Ponti

Of the noisy brigade of Italian artists in Paris, eager to break away from tradition to renew the Italian culture of that time, Umberto Boccioni, extravagant with his perfectly creased trousers and socks of different colors, was certainly the most lively and impetuous.
Marinetti was his spark, managing to ignite in him that vital spirit that defined his personality, that desire to break and find new ways to create a modern, contemporary language.
When, in 1912, Boccioni and his Futurist colleagues exhibited at the Bernheim Jeune Gallery in Paris, holding their brushes, they found themselves challenging, right up to the last stroke of color, their French colleagues, first of all the Cubists, at home. This challenge was actually a mutual exchange. The art historian Ester Coen explains this well, whose contribution is one of the precious interventions that enrich the documentary from the title FORMIDABLE BOCCIONI available exclusively on ItsART.
Written by Eleonora Zamparutti and Piero Muscarà under the direction of Franco Rado, produced by ARTE.it Originals in collaboration with ITsART and Rai Cultura, the documentary traces, 140 years after his birth, the life and works of the restless artist, first actor of Futurism, who devoted his career to inventing a new contemporary language to express modernity in painting and sculpture.

Frame from Formidabile Boccioni | © ARTE.it

“When the Futurists, in February 1912, exhibit at the Bernheim Jeune Gallery – says Ester Coen – their violent charge is very strong, because they have to oppose an art system that is already well defined, and that is to that French painting that , from Impressionism onwards through Cézanne, had arrived at those consequences of pictorial diversification. The violence, even physical, with which the futurists burst onto the Parisian scene is certainly a way to create interest ”.

What is it that differentiates Futurism from Cubism?
“Certainly the futurist ideal, that is to want to represent the essence of movement, dynamism, speed shown in a static dimension, to be able to go beyond that static vision of the painting”.

How are the Futurists opposed to the Cubists?
“According to Boccioni and the Futurists, the Cubist vision is a firm, static vision, where the object is analyzed in all its proportions according to a three-dimensional vision. The object is fragmented and reassembled within the surface, but it is always a vision linked to a stationary object that belongs to a physical reality. What the futurists, and in particular Boccioni, try to represent through a different luminosity, therefore through a fragmentation of light and not through the volumetric fragmentation of the object, is instead this sense of energy, this dynamic charge, this vital charge that must expand right from the subject and occupy the whole reality of the surrounding environment “.

Umberto Boccioni, States of mind: Those who depart, 1912. Museum of Modern Art, New York

When Boccioni goes to Paris he meets Picasso (apparently he frequented his studio). What idea did she have of him?
“Boccioni meets Picasso in Paris, but he also meets all the characters of the Parisian art scene. Picasso, together with Braque, is an almost mythical figure. Together they represent that initial force of breaking a pattern that still belongs to the past. Boccioni recognizes Picasso’s desire to break with the past, recognizes the greatness of this artist and the greatness of the first cubist phase to which Picasso and Braque are linked “.

And what is it that Boccioni reproaches Cubist painting with?
“The fact of not going beyond the objective reality of the real world. Boccioni accuses the Cubists of recreating a parallel world, but which is not really very different from the real one. He reproaches for not going beyond the object, for not creating an abstract vision of reality. The Futurists, on the other hand, insist on the appearance of the dynamic lines of force, which destroy the external vision of the object and of the human figure. The search for universality by Boccioni and the futurists is undoubtedly also linked to the new scientific research of the time, think for example of Bergson, Einstein’s theory of relativity, the discovery of the first studies on the atom, the studies on X-ray”.

So Boccioni doesn’t just throw away all of the cubist painting. Some element makes it about him …
“Apollinaire, in the first article he writes after meeting Boccioni, tells of having met this artist who is painting the theme of the stations … It will be the first phase of Moods, that sort of triptych that Boccioni painted between 1910 and 1911 and of which we know two versions, the first I would say almost expressionist where it is the brushstroke that guides the sense of direction of the lines. Instead in the best known version, today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, there was a look at cubism from which Boccioni derives some elements, but he is already beginning to define his ideas on futurism. Here we see that, both from a formal and stylistic point of view, Boccioni learns some elements from Cubist painting, but at the same time he is already beginning to define in a very clear way what his ideas on futurism are “.

Umberto Boccioni, States of mind – Farewells, 1911, Oil on canvas, 71 × 96 cm | Photo: Carrà | Courtesy of Museo del Novecento, Milan

On the other hand, in the second version of Stati d’animo Boccioni manages to define his idea …
“The second version of the Moods it is the most complex and complete one in which Boccioni manages to define his idea. In the first painting, which is the one related to the departure, we see very confused lines that go in all directions. This sense of circularity of lines of force gathers characters who embrace within the station. In the center we see the locomotive with the numbers, there are very bright colors, very bright reds, greens, blues. They emphasize the confusion of the moment when people part ways on the station platforms. In the second painting, Those who go, people are already on the train and therefore what prevails is this sense linked to the linearism of the perspective that Boccioni wants to give, a diagonal departure with faces cut by the speed of the train’s movement, and with blue to define the sense of melancholy of this departure. The third painting, Those who remain, depicts the people on the platform, now detached from those who have already gone. The vertical lines make this idea of ​​who is still there on the track well. And the green creates this mood of abandonment “.

Umberto Boccioni, States of mind: Those who remain, 1912. Museum of Modern Art, New York

Boccioni or Picasso? Who won the challenge in the twentieth century?
“Both, but in a very different and extraordinary way. If Picasso tries to get out of reality to create a different dimension, to give an objective charge and for a phenomenological study of reality, Boccioni, although perhaps further behind from a pictorial-stylistic point of view, is the one who has a greater vital charge. . That theoretical dimension that belongs to futurism, that search for an ecstasy of the modern, as the futurists define it, is perhaps more modern than that of Picasso ”.

And Paris? Were you ready to welcome the Futurists?
“Paris was more than ready to welcome the Futurists even if it puts itself in a more defensive position towards them. The city was teeming with research of all kinds around Cubism. Mondrian, Diego Rivera were all there to try to find new forms of expression through Cubism. The Futurists arrive in Paris with all possible weapons to try to scratch the border that the Cubists and the whole Parisian environment had set. And this is precisely a central reason for the Futurists to sharpen their weapons and increase their violence, that impetuousness that they also stage in Italy in theaters, to gain a hold on the public ”.

Paris, Montmartre, Frame by Formidabile Boccioni | © ARTE.it

Paris (and somewhat Picasso) was therefore a spark in Boccioni’s art. Why in 1912 just after Boccioni’s trip to Paris does it come to mind to devote himself to sculpture?
“The manifesto of futurist sculpture is written straight away after a trip to Paris. Boccioni visits numerous studios and also knows all the sculpture that was created in those years, such as that of Brancusi or Picasso himself. He was therefore aware that pictorial research was also heading towards different plastic researches. This stimulates him towards the research and application of what are the theories of speed, the idea of ​​representing dynamism also through sculpture ”.

For example, what is a work in which elements appear that Boccioni will later transport into sculpture?
Matter is a painting that – compared for example to Brawl in the gallery or Modern idol – has a more volumetric, more plastic construction. The figure of the great mother is clearly inspired by the figure of Boccioni’s mother, a mythologized, ideal, very vertical figure. The strength that is impressed in the painting is precisely in the intersection of the diagonals, in the gnarled hands that release strength. Within this painting we find elements that Boccioni will then transport into the sculpture, elements that are part of an external reality with respect to the human figure, such as the balcony, the horse running in the distance. These elements will be transported into the sculpture trying to create a polymeric plastic whole that gives the idea of ​​a synthesis between the figure and its environment ”.

Umberto Boccioni, Materia, 1912. Oil on canvas, 226 x 150 cm. Gianni Mattioli Collection, Museo del Novecento, Milan

What happened to Boccioni’s sculptures after his death?
“It is great mystery. There are actually various versions. There are those who say that after the 1916 exhibition organized by Marinetti at Palazzo Cova these sculptures were left in a deposit and therefore destroyed due to bad weather. On the other hand, there are those who say that these sculptures were entrusted to the sculptor Pietro da Verona who, in an act of fury, probably almost wanting to nullify Boccioni’s work, would have destroyed them. Marco Bisi – the nephew who had been adopted by Boccioni’s sister – would have recovered one of the sculptures, Bottle in space ”.

Why in your opinion is Boccioni more famous as a sculptor than as a painter although his sculptures have been destroyed?
Unique forms of continuity in space it is a sculpture that proposes a different dimension compared to traditional sculpture. While Cubist artists try to recreate that particularity of the assemblage of Cubist sculpture and painting, Boccioni seeks that dynamic attention of the masses through dynamic impulse. He tries to free himself from the physical dimension, but, at the same time, he seeks a connection with the external reality. And this is an extraordinary novelty both from a stylistic and aesthetic point of view ”.

What remains of Boccioni today?
“Its extraordinary vitality remains, the idea of ​​an architectural construction of the masses that we also find for example in contemporary architecture, just think of Frank Gehry, the idea of ​​going beyond physical reality. There is this probing into space, that breaking through the reality of the canvas that we find in Fontana’s work. There is the dimension of a randomness of painting that we find in the research of contemporary artists such as Olafur Eliasson. The one left by Boccioni is an extraordinary sign, of a research that goes beyond the physical phenomena of reality while starting from those elements “.

Read also:
• Traveling with Boccioni, the masterpieces to be admired in the world
• The Mattioli Collection at the Museo del Novecento: the story of the protagonists
• Boccioni’s works to see in Italy

“Siamo Loooop, uno studio creativo francese specializzato in one-line art e vorremmo condividere con voi il nostro ultimo progetto: abbiamo reinterpretato 50 dei personaggi immaginari più iconici con una riga.

Viviamo in un’era di abbondanza visiva e ogni giorno siamo sopraffatti da più dettagli, più colori e più tutto… Abbiamo scelto il contrario: la nostra passione è disegnare soggetti nella forma più semplice dell’arte, un’unica linea ininterrotta. Il risultato sembra semplice ma è davvero una sfida da raggiungere e un singolo disegno può richiedere diverse ore… o giorni!

Ci auguriamo che vi piaccia e apprezziate questo momento “less is more”.

Di più: Loooop, Instagram, Behance h/t: noirpanda

Simba

“Siamo un piccolo team di artisti internazionali, designer, animatori e altri campi creativi che sono appassionati di line art e in particolare di continue line art. Tutto è iniziato nel 2015 con i nostri 2 co-fondatori francesi, Stephane ed Emma, ​​che hanno deciso di dedicare la loro passione per il minimalismo e la line art a livello professionale. Credono che, per quanto semplice possa sembrare, la grafica al tratto sia senza tempo e possa offrire possibilità illimitate in termini di messaggio, mezzo e utilizzo. E avevano ragione! Fin dalla sua creazione, Looooop Studio ha collaborato con marchi mondiali come Cartier, Adidas, Hermes, Facebook, Samsung, Google, Nike e molti altri”.

Pantera Rosa

“Stephane (co-fondatore e direttore creativo) è colui che disegna questi personaggi iconici: “Cerco di raggiungere un equilibrio tra il risultato più semplice possibile e un disegno che sia riconoscibile. Durante la creazione, è molto piacevole giocare con le linee e gli spazi bianchi finché non sei soddisfatto dell’opera d’arte. Il risultato sembra semplice, ma è davvero una sfida da raggiungere e, a seconda del soggetto, un singolo disegno può richiedere diverse ore… o giorni!””

Uomo di ferro

“Crediamo che ci sia bellezza in ogni cosa e cerchiamo di catturare l’estetica semplice con il nostro vincolo di linea continua. Le persone sembrano apprezzare questo semplice messaggio (riceviamo molte foto con i nostri disegni tatuati sulle persone) e c’è anche una dimensione giocosa in cui gli piace indovinare a prima vista qual è il disegno.

Omero

Batman

Darth Vader

Spock

Sonico

Pietra focaia

Sirenetta in bianco e nero

Maialino

Lisa

Plutone

Mario

Paperino

Buzz

Harry Potter

Ghiottone

Walter White

Topolino

Pikachu

Spugna di mare

Asino Kong

Rufy

Cartman

Hulk

Barbie

Principessa Mononoke

Yoda

World – The celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Fondation Beyeler. After two important exhibitions dedicated to the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe and to the master of the abstract Piet Mondrian, the Swiss museum puts the spotlight on its permanent collection in an unprecedented setting. Until January 8, in the elegant building designed by Renzo Piano and Peter Zumthor, we will be able to admire in one fell swoop an impressive selection of masterpieces, for a total of 100 pieces and over 30 artists on display.

Fondation Beyeler, Jubilaeums Ausstellung. Photo Mark Niedermann I Courtesy Fondation Beyeler

Works by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Rousseau introduce the modernist jewels of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, on a journey through the best of twentieth century art that will include Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, up to contemporary icons such as Marlene Dumas, Anselm Kiefer, Roni Horn, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Tacita Dean, Rachel Whiteread, Wolfgang Tillmans. Throughout the exhibition, the hyper-realistic sculptures of the American artist Diane Hanson will surprise visitors from unexpected positions, establishing unexpected dialogues with the treasures and spaces of the Fondation Beyeler.

Fondation Beyeler, Jubilaeums Ausstellung. Photo Mark Niedermann I Courtesy Fondation Beyeler

The result is an all-round exploration of one of the most prestigious European collections of modern and contemporary art, put together in 50 years by a couple of collectors who have dedicated their lives to this project. About 400 pieces now make up the collection of Ernst and Hildy Beyeler, who in 1997 decided to make it accessible to everyone with a very clear idea: to create an open and lively museum that could convey the passion for art to the widest possible audience. . Among secular trees and water lily ponds, the architectural jewel created by Renzo Piano at the foot of the Black Forest combines nature and culture in a world of light and beauty. Success was not long in coming: today the Fondation Beyeler is the most visited art museum in Switzerland and is considered one of the most beautiful in the world.

Fondation Beyeler, Jubilaeums Ausstellung. Photo Mark Niedermann I Courtesy Fondation Beyeler

Alla fine degli anni ’60, Tod Papageorge, 25 anni, venne a New York come fotografo in divenire. Ogni giorno passava il tempo a scattare fotografie in tutta la città con i suoi compagni.

h/t: vintag.es

Lo stile di reportage di Papageorge era in bianco e nero, ma i suoi amici gli consigliarono di scattare a colori per ottenere più lavoro su una rivista in futuro. Sebbene all’epoca non fosse riuscito a raggiungere il suo obiettivo immediato di guadagnarsi da vivere attraverso la fotografia, il viaggio ne è valsa la pena, come abbiamo potuto vedere chiaramente nel suo libro pubblicato Dr. Blankman’s New York, due anni di Kodachrome ricco e saturo immagini.

“Fotografare per strada con una Leica non ha molto a che fare con la pianificazione. Esci dalla porta e, bang!, come tutti gli altri, fai parte della grande cavalcata urbana. Ma a differenza di tutti gli altri, stai trasportando una piccola macchina straordinaria che, unita a un grande sforzo, può tirare fuori la poesia da una passeggiata in centro. Tutte le foto fallite che hai mai realizzato, tutte le altre fotografie che hai sempre amato, persino le canzoni e i versi delle poesie camminano con te, insinuandoti nelle tue decisioni su cosa realizzerai le tue fotografie e come li modellerai come immagini. Il processo, semmai, è intuitivo piuttosto che il prodotto della pianificazione, anche se il fatto che pochissime persone siano state in grado di produrre questo tipo di lavoro ad alto livello suggerisce anche quanto sia difficile. In altre parole, intuitivo potrebbe non essere una parola adeguata per descrivere lo stufato di natura selvaggia, lavoro ostinato e duro pensiero che servono a produrre il meglio di questo tipo di fotografia”.

A tormented man, subversive in appearance, ready to draw the sword from his hip to unleash the fight, the beard, the slightly worn velvets, the disheveled hair with a slightly anarchic cut, seeks and finds in his face the gaze of Goliath.
He is a painter by trade, his pants tight like a pair of jeans, his shoes dirty with mud, a shirt sprinkled with every varnish, often with blood, color encrusted on the hands, under the nails.
And he himself, Caravaggio the “scornacchiato”, resembles a canvas, like the characters that his gaze captures from the Roman Suburra – and from the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, where Filippo Neri takes away the hunger from the many derelicts – to transfer to the paintings that putrid reality made up of thieves and prostitutes ready to lend their faces to the most famous madonnas and saints in the history of art.
A quarrelsome frequenter of taverns and street women, Michele Placido’s Caravaggio is the most authentic expression of that “truth” that has always haunted the artist who places the many Christs on the cross on the canvas, finding in reality those Gospels he knows by heart and at whose reading he is moved.
From 3 November The Shadow of Caravaggioan Italian-French co-production signed by Goldenart Production with Rai Cinema and for France Charlot, Le Pacte and Mact Production brings to the cinema the complex existence of Michelangelo Merisi (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) with Michele Placido to sign his fourteenth film as director, Sandro Petraglia, Fidel Signorile and Placido himself on the screenplay, and a cast of big names.

Riccardo Scamarcio (Caravaggio) and Isabelle Huppert (Costanza Colonna) in the film L’Ombra di Caravaggio | Photo: © Luisa Carcavale

Rebellious and restless, devoted and scandalous, independent and transgressive, the Caravaggio 2.0 that Placido brings to the cinema is a pop artist who came to Rome, at that time the center of the world, to draw from that universe of immigrants, priests, prostitutes, pilgrims , cardinals, princes and criminals, and that today he would live his whirlwind existence in any studio in London or New York. Faced with a Counter-Reformation church that asks for statues, domes and paintings to celebrate its opulence in a gigantic construction site of wonders, Caravaggio, like a neo-realist director ante litteram, near the pauperist wing of the church, instead seeks a return to values evangelicals. He finds it in Filippo Neri and in the women of his life, in the Marquise Costanza Colonna (Isabelle Huppert), much more than a friend, who protects him from childhood, in Lena (Micaela Ramazzotti), one of the most famous prostitutes in Rome. , often represented as Mary, the mother of Jesus, and then in Annina, the face of one of his greatest masterpieces, The death of the Virgin, today at the Louvre Museum in Paris, “the most alive death that has ever been painted”.

Micaela Ramazzotti (Lena), The Shadow of Caravaggio | Photo: © Luisa Carcavale

The intensity with which the director sets up the scene is striking Death of the Virgin, and not only, with a moving theatricality. A theatricality that the Placido “word maker” and man of the theater could not renounce. We like these echoes of theater that emerge from the staging of the spectacular celebration of Cardinal Dal Monte set up at Villa Aldobrandini, in the Conversion of Saint Paul and of Crucifixion of St. Peterin the very powerful dialogue with Giordano Bruno.
In the sublime confrontation between Caravaggio and the Dominican friar (Gianfranco Gallo), shot in the basement of Naples to represent the prisons in the Rome of the time, there is the whole search for the truth longed for by two men. Like the philosopher of the infinite worlds, Caravaggio too has been playing dice with death since the terrible condemnation weighs on him.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St. Peter, Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

In the film, the protagonists become living works of art. If for Caravaggio reality comes first of all, even the director makes sure that the skin, the feet, the impulses, the vices, the blood, the gazes of his subjects untangle the strings of the spectator before settling on the canvas. The studio where the painter creates his masterpieces, set in the film in Cinecittà, is a bustle of shopkeepers, prostitutes, nobles and prelates, great art collectors such as Cardinal Francesco Del Monte.
So Placido, and this is one of the strengths of the film, rattles off a series of characters, usually little considered, but contemporaries of Caravaggio, emblematic to smell the historical context of the painter and perhaps a little also his art, as well as the ferments of an era, the seventeenth century, where in Rome the Vallicella becomes the variegated forge of its truth.
Caravaggio’s Rome is also the Rome of Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi and again of Filippo Neri, Scipione Borghese and Cavalier d’Arpino.

Michele Placido, Riccardo Scamarcio (Caravaggio) and Louis Garrel (the Shadow) in Caravaggio’s L’Ombra | Photo: © Luisa Carcavale

Far from being the protagonist of a lacquered scene, scholastically outlined by a string of works accompanied by captions, Michele Placido’s Caravaggio lives by feeding on reality, by the veracity of the Roman accents that explode from the mouth of Ranuccio (Brenno Placido) and his brother (Michelangelo Placido).
The challenge that consisted in the search for historical adherence and in a period reconstruction that did not aim at rhetorical spectacle but rather at the material substance of the environments was won. As probably also the found of the Shadow (Louis Garrel) a secret agent of the Vatican, at times a bit too static in the film, to which Pope Paul V decides to commission a real investigation that puts Caravaggio and the art of him. It will be she who will decide whether or not to grant the pardon that the painter asked for after the death sentence for killing his rival in a duel. And it will be the Shadow, the only fictional character in the film, to initiate the espionage activities on the painter who, with his life and with his art, fascinates, upsets, subverts.
At the end of the film it will be this same fictional character to decree an ending that could appear anti-historical. But the copyright license can also allow itself to play with the dense mystery that lies around the end of Caravaggio.

Riccardo Scamarcio in the film L’ombra by Caravaggio I Courtesy 01 Distribution

The work on furnishings and props is very careful in the film, from books to paintings by Caravaggio, which reflects the desire to overcome an iconographic representation already seen. The works were prepared on canvas with material bases that at the time of printing were coated precisely to make the textures of the paintings much more truthful than simple photographic reproductions. Following Caravaggio’s incessant wandering from place to place, the viewer encounters different locations that shatter the stereotypes of the master’s places, in a dirty setting, definitely far from the temptation of an iconographic or glossy representation.
The presence of the places in the film becomes powerful and drags from the sumptuous papal and noble palaces such as Villa Chigi, where part of the Colonna residence was set, to the popular taverns, between churches and fortresses, along the basements of Caracalla transformed into streets towns full of dirt, swarming with sewers and beggars.
We find Naples with its Renaissance and early Neapolitan Baroque churches, where the Contarelli Chapel and the Cerasi Chapel have been rebuilt, but also Sant’Agostino (the Curia of Rome did not allow the filming to be carried out inside the Roman churches) . At Castel Dell’Ovo, on the other hand, the undergrounds of Malta come to life with the Beheading of St. Johnone of Caravaggio’s last works before his return to Naples.

Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio, Beheading of St. John the Baptist, 1608, Oil on canvas, 361×320 cm, St. John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta

In this challenge devoid of rhetorical overtones, aimed at restoring the whole earthly, human, painful and carnal dimension of the painter and his time, the costumes for which Carlo Poggioli was inspired by the clothes that Caravaggio loved to wear, sometimes underlining the bond between the clothing and the changes in the life of the painter who, from very simple and poor clothes in the first phase of his life, moves on to a slightly more varied and colorful wardrobe when his fame begins to assert itself.

Excluding temporal jumps that are a bit too fluctuating, reflecting the incessant wandering of the master, but which in some moments make the viewer lose a bit by slowing down the focus on the protagonist a little, Michele D’Attanasio’s photography convinces final surprises. And if love is truly synonymous with truth – a bit like Giordano Bruno’s universe made by an equally infinite God, to be loved infinitely – the final message delivered by Placido through Virgil’s phrase, taken up by Caravaggio, Omnia vincit amoris truly the perfect epilogue of that search for truth that Caravaggio defended with conviction until the end of his days.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Amor vincit Omnia, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum, Berlin

Read also:
• Michele Placido tells about his Caravaggio, the solitary “director” who sought the truth in painting
• Nine beautiful paintings to be recognized in the film The Shadow of Caravaggio
• The Shadow of Caravaggiofrom 3 November only to the cinema
• Riccardo Scamarcio is Caravaggio in the new film by Michele Placido