Bishops & Queens

Beautiful Boxes: Food for Your Eyes, 1

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 07:21:00 +0000

Things discussed: Triennale; Arts&Foods; Expo 2015; Impractical Furniture; 3-D Encyclopedias; Dioramas; Liver Cleavers; Houses of Better Days.

Special/Expo 2015
written by f

In the course its three "acts", Arts&Foods lets you see atomic shelters and space pods, avant-garde kitchens and bourgeois dining rooms, cocktail bars and wildly impractical furniture; a fully built temporary house; model cargo ships from a bygone era; tiny people buying tiny groceries and even tinier people tormented in a McDonald's hell; huts made of bread, and couches made of bread, and igloos, also made of bread. And giant hot dogs having a nap by the campfire.

But this is not a silly exhibition: it's playful, mostly, but never frivolous. This is one of its strongest features. And with all its immense quantity of material on display, with one small but very annoying exception, it is always clear.

Arts&Foods is one of the two beautiful exhibitions in the already beautiful Triennale venue in Milan. The other is called Cucine&Ultracorpi (Kitchens&Invaders in English—I'll come back to the difference in naming in the dedicated post.)

With Arts&Foods dubbed "The only Expo Milano 2015 pavilion in the City", both Triennale exhibits were made on occasion of, and in collaboration with, Expo 2015. And they share the larger theme of food: Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life (Expo's official title.)

Both Arts&Foods and Kitchens&Invaders provide a view of the general theme as seen through art and design. But have largely different concepts and aims.

Arts&Foods is composed from hundreds of pieces—ranging from one entire and fully furnished house to the tiny coffee spoon—gathered from museums and private collections the world over; it has a loose chronological pace, and at times is both archival and anthropological in taste. After all, the subtitle is "Rituals since 1851".

With Cucine&Ultracorpi/Kitchens&Invaders we have in a sense the exact reverse: it is conceptual in nature and made entirely from the Triennale Design Museum permanent collection, which is a celebration of Italian design.

In fact, the Triennale Design Museum has the habit of displaying its collection in such a fashion: thematic rides through objects and installations chosen from pieces that are already there.

Both share the same curator and mastermind in Germano Celant and are complementary in essence, with a maximalist and didactic approach in the first, and a minimalist and meditative one in the second. I will talk at length about Kitchens&Invaders in a later post. Let's concentrate on Arts&Foods for now.

As anticipated, the exhibition unrolls in three sections and on the whole is a result of a curatorial choice of great quality, great strength, even if not always of great beauty.

One of its weaknesses is soon evident in the first room of the first section: the captions are very small, usually printed on transparent stickers (which is annoying in the case of vitrines) and, at least in one case, completely useless.

I'm thinking of the unnerving case of the Fijian and New Caledonian cannibal forks and the liver cleavers from New Zealand—objects with names such as Ai cula ni bokola, Iculanibokola, and Wahaika. All from the late 1800s.

The latter especially are wonderful wooden axe-knives with intricated carvings, with a haunting quality to them.

They are right in front of the Dada and Post-Dada display, the one with Duchamp's Boîte en-valise and Meret Oppenheim's homage to Duchamp. It is natural to mistake them for Western contemporary art, and the choice plays on such ambiguity and expectations.

The pairing may be clever, but the near-absence of captions and labels makes it stupidly obscure. The reason why I know what these objects are, how they're called, where and when they are from, is because I bought the catalogue.

The catalogue, unlike the labels, is great in that it organizes the material into informed and informative essays. Along with the Kitchens&Invaders one, it will have a post of its own.

In the exhibition itself, you can find the labels right at knee-level, on the side, like an afterthought. This oversight—or worse if it's a conscious decision—makes for a very dull, uninspired display.

As annoying as this is, it is an incident in an otherwise very positive experience. It is also true that whenever I visit an exhibition, particularly such a large-scale one, I'm always ready to be disappointed. The occasions weren't far afield in this one either. But only at the very beginning.

When so much in the actual Expo pavilions is based on promotion and interaction, the Triennale exhibitions are a meditation on that promotion and that interaction: their meaning, their unfolding, their directions.

Of the three sections of Arts&Foods, this first one is the more serious in nature. And is the one that suffers most under the weight of the material, such that it doesn't quite seem geared up for what it's set out to do.

The very first thing that one sees entering the exhibition is that it combines two contemporary obsessions: food and archives. As we walk on, it does it better and better and becomes more relaxed and more interesting. But at the very beginning the objects look crammed or scattered at random.

The problem may well be the overwhelming amount of stuff on display. That is usually the difference between a temporary exhibition and a permanent one. And this is what the first section of Arts&Foods has set out do be: a museum.

The Museum is a 3-D encyclopedia we can browse through following one thematic thread at a time, or just wiki’ing about with no particular order.

Temporary exhibits on the other hand are usually smaller and more focused; monographic ones on this scale are more the stuff of National Museums. The "food" and "rituals" themes of Arts&Foods are wide-ranging, far-reaching ones.

It is unusual, in Italy at least, to visit a temporary exhibition of these scale and ambition.

It wasn't in the past, at least in Northern Italy. Institutions like Palazzo Grassi in Venice or Palazzo Reale in Milan were once famous for hosting such breakthroughs as I Fenici (The Phoenicians), in 1988; I Greci in Occidente (The Greeks in the West) in 1996; I Maya, in 1998; Gli Etruschi (The Etruscans) in 2001; I Faraoni (The Pharaohs) in 2002-2003; Roma e i Barbari (Rome and the Barbarians) in 2008, in Venice. And Iside. Il mistero. Il mito. La magia. (Isis. The Mystery. The Myth. The Magic) in 1997 and Hokusai. Il vecchio pazzo per la pittura (Hokusai. The Old Man Mad About Painting) in 1999-2000, in Milan. And so on.

Huge, complex international efforts to put together hundreds or thousands of pieces from around the world, with painstaking scientific accuracy and in-depth historical research. These exhibitions contributed to the advancement of knowledge in their respective subjects, and offered insight into forgotten or little-known cultures to the general public.

Today Palazzo Reale has been dulled down and effectively crippled, chopped off into four or five—I don’t even care to check—smaller exhibition spaces, each usually hosting a generic show of little substance and mainstream appeal. Easy money seems to be what they're after.

Palazzo Grassi holds on to its signature quality, but is now completely dedicated to contemporary art, showcasing highlights from the collection of its owner, François Pinault.

The Triennale is famous for large scale retrospectives of contemporary artists, such as the very beautiful and very successful The Andy Warhol Show, The Jean-Michel Basquiat Show, The Keith Haring Show. The space is huge, and it tends to be used for huge events. But a retrospective is an essay, not an encyclopedia.

Arts&Foods has this double nature of art exhibition and museum. Dealing with such scale and size on a curatorial level, you are forced to make your own choices as visitor.

I decided to follow fully realized spaces rather than single objects. And the most interesting progression to me was what I'd call a political one.

Having a didactic attitude, this first part offers a look at society at its micro- or nuclear level: the dining room, the dinner table; and at middle- or social level: the butcher's shop, the cocktail bar, and so on.

Almost immediately, there is a diorama quality to some of the displays, and these near-dioramas are built with a strong sociological and anthropological eye.

Incidentally, when an actual diorama comes into play, it's model ships on a sea of silk. One of the strangest things from a visitor's point of view.

You first peer into it through a strip-window on the wall, not knowing what to make of it, and finally see it in full sparkle once you walk round the corner.

Beyond this and encompassing or trying to encompass it all, there is a macro- or political level.

This is when this first part is at its strongest: when it shows how new technologies, new radical production techniques, and behavioral instructions are imposed from above—or fail to do so.

And this can take two basic forms, both aimed at a deep rationalization and standardization of everyday living: the ideological anxieties of Le Corbusier and other radical designers of the early XX century, on one hand; and the economic planning and large scale marketing strategies to promote (impose) the use of new technologies, on the other.

The former failed in itself but cast a long shadow on the strategies adopted by the latter.

And here lie the highlights of this first section: a full house complete with furniture and appliances. It's La Maison des Jours Meilleurs designed in the 1950s by the French architect Jean Prouvé, who was then specializing in emergency shelters. I quote from the label:

The "House of Better Days" [was] designed in response to an appeal by Abbé Pierre, founder of the Emmaus movement for assistance to the poor and homeless.

The structure had an area of 57 square meters [about 614 sq. ft.], was able to accomodate a family of four-six people and could be mounted by two people in just seven hours. Organized around the kitchen, opening completely onto the living room, it had functional furniture designed by Prouvé himself.

Projects of this kind—temporary homes, emergency shelters—are more common and more urgent now than ever before: refugee camps, migrant camps, disaster relief areas and so on.

Arts&Foods only hints at them with La Maison des Jours Meilleurs, and it does it rooted in its historical perspective.

This is not, in other words, the "hot" topic emerging from this exhibition: the standardization of everyday living is.

What's literally missing but is the ideal—and factual—point of arrival of all this is where we are now: the Ikea home.

(This is the first of five posts dedicated to my visit to the Triennale in Milan. The first three will be dealing, respectively, with the first, the second and the third section of Arts&Foods; the fourth post will be about Cucine&Ultracorpi/Kitchens&Invaders; lastly, the fifth will be taking a look and a read-through of the catalogues of the two exhibitions.)

While We Lay Awake

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 07:14:00 +0000

Things discussed: Reboots; Art Biennale; Expo 2015; Enthusiasm; Vast Oceans Unspoken.

Special/Expo 2015; Special/Biennale 2015;
written by e&f

It's been a very long hiatus. But how long can a hiatus be before ushering a reboot?

This is not, strictly, our plan. We like the way we set up the blog the first time around. But we did think some issues through.

On the whole, then, we'll be doing what we did, albeit at a slower pace, more meditative, and diving a little deeper. But we will also try to cover more up-to-date issues in what seems to be a pretty exciting year of art events.

Our reviews have rarely been timely. We do go to openings but seldom write about them. What we have just seen and experienced needs time to grow on us and find the right arrangement of words on the page. Sometimes this may take weeks. Or months.

This means that often, perhaps too often, we've reviewed exhibitions that were closed or closing. And this isn't a good service to anybody.

There is a tail of posts with this same issue coming soon, but we hope to be interrupting this trend in the next few months.

Luckily for us, this year Italy in particular has two huge events going on at the same time, and both lasting several months: the Art Biennale in Venice and the Expo 2015 in Milan. And in a sense there's a bit of both in each.

Our coverage of these events, given their size and complexity, will be a loose collection of posts with a header link on top, and will be nested under two new labels: Special/Expo and Special/Biennale.

We will be far from covering them all. Not because of size, but because of taste. In this case, too, we will be doing what we've always done: only talk about what we like, leaving unspoken the vast ocean of what we don't.

We'd rather write enthusiastically and critically about something we enjoyed and understood, than deal with something that felt unispiring, useless or irritating to us.

This doesn't mean we can't be critical sometimes. But we will always try to be constructive, talking about marginal aspects of something we enjoyed on the whole.

As for our think pieces, while the blog lay dormant we were fully awake: we have been writing, watching, taking pictures, reading, visiting places and talking to people.

We have enough material already stored away for several months to come. And some surprises, too.

We do hope you'll enjoy the new ride.

At a Glance: Art Before Christmas @ Art Kitchen Superground

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 01:05:00 +0000

Things discussed: Art Before Christmas; Art Kitchen; Superground; Amends; Delays; other things.

written by e&f

We've been distracted. We've been sluggish. And we've been busy on other things. But we haven't abandoned Bishops&Queens.

Things are about to change. Not just change back to the old routine, but, starting 2015, the blog will be snappier, buzzing with news and diagonal takes and fresh cuts.

We'll be all over the place. In a good way. We'll be in, out, on and around the box. Literally.

Talking of promise: a very long time ago we had two interviews with the gorgeous people running Art Kitchen in Milan. We never got to post them. We will. First thing next year.

It may not be enough to make up for the delay, but we invite all of you who live, pass by or gravitate around Milan in these days to go and visit their great space Superground and take part to their new feat: Art Before Christmas.

Expansion: Cildo Meireles

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 13:07:00 +0000

Things discussed: HangarBicocca; Cildo Meireles; installations; Milan; stench; radios; glass; synaesthesia; Popes; bones; eggs; bullets; ice-cubes.

written by e

HangarBicocca is never a disappointment. (I am always more convinced it is truly one of the best art venues in Milan.) It wasn’t again when I went to see Installations by Cildo Meireles.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

Okay, the space is so beautiful and powerful that it is like the Arsenale venue at the Venice Biennale: you feel like whatever you put in will look awesome. Luckily, it’s not always true. But here at the Hangar Bicocca I always appreciate the way the location with its strong character, enjoyable by itself, is still very apt to contain an exhibition in a discreet way, without interfering too much with it or predominating.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

In the 1960s, Meireles was one of the first to experiment with multi-sensory immersive installations addressing social and cultural issues that required the full involvement of the public. Installations is the first exhibition in Italy devoted to him, including 12 of the artist’s most important installations, from 1970 to the present day. Meireles’ installations are pervasive. They aim at all the senses, they are to be lived, gone through, touched, heard, tasted, smelt. It’s not always a pleasant feeling, which is not what one should expect from art anyway, but it is always powerful.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

In the big, high, black pavilion of the Hangar Bicocca, the 12 installations stand out like islands, each one a different world to explore. Like a kid, I was feeling in a playground not knowing from where to start, seduced by each one of them. So I started from the beginning.
I was taken away from the first installation, Atraves (1983-89), an area which you walk in at your own risk, stepping on broken glass and moving among vertical barriers that go from barbed wire to gauze, from fishing nets to big glass sheets. All of them very precariously put, you have to be careful where you put your feet, and where you turn, always hearing the sound of the creaking glass under your feet.

via Artribune

Walking slowly and on the alert, you get to the centre, where is a rough big ball made of cellophane (supposed to be lit from the inside, which wasn’t when I went). It was curious the different reactions this can elicit. In my view a perfect metaphor of life, I saw in the core a precious beauty to be found despite the hardship one encounters in life, a jewel that can be made of simple things (the poor material the ball is made of), while my companion saw in it a possibly dangerous object.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

Next to it is Babel (2001), a totem made of stereos, radios and digital clocks of different periods. They are turned on on different channels and volumes, piling up a series of sounds and voices in a big mish-mash. I smiled when, putting my ear close to one of the radios, I heard the news of the canonization of Pope John Paul II by Pope Francis in the presence of the retired Pope Benedict XVI.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

Olvido (1987-1989) is the most putting off installation in terms of senses. In the middle of a beautifully ordered round enclosure made of 70,000 candid candles, stands an Indian tepee made with 6,000 banknotes from different American countries. From the inside of the tepee, covered with coal, comes the constant noise of an electric saw. The space around it and inside the candles enclosure is covered with 3 tons of bovine bones. I didn’t realize immediately that it was from them that came a sweetish smell, which soon turned into a sometimes barely bearable stench.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

Amerikkka (1991-2013) is a surface made of 22,000 eggs. I stepped on them, which was painful, so I had to be careful at every step, added to the strange feeling on walking on eggs, and lied down. Above is another slanted surface, with a blue background filled with different kinds of bullets all pointing menacingly in your direction. The simple and direct way in which Meireles succeeds again in condensing in one experience the awe, the pain, the danger of life (for what I felt) without even making you feel the need to interpret in words, but just to feel the experience and recognising that he is speaking directly to a part of you that understands and is connected, is wonderful. But then, of course this was my interpretation, which again was different from the one of my exhibition companion, which makes the work even more interesting in my opinion.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

Entrevendo (1970-1994) explores synaesthesia. After putting in your mouth an ice cube you enter a wooden cone-shaped tunnel that gets narrower as you proceed inside. At the dark end is a hot air blower. As the air pressure intensifies, the temperature also rises quickening the melting of the ice cube in your mouth. Your body experiences taste and temperature, while moving in space and time. I cannot explain well how, but with all these senses made active, I felt like something was being switched one, which wasn’t before.

via www.hangarbicocca.org

I was finally a bit disappointed by the last installation, Marhulo (1991-1997), which was the work I was more expecting to see. Maybe because of the many people already sitting there and not wanting to leave, I didn’t manage to really convincing myself to be in a real place. Maybe this was not even the point anyway.

The illusion of being on a deck at crepuscule is well constructed. A sea made of open leaflets reproducing different kinds and hues of waves, ends in an imaginary far horizon, where a monochrome wall reproduces a compact, clouded sky. In the background resonates the constant sound of voices whispering the word ‘water’ in 85 different languages. Everything is so close to reality, and still it does not pretend to substitute it, it states everywhere its fake essence.

I admired the ability with which Meireles creates an environment breathing its own breath, a suspended dimension where the light and the waves are frozen in an endless moment, where what looks real is actually not. Still…

Still… this exhibition gave me one more occasion to appreciate the HangarBicocca and the works of a great contemporary.

Looking forward then for next visit to HangarBicocca.

Out of Space: Many Happy Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 14:41:00 +0000

Things discussed: The Kiss; Constantin Brâncuși; John Berger; Everything that Rises; Lawrence Weschler; Convergences; Perfumes and Shampoos; Early Christian Art; Jorge Luis Borges; Love, eternal.

written by f

The Kiss (Le baiser), the haunting sculpture by Constantin Brâncuși, is possibly one of the greatest works of art of all time. To me, it's up there with three or four others at most.

And it's been part of my life for so long now it's impossible to imagine it without: it stuck in my mind when I saw a picture of it as a child, and, as I grew up, its power over my aesthetic sense, emotions, expectations, and fears, has never faded.

It shows the absolute and the ultimate of so many things: the two becoming one; complementarity; sex; tenderness supreme; and, on the creepy side, the sort of perceptive atrophy that comes to couples who only look at each other and don't take nourishment from stimuli of the outside world.

As with everything of this level, in here you can over-interpret or project everything and nothing. But there is one thing and one only that the sculpture is really all about: love.

It doesn't come as a surprise that the same compositional scheme has been used, consciously quoting Brâncuși or otherwise, so many times.

Here are a few examples, all from cosmetic paraphernalia:

But these are rather superficial glides on the vast implications of Brâncuși's work: these images show the complementarity of the male and female body, hint at their union, and, when they go further, hold the kiss as a synthesis and gateway of the sexual act, rather than love as a whole.

Something gets lost, on purpose, because, well: sex sells.

One can argue that we needn't go to Brâncuși to find the perfect image of complementarity, because the yin-yang symbol would do just fine:

But this is, clearly, neither Brâncuși's world nor research. In a sense, this far eastern abstraction could have been too cold for the rumanian sculptor. Perhaps due to the christian core of a vast part of western culture, Brâncuși, whatever his tension towards synthesis, never does away with the body. And he wasn't looking for symbols or emblems.

As for sex as such, we can agree that Brâncuși wasn't looking for that level of one-to-one correspondence either: whatever he was looking for included that level and, maybe, tended to abstraction, but it seems to me it aims much, much further up.

So: what was Brâncuși looking for?

Let me digress for a second.

I have the feeling that everybody should embrace their own obsessions. In the so called "art world" there are fads, trends, fashions, and so on, but only obsession creates a path. If we want to be a bit less dramatic, we could substitute "obsession" with "focus": only focus creates a vision.This, I think, is valid for each and everyone involved.

In this particular case, a viewer's obsession—mine—and an artist's obsession, Constantin Brâncuși's, are at play. I'm not putting myself anywhere close to the sculptor: I'm just saying that I pay more attention to the world surrounding me when I look at it through The Kiss.

Enter Lawrence Weschler. I knew and loved Weschler's book Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder; and I knew John Berger in at least three major roles: the political activist, the art critic and broadcaster, the book writer.

And I knew Constantin Brâncuși. It seems to me neither Berger nor Weschler speak meaningfully about Brâncuși, so that's not the point. The point is: I stumbled upon this book:

In the introduction, Weschler quotes John Berger's The Look of Things on the subject of the famous photograph of Che Guevara's death: in there Berger makes a point that that picture is obviously based both on Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson and Mantegna's The Dead Christ, and Weschler goes further in the analysis in the book:

But Weschler's aim in this book is not to find Wally in the art world: it's to find examples of how we come to look and represent certain situations or objects along certain lines without even knowing it.

The book is full of insightful analyses, inspirational hints, and more than one surprise. But the most important thing Weschler does is in the words he uses.

Weschler talks of convergences rather than influences, for what's "created" in art as well as any human creative endeavour is often a recombination of known aesthetic schemes, filled up and set alive again by new psychological and cultural anxieties.

On what I'd call the "intensive" level of convergence, an excellent source of ever more surprising entertainment is the website Who Wore it Better. Its visual cataloguing and comparing shows the whole range of "similarity" from amicable quotes, homages, critical rethinkings—to flat-out plagiarism.

On the extensive side of convergence, there is, I think, a very strong tie to the themes some artists choose to explore, that have been crawling through millennia of art production. And that's what Weschler's book explores, and is reflected often playfully in his website.

Now, back to Brâncuși. The artist walked a complex and variegated path as a sculptor that we can only—as it happens—interpret from its conclusion: the polished surfaces, the smooth shapes, the raw often hard material bended to the core of an aesthetic essentialism.

But it's not minimalism, and it's not abstraction: it has nothing to do with either. Brâncuși was really looking to carve out the essence with his own hands. Of course "essence" has different meanings to different artists. What I think it meant for him, and what emerges from his greatest works, is an urge to represent the eternal.

The permanent gymnasium for the seeking of the eternal has been religious art, in the West as everywhere in the world. And in their quest for a "new" way to represent the world, artists contemporary to Brâncuși looked deeply and eagerly at "oriental" and "primitive" art. Sometimes they copied the shapes, sometimes they had insights into their function, and sometimes they ironized on them.

Brâncuși was attracted to them as well, but followed a path all of his own. And The Kiss itself had many different versions, starting from the one exhibited at the Armory in New York in 1913.

That is why I see what am I about to show as a convergence (on the extensive side) rather than an influence, on Brâncuși's masterpiece.

I found this browsing flickr one day. It comes from this link, and it shows a relief on the Church of Santa Eulalia de la Lloraza, in the Asturias, on the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James, in Northern Spain).

The similarities with The Kiss are startling. And this image shows something similar:

It's a relief on the Church of Saint Quentin de Chermignac, Charente Maritime, Poitou, on the Atlantic coast of France. I found it here.

In the Early Christian iconography, both images show the theme—and possibly the constellation?—of Gemini, the Twins. Sometimes, it seems, used as a compositional pattern to represent a couple in love.

This is not the place—and I don't have the knowledge—to go in depth on the subject of this iconography and Brâncuși's relationship with it. But if eternality is what he was looking for to convey in The Kiss, this is a kindred research done some ten centuries earlier.

And both themes and researches converge in what's perhaps best expressed in the poem "La dicha" (Joy) by Jorge Luis Borges:

El que abraza a una mujer es Adán. La mujer es Eva.
Todo sucede por la primera vez.

translated here as:

He who embraces a woman is Adam. The woman is Eve.
Everything happens for the first time.

Weekends Without Words: Museo del Novecento

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 12:22:00 +0000

Things Shown: Museo del Novecento, Milan; Lights; Shapes; More Lights; Some other Shapes; Curves; Reflections; Spiral Pits.

taken by the iPhone of f

Cura Te Ipsum: The Rest of the Words

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 19:09:00 +0000

Things discussed: Gravestones; Patches of Sunlight; Retirement; Inner Light; Shaven Lawn.

written by f

Constantin Brancusi, Le Baiser

Following up on e's obsession with captions—you may find examples of it here, here, and here—here's another curatorial speculation: an exhibition of captions.

Not captions made specially for the exhibition, but a collection of real captions exhibited as works in their own right.

As I've said in my previous post, I have a soft spot for things at rest. I'm attracted to objects that were made to perform a function, performed that function, and then retired. Not thrown away, not discarded: retired. They earned their resting days.

If you remove a caption from the work it describes, you may conceptualize this act in so many different ways: semiotically, philosophically, aesthetically and so on.

There is one image I have, though, that is more powerful than all others: a collection of captions is like a collection of gravestones. And this sad image makes for a playful setup: on a quiet patch of shaven lawn, at regular distance, in rows, tens of captions stand caressed by sunlight.

Underneath, we can figure the works they talk about. Van Gogh's restless Sunflowers, now resting in peace; the glowing fluorescents of Dan Flavin, their inner light faded for good; all the wrappings of Christo & Jeanne-Claude, now folded and buried; Brâncuși's timeless, sleepless, moving masterpiece The Kiss, stone among stones, never, ever letting go, and waiting the end of the ages to turn into dust.

Cura Te Ipsum: The Sustainable Art Project

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 21:00:00 +0000

Things discussed: Sustainability; Food Supplies; Distance; Discarded Kettles; Indigo Blue; Freshness; Taste.

written by f

Sustainability is the word of the day. On every speech we make, every paper we read, every good we trade.

Energy and food are most often associated with the concept, but food is obviously what touches us deeper: we can live without electricity or gas, but we would never survive without food.

What makes food sustainable? It’s usually a couple of things, that I'll put in bullet points down here:

1. Minimal distance between the food supply (say, farm) and the food retail (say, supermarket).

2. Number and effectiveness of natural elements used to enhance growth in the food supply itself: organic fodder for livestock, lack of chemical pesticides or industrial fertilizers for crops, humane treatment of animals, and so on.

3. Freshness of the product: the minimal distance - as of point 1 - ensures that the product doesn't need to be frozen or artificially ripened, but “freshness” is a wider concept: the product has to contain all the nutrients to give out a strong physical supply, but it also has to be tasty. In other words: it has to be good.

Now the thought: what if art could be sustainable? Along those same lines, without losing any freshness, without ceasing to be art?

The “Sustainable Art Project” stemmed from this chain of thought. Here are the rules:

1. Minimal distance. You cut the expenses of transportation, logistics, gas, road space, sleeping hours, materials. This may mean that all the ingredients you need to make a work of art are homegrown, DIY, or simply bought or acquired without violating the minimal distance rule. This means, for example: you don’t get indigo blue. Not even the industrial one. You don’t get lapislazuli, because they come from the other side of the planet; you don’t get stuff from Home Depot or Ikea, because God knows where it comes from, and so on.

2. Natural elements. You may not use industrially processed ingredients, unless the work itself is a repurposing of an industrial artifact that was build for a whole different reason; you don’t have to pollute in any perceivable way, not even visually. Everything has to be environment friendly, in a very specific sense: it has to enhance the space it's in at its best, or merge with it at its average.

3. Freshness. The works have to be good. Not lazy. Not smartass winks. Not hyper conceptualized: everybody has to be able to enjoy them, without for this making them mainstream, dumb, or mere publicity stunts.

Now, a small but necessary digression. I mentioned at point 2 the work as a "repurposing of an industrial artifact that was build for a whole different reason". The fact is: I am attracted to objects at rest.

It could be ready-made or found objects, but even their new artistic life is a function. It's interesting to notice that art―the best art, not all art― is something that never ceases to perform its function. Whatever that ineffable function may be.

Like a permanent talisman, or a dream of perpetual motion: it never loses charge. This said, the fourth rule:

4. Universality. An ethnic artifact may well count as a form of art, and some pieces are masterpieces, but this is true in other contexts. In this exhibition we'd have works made specifically for it.

What are you left with? Well, what you’re left with is sustainable art. But it has to be art. It has to deserve, to earn the title of a work of art. It can’t just be a piece of wood. Or a neon tube. Or a discarded kettle.

It can be these things, but it needs a reason. Otherwise it’s not an art exhibition: it’s a flea market.

I think that, if somebody organized this exhibition for real, it would be a very interesting challenge for artists and curators alike.

Expansion: The Abramović Method

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:24:00 +0000

Things discussed: Marina Abramović; PAC; Milan; performance; being active; being passive; inner space; crystals; quartzes; earmuffs; being naïf; bad trips.

written by e

Among works with a different approach to space, another example is The Abramović Method, which explores one’s inner space.

via dmoda.it

The Method is, in the artist's words: "a kind of summary of all the knowledge I have acquired over 40 years of work: to bring the public to the point of experimenting for themselves", and is also an adaptation of her Cleaning the House workshops.

The Method was born from the realization that the performative act can make a profound transformation in those enduring it, but also in the audience watching them.

In my experience, I came to the conclusion that the public plays a very important role, I would say crucial, in performance,"

says Marina Abramović,

"Without the audience, the performance does not make sense because, as stated by Duchamp, it is the audience who complete the work of art. In the case of performance, I would say that audience and performers are not only complementary, but almost inseparable.

What follows is my experience of the Method at the PAC, in Milan, in 2012.

It started at the entrance where we, the participants (those taking an active part) signed a document committing ourselves to give the artist two hours of our time. It proceeded inside, where, in small groups, we were asked to take off our shoes, bags, mobile phones, accessories, and wear a labcoat-like white gown.

The silence, the slowness in which everything takes place, the way everyone accepts to follow instructions in an almost empty, neutral space, immediately imparts the act with a sacred aura.

First, you are made to sit in a room and watch a video where Marina and two assistants suggest simple but effective movements and exercises to help you relax, and open your senses in order to enter the right attitude to start the method. Earmuffs are given too, to cushion sounds.

Everything is planned to increase awareness of one’s own physical and mental experience of the moment.

©Marina Abramović by SIAE 2012, courtesy Marina Abramović. Photo: Laura Ferrari.

via Artribune

To emphasize the ambivalent role of actor and spectator in the performance, the artist has chosen to test the public who has chosen not to actively participate in the interactive installations. Telescopes allow visitors to closely observe those who choose to engage in the exercises.

As active participant, we were advised to keep our eyes closed, which I did for almost the full duration of the method.The only moments I kept them open was when I, together with my small group, were escorted in little groups by similarly white-coat-clad guides from one situation to another. There, we were left alone with ourselves (if you manage not to think too much about the possible public looking at you with the telescope) for 30 minutes in each one of the three planned situations.

Situation one (in the order in which I experienced them): lying on a wooden table. Under each table was a big quartz, amethyst or tourmaline, each of different colour and hues.

via domusweb - photo by Fabrizio Vatieri

Situation two: sitting on a high wooden chair, again with crystals either on the back, or beneath, or under the legs. All the chairs were in different positions, never facing each other. On the side of each chair was another smaller and lower chair, supposedly for your spirit.

via Artribune

Situation three: standing in the centre of an empty copper parallelepiped, with above your head a big suspended magnet. Here pregnant women and people wearing a bypass could not access their inner space.

©Marina Abramović by SIAE 2012, courtesy Marina Abramović. Photo: Laura Ferrari

Eyes closed, sounds muffled, your body is motionless, and you can access a space which is virtually immense, your inner space. The artist gives you the tools, but it’s up to you to create and move inside a space that you alone can perceive.

I won’t go into details of where I travelled in the three situations, enough to say that I did travel and they were all different journeys, and that, yes, I found spaces - unexpected too - to explore, and a finally rewarding experience.

So surprisingly much that I decided to go back some time later, towards the end of the exhibition. And I had again my journey, but… how bad it was the second time!

If the first time I had been surprised at the inner lands I had been able to touch, the second time the space I found myself in was black, dense, and uncomfortable. I just wanted it over as soon as possible. I was very surprised and did not understand why.

via Fool Magazine

A friend of mine, who came with me the second time, and had had a similarly pleasant experience on her first time, shared with me her suspicions.

According to crystal therapy - which isn’t supported by any scientific proof - each crystal has a sort of "energy field" and would have the ability to get in touch with every form of life in the animal kingdom. The crystal would be able to operate in the human body plans defined as "physical-mental-emotional" and spiritual, bringing "balance" and "harmony."

Crystals are used for allegedly "therapeutic" purposes and "spiritual transformation" and to "recharge" the hypothetical aura of the body.

Marina Abramović already used crystals in her work, such as the, Crystal Cinema (1991), Shoes for Departure (1991), Dozing Consciousness (1997), and the Crystal Chamber.

via Mudam

According to crystal therapy, crystals should also be periodically energetically cleansed. Each type of crystal should be cleaned in a different way and cherished as a living thing, so as to charge its energetic power. This is because they would deteriorate in their supporting us. Operations to restore a crystal are also usually quite time consuming.

via Creative Time Reports

The crystals in the exhibition had probably been left untouched since the first day they had been placed there. If we take the crystal therapy assumptions for good, they might have absorbed tons of good and bad feelings of all kinds of people in months. And they might have been releasing those tons too. This was my friend’s supposition.

via Creative Time Reports

Ignorant of the matter, I was a bit doubtful, but gave her some possible credit. If that was true, I started thinking that was quite irresponsible of Marina Abramović. If really so, she could at least have warned us. But then it came down on me that maybe our negative reaction was also part of what she wanted us to achieve. The Method was supposed to be a condensation of her experience in art, of her performances. She had always been the performer. With the Method she invited us to be the performer. Then, her performances are not known to be comfortable or pleasant. Quite the opposite. They were more often than not also painful to her. How naïf of me to read what the Method was meant to be, and go through it so thoughtless, so unaware of what I could really expect. But still, I think it’s better like this, that I went in with no expectations the first time. And that, going with many expectations instead the second time, they were all betrayed.

And finally, yes, I appreciated also all what I thought I did no appreciate on my second visit.

I don’t know if my interpretation is close to what the artist meant, but what the experience was fulfilling and rewarding to me, even when it was bad and made me feel sick.

To conclude, it is clear that the exhibition is all about inner space. The set up is minimal, essential, functional. The space the artist creates is not so much concrete, and yet it is probably the vaster she could tackle. Actual space and the props in it are just a medium to get to one’s own inner space, and her space too, the space she has experienced in her previous past performances.

At a Glance: The Stand of the Phoenix

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:23:00 +0000

Things Discussed: Cathedrals; Phoenixes; Xu Bing; St. John the Divine; Uptown Manhattan; Jim Woodring; Frank.

written by f

I saw them and photographed them on February 28, and they still weren't fully accessible to the public. But the two phoenixes by Xu Bing surely made for an impressive view.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in all its massive space, is an active church, open to anyone and well worth visiting in its own right.

The two giant phoenixes by Xu Bing, on the other hand, were still being checked for safety reasons.

The way I see it, a few last tweaks were being made. But they were already pretty outstanding floating up there.

If you are in New York, please go see Xu Bing's installation. You can read about it in this New York Times article, on the Cathedral's official website, and see this beautiful video on vimeo.

As I wouldn't be able to give a better description than this, this is The New York Times:

As these phoenixes hovered some 20 feet above, their tiny, twinkling lights illuminated an array of unexpected materials: feathers fashioned from impeccably layered shovels; crowns made of weathered hard hats; heads created from jackhammers; and birds’ bodies sculpted from other salvaged construction debris, including pliers, saws, screwdrivers, plastic accordion tubing and drills.

It really is an impressive sight. Although it does bear a resemblance to what Jim Woodring's Frank would find in his explorations

As for Bishops&Queens, this is what I myself saw that day (please note that I wasn't able to upload pictures the usual way, so that, to view them larger, you'd have to open each of them on a different tab):

Expansion: The Big Bambú Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 14:14:00 +0000

Things discussed: bamboo; Doug and Mike Starn; suspension; Venice Biennial; interdependence; being active; being passive; chaos; strings; Mikado sticks.

written by e

Another great example — a huge example — of art in space & space in art is the installation Big Bambú, by American twin brothers Doug and Mike Starn, seen at the 54^th Venice Biennial in 2011.

via Doug and Mike Starn

Like the Tom ás Saraceno’s installation, it is a work of art that generates a new space — an experience space which would be impossible in normal circumstances.

The artists created a 15m (50ft) tall hollow tower of bamboo canes, with an inner undulating trail spiralling up to the top. Up there, a relax area (c.15sqm/161sq ft), even better than a proper Venetian altana: it opened a view never seen before, and never to be seen again, as there is no buildings as tall in the area.

via designboom

A view that took in the Accademia Bridge, the portion of the Grand Canal in front of the Guggenheim Collection, further away up to the Doge’s Palace, and everything behind, that is more or less a maze of red brick roofs.

via desginboom

via designboom

The structure of the Big Bambú was solid, but the lightness of the material was so pervasive, I felt like walking up in the air. The spiral you walked on allowed a partial sight of what was below, and having always a full view of the sculpture from the inside, you had an impression that everything was lightly woven, that it stood up just out of a matter of subtle balance.

I don’t mean the structure looked loosely woven. The bamboo shafts were actually tightly kept together by coloured lashes, and there were always members of the Starn’s crew climbing some way or the other to check poles and tighten knots, even when you were ascending.

I never felt uneasy or unsafe. I was almost feeling lighter, suspended, and lifted upwards. The day was sunny and the time of the day was the full afternoon light, just before it turned into the long lazy Venetian summer evening—it was June, close to the end of the exhibition, which lasted around one month.

via designboom

The Big Bambú had been first set up on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY in 2009. In addition to the original 2,000 fresh poles harvested from a farm in France, Doug and Mike utilized several fragments of the Metropolitan installation.

What's in the nature of this kind of installation is that even by bringing the same piece to another place, you have to adapt it to the new space. In this case, it was not a roof, but a small court among old houses crammed in a net of canals and narrow streets.

via Doug and Mike Starn

Another feature is that the work is equally enjoyable from the inside (the active participation visit) and from the outside. And the view from the Canal was really something. It looked like an explosion of crazily messed up Mikado sticks, when it was indeed a very carefully structured organism inhabited by some little creatures crawling upwards and downwards.

The organic maze was in fact alive, in a state of constant flux, complete but always developing.

via Doug and Mike Starn

As Mike Starn stated,  ‘it is a sculpture, but not a static  sculpture’ where growth and change are a constant. The brothers have given shape to a ‘philosophy of chaotic interdependence’ and of philosophical engineering where everything depends upon one another, and the interdependence is natural and fluid.

via Doug and Mike Starn

When art, like here, takes possession of space, it doesn't only create a new space, but a deep impression in the people who experience it: one enhanced by the fact that it is a temporary experience; one you will probably never go through again, which makes it all more special. You savour each moment, each step, each breath on the work. Added to the beauty of the experience (and the view), you get out of it and back into the narrow and often claustrophobic calli (Venetian streets) with an intimate, profound and meaningful experience.

Interdependence, and the relationship between the artistic space and the viewer is an issue addressed by many contemporary artists. In a historical period that sees so many art voices and cries that it is so hard sometimes to see where art is going, this might actually be a voice that will be growing into something more substantial, and becoming maybe a real new current, like we haven’t seen in a long time.

Big Bambú has since travelled to Rome in December 2012, and to the isle of Naoshima, Japan, in 2013.

At a Glance: See Change

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 18:32:00 +0000

Things Discussed: LAX; See Change Video Installation; People to Pick Up.

written by f

Please, go pick someone up at Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX in Los Angeles. If you don't have anybody to pick up, go there anyway.

I was there for a few minutes. I was the one someone came to pick up. I didn't have much time to spare, and I regret it.

So please, go there and find time to spare. Go by the Bistro&Bar—on your left facing the arrival gates—and look at the amazing video installation in front of you.

An impressive collection of videos by seventeen artists, many of which are well worth your time.

Beautiful Boxes: Custom Space, 2

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 17:31:00 +0000

Things Discussed: Marlene Dumas; Thomas Schütte; Roni Horn; How to be Liquid in Many Forms.

written by f

The aim of these posts is not to review every sigle work or exhibition choice of a visit. That's the job of more competent eyes. The thing I do feel like doing is simply mention here a couple more things.

Like most shows based off the François Pinault Collection, there's a strong tie to the past. The past is here the Arte Povera+Mono-ha rooms downstairs and a couple of other works scattered around the Dogana space.

It is also true, though, that among the artists living and working today, there are almost no new names here. And it's not really surprising to find two of contemporary art's sweethearts: Thomas Schütte and Marlene Dumas.

But while I found Schütte's Fratelli in great shape (at least proud of the shape they got), for lack of a better word I'd say Marlene Dumas' paintings had circulatory problems.

Dumas is one of the most successful painters of our time. There's no contemporary art museum I visited that doesn't at least have a couple of works by her. The appeal to me is obvious: her visual research is so subtle she treats oil on canvas as it were watercolors. Some color bleeding resembles the dreamy quality of a Munch, while some technical solutions may recall the distortions of the italian illustrator Gianluigi Toccafondo.

As wonderful and powerful as her works usually are, the ones displayed here are rather subdued. It sometimes felt like someone else was painting in her style.

With exceptions, as always.

As "old" names that were, I confess with shame, new to me, there was one I found enchanting: Roni Horn.

In every show, there's staring, and there's walking around. And here reflection is a good path to follow: a mirror with a shattered glass in the twisted Ikea-like space at the entrance, Pistoletto's inner mirror cube, the water-filled cylinder and rectangular box by Kishio Suga in front of Mario Merz's neons, all the way to the solid glass stacks by Roni Horn, Well and truly.

These works seem also to respond to another theme: how to be liquid in many forms. If ice is solid water, Roni Horn's are cylinders of liquid solid glass.

(my visit to Punta della Dogana exhibition Prima Materia, started in part 1, continues and concludes in part 3)

Beautiful Boxes: Custom Space, 1

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 17:30:00 +0000

Things Discussed: Punta della Dogana; Prima Materia; Perks; Collections; Light; Holes; Bricks, Wood, Textures; Exhibitions Built to Last.

written by f

One of the perks of being a resident in Venice, Italy, is that you get to go places for free. Musei civici, that is: those directly dependent from the municipality. An impressive array of institutions that goes from the Doge's Palace to the Correr Museum, from Ca' Pesaro to the Museum of Natural History, from Ca' Rezzonico to Palazzo Fortuny.

The deal is: you pay taxes to keep us alive, in turn you can come visit us whever you please. Gallerie dell'Accademia, alas, is not one of those, because is state-owned and it's not run by the city. And so aren't the famous private ones: the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, and the two venues of the collection of François Pinault.

But wednesday is a special day. Wednesday is the day you go to Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana for free. If you're a resident, of course. That's still part of the perks.
No surprise I usually go there on wednesday, then. But there's another reason: for most of the exhibitions held there so far, if I had to pay I'd rather not go.

The exhibitions are rarely the main attraction: the place itself is worth the visit. This is true for Palazzo Grassi. But never so true as for the Punta della Dogana: a masterpiece of measure, textures, and taste.

Not expecting much, this was perhaps why I was so captured with the beautiful, beautiful Prima Materia exhibition they have there now. To me, it’s the first one since Punta della Dogana reopened that gives justice to—a critic may say “holds a dialogue with”—the space. And so beautiful the space is that every element—the building ingredients: bricks, wood, and concrete—is there to be cherished.

via Wikimedia Commons

Punta della Dogana was, historically, the office of the Custom of the Republic of Venice: all ships entering the lagoon should stop there for inspection and taxes. Overlooking a 270° cut of the Canale della Giudecca, and being the gateway to the Grand Canal, it has the most impressive view of the whole city, with Saint Mark's Basilica and Bell Tower on the left, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in front and the Giudecca island on the right.

It's an isosceles triangle with a rounded tip (its beautiful outline is kept in the museum logo). Inside, it's divided in nine horizontal slices and a central cube. In all its constrained geometry it's a very dynamic space.

More often than not, the temptation of looking at the structure is more powerful than the allure of the works. Luckily, this show makes no effort to distract you from the space: the works inhabit it in a discrete and meaningful way, almost whispered, content, sometimes, to simply blend in.

The sense of wonder and sacred space starts at the very beginning: you close behind a very heavy grey curtain to cut the sound of the fist work you meet, Bruce Nauman's 1987 clown video No No No No!, New Museum just past the entrance door. Now you're in the cloakroom, and soon hear a quiet cascade of sounds: it's Raining by Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, borrowed from her 2012 Tate Modern installation TH.2058.

Left the room, you lift and drop a second heavy curtain. And once you do that gesture, you're also cutting out any sound from the external world. And it's a completely artificial world you're thrown into right away, the chaotic video-furniture-backyard joint installation by Lizzie Fitch & Brian Trecartin: 2011's Local Dock and Public Crop, and 2012's Porch Limit. A somehow playful, hallucinatory start with the syncopated video in the style of a reimagined 1960s.

This show is a flow from the start, and it never stops.

There's stuff I didn't like, as it always is, and I'll rather get that out of the way immediately. On the upper level there's a room filled with eight big vertical paintings by Mark Grotjahn. A geometric pattern that seems repeating underneath, a blend of colors that keeps changing ever slightly. I find it all rather uninteresting. Starting from his manneristic and unnerving titles: Untitled (Turkish Forest IV Face 43.93) and on and on along those lines. Why "untitled" and the actual "title" in brackets? Even in the Sixties the idea wasn't pretty anymore.

As for the works, you keep staring at them expecting more, and nothing comes back. It's really just colors.

A very smart museum guide I talked to told me the setup was wrong in her opinion: those paintings should hang closer together, in a tighter space, with no natural light. Only then their patterns and colors would start making sense, breathing atmosphere and letting you in. I concede she may be right. But still.

Now: that was perhaps the only thing I didn't like there. Because the exhibition feels all in all so true to the space. In the words of Martin Bethenod from the Introduction to the exhibition catalogue:

Prima Materia questions the very premises of Punta della Dogana, perhaps even more so than the previous exhibitions presented since it reopened in 2009. It offers the occasion to rethink the spaces, to modify the perception of them.

And since we're here, this has to be said: the trilingual catalogue is a thing of beauty.

The format, the essential graphic grid—what font is that?—the tactile sensation of the paper chosen—recycled, grey, to give the idea of a first, if not primordial, matter—as in one of the cores of the exhibition, the Arte Povera+Mono-ha rooms—and a wink at the great grey concrete tiles that's the signature of architect Tadao Ando.

The graphic choice—true as it is that some items may be pieces of hipsterica—is consistent throughout: every flier, pamphlet, guide, ad, caption follows the rules of the game. All this thanks to the work of Tassinari/Vetta design studio.

For this and other more important reasons we'll soon explore, it seems that, here, the exhibition gets everything right.

The trademark room of Prima Materia is on the ground floor: a meaningful encounter of Italy's Arte Povera and Japan's Mono-ha, two movements—not always clear of the suspect of being just fads or stunts—that gave the matter used preeminence to the work on the matter. The implications of some of the works may be tired or enlightening depending on taste and inclinations of the viewer, but the pieces are, often, beautiful.

In these rooms, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Ufan, Koji Enokura, Mario Merz, and others, provide the historical ground on which the whole curatorial project is built.

Some of the works are so silent you feel bound to play with them. You may not touch, but nobody stops you from looking at works through other works: holes, reflections, refractions are the playground for your eyes.

(My visit to Punta della Dogana exhibition Prima Materia continues on part 2, and concludes in part 3.)

Beautiful Boxes: Up to Tate

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 14:03:00 +0000

Things discussed: Tate Modern, guilt, Surrealism, dream, poetry, good ideas, bad seats

written by e

Talk of the Tate without being boring, redundant, repetitive?

The Tate Modern is great in so many ways: accessibility, richness, beauty and vastness of space, variety and value of works, selection of exhibitions. The permanent shows to enjoy for free and the temporary ones to see for a fee. Not to mention common areas, toilets, and a bunch of accessory services. It’s hard not to fall in love with it.

This is to say I’m almost feeling guilty here: there’s one teeny little thing I didn’t like in an organism so beautifully complex and organised. On the second level of the permanent collection ‘Poetry and Dream’ - over 70 works from the surrealists and their entourage - the second room ‘Surrealism and Beyond’ has works on the walls in the most random positions.

Works big and small hang close to one another toying with the rule of the straight line. Some very small works are almost too high to be seen. I saw confused visitors who couldn’t tell which caption described which work. And the captions weren’t bad at all: well done, wide, and clear. Not their fault.

The aim behind this setup was to make the room’s theme evident – poetry and dream. The disorder would be symbolic, with images scattered in space, in incongruous positions or unexpected combinations, just like they do in dreams and in surrealist poetry. As obvious as it was, I think curators must keep themselves within certain constraints, the intelligibility of what’s shown above all else. A compromise could have been found, a less extreme disorder could have been shown, the whole show would have been more appreciable.

I was a bit suspicious as I walked on and in the following rooms. Soon enough, though, the visual noise of that room was dispelled. Works were again given the right space and breath, and I completely forgot about the start.

To make the story short, I’ll end here this whispered post: it’s not a big deal. It wasn’t such a big slide on their part. The experience was pleasurable and rewarding: that was just a tiny stain.

The point is: not always a good curatorial idea makes for a good setup. You know it in design: too many uncomfortable chairs are still made today. The first thing a designer should think about is to make the objects accessible and the users comfortable.

So should curators and museums.

Expansion: Lost in Space, not in Meaning

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:16:00 +0000

Things discussed: Tomás Saraceno, being active or passive, void, Hangar Bicocca, Milan, space, time, craters, instability, quantum physics, foam, Yves Klein.

written by e

I am going to correct here my blog co-author who in a previous post wrote:

Rudolf Stingel: when you think about art and space, his is the name that comes to mind.

Okay: I agree. But I must add a name: Tomás Saraceno. In his installation On Space Time Foam, which I experienced at the Hangar Bicocca in Milan, in January 2013, not only there is no distance between space and work, but also between space, work and you.

All pictures © Tomás Saraceno

You become an active element of the installation, modifying its shape, balance, and in turn the balance of other active visitors. You have to be active to fully enjoy the work, because the work is an experience.

On Space Time Foam is a floating structure consisting of three membranes of transparent film that can be accessed by the public. The Hangar Bicocca was the ideal location for this installation, which was specifically designed on the cubic space of the exhibition site. In this big room, a cube 24 meters high, the Argentinian artist and architect stretched three layers of film at different heights, and with different degrees of tension. Unfortunately, at the moment of my visit only two were accessible, the highest and the lowest one.

You start from the top. But first, in another big dark room—the perfect anteroom for this, taking you from darkness to light—you have to sign a form, taking full responsibility for whatever can happen, and vowing to visit responsibly. This could be a put off as much as a turn on. In my case it was the last one.

There are shifts, as access is limited to a certain number of persons, and I were lucky to be able to go in a quiet moment and did not have to wait long, which I have been told was quite the case in the evenings and weekends.

I climbed the stairs to the top, where I was asked to take off shoes, belt, any clock or piece of jewellery. And then, I was ready to bent and crawl on an almost transparent wobbly surface suspended at 24 metres (79ft) from the ground. This upper sheet looked like a big bubble, you access it slowly, one person after the other, and when you are on it, it gives away and you create a sort of depression. You move on, other people slide in, and the bubble fills up with human craters. You are advised not to join other humans as it might get difficult to get out of the joined cavity.

I was then free to cheerfully slither around, roll or just lay belly down, looking at the lower level through the cloudy film sheet (it was obviously quite thick, so not really transparent, which I would have loved to) or belly up. And there, resting quiet for a while, I started to feel my body heaving up and down. The other visitors were moving too, altering and influencing my position.

From a first almost childish pleasant surprise given by the unfamiliar surface and unusual kind of movement, I then accessed one of the things the artist really wanted to convey. The clear notion that everything and everyone is connected and there is no movement or action by someone that has not an impact on something or someone else. I then felt also the responsibility of my own action and movement. I could not just enjoy randomly the experience, I had to pay attention to my actions and to the others’ position in space. But this did not take away the first simple pleasure: it was still pure pleasure, only emphasized by the fact that it started from a physical one, and then, reaching a deeper comprehension—touching not just your outer senses, but also your inner perceptions and understanding—became a fully satisfying experience.

Even the opening of a door or the breathing of a visitor could actually change the shape of the installation, as if it was a living organism. The work was in fact made by what you don’t see. As the artist said, the installation is made of 7.000 cubic meters of air, and you are supported by air. The visitor does not realize (I did not indeed) that the Cube is subject to a pressure of warm air that keeps the membranes inflated.

Too soon it was late, and we were called back because the time was over (15 minutes maybe?). But there was still a layer, the lower one. This one was not bubblish, but almost completely deflated, so when I got inside (and only three people at a time were allowed here), I just slided down. It was like a big crater from which I could crawl upward to then leave my body go down again, head upward, downward, or rolling. Beneath, was only the floor, some 10 meters beneath. Passive visitors can visit the installation from there, nose up at the people hovering at various heights over their heads.

Sense of time, but above all of space, is suspended, like those film sheets. Movements in space are turned upside down, and this has a subtle influence on your mind and spirit. It is a capturing, exhilarating feeling, but as I said, with a lingering taste of a meaningful experience, that brushes chords mostly untouched.

There are not many occasions to experience space in a different way from the usual. The experience here was so enjoyable and positive, that I wished it to be a permanent installation in the city. Actually, I wish there to be one in every city, so that you know you can get some nourishing restore of the body and of the mind whenever you want.

It was indeed a pity that the middle layer was not accessible, as from pictures of a previous time, I could see that the upper and middle levels can be at times so close that people ‘upstairs’ can even touch the middle level. Another kind of connection, and of responsibility, arouses. A vertical connection, not as direct as the first one (the horizontal one, on the same layer), but subtler, more delicate, and possibly dangerous too.

via AP

The effects of this installation on the various nuances of emotive life are vast. More than transparent layers, the sheets become like mirrors, amplifiers of emotional landscapes, of inner possibilities in meetings. The power of the artist lies in giving all this in a playful way. I really turned into a child in a playground, but I ended up being conscious of inner movements that were still growing in my conscience as I walked away from the exhibition site.

Only after writing this post I found out that the idea for On Time Space Foam stemmed from a drawing by physicist Paul Davies and is connected to the quantum foam concept - the theory of quantum physics, where the fundamental layers of existence, the conformation of the universe on the smallest scale is structured like a foam - and to Yves Klein’s obsession with air.

All drawings © Tomás Saraceno

Out of Space: Francesca Blanc

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:32:00 +0000

Things discussed: Francesca Blanc, sculpture, suicide, bronze, naked, Giacomo Manzù, Milan football team, La dolce vita, birthday.

written by e

Francesca Blanc, via Museo Manzú

Sculpture of Francesca Blanc

by Giacomo Manzú

Bronze

90 x 50 x 64,5 cm

1941-50

Manzú Collection, Ardea (Rome)

This life-size sculpture of a young girl, which I saw during my visit at the Manzú Collection aroused in me two feelings with the same degree: discomfort and grace.
The body of this very young naked woman looks uncomfortable, recoiled, unbalanced, the arms joined and stretched before her, contained by the bent legs, as if to build some protection. The back is similarly curved to shelter. But her balance is uncertain, she is on the point of leaning down on one side, of falling.
You feel like stretching your arm to prevent her fall, to contain her. Her expression tells you she would not mind, she would appreciate it actually. But it would be pointless. Her calm posture, down-bound glance, and sad smile, speak of a melancholy far away, too unreachable to be amended.

She is bronze, but she stays there like a breath of air, a confined and enchanting gloomy sweetness on the brink of dissolving once you look away.

More than the physical resemblance of the girl, Manzú beautifully and sadly portrayed her inner world. A complex world, perceivable even at such an early age, and actually threatened by a depression that finally led to her suicide at the age of thirty-three.

Franscesca Blanc, via undo.net

This of course wasn't mentioned in the caption in the Collection. A woman I know - who also personally knows Inge Schabel, the second wife of the artist - told me that story when I mentioned my fascination with the sculpture.
So I looked for more information about this woman, and found out that not much is publically known about Francesca Blanc. Some source is found on Wikipedia, but some of it is at the moment inaccurate.

Born in Rome on February 27th, 1929, she was the daughter of a Roman noblewoman, Anita Felici and Mario de Blanc. She had married very young prince Alessandro “Dado” Ruspoli, a dandy and playboy, supposedly the inspiration for the main character in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, from whom she divorced around 1956. They had no children.

At the end of the Thirties, Manzú was fascinated by this young girl, whom he portrayed naked in various drawings and sculptures. The final sculpture in bronze, life size, took him two years to finish, from 1940 to 1942, and granted him the ‘Gran Premio per la Scultura’ at the 4th Quadriennale Romana. Various sketches and versions of the work exist, and the actual sculpture visible at the Manzú Collection is a later version from the Fifties. This work later inspired him the subject for ‘Passo di Danza’.

On February 27th, 1962, the day of her thirty-third birthday, she committed suicide, throwing herself from the window of her bathroom in her flat on the seventh floor in the centre of Milan, where she had moved after the divorce.

A few facts are known:
- She owned the Manzoni theatre in Milan and the Sistina theatre in Rome.
- She was a sports fan, especially of the Milan football team.
- The day of the suicide, she had just arrived from Rome, where she had gone to see a football match of her favourite team, Milan A.C., but this time she was supporting the rival team, Lazio, the region which she came from.
- She had then gone back to Milan and taken a taxi from the Central Station to take her home.
- She was wearing a light blue nightgown when she was found on the pavement by an errand boy.

This might sound naive, but after finding all this out, looking back at the pictures of her sculpture, I wonder what position her body took, when she met the ground.

Board Vision: Tales From the Battlefield

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 01:41:00 +0000

Things discussed: Spatial Dysmorphia; Aliens; Coups and Ambushes; Blackboards; Emptiness; Boxes; Dinosaurs; Institutional Inertia; Vantage Points.

written by f

Mantua is a small town, capital and namesake of its own province in southern Lombardy, Italy.

Founded by the Romans, like many—but more than most—Italian city-states, Mantua has been an important centre of political and artistic activity since the Middle Ages.

Like most, if not all, city-states turned small towns, it's been struggling with the management of its immense cultural heritage for centuries.

The 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake deeply affected its territory. It’s suffered floods, cracks, shifts—and so have many of its historical buildings and churches.

On top of this, outsourcing, off-town shopping malls and cinemas, and the global financial crisis, have accentuated the typical institutional inertia that plagues most of the Country when it comes to cultural and historical heritage.

In some cases, intervening to patch the scars wouldn’t be enough. The need for change is palpable. It seems sensible to look at past solutions. So, what's happened before? Looking back a good one hundred years, the city has gone through only one major rethink.

Organically transformed through the centuries after its mediaeval heyday, Mantua was, by the end of the 1800s, a mostly baroque or post-baroque city. Its main buildings retained their mediaeval structure underneath, but everything else was obeying the prevalent taste of the time.

Due to a movement that spread in that area of Northern Italy in the first decades of the 1900s, Mantua was re-mediaevalised.

The thick decorative whippings and dressings on the buildings’ façades were cleared away, some of the palazzos were redesigned from the inside, windows were added and others removed, homes and shops were wiped out, entire "lost" churches rebuilt, all to match an ideal image of the mediaeval city that in turn matched the mostly anachronistic ideology of the restorers of the time.(*)

The city was, in short, turned into a stage set: arches were built with no apparent structural purpose—or they stood as leftovers once stripped of the structure they supported; suggestive passageways were opened; historical-looking staircases were raised to make a view, and perspective vantage points were scattered all around town.

For what we know now, it was all done in good faith. But it was dramatic, and to a certain extent it was destructive and dismissive of the last, say, four hundred years of history. And it was a fantasy applied to the real world. Although what happened to Mantua is nothing like the real mediaeval theme park that Grazzano Visconti has become. (**)

But Mantua is, by all standards, one of the most beautiful cities in our peninsula. In short, when you think about it: they win. Also: what they've done has now become historical heritage. Also: twisted as it may look, theirs was an act of love.

This said, we could never do that to a city again. The problem is: how can we revitalize a place that is held almost immobile by institutional inertia?

These days there's a sort of spatial dysmorphia at play. From within.

A good—and sad—example of this is the immense central void of Sordello Square. It's one of the largest piazzas of the whole country, but, unlike other cities, whose central squares are also their touristic, institutional and commercial hubs, it has been gradually left to chew on its own emptiness.

And this is the real topic of this post.

Some of the facts, as the jingle goes, can only happen here.

The first fact is a typical and very fortunate Italian trove: a few years ago, during maintenance works on the piazza's surface, the workers stumbled upon Roman ruins. The works were stopped and everything set still for another typical and less fortunate Italian paradox:

"Roman ruins! We should definitely peel off the whole piazza above to unveil such marvels!"

"No, wait: the piazza is itself a historical marvel. What do we do?"

And here comes to play another typical Italian attitude: nothing. We do nothing. They put a box over and around the Roman mosaic, part of a buried Domus Romana, opened it to the public for far too short a time, and left everything else as it was.

Giorgio-Sebastiano Bertoni is an architect. With his two associates, he runs studiopdA, an architecture firm on the side of Piazza Sordello itself.

The firm has planned and built apartment buildings and hospital wards, and is active in a series of restructuring works in private homes. Their main business and interest is, though, the maintenance, restoration and monitoring of ancient churches around the whole province. The damages of the earthquake have made their expertise particularly needed in recent times.

The immobility of the central piazza is therefore, for them, a very deeply felt issue: their offices are there, their job has mostly to do with the Soprintendenze—Head Office for the Administration of Cultural and Historical Heritage—and the piazza is the symbol of all they have to struggle with.

Sebastiano—as he's known to friends—is also a painter, a draughtsman, and, above all, a very witty man.

His colleagues and he have a blog here. Among the last posts, Sebastiano has drawn on his wit, his art and to some extent his exacerbation with the Piazza Sordello issue.

Their blog is in Italian. With his permission, I've translated the whole of his Tales from the Battlefield, attaching his beautiful blackboard drawings. You can find everything here from the next sentence on.

(*) I want to make clear that, although the re-mediaevalisation is a fact, my tone and choice of highlights may result a little too sarcastic to some; furthermore, any mistakes in this post are entirely my responsibility.

(**) Giorgio-Sebastiano Bertoni has suggested this extreme example of the re-mediaevalisation rhetoric.

From the Battlelfield, 1

Space-archaelogy-politics. Piazza Sordello in Mantua has been object of discussion for a while now. It may be that we're not looking at things from the right perspective. Perhaps we're not even researching a method to face the theme of its complexity. Today, we'll try with cartoons.

At the blackboard!

The piazza as it is, or was, from one of its vantage points, the Market Square.

This empty space was filled with monuments at the end of the 1800s. The monuments were then removed. I'm imagining a monument dedicated to the "scale" of the Duomo façade, which was apparently designed for a 4-5 metres (13-16ft) tall man.

The Colossus of the Month is dedicated to the founder of the artificial lakeside landscape that separates Mantua from other towns.

Sometimes—why not?—a deeper emptiness can sit on top of the existing emptiness.

The Piazza hides treasures. After all, the city was founded by the Romans.

This is the forbidden dream—or nightmare?—of some soprintendente.

From the Battlefield, 2

This place represents the highest point of the city. We can imagine that in ancient times is was an islet at the centre of wide swampy grounds. Before being a "void", it's been the original inhabited area.

It seems that the history of the space as a "piazza" dates back to the Gonzaga Family's coup. They took the power away from the Bonacolsi by ambushing them from calli, sotopoteghi and interstices.

To prevent these things to ever happen again—but to their detriment—they demolished some buildings, to have the maximum visibility over the city from the Palazzos of Power.

It seems obvious, then, that we could add troves from a later era—or an earlier one, why not?—to the remains from the Roman times. Who could exclude the wonderful nature of possible future finds?

Discovery no. 1
The tip of an egyptian pyramid emerges: new reasons of pride for the town's parochialism.

Discovery no. 3

Remains of the biggest dinosaur in the world—or thereabouts. The missing link with something else.

Discovery no. 4

Flying saucer. Alien Civilisations and evidence of extra-terrestial life. The Piazza was an ancient runway.

Discovery no. 5

The ultimate find. As György Ligeti's music rises in the background, 2001's Monolith surfaces—the Sentinel, avatar of a superior entity...

But we're impudent and have a taste for provocation. Thus, after years of arguments about "historical centre", road network and parking spots, here's a different approach to the issue: a good ol' multistory car park. Underground.

—Excuse me, where can I park around the City Centre?

—In the City Centre!

Going further, daring where no man has dared so far, a surreal (?) reflection on this place. Where many of the most important buildings are kept empty, showing only themselves, without any of the small commercial enterprises that, once, kept it alive—perhaps evicted in virtue of a cultural heritage policy not always easy to grasp.

What if we inverted this tendency? There's no money to reopen the Camera degli Sposi?

And what if the famous "City Centre" was a Shopping Centre?

Et voilà:

Useless to cry with indignation and scandal: back in he Seventies the city was full of commercial neon lights illuminating the buildings.

Big neon signs: A famous ex-vermouth, the Apfel Store, the commerical arcade Coins, the good ol' city supermarket Coopf. How can you possibly have more life!?

Expansion: Et In Synesthesia Ego

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 03:58:00 +0000

Things Discussed: Rudolf Stingel; Carpets; Sailors; Lightbulbs; the Softening Sound of Your Own Steps; Patterns Repeated.

written by f

Rudolf Stingel: when you think about art and space, his is the name that comes to mind. No distance between space and the work displayed.

There's no work displayed: the work dresses the space. It makes the space behave differently.

I had one of the most meaningful experiences of art in my life in New York in February last year, at the New Museum. The show was called NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and no Stars.

As usual, there were entirely forgettable works, along with some remarkable ones. But that's what they were: works. Until I entered the Orange Room.

Félix González-Torres and Rudolf Stingel at the New Museum, via Contemporary Art Daily

That wasn't even its name. It didn't have a name. It was just one of the floors. You are in the elevator. You get out of the elevator. There is a black and white sky all around you, an absorbing orange carpet under your feet, and a song inside your brain. On your left, a small bunch of lightbulbs cascading from ceiling to floor.

The lightbulbs and the sky were by Félix González-Torres. The song was Kristin Oppenheim, with her haunting version of Sail On, Sailor.

And there was the carpet. I didn't know it then, but that's when I fell in love with Rudolf Stingel.

It took me a couple of months, another continent and an entire Venetian Palace to finally realise it.

Palazzo Grassi is many things: one of the most important contemporary art museums in the world, one the most important institutions in Venice, one of the most beautiful works of restoring and restructuring by two great architects, Tadao Ando on top of Gae Aulenti's work, and one half of the Pinault collection showcase. The other is Punta della Dogana.

It is a huge building, possibly one of the biggest palazzos in Venice, The exhibition space spans from ground floor to two full storeys upstairs.

In April 2013 I saw there the exhibition Rudolf Stingel. The place was entirely covered in carpets. In a carpet, a double-level one: industrial carpet printed with image and patterns of a persian rug. The space was now halfway between a living room and a temple.

These are the things my iPhone and I selected that day.

Beautiful Boxes: Giacomo's Sense of Space

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 03:19:00 +0000

Things discussed: Giacomo Manzú, sculpture, Rome, boxes, scary cardinals, fighting lovers, Inge Schabel, muse, captions, forgotten museums, obsessions.

written by e

Museo Manzú, via Isola Verde

Giacomo Manzú (born Manzoni: Manzù is Manzoni in the Bergamo dialect), was born in Bergamo in 1908. From 1964 he chose a hill close to Ardea, 40 km from Rome, as his home. The hill was later called after him. He is one of the great Italian sculptors of the twentieth century, working, exhibiting and teaching in Italy and abroad.

From 1981, ten years before his death, the Manzú Collection, in Ardea, is open to the public and is also the burial site of the artist himself, since 1991.

Museo Manzú

Although free, the collection is unfortunately not much visited, a direct reflection of the fame of the artist, greater abroad than in his own country.

The Collection is in a ground floor building with two big rooms, one further divided by panels in two spaces. The layout was planned by Manzú and his second wife and muse Inge Schabel, a rare case of a display after to the artist’s intentions. The Collection contains over eighty pieces, including sculptures, models, medallions, incisions and sketches of theatrical costumes, all the pieces mainly dating from his mature period, between 1950 and 1970.

The display in space of statues in different sizes and materials, and of the drawings on the walls, reflects the outer lines of the building. It is linear, tidy, spacious, with all the necessary light and space to stop in front and look around a work, and to move to the next one not too abruptly, leaving an impression lingering behind you, before opening to a new one.

You feel the consistency of space, of the empty space surrounding the sculptures. A perception that unconsciously brings you closer to the sculptor himself, and to a different way of conceiving and dealing with hard materials, marble, ebony, bronze.

Raccolta Manzú

Donna sdraiata

Amanti (Lovers) via Wikimedia Commons

Guantanamera, via Wikimedia Commons

Guantanamera

The sculptures are definitely the masterpieces. Some etchings are beautiful, some sketches for theatre’s costume are less, but that is my opinion. A few of his renown Cardinals (a series began in 1938, with over 300 pieces in all) are almost scattered in the rooms. Two of them welcome and goodbye you outside.

Welcome? Their shadow takes on quite a menacing aura when you go out, especially if in the meanwhile it’s got dark. But inside, they go from being aloof, very tall and… yes, still a bit scary, to being short, plump and lovely.

Museum Entrance

via Scultura Italiana

via Regione Emilia-Romagna

The bigger room has also a good number of Lovers (a theme started in 1965), seemingly scattered, but again in a good way, because you feel like it was a recurrent theme that he could not keep out of his mind and hands, and you actually see how he got always closer to fix, in unmovable matter, the frenzy of passion, and the endlessly fighting of lovers. They wrestle - their faces altered - in a magical balance, in the grip of muscles and skirt’s folding. They look like a counter altar to the solemnity of the cardinals, who are abstract in their seraphic, monumental shape, only their head popping out of a cape replacing their bodies, and with an almost erased expression.

Grandi Amanti, via Scultura italiana

Grandi Amanti, via Scultura Italiana

The third obsession of Manzú’s was Inge Schabel, his second wife, met in 1954, and his great love and muse since then. She is in the many a canopo busts, where the face is joined through an unrealistically long neck to a round bust, almost in the shape of an amphora. She is then in the many drawings. Each version is a bit different from the others, but together they get you to feel you know Inge’s profile so well, that you are sure you would recognize those strong lips, straight nose and long legs among hundreds.

Busto di Inge (Inge's Bust), via Scultura italiana

Inge, via undo.net

The empty space, the white walls, the grey ground compose the perfect frame to enter and embrace the Collection.

Ah, I forgot the captions, my soft spot. They are small, old, written with a typewriter, which I would have nothing against, if it wasn’t that sometimes they are anaesthetically yellowish, there are misprints, and some missing pieces of information. Just a tiny slip, in an otherwise very remarkable visit.

A display not too loud, discreet, giving the right space and breath to the works. And in this we should not forget that Manzú (and Inge) laid his hand on not just the sculptures.

All was even more appreciable, given that there were only two people visiting (us). Happily for us, alas, not for the house.

e

Phil, Fit, Mambo: So Museum would, were it not Museum call'd

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 01:28:00 +0000

Things discussed: Acronyms; Dismay; Cultural Habits; Institutional Obsessions; Italian Cats; the Importance of Branding.

written by f

I'm not an expert—but are there experts on this field? Is this even a field? Experience says that, when there are so many examples of a thing to put on a list, it must be a field.

Anyway: I'm no expert, but I have the strong feeling that many new Italian museums may have been opened only because someone thought of a pretty name.

Let me drift away for a moment with a very strategic swerve. Let's talk about acronyms.

The English language and the English speakers love acronyms. That's a fact. Who wants to waste time with polysyllabic words? This stated, it's also a fact—much to my dismay when I found out—that in many cases English speakers simply pronounce the letters separately. M.I.T. Em Eye Tee, C.I.A. See Eye Ay, D.E.A. Dee Ee Ay, and so on.

Italians aren't necessarily that fond of acronyms. Unless they become themselves names. Best if with a twist. Before delving into the new Italian phenomenon of sprouting of new museum names, let's see what examples can we give of American or English cases.

I think it all started with the MoMA in New York, that begot MOCA and the like.
Other famous American institutions are called with a name that is not the extended one, while the British had it pretty easy there, because Tate is already short. And catchy.

Back to the U.S.: Met is not an acronym: it's a nickname, short for Metropolitan Museum of Art or Metropolitan Opera.
In the music world, LA Phil is an interesting second level acronym plus a short form. It stands for LA (or L.A.) Philharmonic. Why second level acronym? Because LA (or L.A.) is short for Los Angeles, but it is also an alternative name for Los Angeles. By Americans, L.A. is likely more used than the long form to refer to the city.

Back to art, this is not the case with the rather ugly SFMOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Nobody calls San Francisco "S.F." in real life. But this isn't my problem with the acronym. My problem is that it's mixed between letters spelled out and an acronym read as a name, with a wink at the more famous Manhattan one: ES EF Moma. Ugly.

Anyway, none of these cases is necessarily meant to mean anything. Moma is not a word of the English language - unless you think of “Momma” when you pronounce it. And even when it is, it's not felt as such. Met is not perceived as the past tense of meet, although it's definitely a place where you can meet people.

The case of Manhattan's FIT—Fashion Institute of Technology—is an exception, because their research has—obviously—to do with stuff that fits. Another exception is the new Manhattan museum MAD, but we'll see that later.

In Italy, in recent years, new and old museums and institutions are actively looking for pronounceable acronyms. One reason is what I said before: Italians don't particularly like acronyms. The other is that Italians start to like acronyms when they become words in their own right. In many cases, we are here deep into the backronym game.

Keep in mind FIT: Italians like stuff like that. Or at least the museum boards think that Italians like them. And not only museums: an example in Venice are the new University Libraries. Among others: the BAUM, Biblioteca Area Umanistica (Library of Humanities) and BALI, Biblioteca Area Linguistica (Library of Linguistics and Language Studies).

One may argue that between the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the historical Opificio delle pietre dure, some trimming here and there would have been healthy.
It is true now that the habit of trimming, or the vice—or the game, is spreading like a virus.

What's next is a very partial survey of names of museums and art institutions opened across the peninsula in the recent past. Sometimes the places were already there, but the names were changed to adjust to the current trend.

MAST
Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia
Arts, Experimentation and Technology Factory
Bologna, opened in 2013.

Made Expo
Milano Architettura Design Edilizia
Milan Architecture Design Building
Milan, started in 2013.

FAR
Fabbrica d'Arte di Rimini
(Modern and Contemporary) Art Factory - Rimini
Rimini, opened in 2013.
FAR is the English far, but it's also a poetic or traditional form of Italian fare: to make.

Macro
Museo d'arte contemporanea di Roma
Rome Museum of Contemporary Art
Rome, opened 1999 in an ex brewery. Amazing space.

MAXXI
Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo
National Museum of the Arts of the XXI Century
Rome, opened in 2009

MAMbo
Museo d'arte moderna di Bologna
Bologna Museum of Modern Art
Bologna, opened in 2007

MART
Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto
Rovereto (Trento province), opened in 2002 in its current location.
This is not even an acronym any longer. It was when they opened it in Palazzo delle Albere, its previous headquarters. It then stood for Museo d'Arte di Trento.
You can read about my visit to the Mart here.

MUSE
Museo delle scienze di Trento
Trento Science Museum
Trento, opened in 2013
Designed by Renzo Piano, who had immense success with his previous Natural Science enterprise, his beautiful California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

MUST

Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia "Leonardo da Vinci"

National Museum of Science and Technology "Leonardo da Vinci"

Milan, opened in 1953.

The Museum is almost never referred to as "MUST", but the museum shop is - rather cleverly - called MUST SHOP.

MIC

Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza

International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza

Faenza (Province of Ravenna), founded in 1908.
I haven't been able to check, but it's safe to assume that they wouldn't have called it "MIC" in 1908.

MARCA

Museo delle Arti di Catanzaro

Catanzaro Museum of the Arts

Catanzaro, opened in 2008

MUVE
Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia
Venice Civic Museums Foundation
Venice, founded in 2008.
This is not a museum, but the institution in charge of the 11 Venetian public museums.
Among them: the Doge's Palace, the Museo Correr, Carlo Goldoni's House, Ca' Pesaro, the Glass Museum and Palazzo Fortuny.

MADRE
Museo d'arte contemporanea Donnaregina
Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art
Naples, opened in 2004.

MAN
Museo d'Arte della Provincia di Nuoro
Province of Nuoro Art Museum
Nuoro (Sardinia), opened in 1999.

Second to last, a non-italian example:

MAD
The Museum of Art and Design
Manhattan, New York, opened in 2008 with this name and venue.
Before moving to Columbus Circle, it was known as Museum of Contemporary Craft (MCC?) and had already changed address twice since its foundation in 1956.

And last, a stroke of genius, and my personal favourite:

MAO
Museo d'Arte Orientale
Oriental Art Museum or Museum of Oriental Art
Turin, opened in 2008.
You'll have to agree that this one would be difficult to pull off in English.
OAM? MOA, anyone?

As the matter stands to this day, it's very surprising that no one has yet thought of MORE as a museum acronym. Although, to be fair, there's a website with this name. But it's not a physical place. It is not, strictly speaking, a museum.

No one has yet opened a museum called MUCCA (Italian for cow) either, or MULE, o MARE(*) (Italian for the sea), or MINT, or MIX. Or MAP. Or MIAO (Italian cats do that. A lot.) (They also purr.)

Sooner or later someone will pay to open an actual place with one, or all, of those acronyms, then think of an extended name that adapts to it, and finally fill it with stuff that, in turn, fits the extended name freshly made up.

This is exactly how it works, isn't it?

f

(*) My blog co-author suggests "MARE" as the acronym of Musée d'Art de Renoir.
A museum that, very likely, neither of us would visit.
And this may explain why the perfectly legitimate example of Turin's GAM Galleria d'Arte Moderna wasn't included in the list.

f

Beautiful Boxes: A Boxful of Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:37:00 +0000

Things discussed: Ara Pacis; Impressionism; boxes; captions; collectors; red hair; wag artists.

written by e

I happened to be in Rome during the last Christmas holidays, and I visited Gems of Impressionism at the Ara Pacis exhibition space (December 23, 2013 to February 2, 2014). The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and presented a collection of 68 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.

Right. Done with the institutional info. The reason why this is the subject of this post is not much the need or desire to speak about the content.

We are all pretty familiar with Impressionism. I will make some considerations about the box that contains the exhibition—and the way this box is lined and padded, as the venue can influence greatly the final perception of a visit, in a way or the opposite. And this goes from how far the ticket desk is from the entrance door (you will notice the importance in a rainy winter day) to the dimension of the font in which the details of the works are written under them.

The Ara Pacis Museum, designed by Richard Meier, is a beautiful box, discreetly - far from being without character—enshrining the Ara Pacis monument in such a way that it is visible from the outside, with a wide view so that the monument is almost fully visible in its outer space.

via Wimedia Commons

via Wikimedia Commons

The architectural structure is neat and light, interacting in a gracious way with the outside. Yet, when you arrive to visit just the temporary exhibition, you start queuing in the main entrance line—most of it, even when not crowded—compelled to unfold outside. Only to discover that that is the entrance to the Ara Pacis Museum itself, and that the temporary exhibition ticket counter is at a downstairs entrance, to be accessed from the outside. There, probably, another queue awaits you. The good news is that the counter is far enough from the door to keep enough people away from the cold rain that is pouring outside in a late December day. The bad news is that the same counter serves aspiring visitors and bookshop customers. It is good to be in the middle of the small bookshop, so that you can peek into the art books while waiting, but there is no order at the counter whatsoever, which is quite annoying.

But once you are in, you are all ready to start this new journey inside Impressionism. The exhibition displays works never shown in Italy before and is divided in five sections: ‘En plain air painting’, ‘Portraits and Self-portraits’, ‘Women Friends and Models’, ‘Still Life’, ‘Vuillard and Bonnard’, and ‘The Heritage of Impressionism’. The partition deserves mention as the number of works for each section is in overall well balanced, together with the size and juxtaposition or works. Each section is - not originally but still effectively - marked by a different wall color, sober, but distinctive. Works emerge well lit in a generally suffused low light. These are all aspects that are not obvious, and more often that not, are not ideally planned.

AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABI

I am generally a bit fussy when it comes to the captions. Often too small or too far away from the work to be easily read, here they are written on wide gray panels, rather beneath the work, so as not to encumber the wall space around the work with extra visual material, but still written in white characters just big enough to be read comfortably. The ensemble is sober, effective, functional, in a word, successful.

via La Nouvelle Vague

via 06blog

The choice of works also deserves a word. You won’t find the most famous works representative of the movement. Still, the quality is so refined, that you won’t have a word of complaint. Of course the names of Impressionism are there, Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Corot, Van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Renoir, Pissarro, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Sysley. But the relevance of the selection of works is also that it presents the point of view of a private art collection, grown out of a personal and refined taste, that of Andrew W. Mellon, a wealthy businessman who started the collection in the 20’s, and whose work was carried on by his heirs.

via Wikimedia Commons

As said, this is not a review on the works exhibited, yet I would like to mention one work which made me stop and gaze at it, and then come back to it at the end of the tour. A portrait of Carmen Gaudin by Toulouse-Lautrec.

It is a small work, so powerful that calls your attention even if you are walking thoughtlessly towards it. A seated woman is seen from the side. She wears a dark dress, and the background is also darkish with leaves and plants, yet looking like an indoor place. A light from the right, the direction where her glance is drawn to, sets to fire her somewhat disheveled red hair, shedding some flames on her neck and profile too. She is intense, and her intensity is emphasized by and resonates with the color of her dress and the background. Her eyes speak, even if you don’t see her eyes. The painting is enshrined in a wooden elaborate frame, which unexpectedly (for me) suits the works very well, acting like an extension of the vibration aroused from the figure.

Then you move on to the next work, and meet another pair of eyes, in a portrait by Renoir, and you cannot help liking the former work even more. Yet, some people still like Renoir.

I finally walked out quite satisfied. It was still raining, and it had got dark, but I could still see the Ara Pacis inside the Museum all lit and shedding its light on the wet street where a contemporary wag artist sat on a chair on the side of the building, and had set up a small installation of funny/thoughtful remarks on art in general and the city on the gate on the other side of the street. Much as I can appreciate street artistic initiative, there is often a huge gap from what some people think can present as art today and what art really is and makes you feel like. The exhibition I had just come out of stressed even more this feeling of mine.

e

Beautiful Boxes: A City of Two Tales

noreply@blogger.com (Bishops and Queens) — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 22:05:00 +0000

Things discussed: Mart; Rovereto; radial patterns; catching up; Antonello da Messina; L’altro ritratto; different ways of missing the same exhibition; dinosaurs; the things you never learn.

written by f

I’d been to Rovereto twice, with the same friend I now came to visit. Both then studying in Venice, we came here for the International Festival of Archaeological Film. That was eleven years ago. And a full six years have passed since I last saw her, in Rome, the day of my birthday, before I went back to Saudi Arabia and she took off to Spain.

So why are we here now? Rovereto is a rather sleepy, pretty small town in the Autonomous Province of Trento—itself a small town.

Scattered in a valley enclosed by the Alps, Dante talked about it, dinosaurs used to walk here, and now there’s a Museum of Modern Art.

My friend is from around these valleys. After a lifetime of travelling, she settled here with boyfriend and daughter about a year after I saw her last.

A year before that, in 2006, when she was living in Rome, we both missed the grand and beautiful—or so they all said—Antonello da Messina exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale. We got there the morning after it closed. She was confused, and I was pissed off.

When we learnt that, once again in her town, another massive Antonello exhibition was taking place, we decided that nothing and no one could stop us this time. We said it before it opened: we have all the time in the world. And that’s why I went to Rovereto the second-to-last day. A Saturday. Because, you know, you never learn.

We had a hell of a lot to catch up, but I was determined to go through it all later. When I got to the Mart’s central piazza at 10-something, though, it became evident that that day I was already too late. The line was stretching well beyond the designated area, and truckloads of elderly citizens, young students, organized tours, were pouring into the piazza by the hundreds.

As I waited, my iPhone and I looked around and took pictures of whatever caught our eyes.

I’d never been to the Mart before. It was a rainish day—it didn’t really rain, but that was the mood—and I was looking at a flattened image of the building against the grey sky, and trying to guess what Mario Botta’s architecture was like. Until the sky cleared for a bit, and I understood.

The scenic web of steel wires that hold the dome together projected a marvelous shadow pattern on the side of the façade. If circular buildings even have façades. Or sides. The same thing happens in the British Museum. It’s common use by architects of enclosed public spaces all over the world—the Sony Center in Berlin is another instance of this: the shadows are part of the structure. And they are a bit of a showing off. And they are an architectural cliché. All these things together, but one for certain: they work. Every single time.

In this particular grey day dotted by unexpected visits of the sun, the shadow play projected by the webbed dome on the stone slabs provided entertainment. And atmosphere.

I have a thing for buildings devised from geometric patterns or elementary geometric shapes. Gordon Bunshaft comes to mind as designer of my favourite building of all: the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, based entirely on the triangle, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., based entirely on the circle. And no one loves the circle more than Mario Botta.

Partly due to his ideal apprenticeship under Louis I Kahn, partly because it gives order and polish without being boring (the circle is always interesting); partly because it has an eternality to it, a sacrality of sorts, without referencing any given religion or spiritual practice; and partly because he can: Archistars don’t usually work in constrained spaces.

When my friend arrived, it was evident at a first glance that we were not going to make it. At least not in the morning. We went to have lunch. We caught up.

Early afternoon was even worse. But we had to. You have to understand: we had to.

The line was so long it was impossible to get in: the guard at the door stopped anyone who tried to skip the line. We went to him: “We’re only going to the bookshop”, we said. “Oh – said he - the bookshop”. And let us in.

We stayed there long enough, I went to the bathroom, waited a bit more, then infiltrated in the line and bought the tickets. Sense of guilt played a part and I didn't even check if I had discounts. I could have gotten one with my train ticket. Very well.

Her little girl was with us. And the little girl decided she didn’t like Early Renaissance paintings that particular afternoon. Understandable: the gadgets at the bookshop were far more interesting. We took shifts. I gave it a shot first. Saying I didn’t see anything is an understatement. My friend went second: same thing. “I’m coming back tomorrow”, I said. “What?” “We have to see it. I’m coming back tomorrow. Earlier. I’ll be the first in line”.

I went back the next day. Earlier. I was the first in line.

Being early to a place like this and being greeted, for once, by a clear beautiful day, has two outcomes: it’s empty when you get there, and you have to wait a long, long time before going in. In my experience the two merged into a fruitful observation of Mario Botta’s work.

I have said about the circle, and circular is the fountain/pond at the center of the piazza. It has elements of both Carlo Scarpa and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, designed by Louis I Kahn. Later in the day I noticed that it might have been quoting also from a fountain-trough in Rovereto’s central Piazza Malfatti.

The circular plan is evident, but another motif that keeps popping up is a keyhole shape. The steel tube dome is divided in twenty ideal slices—ideal, because two are open, giving it a keyhole outline. Apart from the radial patterns that are always fun, the keyhole motif is reprised by the piazza itself, that looks like a reverse of Bernini's colonnade embracing Saint Peter's basilica in Rome.

Another staple of Mario Botta’s buildings are the thin, tall windows, always stacked very tightly to give a continuous and yet almost musical pattern.

For the long wait, the rhythm of Botta's slender windows becomes almost hypnotic: always even at the top, they slightly zigzag at the bottom - one up, one down - gradually getting longer. If we stretched the circular line we would obtain a Cheshire Cat Grin.

Anyway: at 10am sharp they let us in.

There are few experiences more fulfilling than a visit face to face with Antonello da Messina's portraits. I had missed it last time, six years ago. I didn’t know. There are few experiences more distressing than having to share this ideal intimacy with screaming kids, herds of elderly people with earpieces and insufferable know-all guides with loud squeaky voices.

But not this time: this time my friend and I were among the first to get in. And it was all so quiet. So quiet the works could finally breathe.

In Rome, curator Mauro Lucco stressed the influence on Antonello by the Spanish painters in Southern Italy and the Provençal ones during his travels. And the Flemish, of course. This one, organized by Federico de Melis, disagrees and gives more credit to the long shadow of Piero della Francesca. Obvious as it is that the double take has a common ground, here we look at Antonello through Piero’s lens.

Antonello was born and died in Messina aged 49 in 1479. In between, he traveled a lot. Had his apprenticeship in Naples under Niccolò Colantonio, spent years in Venice and was deeply influenced by Giovanni Bellini, the champion of Venetian art at the time. In each voyage, he would pick up something: the Spanish, Provençal and Piero della Francesca in Sicily and Naples, the Flemish and Bellini in Venice. All around him, the mediaeval cities, Gothic and Romanic architectures, were being transformed beyond recognition. Coming from a land of syncretism, like a sponge he moved through history in the making. Cities were planned anew, spaces opened, new military structures arose, public buildings got a heavy hand of makeup.

And the design of the exhibition spaces at the Mart cleverly reflects this: arches of different shapes and styles and sizes, some flying and some interred, like the ones you could find in cities were the street level has risen, or sometimes in Venice where a canal has been filled with dirt and turned into an alley.

If you've been exposed long enough to reproductions of a work—a work that is possible to represent visually, photographically, like paintings, sculptures and so on—when you see the original you always have that strange sensation of déjà-vu.

I mean yeah of course Walter Benjamin already wrote about this, but what I mean here is not a broad cultural critique, it's a psychological trick, that also happens with famous people you've been seeing on TV or in the movies. Your first reaction is: “There you are!” - Like meeting an old friend.

For those who've been exposed for far too long to any given reproduction of a work of art, the reaction may occasionally be: "You again?". Which incidentally is what the mat at my friend's doorstep says.

That was not so with Antonello da Messina. The moment I saw the 1476 Annunciata of Palermo the “there you are” died in my mouth, and the “you again” never even surfaced.

Having seen it in catalogues, online and on paper, for years, and on the gigantic posters on the way to the Mart, seeing it there on the wall was a first time. And it felt as fresh as a first time should be. Suddenly, I didn’t know anything about it. It was as if I’d mistaken it for someone else.

It’s impossible to describe the pale blue color of the drapery and the roundness of the expression on the Virgin’s face; the composition, so geometric and yet vibrant; and the hands; and the eyes. Those eyes.

Antonello da Messina, Annunciata (Virgin Annunciate), Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo
via Wikimedia Commons

The physicality of the painting should be hidden here. Early Renaissance painters used the velatura method long practiced in tempera painting: ultra thin layers upon layers of paint to create transparencies and light effects and subtle traits in the expression of the eyes - and at the same time hiding the extreme quality of the technique, so much so that the painter disappears under his own work. This is stunning in Antonello’s case. But, somehow, you can see his hand. Made by someone who never settled in his research, his experimentations may seem rather silent to us, but they were never at rest.

This Annunciata was one of the first ever paintings to show the Virgin Mary as a real woman. It was one of the first ever Italian portraits to show a three-quarters figure; it was the fruit of an immensely talented italian painter studying and absorbing the then new lesson of masters Petrus Christus and Jan van Eyck. It was many things, new things, revolutionary things. Yet, it doesn’t matter now.

The academics do their painstaking job of attributing, collocating, understanding, interpreting, but this is not why we look at it. We look at it because it’s beautiful. And fresh. And we look at it with such ease because there is one very important thing this picture is not: it is not remote.

Antonello was one of the first painters in the western tradition to speak our language. And it was a language so needed that immediately became a staple of the whole painterly world: the profile was all but abandoned in favor of the rounder, more “illusionistic" three-quarters; the psychological depth substituted the typified images that had until then dominated; oil made tempera obsolete. And so on. It caught up with such momentum that we can only understand it by comparing it to something closer to us: the Impressionists.

Impressionists are pretty. Everybody loves the impressionists. People even like Renoir. That’s because it’s so easy to like. What’s not to like? It’s colorful, it’s vibrant, it’s illusionistic. We can’t even begin to think how people could have not liked the impressionists when they first came out. Art after them had them as a new standard.

Now that’s what happened with the Early Renaissance, more or less. But on a far larger scale.

Of course they had predecessors, everybody has predecessors. But when the completion of those tensions that had been around for decades finally occurred, it took the art world - the only world that produced images at the time - by storm. And Antonello da Messina was one of the absolute protagonists of that.

Here at the Mart today, Antonello is obviously the main attraction, but it’s only half of an ideal two-parter. And the portrait being Antonello’s calling card, it’s not surprising that the companion show - also closing today - is called L'altro ritratto.

Very clever title: "The Other Portrait" would be a plain translation, and the one reported on the website. But the Italian is ambiguous here: it also means "The Other Portrayed". And the Other is the real protagonist, in all the possible shades of otherness. A visit to this show made it clear how anyone who gets portrayed - even oneself - becomes an "Other". And that's the third layer of meaning of the title.

What do we find here? Once again the curatorial choice was very much to the point, without frills - but with very few thrills too.

Shown in a semitransparent enclosure made of paper or cloth, reminiscent of the Japanese fusuma – sliding wood and paper panels – the works were displayed at a reasonable distance from each other. Under most of them, at cat-eye level, a strip of musings about the Other flowed without clogging the visual space. An example among many: “in attesa dell'altro, io sono qui, voi ci siete?” (“Waiting for the other, I am here, are you too?”)

Among the highlights—at least to my taste—Thomas Schütte and a series of portraits, or studies, of his melted sculptures of faces (a double level otherness here); two beautiful, impactful and hypnotizing oversized Till Freiwald watercolors that seemed in a constant confrontation with Thomas Ruff’s polaroids; six vertical black&white videos by Fiona Tan (Provenance, 2008), deservedly in a room all of their own:

There also were Óscar Muñoz’s existential disappearing portraits, and an existential 1979 shadow-portrait by Claudio Parmiggiani; and Lucian Freud, portraying Lucian Freud.

Otherness galore.

These twin exhibitions at the Mart were part of the first crop of the new director Cristiana Collu’s plan (*) to give this beautiful space justice: quality seems to be her main stand. And this is not so obvious given what other museums are doing.

(*) this youtube video may not have English subtitles yet, but she sums up her vision here.

f

Bishops & Queens

Beautiful Boxes: Food for Your Eyes, 1

Things discussed: Triennale; Arts&Foods; Expo 2015; Impractical Furniture; 3-D Encyclopedias; Dioramas; Liver Cleavers; Houses of Better Days.

While We Lay Awake

Things discussed: Reboots; Art Biennale; Expo 2015; Enthusiasm; Vast Oceans Unspoken.

At a Glance: Art Before Christmas @ Art Kitchen Superground

Things discussed: Art Before Christmas; Art Kitchen; Superground; Amends; Delays; other things.

Expansion: Cildo Meireles

Things discussed: HangarBicocca; Cildo Meireles; installations; Milan; stench; radios; glass; synaesthesia; Popes; bones; eggs; bullets; ice-cubes.

Out of Space: Many Happy Returns

Things discussed: The Kiss; Constantin Brâncuși; John Berger; Everything that Rises; Lawrence Weschler; Convergences; Perfumes and Shampoos; Early Christian Art; Jorge Luis Borges; Love, eternal.

Weekends Without Words: Museo del Novecento

Things Shown: Museo del Novecento, Milan; Lights; Shapes; More Lights; Some other Shapes; Curves; Reflections; Spiral Pits.

Cura Te Ipsum: The Rest of the Words

Things discussed: Gravestones; Patches of Sunlight; Retirement; Inner Light; Shaven Lawn.

Cura Te Ipsum: The Sustainable Art Project

Things discussed: Sustainability; Food Supplies; Distance; Discarded Kettles; Indigo Blue; Freshness; Taste.

Expansion: The Abramović Method

Things discussed: Marina Abramović; PAC; Milan; performance; being active; being passive; inner space; crystals; quartzes; earmuffs; being naïf; bad trips.

At a Glance: The Stand of the Phoenix

Things Discussed: Cathedrals; Phoenixes; Xu Bing; St. John the Divine; Uptown Manhattan; Jim Woodring; Frank.

Expansion: The Big Bambú Theory

Things discussed: bamboo; Doug and Mike Starn; suspension; Venice Biennial; interdependence; being active; being passive; chaos; strings; Mikado sticks.

At a Glance: See Change

Things Discussed: LAX; See Change Video Installation; People to Pick Up.

Beautiful Boxes: Custom Space, 2

Things Discussed: Marlene Dumas; Thomas Schütte; Roni Horn; How to be Liquid in Many Forms.

Beautiful Boxes: Custom Space, 1

Things Discussed: Punta della Dogana; Prima Materia; Perks; Collections; Light; Holes; Bricks, Wood, Textures; Exhibitions Built to Last.

Beautiful Boxes: Up to Tate

Things discussed: Tate Modern, guilt, Surrealism, dream, poetry, good ideas, bad seats

Expansion: Lost in Space, not in Meaning

Things discussed: Tomás Saraceno, being active or passive, void, Hangar Bicocca, Milan, space, time, craters, instability, quantum physics, foam, Yves Klein.

Out of Space: Francesca Blanc

Things discussed: Francesca Blanc, sculpture, suicide, bronze, naked, Giacomo Manzù, Milan football team, La dolce vita, birthday.

Francesca Blanc, via Museo Manzú Sculpture of Francesca Blanc by Giacomo Manzú Bronze 90 x 50 x 64,5 cm 1941-50 Manzú Collection, Ardea (Rome)

Board Vision: Tales From the Battlefield

Things discussed: Spatial Dysmorphia; Aliens; Coups and Ambushes; Blackboards; Emptiness; Boxes; Dinosaurs; Institutional Inertia; Vantage Points.

From the Battlelfield, 1

From the Battlefield, 2

Expansion: Et In Synesthesia Ego

Things Discussed: Rudolf Stingel; Carpets; Sailors; Lightbulbs; the Softening Sound of Your Own Steps; Patterns Repeated.

Beautiful Boxes: Giacomo's Sense of Space

Things discussed: Giacomo Manzú, sculpture, Rome, boxes, scary cardinals, fighting lovers, Inge Schabel, muse, captions, forgotten museums, obsessions.

Phil, Fit, Mambo: So Museum would, were it not Museum call'd

Things discussed: Acronyms; Dismay; Cultural Habits; Institutional Obsessions; Italian Cats; the Importance of Branding.

Beautiful Boxes: A Boxful of Impressions

Things discussed: Ara Pacis; Impressionism; boxes; captions; collectors; red hair; wag artists.

Beautiful Boxes: A City of Two Tales

Things discussed: Mart; Rovereto; radial patterns; catching up; Antonello da Messina; L’altro ritratto; different ways of missing the same exhibition; dinosaurs; the things you never learn.

Francesca Blanc, via Museo Manzú

Sculpture of Francesca Blanc

by Giacomo Manzú

Bronze

90 x 50 x 64,5 cm

1941-50

Manzú Collection, Ardea (Rome)