A mini route to drink in a little beauty on days of non-stop heat. From Rome, to Carrara, to Verona, to Cadore, there is art that is worth a visit (hopefully with air conditioning)
August, I don’t know you about my exhibitions. High summer is certainly not the period for which the most attractive art exhibitions of the year are programmed, usually aimed at exploiting the public residing in the major cities who, in the hot season, can also move elsewhere. Even at this moment, however, there is no shortage of exhibitions worthy of consideration, especially in places with tourist flows, or those that would aspire to be so, which in this way diversify the leisure offer available to holidaymakers. I highlight a few among many, without this at all corresponding to a selection of events more worthy than others (check carefully first if air conditioning is provided).
The process of intellectualization that concerns the arts from the Renaissance onwards makes them move in two equal and opposite directions, on the one hand identifying the field of a real science of vision, on the other aiming at the model of literature in order to be able to present itself as a sort of poetry in images. In this second aspect, the Metamorphoses, Ovid’s classic poem in which the events of the gods manifest themselves through the fantastic transmutation of the human body into other forms of nature, constitute the point of reference for a whole series of works which, in celebrating the myth, also enhance the unique ability of art to depict it. About eighty examples of the genre, many of which are so well known that they need not be mentioned, are included in an exhibition that the Galleria Borghese in Rome has organized with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (curated by Francesca Cappelletti and Frits Scholten, until 20 September).
How many know that Titian, a better emulator of Giorgione also in this sense, was considered a master in the rendering of landscapes which had not yet risen to an autonomous pictorial genre in his time? An exhibition at his native Pieve di Cadore (Palazzo della Magnifica Comunità di Cadore, curated by Bernard Aikema and Thomas Dalla Costa, until 18 October) addresses the topic, focusing on the way in which Titian, even when he massively draws inspiration for his landscapes from German prints, then transfigures them into a painting that aims to communicate a lively and enveloping emotion of nature, in the context of a vision for which the civilization of his era was re-proposing the perfect balance between divinity, man and creation at the basis of the ancient golden age.
With Luca Signorelli and Pietro Berrettini, Gino Severini (1883-1966) is the other great artist born in Cortona. The Tuscan town dedicates a retrospective to him (MAEC, curated by Daniela Fonti and Margherita d’Ayala Valva, until 1 November) which touches on the crucial passages of his career, from early Divisionism to early Futurism, from involvement in the Parisian avant-garde of Cubism to the recovery of a traditionalist figuration that heralds the international rappel à l’ordre rather than following it, finding follow-up in the development of new “national” iconographies, such as those centered on the Commedia dell’Arte and Pulcinella, which he applies in particular in mural painting, another reference to the past, while the ardor for fascism was giving way to a rediscovered Christian vocation.
The pictorial activity of New Yorker Julian Beck (1925-1985), leader of the Living Theater who represented one of the pinnacles of avant-garde theater of the twentieth century, several times, with his inseparable companion Judith Malina, guest of our country (Rome, Spazio Ripense dell’Accademia di San Luca, curated by Lorenzo Mango, until 14 November) is little known. Before dedicating himself body and soul to theatre, Beck had participated in the abstractionist ferment that in New York led to the affirmation of Action Painting and other fronts of new American art, without however completely denying figuration also due to a passion he had for Mexican muralists (an exhibition is underway at the Capitoline Museums in Rome on the most famous of them, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo’s unfaithful husband, curated by Miguel Fernández Félix and Alberto González Torres, until December 13).
Exhibitions involving women are growing, who knows to what extent due to the greater appeal that the subject is having on scholars and the public or in response to requests from above – the Ministry of Culture recognizes financing concessions for initiatives of this kind – such as “female quotas”. If you expect a more balanced representation of female art between the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the exhibition The ladies of art in Carrara (Palazzo Cucchiari, curated by Massimo Bertozzi, around one hundred and thirty works, until 25 October) is not for you, standing out rather for the numerous relationships of familiarity, original or acquired, that women still maintain with respect to other artists, intellectuals or patrons (for example Amanzia Guérillot, wife of Angelo Inganni, Emma Ciardi, daughter of Guglielmo, Leonetta Pieraccini, wife of Emilio Cecchi, Adriana Pìncherle, sister of Alberto Moravia, Luce and Elica Balla, daughters of Giacomo, Daphne Maugham, wife of Felice Casorati, Cesarina Gualino, wife of Riccardo, Edita Broglio, wife of Mario, etc.), although there are naturally exceptions (Evangelina Alciati, Bice Lazzari, Regina Cassolo, Carla Accardi, to name just a few).
However, the American Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), a figure of excellence in social photography of the early twentieth century, to whom the Scavi Scaligeri International Photography Center in Verona dedicates a retrospective of around two hundred works (curated by Walter Guadagnini and Monica Poggi, Camera production, until 1 October) did not need propitious relatives.
Lange is one of the photographers hired by the government agency FSA (Farm Security Administration) as an instrument at the service of Roosevelt’s New Deal, documenting in the company of economist Paul S. Taylor the miserable conditions of farmers who migrate for work. The resulting photographs are memorable, such as the portrait of Florence Owens Thompson, better known as Mother Migrant (1936), which is still extraordinarily relevant. Lange’s documentation continues in 1937 in the countryside of the South, where the problems of uncivilized exploitation of labor – past stories? – those of racial segregation are added, also recording the progress that Roosevelt’s policies were achieving from this point of view. A much less well-known chapter is the one in which Lange has more than one doubt about Roosevelt’s actions, when the president orders 110,000 Americans whose origins date back to Japan, who from one moment to the next became enemies at home, to be interned in isolation camps. Lange sets out to bear witness to their unjust hardship, but many of her photographs are censored or relegated to oblivion by federal authorities.
Happy August holidays to everyone, heat permitting, obviously.
