the feeling that society was taking another route and that art was no longer a human feeling, but something excessively led to presumption, something that made color, the soul of our existence, a mere patina facade. He therefore decided to estrange himself from the change of his ideals, he pursued the matter with courageous intellectual honesty, undergoing, on the part of the official culture, the removal as a leading figure of Italian art.
After the war years, Giacomo Balla's work was deservedly re-evaluated worldwide. He had been a true master, creator of an artistic uniqueness, leaving a fundamental mark on the international cultural scene. In the following years he continued his artistic production, remaining a serious and passionate artisan of the art, he disappeared at eighty-six on March 1, 1958.
- Giacomo, now I would like to talk to you about a work, an important and revolutionary one-color for those times, "Dynamism of a dog on a leash".
- Dear guys, I had the awareness inside me of feeling a strong attraction for photography, which I thought was great news. I have always been an experimenter, I felt like a navigator discovering new lands and I could not remain indifferent.
- Giacomo, why the format of the work is almost square, with the dog in the foreground and the figure of the woman cut at the height of the legs? -
- It's easy, for a matter of freedom. I wanted to free the dog from the leash, ideally snatching it from the woman, tight, oppressed in her ankle-length ancient dress, which held her captive. A dress that accentuated, but at the same time concealed, the beautiful feminine and natural forms, while the animal, with the speed of its steps, hovering the leash wanted to speed up the legs and all the woman's personality towards a modernization of its customs and traditions.
As you can see the protagonist is the dog, which I have depicted in an oblique line upwards, seeing a distant horizon. My own signature is placed in the lower right corner, as author and man of this new epoch I follow with my graphic authentication that direction. I, transforming myself into an invisible being, crossing the time barrier, project myself, like a series of frames of a film in use to the camera together with the images imprinted on the cellulose, towards the future.
About the future. Oh yes, my boys, in 2080 we went too far, we carried humanity too far, dampening a beating heart, a universe of feelings, the fantasy that makes you happy with simple and genuine things, the joy of existing, and we fell in love with progress, with science superior to the human dimension, leading men and women to become unhappy automata and this was a serious mistake.
- Giacomo in 2080 did we become unhappy automata?
- Well yes, luckily we stopped in time, we were on the edge of the abyss, then the power of art magically aroused, through all humanistic expressions, that power that allowed us to separate technology from the true essence of humanity, an essence made of the five primordial senses that make us unique and happy. We managed to get the best out of the tools of science by simply remaining human. Like this car ancient outside but modern and hyper-equipped inside, which rises in flight, does not smoke and does not pollute, beautiful to live it humanly with the most pleasant and spontaneous of smiles.
- Laurent, what do you say?
- This futuristic discussion was delightful, to stay on topic can I delight you with a poem of mine?
- Laurent, I will listen to you with pleasure
The title is A little background genius.
- Hey boy, but this is a futurist poem!
- Thank you, said by an artist like you is a great compliment, even in my book Someone inadequate, under a mask of drama I built a heart that pulsates with optimistic enthusiasm, a dynamic action to awaken the torpor of a life now spent, the energy that turns on the light in my mind, my light that wants to illuminate the path of those who have lost hope.
- Laurent, you were born in the wrong period, if you had been in my time you would have had extraordinary success, but I wish you to get it anyway in this modern era, you are young and time is on your side.
- Giacomo, I promise you that I will try.
- But Walter, Jackson Pollock told me that on this futurist toy car you have a nice assortment of chocolates.
- Of course Giacomo, you can find them in the drawer of the mini bar.
- I don't seem to see them, but what is this? A jar? Why do you keep a jar?
- A jar?
- Yes, it is really a jar and above it is written "Artist shit"
- Ah, yes it is the work of Piero Manzoni.
- And you want to confront it with the chocolates you gave Pollock? Do you now know what I can do with this jar?
- But Giacomo it wasn't my fault if Pollock got all the chocolates. And then the jar is by Piero Manzoni for the next interview.
- Even if it is artist shit, now I throw it in your head so you learn for the next time.
- Giacomo, please don't, that jar is worth more than two hundred thousand euros!
-But Walter couldn't they have given him Cattelan's banana?
- Banana? Laurent, but what can I do if the artists are crazy?
- So let's go get some coffee, that's better.
- Giacomo, we can't, Salvador Dalì left the bill to pay.
- Guys, don't worry, we drink and then you have Piero Manzoni pay the bill. With what his work is worth you can afford to pay us a coffee, wow!
And so, friends, while I, Laurent Vercken de Vreushmen, Giacomo Balla and his dog on a leash, go and have a coffee, which we will then charge Piero for, we greet you and look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. I think you understand who we will interview.
Una casa di vento: incipit
Disegni di Walter Fest
Incipit de Una casa di vento di Patrizia Poli
Sale la scala a piedi, senza accendere la luce. Gli par di sentire Michela: «Hai tanto insistito per l’ascensore e ora non lo prendi?». Gira la chiave ed entra, lo accoglie la vampa dei termosifoni, s’infila in camera di suo figlio, subito sulla destra, con la porta spalancata perché devono averlo a portata d’orecchio anche mentre dorme. Si lascia cadere ai piedi del letto, il respiro pesante di Loris dà spessore al buio.
«Babbo.»
«Dormi, ciccio.»
«Perché ci hai messo tanto a tornare?»
«Ho fatto un giro, si sta bene fuori.»
«Volevo salutare il nonno.»
«Poi un giorno ti ci porto, ora dormi, è quasi l’alba. Cazzo, hai di nuovo la tosse.» Gli sistema il lenzuolo sotto il mento, poggia le labbra sulla fronte che è appiccicaticcia, sgradevole, calda. «Buonanotte, per quel che ne resta.»
«Buonanotte, babbo.»
Spera che si riaddormenti, che non stia sveglio nei suoi laghi di sudore, nelle sue tossi convulse che grattano la gola. Va in camera sua, si spoglia, lascia cadere gli abiti sul parquet, tutti in un mucchio solo, sa che domani Michela si arrabbierà anche per questo, ma adesso non importa, adesso è così e basta. Si stende accanto a lei. Odori e scricchiolii prendono corpo dall’oscurità. Il ticchettio della sveglia, il puzzo dei calzini che ha tenuto su tutto il giorno, la tosse di Loris, secca e raschiante, il gatto che russa fra le gambe di sua moglie. Non saprebbe dire se lei dorme o fa finta, in ogni caso è molto tardi, è stanco e non gli va di parlare. Gli occhi, però, rimangono aperti e si adattano pian piano all’oscurità della camera. Comincia a intravedere il profilo di Michela. La frangia liscia arriva fino al naso, che è grosso, la bocca è come un taglio nella faccia, solo il labbro inferiore è carnoso, l’altro è sottile, lungo. Ha un accenno di doppio mento che s’intensifica non appena ingrassa. La conosce a palmo a palmo, anni fa la percorreva con la lingua dalla fronte alle dita dei piedi, imparando il sapore dei suoi orifizi, dei suoi umori nascosti, della sua pelle, delle prime increspature che non erano ancora rughe. Ora lei non ha più un odore suo, sa di bagnoschiuma, di candeggina, di gatto. Un piede lo sfiora poi si ritrae, è freddo, con le unghie che tagliano.
Lei sente il suo sospiro e si gira nel letto, si è svegliata o forse non dormiva. Non apre bocca, però, non lo consola. Lui avrebbe tante cose da dire, le parlerebbe di come suo padre gli metteva una mano sulla spalla solo per farsi fotografare, di quando gli strappò la maglietta di dosso per punirlo, di come non era mai contento dei voti che portava a casa, di quella volta che lo sgridò perché, colorando l’album, era andato fuori dai contorni. Parlerebbe anche volentieri di tutti quei silenzi a cena, della mano di sua madre che stringeva la padella così forte da far cadere la frittata. E pure del famoso materasso, sì, che suo padre insisteva per portarlo giù, nel fondo dove trascorreva tutte quelle ore di pomeriggio dopo il lavoro, e sua madre a chiedergli perché non lo butti e perché ti fai sempre la barba dopo mangiato. Parlerebbe di tutte queste cose per vedere se quel blocco di pietra che ha sul cuore potrebbe spostarsi un pochino. Prima lei lo avrebbe anche ascoltato, pure tenendolo abbracciato, a quei tempi là, quelli della Uno. Ora gli direbbe solo: «Me l’hai già detto, che ci vuoi fare, è così.»
In una notte come questa, la notte che hanno appena tumulato tuo padre in quello schifo di loculo di cemento, Cristo santo, non dovresti fissare il soffitto, dovresti stare fra le braccia di tua moglie che ti dice «piangi amore mio sfogati», come si vede nelle fiction. A quel tempo là parlavano, quando fermavano la macchina sulla strada del Castellaccio - e la macchina non era quella di adesso e nemmeno quella prima, era la vecchia Uno - in quel posto dove di notte si vedono tutte le luci della città e delle navi in rada. Allora stavano mano nella mano per tutto il tempo, si guardavano la bocca, si baciavano. La lingua di lei cercava la sua, prima come un guizzo sulla punta, poi a fondo, fino alla gola, fino al palato, e lui rispondeva subito, la stringeva, la stritolava. E si raccontavano ogni cosa, parlavano fitto, le lucciole entravano dal finestrino, accendevano l’abitacolo d’estate, i fiati appannavano i vetri d’inverno, in macchina c’era odore del vino che avevano bevuto, del profumo di marca che lei si metteva, di sudore buono. «Chissà come saranno i nostri figli, chissà dove saremo noi fra qualche anno» gli diceva lei. Qui siamo, cazzo, qui, in questa stanza che hai arredato tu e ora non ti piace, con te che smani per le caldane e Loris che si gratta e respira male. A quei tempi lo avrebbe consolato, lo avrebbe stretto al cuore, magari avrebbe anche pianto con lui. Di piangere, lei, ha smesso da tanto. La musica si è spenta, l’amore evaporato come acqua di mare rimasta fra gli scogli. Quando l’acqua se ne va, rimangono cristalli aguzzi e amari, rimangono denti di cane che, se ti ci siedi sopra, strappano il costume, rimangono erbe marine che bucano, forse non sono erbe ma bestie con le chele, rimane il sale, proprio preciso a quello che lasciano le lacrime sulla pelle.
Dentro si sente come se avesse attraversato il deserto dimenticando a casa la borraccia. Il viso s’inumidisce, suda ghiaccio nella camera surriscaldata. Sono costretti a tenere quella temperatura per Loris, ma l’autunno è mite, un novembre che sta per diventare dicembre senza che nessuno se ne accorga, dicono che il freddo, però, quello vero, sia in arrivo a giorni. A suo padre il freddo dava parecchio fastidio negli ultimi tempi, stava ingobbito nella poltrona, non si voleva lavare. Francesco si annusa le mani, ci sente l’odore dell’olio con cui hanno lucidato le panche della chiesa e anche la bara. Forse usano lo stesso prodotto per tutto quello che è collegato alla morte. La bara è entrata nel loculo con una traiettoria sicura, forse l’unica certa della vita. Lui ha guardato Michela, sperando di vedere qualcosa, di cogliere uno di quei tic che indicano turbamento, magari anche solo la gola che deglutisce, ma lei aveva la solita espressione di sempre. Michela fa tutto quello che deve fare ma poi te lo rinfaccia, con gli occhi, con la postura del corpo. E lì lui si è spaventato, ha capito che si muore, che un giorno ti svegli ma non vai a letto la sera, apri il diario ma non ci scrivi, apri bocca ma non respiri, come suo padre all’ospedale che spalancava la gola e si sentiva il rumore attraverso la laringe. Ha capito che toccherà anche a Loris, che succederà presto, e che loro non possono farci nulla. Lui è padre ma non può proteggere suo figlio, non può difenderlo, può solo aspettarne la morte, che è innaturale, fuori dall’ordine normale delle cose. Ma stanotte deve accantonare per un momento persino il pensiero di Loris e concentrarsi solo sul proprio padre, congedarsi da lui come si deve. Di parole fra loro ce ne sono sempre state poche. Suo padre era quello che montava in silenzio le ruote del triciclo e poi stava a guardare mentre lui andava su e giù ai giardinetti spelacchiati della Questura. Quando si voltava, lo vedeva distratto che si fissava le scarpe.
Si gira nel letto, dà la schiena a sua moglie, prova a dormire. Lei soffia nel buio, forse sospira o forse è stato il gatto, o il primo inizio di vento dietro la tapparella.
Ormai è giorno, c’è una luce grigia che sporca la camera. Si alza, va in bagno a urinare, si prepara un caffè con la macchinetta a capsule compatibili. Michela si è alzata prima di lui e ora gli dà le spalle, con i polsi affondati nella schiuma del lavello.
«Il bimbo?»
«Dorme, meno male.»
«E allora lascialo dormire, non fare tutto quel casino. Perché non dai la via alla lavastoviglie invece di rigovernare?»
«Per due piatti? Non c’eri ieri sera a cena. Non ci sei mai.»
«È morto mio padre, te lo sei scordato? Avevo bisogno di un po’ d’aria, di schiarirmi le idee, di stare da solo.»
«Se eri da solo, non lo so.»
«Sempre gli stessi discorsi del cazzo.»
Lei si volta per metà: «Stare insieme a te è come lanciarsi tutti i giorni a testa bassa contro un istrice. E io sono stufa, stufa, stufa di dissanguarmi. Voglio un po’ di pace. Non mi va di litigare sempre.»
«Nemmeno a me, ma siamo quello che siamo.»
Vederla dibattersi come una farfalla intrappolata sotto il bicchiere della sua indifferenza gli procura una certa soddisfazione sadica, deve ammetterlo. «Io vado.»
«Sì, è meglio.»
Esce senza nemmeno radersi. Il gatto si piazza accanto alla porta e lo fissa, come per chiedergli dove vai così presto, dove cazzo vai tutti i giorni a quest’ora, che bisogno c’è di uscire all’alba se l’ambulatorio apre alle dieci? Ma non ce la fa a rimanere, non ce la fa vedere Loris che si sveglia e comincia subito a sudare e tossire, che lo guarda con quegli occhi imploranti. E non ce la fa a rimanere con lei, perché dovrebbe trovare parole diverse, parole morbide che non gli escono più di bocca da tanto tempo, dovrebbe avere il coraggio di toccarla, di stringerla fra le braccia e chiederle: «Com’è che ci siamo ridotti così? Siamo noi, cazzo, siamo ancora noi, Francesco e Michela, siamo tu ed io.»
Arte al bar: Salvador Dalì
Disegno di Walter Fest
Readers of signoradeifiltri, welcome back to our artistic habitat, today we will meet a great artist but, unfortunately, we have a problem: all my means of locomotion have left me, I don't know how to go and get it, I need help and the only one who can run to our rescue is Matteo "spark", the writer from Foligno. Now I phone him.
- Matteo, only you can help me!
- Hi Wà, what happened?
- The 500 is brokent, the Vespa, after I had it driven by Picasso, has a crooked fork, the Guzzi is painted all pink with a green tank and, if he sees it, he gets pissed and gives it up, I have to go get him in 10 minutes and I don't know how to do it, please come up with an idea!
- There is the 600 minibus of the nuns of the convent of the pacifists.
- Ah! So?
- Then we steal it, but then we bring it back.
- Basically, we are on a mission on behalf of God!
- I know this joke, come on, let's not waste time, let's go to the convent, dressed all in black so as not to catch the eye!
- Like priests?
- What are you saying, like Diabolik! But didn't you read the comics? I recommend you also dye your face black!
- And how do I do this?
- With Giotto markers, but do I have to tell you everything? What kind of artist are you?
- I'll be right back!
Walter Fest and Matteo "Spark", the writer from Foligno, disguised as Diabolik, with Giotto's face tinged with black, are about to scrape the nuns' minibus, and then go running to pick up today's artist.
- With a jump we climb over the wall of the pacifist nuns, with a painter's spatula we open the door, Matteo the writer attacks the wires of the ignition lock, I start, there is full of fuel, we are going to start and ...
- But you're just too clumsy!
She is the abbess nun and has a large club in her hand.
- Take the keys and make no noise, of course you are really two idiots, the youngest here is 105 years old. It's a life we don't drive, instead of scratching it you could have asked.
- Sister, let's run, we have to take an artist!
- Well ?! Are you going to take him with a 600 minibus? And then who would this artist be?
- That's what designed the chupa-chups brand.
- The lollipops?
- Yup.
- Come on, don't keep him waiting. And when you bring it back I want it repainted.
- Like Pollock?
- On Sunday both of you come to confession, lazzaroni!
- Well, let’s go, the nun is still holding the club!
And thanks to the ecclesiastical recommendation, we start and in a flash we are with him, who is he? But it's easy, it's Salvador Dalì and he's waiting for us at the bar.
- Master, welcome, thank you for accepting our invitation.
- I have been waiting for you for an hour.
- Master, sorry, can we offer you a good coffee?
- Yes, but first I would like some pretzels, with olives, chips and a dry Martini.
Fortunately, Gianni, from behind the counter, saw the scene and in a flash brings us everything.
- So what do we want to talk about?
- Master, would you tell us brief notes about your life?
- Excuse me, what do you care?
- Maybe our readers are interested in your history.
- Do you want me to tell you something very frankly?
- Sure.
- Very well, then you must know that those who approach a work of art must not know anything about the life of an artist. These people only have to care about the pleasure, the taste of seeing the work done. They can study it, admire it, they can be led to reflect, they can dream, but to know the life, death and miracles of an artist, what would it do?
- Can you help us solve the dilemma?
- If the public were interested and enchanted by our love stories, passing through our human disasters, and therefore attracted by our fortunes or existential misfortunes, they would go into confusion. But aren't you tired of this crazy curiosity you call gossip?
- Without doubt the historical episodes have always influenced the artists, without popes and patrons your renaissance would not have been born, pass me the chips.
- Would you also like some cubes of Parmesan?
- After, after ... Here, you see, art must be admired, enjoyed, lived, contemplated. Art is part of the universe, consequently ,who cares who I was the son of, my love story, my performances, my travels, my mustache?
- Master, but if art is part of the universe, who is the artist?
- Let's say that the universe is the crumbling medium with which you arrived, let's say that you have no fuel in the tank and therefore it is a static vehicle.
- So?
- And then the genius of the artist intervenes, which is the fuel of the universe, it is the energy that lights up the colour, develops the vital power that illuminates people and makes them alive, an unstoppable explosion of perpetual motion, the humanity that merges with nature. Art puts the whole context in order and in disorder, creating balance and imbalance for your joy, in the continuous search for poetry and happiness.
- Maestro, speaking of poetry, I would like to introduce you to Matteo Gentili.
- And who is he?
- A writer, a poet who has music in rhymes.
- Boy, you should cut your beard, it ages you and makes you look, with all respect for the category, as a barber. But let's go on, what else would you like to ask me?
- Master, can you tell us about your style?
- I have no style, my painting is magic, if we have to talk about style that must refer only to my person, I am an object made of style, and the problem for others is that I am inimitable. Come on, try to imitate me! And do you want to know why I am shaped by my style?
- Of course we are curious.
- I wanted to be free, freedom is a great thing. Do I want to wear yellow trousers? I wear them. Do I want to wear a pair of fake shoes? Even if I am a painter, do I want to make a film? I can. And then I love to be photographed, because photography is a beautiful invention. But above all, I wanted to have fun, laugh, be cheerful, a mood that allowed me to paint and represent what escapes you humans and, without caterpillars in the head, to free my boundless fantasy. I admit it, I was a great worker of art, but still playful. And then the artist must not be too serious. Aren't politicians, academics, anchormans on all the pulpits of the globe enough?
- You were a surrealist.
- Yes and even the only one, although the movement was formed by a group of valid painters, I was “the” surrealist. Do you understand the difference?
- Let's imagine so. Master, what do you think of the other artists of that period who shared that path with you?
- Brilliant, capable, talented, daring, able to break with the art of the past, but held back by money, by the urgent need to satisfy critics and merchants to sell their works, a border that, if not crossed, precludes you to dive into the indefinite. Not that I didn't love money and success, but I didn't want to fix my mind on earthly matters.
- And you, detaching yourself from the crowd, created your myth.
- It was easy because I was born a myth, since I was a child I had my ideas and then, like many others, I was predestined. Do you see these hands?
- Yup.
- They are like those of a magician. I drew and painted magic. But you were asking me about the moment when I detached myself from the rest of the painters of the surrealist group, with whom there were divergent points. I am not a lone wolf, I have always worked with many other artists, photographers, directors, writers, advertisers, the only condition for collaborating was to have fun and be visionary.
- Master, did you also draw and receive inspiration from other artists?
- How to remain indifferent to the beauty of art produced by other artists of the past? I believe that the whole real and unconscious universe is a huge ocean of energy, which we must all draw on. I have never copied or imitated anyone, I have only drawn on that energy necessary to create new ones. Boy, what's wrong? You look nervous.
- Matteo, tell him about the poem.
- Master, would you like to hear a poem of mine?
- Sure, is that why you're nervous?
- You know, I'm kind of emotional.
- Boy, I read in your eyes that you must have a great energy inside, strength, let me feel your art.
“In the vast expanse of crazy diamonds I searched for memories without finding them.
Yet these thoughts shone like stars in the sky
But a man cannot
a man does not know
a man loves what he sees
So these thoughts turned into memories
savor the gestures of a heart in turmoil "
- Well done, good Matteo. And so you too dig with abstraction in the maze of your unconscious to talk about love. I know about love. Do you know that I have loved a woman for over fifty years? How is this poem titled?
- What title would you give her?
- Synthesis of a synthetic love.
- But you're a genius!
- I know!
- Matteo, tell him about the book!
- Boy from Foligno, did you also write a book?
- Yes, someone. It is published with @libereria: The stories of a stranger.
- You will be successful, but cut your beard and, since you are nice, I will allow you to make yourself a mustache like mine. And when you go to the presentations of your work, you keep this same charisma. Be anxiously emotional but real and spontaneous, this thing people will appreciate. But what do we do now?
- Actually we should bring the 600 back to the nuns.
- I understand, give me a ride to the bus stop. Hey, boy from the bar, I recommend you not to accept money from these two, marks the drink on Giacomo Balla's account. Come on, come on, my wife is waiting for me.
Friends, before returning the vehicle to the pacifist nuns, Walter Fest ,Matteo Gentili and Salvador Dalì thank you, greet you and look forward to seeing you at the next interview with the artist. And it will still be a pleasure.
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not a madman" Salvador Dalì.
INTERVISTA CON L’ARTISTA JOHN ATKINSON GRIMSHAW (Leeds 1836 – 1893)
Readers of signoradeifiltri, the blog that sails like a sailboat in the sea of culture, here I am, back to you in the company of a new guest, surely only a few of you you know him, and it will be a great pleasure for me to introduce you to him, but first you have to wait me to pick him up with my Vespa. Today there is a beautiful sun, we are in spring and the health emergency does not exist in our imagination. There he is, I see him, I brought a Viking helmet for him. Who knows if he will like it, I also brought a copy of one of his works and we will talk about it together.
- Hello.
- Hi Walter, as usual you're late, Pollock had told me that you would keep me waiting.
- It wasn't my fault, the Vespa had a dirty spark plug, a flooded carburettor and a clogged muffler.
- Why didn't you come with the Fiat 500?
- All the artists I interviewed have run out of stocks of chocolates and coffee.
- Ah, so what do we do now?
- I thought of going to get coffee and then take you to see the Colosseum what do you say?
- Okay, but don't run.
- Put your helmet on and let's go.
- But this helmet has horns!
- Yes, like a Viking. Why, don't you like it?
- Fortunately, there is no one who will see me.
- I say you're fine, come on, let's go.
Every time I go out on a Vespa with the artists, the helmet never gets a nod of approval. Yet they are artists, they should be extravagant, I begin to believe that they are just normal people with a low sense of humor, nobody is perfect.
Vrooommmm ... A few minutes by road and we arrived at our destination.
- Walter, do you know why I like Italy?
- I can imagine it ... Because you eat well?
- Walter, why are you so banal, everyone had spoken so well about you!
- I was kidding! Come on, I want to hear it from you.
- The light, you have a fantastic light, you don't need lighting, even in the dark, light creates a crazy harmony, and gives you a great emotional charge. I'm a bit of a cold guy and I'm comfortable here.
- I decided to interview you because a Scottish friend of mine recommended me. She is your fan, she likes your romantic spark. Instead, I like your works more.
- What?
- The depth, the breadth of the image and the sign, such a clean sign.
- What about the colour? Does the colour tell you nothing?
- Well, yes, the colour is also fascinating, but your works seem a single colour, I hardly see reds, blues or pinks.
- Walter, now I will explain, the use of colour was my business card, or, better said, my poetry. The people who could afford to buy my works wanted first of all works that represented the places of the time in an elegant form, free of dirty, violent or dramatically real images. And that was what I did, in short, I made a photograph colouring it with poetry and a touch of romance.
- You had a very refined technique.
- Let's say I had a very steady hand, and then consider that I am very calm, methodical, without emotional impulses. In just over twenty years I was an employee, a classic dandy, dressed neatly, and punctual like a Swiss watch.
- And how did you become an artist?
- Many of us have a dual personality, I was externally cold, but in my heart and in my soul I saw and felt different atmospheres, musical lyrics with warm and comforting background colours. I had no impetuous classic impulses like "genius and unruliness", but I was a disciplined and imaginative artist, and yet capable.
- It is true, your works are a mix of fantasy and photographic rationality, is it possible that you have never been tempted to change?
- And what would it do? That was me, myself, one with the work I was going to do and that, after years, gave me fame, success and economic gratification. My exaltation was not in experimentation but in the satisfaction of letting the observer enter into my work and to make him live the emotions he wanted to experience. And, modesty aside, even without school and teachers, I did well. And my children became appreciated artists and you know that children hardly follow in the footsteps of their parents.
- Yes, I understand, but let's go back to your works, as I said, I really like your large formats, I would define them as pictorial cinemascope, you are also famous for the brightness of your moons and reflections on the water.
- The secret was a steady hand, working in absolute silence. Before placing the brush, I closed my eyes to imagine the scene, paying attention to the smallest detail, using high quality tools and products that were not lacking in my part and, in addition, a lot of love. Without love we don't go far and my love was made exclusively of poetry, a gentle breeze that warmed my heart and gave me the serenity necessary to work at my best.
- What would you do if you went back?
- First of all I would stop smoking and sniffing tobacco, then I would do everything I did again. I'm honest, I wouldn't even have been eager to know the Impressionists. Too transgressive for my taste, maybe at best I could have gone for a ride in Japan.
- Japan? Not a bad idea. Look John, it's getting late, we didn't have a coffee and we didn't even see the Colosseum.
-Walter, how about going for a Neapolitan pizza with red wine and an evening stroll in the light of the stars with your Vespa?
-Neapolitan pizza and red wine? John, weren't you a cold guy?
- Yes, but your pizza and red wine are very good!
Ladies and gentlemen of our beloved blog, John Atkinson Grimshow and I greet you. We go for a pizza under the shining moon and look forward to seeing you at the next surprise interview.
Arte al bar: Pablo Picasso
Disegno di Walter Fest
- Dai, mettiti il casco che andiamo a prendere il caffè.
Per fortuna tutto fila liscio, ma la prossima volta prendo la 500, Pablo Picasso guida come un torero, ci sediamo al tavolo.
- Pablo, se tu non avessi fatto l'artista, che cosa avresti fatto nella tua vita?
Dear reader of signoradeifiltri, today we will have a spring edition, it is 8.30 am, I am waiting for an artist that I have to interview, we will go to the usual bar to have breakfast and then with my Vespa I will take him for a ride around Rome. My pistachio green Vespa is ready, my friend Mario has informed the bar tender that we will arrive with an illustrious guest, first I will offer him a hot coffee. I know that the interview will not be boring, static and formal. I see the artist who arrives: Pablo Picasso.
- Hi Pablo.
- Hi Walter.
- Come on, put on the helmet, we're going to have coffee.
- Yes, but I'll drive.
I'm afraid, he has a grim look, it's better to go along with him and not say no to him.
- Okay, but go slowly, can you put this helmet on?
- Hey, Walter, but this is a centurion helmet!
- Pablo, we are in Rome.
- Yeah, if we were in Venice, would you put a gondola on my head?
- But you look like Julius Caesar.
- We don't even talk about it!
After a heated dispute, Pablo Picasso agrees to put the centurion helmet on his head, in exchange for going to the Trevi fountain like Marcello Mastroianni, let's go ... broooommmm!
Fortunately everything goes smoothly, but next time I’ll take the 500, Pablo Picasso drives like a bullfighter, we sit down at the table.
- Pablo, if you hadn't been an artist, what would you have done in your life?
- Bueno, good question, I would have been undecided between the policeman and the barman, two occupations to be in contact with people. Logically, I left it to fate, we cannot hinder fate, each of us has a task, mine was to be an artist.
Two beautiful girls go by and Pablo looks at them.
- Pablo, good things are better than bad things.
- Claro, it's a question of sensitivity. That formidable ability we have to be attracted by everything that emanates harmony and poetry. Life is fascinating, spectacular, and humanity has the good fortune to live surrounded and immersed in the wonder of nature. Art has the duty and obligation to manifest everything that surrounds us through fantasy and technique, everyone must do their own to make our existence poetic.
- Pablo, not everyone has this sensitivity and, in any case, something less beautiful is always present.
- Diablo! And we artists must separate the bad images, selfishly built from the hands of man, from what is the universal language, directed towards a good way of life that makes humanity happy. It is true that we must also highlight brutality and miserable human weakness, as if we were a book open to all, we artists, messengers and apostles of creation.
- When you made Guernica were you very angry?
- No, more than angry, look me in the face, touch here, squeeze without fear of hurting me.
He takes my hand firmly and makes me touch his left biceps. Pablo Picasso has exceptional musculature.
- I was a fury, I made that painting moved by a beastly inner strength, each touch of brush a blow against the absurdity of inhumanity. It was like shooting an anti-war film, a dramatic black and white film with no other colours, it was useless to show blood and flaming colours, have you ever seen a black and white film?
-Yup
- In the contrast between those two tones there was the maximum of expressiveness, if I had used the colours it would have been a work like all the others and, instead, I had to impress the people, the same ones who rule the world without thinking about the sufferings of the innocent people. Unfortunately, some, too tied to the interests of a few, have not understood the lesson and armies are still playing war.
Cabrones! ... Barman bring me a gazzosa ... cabrones all!
- But everyone?
- Yes, all cabrones!
Pablo sips the gazzosa and lets out his anger, I try to make him talk of personal and romantic matters.
- Have you had a lot of love affairs?
The answer is a clear affirmative gesture, narrowing his eyes like a fawn in love.
- I liked women a lot, I looked at them!
- And music?
- I worked too hard, I didn't have time for music, but I liked it, oh yes, if I liked it. If I had been from this era, I would have liked the Beatles, a little rock, a little romantic, even if they didn't show it. They were muy loco like me, and besides, with all that hair, they were also nice, but I confess that even without their baronet helmets I had a certain charm.
- You traveled the world.
- Oh yes, but I could do more, it was a long way. You know, sometimes I felt master of the world but, in the end, you realize that you were just passing through and this thing made me a little sad. Luckily I have always worked a lot and canceled negative thoughts with my creativity, but I have no regrets. My art was a fantastic personal language and universal language, I did what I wanted as a child, I had fun and, even if you struggle to savor the pleasures of life, then you enjoy poetry and you feel at peace with yourself. Too bad that you remain only a pawn on the board, but with a heart swollen with passion. Of course it's worth living! When he is strong and sincere, El corazòn makes you see the light of existence without limits!
- Pablo, which work are you most fond of?
- Walter, what question is it? It's like asking if you love mom or dad more, I loved all my works. It was a continuous search and exchange of love with them, in each of them I left a part of me, I can't say that I loved one more than another and do you know why?
- Yeah, why?
- Because my works were me and I was them, so it's like saying that we lived in symbiosis and I was a little selfish, huh! I loved myself very much!
- Would you have liked to be a futurist?
- No amigo, a movement of confusing colours, brilliant but confusing, and then these futurists were too dreamy, reckless, obsessed with myths. The speed? Modernity? The super ego of the man who rules the earth, the seas, the sky? No amigo, I hold poetry tightly, don't you see how much poetry inebriates us with its sight and its perfume?
- Pink period?
- Yeah, I saw what the others couldn't see and I was happy to have painted it. Ask me about Dali.
- Pablo, what do you think of Dali?
- Ahahahah ... I'm glad that I stole him a lot of women, I always beat him on time, but I valued him and he esteemed me. Great scoundrel, with a small format work he has crossed the barrier of time and has become famous and immortal.
- The persistence of memory.
- Yeah, a small enigmatic and visionary picture, only a great artist like him could make it ... Now we have to go, did you bring the money to pay the bill here at the bar?
I open my wallet, I have five euros, a few saints and an expired bus ticket between the cobwebs. We hadn't told you but while we were talking, we had six coffees, five sugary donuts, a box of Tuscan cigars, a sambuca, a soda and a whiskey.
- Ahahah ... I think we're in trouble now, come on, let's go.
- Without paying?
- It is claro, start the Vespa, I jump on and off we go to see the Sistine chapel and, later, the Trevi fountain, for swimming.
Vroooommm !!
Readers of the blog kissed by the rays of the sun of culture, yes, Pablo Picasso and I fled with the Vespa and did not pay the bill at the bar. It was not our fault... I forgot ... The bath in the Trevi fountain can only be done by Picasso and I, if you want, follow us with your imagination.
L'arte astratta secondo me
Molta gente, parlando di arte astratta, pensa che sia bella e piacevole ma di non facile comprensione. Molti pensano che chiunque possa essere in grado di realizzare opere di quel genere. Si dicono molte cose ma in realtà l'arte astratta nasce dalla fantasia di ognuno di noi. Ognuno di noi vede tutto quello che abbiamo intorno con una logica ma poi, con la fantasia, può inventare ciò che di fatto non esiste. Ed è proprio la fantasia un motivo di gioia per tutti noi.
Provate a pensare agli scarabocchi dei bambini, sono vere opere d'arte, perché naturali. I bambini sono liberi da condizionamenti, quindi, quando disegnano, sono autentici e spontanei e il loro linguaggio espressivo diventa arte.
Oppure pensiamo agli uomini della preistoria, pensiamo ai disegni rupestri nelle grotte di Altamira in Spagna. Gli esseri umani hanno da sempre utilizzato il linguaggio grafico per comunicare, non è importante che il disegno sia fedele alla realtà, oppure simile, oppure totalmente diverso, tanto da lasciare all'osservatore la possibilità d'interpretare un'opera considerata astratta. La bellezza dell'arte è nella sua manifestazione e nel vedere questo linguaggio come una parte essenziale della nostra vita.
Che vita sarebbe senza la bellezza dell'arte? Arte astratta, o figurativa, in una parola sola: "arte". Secondo me, l'arte astratta è sempre esistita ma è con il movimento francese degli Impressionisti che qualcosa è cambiato nella storia. Da quel momento l'arte potè anche essere considerata da un punto di vista diverso. Come è successo per tutti i nuovi movimenti, la rottura con gli schemi del passato ha generato una scintilla creativa.
La scomposizione della luce, con effetto su tutte le forme, grazie agli Impressionisti, ha fatto nascere delle opere d'arte nuove. L'osservatore non vedeva più solo quello che esisteva realmente ma, attraverso la fantasia, poteva toccare con mano le impressioni che abbiamo davanti gli occhi in ogni nostro momento. Impressioni che, essendo velocissime, ci sfuggono. Gli impressionisti, con una tecnica astratta, erano riusciti a fermarle sulla tela. Quindi ci trovavamo di fronte a un nuovo rinascimento che non si sarebbe più fermato.
L'arte astratta è veloce, spontanea, dinamica, anche se può sembrare irrazionale, le sue forme sono comunque equilibrate. Con un solo colpo d'occhio può emozionarci, farci sorridere, farci sognare, farci riflettere. L'arte astratta non ha limiti. E' vero, è molto difficile per un artista inventare qualcosa di nuovo, perché tutto è stato già inventato, ma è proprio questo il bello, trovare strade alternative, sperimentare. E, grazie alla fantasia, nulla è impossibile.
Many people, speaking of abstract art, think that it is beautiful and pleasant, but not easy to understand. Many things are said but, in reality, abstract art is born from the imagination of each of us. Each of us sees what is around us with a logic but then, with the imagination, can invent what does not actually exist. And fantasy is a reason for joy for all of us.
Try to think of children's doodles, they are true works of art, because they are natural. Children are free from conditioning, therefore, when they draw, they are authentic and spontaneous, and their expressive language becomes art.
Or think of the men of prehistory, think of the rock drawings in the caves of Altamira in Spain. Human beings have always used graphic language to communicate, it is not important that the drawing is faithful to reality, or similar, or totally different, so as to leave the observer the possibility of interpreting a work considered abstract. The beauty of art is in its manifestation and in seeing this language as an essential part of our life.
What would life be like without the beauty of art? Abstract, or figurative, art, in one word: "art". In my opinion, abstract art has always existed, but it is with the French Impressionists movement that something has changed in history. From that moment on, art could also be considered from a different point of view. As has happened with all the new movements, the break with the patterns of the past has generated a creative spark.
The breakdown of light, with an effect on all forms, thanks to the Impressionists, has given birth to new works of art. The observer no longer saw only what really existed but, through fantasy, he could touch the impressions we have before our eyes in every moment. Impressions that, being very fast, escape us. The impressionists, with an abstract technique, had managed to stop them on the canvas. So we were faced with a new renaissance that would never stop.
Abstract art is fast, spontaneous, dynamic. Even if it may seem irrational, its forms are however balanced. With a single glance, it can excite us, make us smile, make us dream, make us reflect. Abstract art has no limits. It is true that it is very difficult for an artist to invent something new, because everything has been already invented, but this is the beauty of finding alternative ways, experimenting. And thanks to the imagination nothing is impossible.
"Art is a harmony parallel to nature" Paul Cezanne.
"I work from the inside out, just like nature" Jackson Pollock