Catalogue

This short essay explores the characteristic use of photographic images in Surrealism between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. In particular the Surrealists chose functional images with a documentary or informative purpose, decontextualising them in their art in order to raise questions and unsettle the viewer. The use of these images became a Surrealist gesture in its own right, stimulating the imagination and creating a form of poetry that generates surprise, or the ecstasy so beloved by the Surrealists. This subverts the meaning of the images, lending them added power and connotations that are both artistic and non-artistic.

What is an image and why have images become so important in our daily lives? And what does the gaze mean? Federico Ferrari reflects on our society of images and the cadenced relationship between words and pictures, a relationship that forges our horizon. He focuses on the use made of images and the world they create, and how the gaze refracts: a single vision of the world, a single measure is impossible. The contemporary image calls for a new definition of the gaze, which springs from the unique nature of each vision and is also capable of embracing its plurality. As the number of possible visions is by definition infinite, what really counts is what underpins them and is therefore common to them all. To borrow the terms of set theory, it is an empty set that appears null but also contains something: our gaze. The force that precedes us and is remains open, capable of going beyond all possible visions, all given images. The empty set of the gaze and the power of vision.

In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of artists who, in shunning technical virtuosity, have produced works that challenge the very definition of painting. Enormous canvases overflowing with smudges and failed attempts bear witness to an intense struggle with the medium. Works of modest dimensions are further diminished by an uncertain hand and a sloppy style. Others still opt for self-sabotage, concealing their content behind torn canvases. Why on earth should painters sign paintings doomed to failure? Perhaps to free art from the yoke of the market and the expectations that have weighed upon painting for centuries.Artists such as Albert Oehlen, Mary Heilmann, David Hammons, Christopher Wool, Michael Krebber and Raoul De Keyser choose the path of impermanence, moving away not only from the idea of the ‘masterpiece’, but also from any semblance of completion. After all, Cézanne, with his tormented reinterpretations of Mont Sainte-Victoire, or Giacometti, with his unfinished portraits, already demonstrated a certain distrust of the finished work. The history of modern art is studded with acts of negation, of radical rejection: an attitude that finds resonance in Asian arts and philosophies, where the “unfinished” is perceived not as a flaw but as a quality to be appreciated and sought after.In the essays collected here – published from 2009 onwards – Raphael Rubinstein traces a genealogy of ‘provisional painting’ and explores an art capable of asserting its own transience as an authentic value.Afterword by Luca Bertolo

Throught time, only few books have been devoted to Rome, as artists have always been in awe of the Ethernal City. As many other photographers, Mimmo Jodice waited many years before facing such a project, but his most recent works, especially the one on the myth of the Mediterranean, can be regarded as preparatory to the myth of Rome. Jodice’s eye spans from the ruins of the Ancient Rome to the Renaissance, Baroque and modern architectures, guiding us in a long journey through time and history. The book is a project commissioned by the publisher to Mimmo Jodice and is an independent publication with no connection to any exhibition or event. The volume includes texts by Richard Burdett, Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics and currently chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics, and Cornelia Lauf, art historian and curator currently teaching at the faculty of Arts and Design at IUAV in Venice.

‘Jewish by blood, Hamburg at heart, Florentine in spirit’: this is how Aby Warburg (1866–1929) liked to describe himself, a phrase that aptly captures his obsessive quest for self-discovery—cultivated through self-narration—and the significant shifts in direction that marked his life’s journey. If he is recognised today as one of the most influential art and cultural historians of the 20th century, it is in spite of his fragile mental health and a life as an ‘outlaw’, convinced that true insight belongs only to those prepared to deviate from society’s ordinary expectations.Having renounced his role as the eldest son in Germany’s wealthiest banking family and rejected Jewish orthodoxy, Aby followed his own intuitions and embarked on a journey through the world of symbols that took him from the Wild West to the heart of the Renaissance, in Florence. An independent scholar and free thinker, intolerant of the compartmentalised structure of the university yet in dialogue with the most progressive intellectuals of his time, Warburg pioneered a holistic methodology that integrates historical and artistic inquiry with sciences such as anthropology, medicine and psychology. This interdisciplinary approach guided his research into the survival of antiquity—distilled in his famous unfinished work Atlas Mnemosyne—and the creation of his extraordinary library, now housed at the Warburg Institute in London, a valuable resource for academics worldwide.Hans C. Hönes paints a detailed and intimate portrait of a man who, despite countless personal and professional difficulties, was ahead of his time, laying the foundations for contemporary art history.

An anthology of quotes by the artist David Hockney covering a wide range of topics, including drawing, photography, nature, creativity, his relationship with technology and homosexuality: a sort of intellectual autobiography in miniature. My Eyes on the World offers an enchanting and engaging distillation of the inimitable spirit of one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists through observations – some previously unpublished – collected over the years by the writer and art critic Martin Gayford.Hockney has a talent for capturing profound truths in concise statements, ranging from the most everyday – ‘The eye is always moving; if it isn’t moving, it’s because you’re dead’ – to statements on art or opinions on other image-makers, such as Caravaggio, Cézanne and Walt Disney.

There have been times when the general public was not only held in high regard, but was even courted: one need only think of the most famous painter of antiquity, Apelles, who displayed his paintings in the street and hid himself away to eavesdrop on the opinions of ordinary people. Even Leonardo da Vinci and Annibale Carracci subjected their works to the criticism of the common people, who never lie, according to the motto vox populi, vox dei.Yet, from the 18th century onwards, the idea emerged that the right to pass judgement on art was the exclusive preserve of that cultured elite who, from all over Europe, flocked to Italian cities to refine their taste, thanks above all to the opening of the most elegant princely collections. The wider public ended up being mocked and opposed by writers, connoisseurs and the artists themselves, who portrayed them as a vulgar and undignified rabble.Today, opportunities to enjoy art and participate in cultural life have grown exponentially, and museums, aware of the undeniable value of the masses, stage spectacular events and set up educational departments to attract as many visitors as possible. Whether celebrated or despised, their influence can no longer be ignored.It is from this premise that Oskar Bätschmann’s research begins. Through a rich variety of anecdotes, illustrations and writings from different eras, the author tells the story of the public that art history has yet to discover, bringing them to the fore as never before.

The exhibition “Faces and Allegories. Sculptures by Lorenzo Bartolini” curated by Carlo Sisi brings together a selection of works focusing on portraits and allegories: subjects and themes pursued by the Tuscan artist - first a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, then official sculptor to the Bonapartes - at a time when the aesthetics of Purism with its “relative beauty” was imposing itself on abstract neoclassical forms, introducing into art the elements of a Nature observed without mediation.The first section of the exhibition, dedicated to the “Faces”, presents a series of female portraits “in conversation”: snapshots of those salons that in the first half of the 19th century represented the militant and often dissenting core of the intellectual elite of the time. Bartolini’s studio in Borgo San Frediano, Florence, was a mundane meeting place, so much so that the posing sessions were animated by cordial dialogues with which the artist “entertained people, young or old, authoritative or not, making them participate, while he painted the portrait, in the ideas and motions with the intention of capturing the soul, the special beauty that he strove to restore by availing himself of the conquered spiritual harmony”.The second section of the exhibition examines one of the cornerstones of Bartolini’s formal poetics, through the union of natural beauty, based on the study of the 15th-century masters, and concepts adhering to the ethical and political aspirations of the Restoration. With the group of the Carità educatrice, the apex of the Romantic allegory depicting the spiritual and intellectual education of children and alluding to the paternalistic care of the Grand Ducal government, plaster models are displayed to help reconstruct its compositional history, as well as a selection of works that outline its context and fortune.The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition consists of an introduction and an in-depth text on the ideological and cultural climate in which Bartolini moved, and an illustrated section dedicated to the works on display.

As he razes Carthage to the ground, Scipio Aemilianus recalls the words of Heraclitus: ‘A heap of rubble thrown together at random is the most beautiful order in the world.’ Scipio is convinced that every warrior is the architect of a new universal harmony. Yet, according to Albert Speer and Victor Hugo, not all ruins are created equal, and creating them well is an art. The former shapes buildings destined to produce beautiful ruins; the latter, a ‘martial arts critic’, is so struck by the sight of a gutted tower that he makes it the template for the new Romantic aesthetic. Ruins provide models for art, but the reverse also occurs, if it is true that the Allied bombs drew inspiration from the Ruins of the Old Kreuzkirche, painted by Bernardo Bellotto in 1765, to determine the face Dresden would have on the morning of 15 February 1945.Not even a promise of destruction can interrupt the spectacle of war. Thus, in the midst of an air raid, the manager of a German cinema clears away the rubble preventing the screening of a Nazi propaganda film. A few kilometres away, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau has returned to its original state of debris scattered across the city streets, from where the artist had gathered it years earlier to elevate it to a work of art.What Jean-Yves Jouannais presents to us in these pages is an exclusive circle of heroes obsessed with sieges – that is, obsessed with sieges – who, without renouncing their commitment to the war effort, have amended its laws, feeling more inclined towards art. From antiquity to the present day, they inhabit spectral spaces, strewn with debris that the author describes with hallucinatory realism, so much so that the reader will feel as though they are touching the incandescent matter of the ruins of Berlin, Ebla, Halberstadt, Luoyping, Hamburg, Dura Europos or Stalingrad.

Sic transit gloria mundi. The things of this world are fleeting, as Pierre Le-Tan is well aware; this is why he has decided to immortalise twenty eccentric characters he has encountered along the way. With an ironic yet delicate touch, he evokes the atmosphere of auction houses, the lavish parties in the villas of Tangier, or the unusual encounters in the confines of a railway carriage where, for the first time, he had the privilege of meeting them.Driven by the same impulse, individuals of refined taste and a passion for collecting have amassed objects bordering on the bizarre: from glass animal figurines to wax heads of criminals with real hair attached, to crumpled pieces of paper catalogued as if in a museum. The Princess of Brioni, Umberto Pasti and Le-Tan himself, much like those birds that decorate their nests with pebbles, respond to an ancient and primordial instinct, entirely alien to the market logic that drives the most illustrious and established collectors. Free from fashions and speculation, they explore and collect for the sheer pleasure of being surrounded by objects they have chosen and love.Of them, perhaps, the only testimony that will remain is in these pages, with the moving drawings of a curious Franco-Vietnamese artist, and in the fading traces of a bygone era imprinted on the walls of their homes.

The exhibition “Condensare l’Infinito” by Michele Ciacciofera, hosted at the MA*GA museums in Gallarate, the Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brest and the Building gallery in Milan, evokes the artist’s journeys from the Mediterranean to Brittany and finally to Scotland, crossing the Pre-Alpine and Alpine ranges.The catalogue explores the artist’s creative journey and takes the form of a geographical atlas punctuated with theoretical and visual references, aiming to recount in a fresh way the history—or rather, the stories—of the emergence of the relationship between humanity and space. Michele Ciacciofera, using a variety of artistic techniques, including installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, theatrical performances, video and sound, freely combines media and methods of exploring nature, history, mythology and humanity. This diversity is reflected in the volume through five sections dedicated to five archetypes of the artist’s work.The authors—Alessandro Castiglioni, the book’s editor, Melissa Bianca Amore, Angelo Crespi and Loïc Le Gall—each from their own perspective, examine the concepts of time and space, outlining the possible paths through which humankind marks its passage and leaves its trace.The texts are in Italian, French and English.

It was the year 1993 when Dave Hickey, the enfant terrible of art criticism, galvanised by the controversy surrounding Robert Mapplethorpe's Portfolio X exhibition, decided to launch a ferocious attack against the academic establishment by dragging a bygone theme into the spotlight: beauty.Demonised and accused of connivance with the logic of the market, the latter had long since wandered like a spectre through the ruins of the aesthetic debate, sowing embarrassment within the new ‘therapeutic’ institutions - museums, galleries and the entire art system. Like priests of a mystery cult, following the dogmas of Greenberg and Barr, the professors had mystified artistic practice with lofty theoretical disquisitions, underpinned by a corrosive distrust of all that was loveliness and seduction, ‘beauty’ in fact.In these four essays - more like a manifesto than a polite discussion - the Texan critic aims straight at the target and recalls how over the centuries authors such as Raphael, Caravaggio and Warhol have exploited pure form to establish an immediate relationship between the observer and the content of their images, in a democratic and liberating process.Thirty years after its first publication in the United States, the dragon evoked by Hickey once again spreads its wings and pours forth, sparing no-one, its fiery, provocative and unfiltered prose. Completely indifferent to the antipathies it may arouse.