CritIt is a blog dedicated to art experiences in the field of painting, sculpture, installations, and architecture. Each article is dedicated to a theme revolving around the concept of ‘identity’ and how art relates to contemporary culture, society, and politics.
Art criticism is not an exclusive discipline, but a discourse to share. If art is to represent culture, then it should be public.
'Art is not a thing; it is a way.' ~Elbert Hubbard
Passi. 2011. broken glass and mirror. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna.
‘...architecture is the only reason for sculpture. The spirit of architecture is sculpture, and construction of sculpture is architecture...’- Arturo Martini, Scultura lingua morta (Sculpture a Dead Language), 1945
The entrance of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna exhibits Perri’s, a Cosenza born Italian, installation that acts as a transitional zone, a ‘symbolic threshold’. Its intentions are to play with spatial perceptions, dimensions, materiality, and reality. The simple application of glass panel pavements plays with the reflected sculpture images through altering and recreating an unbalanced reflection upside down. A type of ‘broken narration’ of the spectator’s reality..
The gallery, unlike previous works in the museum itself, actually commissioned Passi. The gallery hall location is particularly essential to Pirri’s work. The glass ceiling acts as a link between indoor and outdoor. The spectator’s reality of the mirrored image is projected into the exterior brightly lite space.
The space is indoor yet appears outdoor. Pirri’s work is successful through his careful study of applying an unmistakable material in an uncommon placement, integrating spectator into the artwork, and understanding the location’s uniqueness.
Steps in Florence
Passi in Florence expands Renaissance interiors. Shattered (yet safe to walk on) mirrored panel pavement floors of the main hall of the palazzo along with the corridors that lead to and from it. Tourists find the process of visiting the spaces a challenge. The decorative ceilings filled with trompe l'oeil frescos are reflected on a fractured mirrored floor creating a new interpretation of spatial perceptions. The art work ironically, rather than taking away from the interiors, forces the visitors to look more clearly at the details of painted surfaces. The results are a play of colors, shapes, and images that fill the entire six surfaces; a three dimensional portrayal of two dimensional works.
"senza titolo" [cod.5137] “Opere per BASE “. 1989. Galleria Carini, Florence.
Riccardo Caporossi , Alfredo Pirri. Hic Iacet Corpus. 2011. Villa Borghese.
Racconti Exhibit. 2006. Galleria Oredaria. Rome.
More About the Artist:
i. Official artist website: www.alfredopirri.com
ii. Artist facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Alfredo-Pirri/389361791177339
iii. Roma gallery tours: http://www.romegallerytours.com/article.304/alfredo-pirri-giacomo-guidi-arte-contemporanea.html
iv. shows: http://www.alfredopirri.com/category/archive/
Bibliography
i. Pirri, Alfredo. ‘Steps, GNAM 2011’ in Alfredo Pirri (online). http://www.alfredopirri.com [last sited: 20:00, 26/1/2014] ii. http://www.alfredopirri.com/passi-galleria-nazionale-darte-moderna/?lang=en [last sited: 13:30, 01/04/2014] iii. Ugolini, Paola. 'Alfredo Pirri, Racconti'. UnDo.net. Vol. 30 No. 210. Nov.-Dec. 2006. http://www.undo.net/it/magazines/1164045283
Umberto Mastroianni, one of Italy’s leading sculptors, created art with a conscious twist. The artistic turning point was during World War II when the he fought alongside Italy’s Fascist opposition. It was that time that Mastroianni went from figurative paintings that reflected material experimentation to abstract art with a cause. He was not just trying to practice expressing the typical objectives of beauty. He wanted to communicate an ideology, a message of peace and anti-war. He was definitely a critic of the times that responded to the world around him and reflected the philosophy of Italy’s youth.
His talent is genetic, having a master engraver father and sculptor uncle. His initial formal training was under Michele Guerrisi of Torino. During that time he encountered the second wave of Futurist friends, such as Luigi Spazzapan. The combination of family, education and friends definitely gave Mastroianni a good foundation. Thanks to Filippo de Pisis, the artist finally had the chance to exhibit solo in Genoa in 1931.
World War II: A Turning Point
Mastroianni, Umberto. Il Monumento alla pace. 1987. Piazza XV febbraio, Cassino.
It was World War II that set the psychological and intellectual motivation for artistic transformation. Being a part of the Mussolini army fighting alongside Nazi Germany provoked desertion. Mastroianni went from defending Mussolini in battle, to fighting against Fascism alongside the Italian partisans; standing by the democratic political philosophies of the anti-Nazi Europe.
War was a major concern to Mastroianni’s art. In fact his pre-war expressions were oriented to classical and Etruscan influence on his modern artistic production. The war transformed his outlook. Heavily influenced by Futurism, by artists such as Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, Mastroianni became obsessed with the mechanics of change. His desire for peace and need to express the inhumaneness of battles was expressed through machine-like abstractions. His ideas and themes met the needs of the people and his acclaim to fame. Mastroianni’s organic forms were replaced by definite shapes of mechanical fragments.
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1. Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. 1913. Bronze. Museum of Modern Art (New York City).
2. Giacomo Balla. The Speed of an Autumobile. 1913. Oil on canvas.
Mastroianni’s monumental art combines anti-war ideology, abstract language, and mechanical systems. The extent of his public works shows an appreciation for artistic technique and socio-political position. Monumento ai Caduti (Monument of the Fallen) and Monumento ai Partigiani (Monument to the Partisans) in Turin, Monumento alla Resistenza (Monument to the Resistence) and Monumento ai Partigiani del Canavese (Monument to the Partisans of Canavese) are a few of his pubic work that mark the end of the war and express condolences to those who fought against Fascism. As many monuments of war, they express the dark moments captured in violent history. They mark turning points to those who won, to those who lost, and to those who survived. They are a verbal expression of victory or of defeat. Mastroianni is not one of the few, but one of the many artists who have sculpted in the name of conflict. His technique and approach are unique.
1. Mastroianni, Umberto. Monument to the partisan struggle. 1977. Wood and metal. Urbino. 2. Mastroianni, Umberto. Composition. 1975. Bronze. 3. Umberto Mastroianni. Lo stregone. 1966. lead print. Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica. Rome
The American Twist
Mastroianni, Umberto. Battaglia. 1957. Bronze. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna. Rome.
Mastroianni was also one of the first Europeans to be influenced by the emerging American Abstract Expressionism. Jack Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Richard Pousette-Dart were of the many names behind the new artistic movement. Essentially the period was influenced by artists who fled Europe during the war and practiced in America. New York City became a meeting point for European and American artists to create a new form of artistic production of painting and sculpture that also had a trickle down effect into architectural forms of expression.
Battaglia, now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, is one of Mastroianni’s works that is a combination of Boccioni Futurism and Pollock Abstract Expressionism in dynamic sculpture. The piece is actually a depiction of a group of warriors in combat. The piece looks more like painting with abstract brushwork come to life. Battaglia uses industry and technology to express the mechanisms of war with machine forms. The aggressive shapes, forceful nature, and explosive energy define the artist's nature to oppose oppression, aggression, and destruction.
1. Pollock, Jackson. No.5. 1948. Oil on fiberglass.244 × 122 cm. (96 × 48 in.), private collection.
2. de Kooning, Willem. Woman V,1952 1953. New York. Private Collection.
3. Pousette-Dart, Richard.Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental. 1941-42. Oil on canvas.
Look into Other Monuments of War
The Merchant Seafarers War Memorial, by Brian Fell, is a sculpture dedicated to the Merchant Seamen of Cardiff Bay and Butetown. The uniqueness of this work is its scale and use of materials. The structure is actually a combination of the front part of a ship and a the form of a face. Hidden within the artwork are inscriptionsnad portraits of local seafarers who fought in war by Louise Shenstone and Adrian Butler.
The Arc de Triomphe, designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806 and dedicated to those who fought in the Napolian Wars and in the name of France. The concept derives from ancient Rome's Arch of Constantine in Fuori Imperiali. The arch of Paris is a symbol of the city, an internationally recognized landmark, in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, also known as the Place de l`Etoile. The names of the Generals and the wars they fought in are on the underside of the arch, as a reminder of the greatness of France though victories of battles fought in history. Beneath the structure lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In 1919, after the victory parade that celebrated the end of WWI, Charles Godfroy flew a biplane through the Arc de Triomphe.
The rectangular column with the clothing of female figures of war is an unusual monument called The Women of World War II. The uniqueness is it's shape and use of symbols without actual figures. It reminds the public that women participated and fought during the war. Most people associate WWI with men, and not women. The sculpture is by John W. Mills in Whitehall London, near Cenotaph. The artist used the various uniform clothing forms of the various jobs women held in the English army to symbolically associate the female with a grand scale role in battle.
The Art of: Balla, Archipenko, Martini, Carra, Kandinskij, Miro, & Bill
Giacomo Balla Espanzione dinamica + velocita
Ezpanzione dinamica e velocit. 1913 (circa). oil on canvas. 65,5 x 108,5 cm. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
The painting is a part of a series called ‘auto in corsa’ from 1913-14 during a period of experimentation and representation of velocity. The painting is a monochromatic work of different shades of the same color, considered a Bragaglia influence, to represent a type of dance as a form of understanding speed and futuristic ideas about modernity.
Giacomo Balla Works:
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1. Velocità d’automobile. 1914. Oil on canvas. 49.5 x 66.5 cm. 2. Velocità astratta n. 2. 1914. oil on canvas. 28.5 x 44.1 cm
Camminando (Woman Walking). 1912-20. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Roma
Alexander Archipenko, born in Kiev when the city was part of the Russian Empire, today in Ukraine, was a part of the emerging Russian painters who lived in the artist colony La Ruche in the early 1900s. At a young age, in the year 1910, he had exhibitions at Salon des independents and Salon d'Automne; which were iconic signs of success.
Other international exhibitions were the 12th Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte di Venezia of 1920, First Russian Art Exhibition in the Gallery van Diemen in Berlin in 1921, Russian Paintings and Sculpture in Chicago, in 1923’s Century Progress World's Fair of Chicago, Cubism and Abstract Art in New York in 1936 and many others. To state his international mark on art, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1962.
What art goers know most about Archipenko is his relation to Picasso and the cubist movement. The artist is in fact known to be the artist after Picasso to have applied cubism in 3D. His creative production applied negative space as a major tool to artistic representation. The voids, or absence of materiality, is just as important as the object itself. Movement is described through form, curves, and materials. Minimalizing the object to express a grander concept of artistic expression.
Other Alexander Archipenko's:
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1. Woman Combing Her Hair. 1914. bronze. 178.5 x 40 x 40 cm
2. La Lutte (The Boxer). 1914. Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin.
Il dorminente. 1921. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Naztionale di Roma
Martini is known for figurative sculptures produced in a diversity of both styles and materials. It took training in diverse cities before settling in Munich, Germany, to study under the academic sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand in 1909. His art was very impressionistic until the 1922 exhibition entilted ‘Valori plastici’ where Martini’s influence became more interested in nature. Il dorminente represents that second phase of artistic ideology where the sculpture studies the metaphysical of sleep, as a condition of suspending existence. The end result is a humorous representation of a state of mind.
Martini's Marbles:
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1. Livy (Titus). 1942. Marble. University of Padova.
2. Fanciulla verso sera, 1919. Marble. 55 x 51 x 33. Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna
L’ovale delle apperizioni. 1918. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma
Carra is considered to be on Italy’s most influential painters of the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his metaphysical paintings. Though Martini is considered to be a part of the same group of artistic production, their works are completely different.
He, like many others of the time of experimental art, was self taught. In 1909 he became influenced by Futurism when he encountered the poet Filippo Marinetti and the artist Umberto Boccoioni. The new aesthetic creative path experimented with expressions of modernity in relation to technology reflected by movement, dynamism and speed.
L’ovale delle apperizioni was published in 1918 in Valor plastici. Carra described the ‘uomo elettrico’ 9electic man) as a manikin without legs, a ‘statua arcaica della mia infanzia’ (an archaic statue of my childhood), a female manikin with ball and rachet. Carra was quoted as saying ‘Che sia evaso dal museo?” (Let it escape the museum?) in regards to works being exhibited within a processed interior layout.
Other Carlo Carra Illusions:
The Pursuit. 1915. Charcoal, collage, tempera. 39 x 68 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Venice, Italy
Wassily Kandinsky. Linea angolare. 1930. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma.
‘I applied streaks and blobs of color onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could...’-Wassily Kandinsky
Vasilij Vail’evic Kandinskij, more easily known as Wassily Kandinsky, was a painter and theorist, famous for his purely abstract art actually started as a an intended professor of law and economics. Fascinated by anatomy at age 30, his life objective diverted and he enrolled in Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts.
It was the politics of the era, the beginning of WW1, that sparked an artistic reaction. His anti communist theories, especially in relation to art, inspired a psychological and physical alteration in artistic expression that was communicated through art. This period is what Kandinskij is most famous for and what led to his original intentions as professor. This time, not in economics nor law, but in art and architecture at the most renown school of European modern history, the Bauhaus. The Nazi intervention and closing of the school took the artist westward in 1922 to France where his work evolved even further.
Linea angolare is a part of Kandinskij’s French evolution in abstract impressionism that is an accumulation of his artistic theories that cherished concepts of universality of all the arts, including music, science and philosophy. The painting is actually a very careful study of line, space, depth, plains, forms figures, and colors; filled with intricate construction of symbolism and architectural skill. Art goers and analysts particularly like interpreting his works for its possibilities of interpretations.
Some of Kandinskij’s Compositions:
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1. Composition IV. 1911 (170 Kb); Oil on canvas, 159.5 x 250.5 cm (62 7/8 x 98 5/8 in); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen, Dusseldorf
2. Composition VIII. 1923 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm (55 1/8 x 79 1/8 in); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York ii. Ronald Alley. Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists. Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.379 i. ‘Wassily Kandinsky’ in Wikipedia (online). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky [last sited: 21:52, 01/02/2014]
Il Compianto degli amanti.1953. 45,0 x 37,0 cm. Oil on canvas. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma.
“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”
It took Miro til 1919, when in Paris to be influenced by cubism and geometric forms. This phase along with Dadaism of 1924 brought about the formation of his manifesto on surrealism. Along with Klee, the spirit of Miro was created, a freedom of invention of spatial studies and visions.
“I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.”
Il Compianto degli amanti reveal's Miro’s ability to narrative in abstraction established him as an artistic genius of modern art. His childlike figures, that appear doodle-ish, framed in a classical cornice, can easily be a discourse over what is art. Miro was an artist that helped alter and transition how a viewer seeing the world expressed through artistic representation.
Miro Abstracts:
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1. Sonnens. 1955
2. Carnival of Harlequin. 1924-25. print.
Max Bill is a Swiss architect/designer know for producing concrete art that is based on mathematical concepts. His concepts derive from a study of geometric forms that ultimately create an object of expression. Nothing is left to randomness, everything is calculated. This process shows that artistic expression can derive from something concrete.
Unita tripartita is an example of the artist's ideology of applying logic and calculations to production. With the application of 3 ribbon-like shapes that continuously intertwine, the steel structure is given shape. The forms that ultimately twist and turn with a traceable beginning has a title that remains a mystery.
Max Bill. Unita tripartita. 1958. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma
The metal sculpture won the first prize of the first Bienal de São Paulo in 1951.The original work is on display in Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. Another sculpture was produced and now displayed at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna of Roma.
Max Bill Mathematical Objects:
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1. double surface with six rectangular corners. 1948-78. Granite, 165 x 163 x 120 cm
2. halbe kugel um eine achse. 1965-66. black swedish granite. diameter 100 cm.
The entrance of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna exhibits Perri’s, a Cosenza born Italian, installation that acts as a transitional zone, a ‘symbolic threshold’. Its intentions are to play with spatial perceptions, dimensions, materiality, and reality. The simple application of glass panel pavements plays with the reflected sculpture images through altering and recreating an unbalanced reflection upside down. A type of ‘broken narration’ of the spectator’s reality..
The gallery, unlike previous works in the museum itself, actually commissioned Passi. The gallery hall location is particularly essential to Pirri’s work. The glass ceiling acts as a link between indoor and outdoor. The spectator’s reality of the mirrored image is projected into the exterior brightly lite space.
Steps in Florence
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