Ponti

La tradizione del jack-o’-lantern risale a secoli fa, quando le persone in Irlanda decoravano rape, barbabietole e patate per spaventare un personaggio mitico di nome Stingy Jack. Gli immigrati irlandesi portarono la tradizione in America, patria della zucca, e il popolare frutto divenne parte integrante di Halloween.

h/t: vintag.es

Secondo il racconto popolare, Stingy Jack stava bevendo un drink con il diavolo ma non voleva pagare per il suo drink. Per risolvere questo problema, convinse Satana a trasformarsi in una moneta che Jack potesse usare. Tuttavia, Jack ha deciso di mettere la moneta in tasca, accanto a una croce d’argento. Questa croce d’argento ha impedito al diavolo di tornare indietro. Jack ha fatto un patto che il Diavolo non lo avrebbe infastidito per un anno e non gli è permesso prendere la sua anima se Jack muore.

Un anno dopo, Jack incontra di nuovo il Diavolo. Jack convinse il diavolo ad arrampicarsi su un albero e raccogliere frutta. Mentre il diavolo era sull’albero, Jack incise una croce nella corteccia dell’albero in modo che il diavolo non potesse scendere. Jack ha quindi fatto un altro accordo, in cui si affermava che il diavolo non avrebbe potuto infastidirlo per 10 anni.

Jack è morto un po’ dopo questo. Stava per andare in paradiso ma Dio non lo voleva lì, quindi doveva essere mandato all’inferno. Tuttavia, al Diavolo non fu permesso di reclamare la sua anima e comunque non lo voleva, e così fu costretto a vagare per la Terra. Il diavolo gli diede un pezzo di carbone ardente, che Jack mise in una rapa scavata. Gli irlandesi che lo videro si riferivano a lui come “Jack of the Lantern”, che alla fine fu abbreviato in “Jack O’Lantern”.

Le persone in Irlanda e in Scozia avrebbero iniziato a intagliare facce in rape e patate, per spaventare Stingy Jack e respingere altri spiriti malvagi. Gli immigrati dalle isole britanniche che sono venuti negli Stati Uniti d’America hanno comprato la storia con loro. Tranne che hanno iniziato a usare zucche invece di rape e patate, ecco perché le zucche intagliate sono chiamate Jack O’Lanterns.

One hundred and forty years ago, on October 19, 1882, he was born in Italy Umberto Boccioni. A brilliant, restless artist, the first actor of Futurism, he dedicated his life to inventing a new contemporary language to express modernity in painting and sculpture.

On this occasion, from 19 October 2022, the unpublished documentary entitled FORMIDABLE BOCCIONI from Eleonora Zamparutti And Piero Muscarà directed by Franco Radoa work produced by ARTE.it Originals in collaboration with ITsART And Rai Cultura.

Writer, journalist, illustrator, Umberto Boccioni finally becomes a painter following an unconventional path. He was the son of his time, an Italy shaken by the Industrial Revolution and by the great scientific discoveries, destined to become the epicenter of the Great War.

Boccioni’s life changed on February 21, 1910 when he met the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of Futurism in Milan. The artist embraces Marinetti’s revolution, translating poetry into art and making a fundamental contribution to the most important artistic avant-garde of the early twentieth century in Europe, Futurism.

In painting he creates works such as The rising city And The laughwhich he exhibits in an exhibition in Paris at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, clashing with Picasso and the Cubists and causing scandal throughout Europe.

In sculpture Boccioni challenges centuries of immobility, freeing once and for all this art of closed forms, of classical beauty. His great masterpiece, Unique forms of continuity in spaceemblem of the dynamism imprinted by the new futurist culture, it has become a universal icon, reproduced in millions of copies on 20 euro cent coins.

Paradoxically, his death came unexpectedly, by chance, in August 1916, during a break from the front where he had volunteered. He, the very modern, thrown from the horse frightened by the passage of a train.

After his death, at the age of 34, the sculptures of Umberto Boccioni are destroyed, torn to pieces by an anonymous “passatista” artist. What we admire in the most important museums in the world are bronze reproductions.

FORMIDABLE BOCCIONI it is the story of the life and works of the futurist artist through exclusive interviews with leading experts, collectors and directors of the most important museums that house Boccioni’s masterpieces. The documentary is accompanied by a variety of original period documents, films and materials.

Among the interviewees James M. Bradburnedirector of the Brera Art Gallery, Karole PB Vaildirector of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Danka Giacon, curator of the Museo del Novecento in Milan. Art historians prof Ester Coen And Niccolò D’Agatithe historian Giordano Bruno Guerripresident of Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, the biographer Gino Agnese and the writer Marella Caracciolo Chiaauthor of the book A bright parenthesis dedicated to the love story between Umberto Boccioni and Princess Vittoria Colonna.

The special contributions of Floriane D’Aubervillegreat-grandson of the French gallery owner Joss Bernheim-Jeune, Romana Severinidaughter of the artist Gino Severini, a great friend of Umberto Boccioni since his youth, e Giacomo Rossiheir of Gianni Mattioli who lent his important collection of futurist art to the Museo del 900 in Milan where it will soon be presented to the public in a new setting.

“The Museo del Novecento in Milan has a unique collection in the world of futurist works of art in which Boccioni’s role is central” declares the director Gianfranco Maraniello “The new exhibition, enriched by the masterpieces of the Mattioli Collection, including some of the most significant of the artist, makes the Gallery dedicated to Futurism even more complete and precious ”.

“We all live, like Boccioni, Freud and Einstein – says James M. Bradburne, director of the Pinacoteca di Brera – without knowing what the future holds, just as Einstein in 1907 did not foresee the full impact of his awareness that energy and matter were related . However, the future of Einstein, that of Freud and that of Boccioni have been largely realized. “

“Peggy Guggenheim has always loved sculpture, just think that the first exhibition she organized at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, in 1949, is precisely dedicated to contemporary sculpture. Her transfer to Italy undoubtedly influenced her interest in Futurist art, so much so that it led her to acquire in 1958 Dynamism of a running horse + casea unique sculptural work of its kind, created by Boccioni in 1915 ”, says Karole PB Vail, director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, in Venice.

TITLE: FORMIDABLE BOCCIONI
DURATION: 54 ‘
FORMAT: FULL HD
YEAR: © 2022 ARTE.it Originals in collaboration with ITsART and Rai Cultura

A film by Eleonora ZAMPARUTTI & Piero MUSCARÀ
Director: Franco RADO

ITsART
Promoted by the Ministry of Culture, ITsART was created to support the dissemination and enhancement of the Italian artistic and cultural heritage in the world and is the first platform to offer a streaming service of this kind at an international level. Available in Italy, in the United Kingdom and in all European Union countries, it offers a vast catalog of contents and a new and original approach to the cultural offer.

The contents are accessible via Smart TV, PC, MAC, Smartphone and Tablet. It is possible to download the ITsART application from the official stores of Android, iOS, Android TV, Google TV, or from the stores of the main brands of Smart TVs (view the details on device compatibility in the FAQ by visiting the “Support” section of our website ).

ITsART is also on social networks with official profiles: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn.

Read also:
• “Formidabile Boccioni”, the futurist genius in a docufilm

Padua – “It can be said that art deceives. Art has always exploited illusion and skills on how to influence, direct and deceive the eye. Just by drawing a point on the background, a double plane is created that in reality does not exist ”he says Guido Bartorelli, Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Padua and co-curator of the exhibition “The eye at stake” set up at the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà in Padua until February 26, 2023.

The exhibition takes up the famous exhibition in the title The Responsive Eye presented at the MoMA in New York in 1965, dedicated to the abstract tendencies of optical and perceptive art then in vogue (a short, original video shot by a young Brian De Palma and available on YouTube testifies to that event), and declines in a new, unprecedented key.

There are two tracks on which it travels “The eye at stake“. One with a historical style, entrusted to Luca Massimo Barbero, is dedicated to artistic research that has focused on color, optics, movement, perception, articulated from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. A path that embraces works ranging from Renaissance astrolabes to the contemporaneity of an Anish Kapoor.

The other path – by psychology teachers Giovanni Galfano, Andrea Bobbio and Massimo Grassi of the University of Padua together with Guido Bartorelli -, opens up a magical world between art and science that investigates the experiments conducted at the beginning of the Sixties by the artists of the Group N in collaboration with the perception psychology scholars of Padua.

The trigger for this great exhibition not to be missed is the 800th anniversary of the University of Padua, of which the school of psychology founded in 1919 is part. For the occasion, the psychology professors have opened a dialogue with their history colleagues. of art to investigate how in the Venetian city, starting from the end of the 1950s, artists have appeared who have put the process of seeing in oneself at the center of their research. At that time, works of art were created that had the aim of investigating and penetrating the act of seeing, as a problematic act in itself. A goal that coincided with the research carried out by the psychologists of the University of Padua.

The Sixties in Padua were a very fruitful period for art and scientific research …

“Group N was formed in 1960 and had a fairly short life until 1964. The perceptive interest from which the artists moved came from the internal tradition to international art. Among their points of reference was the Bauhaus which in the last part of its history was based in Berlin where there was a school from which the theory of Gestalt, or the psychology of perception, spread. Padua, like Berlin, like Graz was one of the great centers for the diffusion of these theories.
Well, the Paduans, very young (they were just over twenty), start at the beginning to be interested in seeing in themselves. Then in 1962 they realize that in Padua those themes are being studied with a recognized international authority.
The Paduan artists attend the psychology workshops and the psychologists begin to attend the exhibitions organized in the ateliers of the N Group. And from there they learn from each other, we witness a very interesting exchange. Artists become more aware of what they are doing, they refine their means of obtaining optical illusions or figure effects to a degree of great complexity. Psychologists find new fields of research in the work of artists.
An emblematic case is that of the “moiré” effect: a French term that indicates an optical effect that occurs in nature when we have two similar structures that overlap on different planes. Strange plays of shadows and recurrences of figures are created that in reality are not there, but are the effect of the fact that our eye is unable to instinctively focus on both planes. This is an effect that the artists of Group N exploit a lot. After that, the psychologists themselves realize that it is an effect worth studying. “

Base disc for zoetrope, Wheel of life, published by HG Clarke & Co., London 1870 Turin, National Cinema Museum © Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin | Photo: © Giorgio Tovo



What are the effects observed by artists and psychologists of perception?

“The section that has as its title”Group N in the psychology of perception”Begins with an example of the scientific studies that were carried out in Padua in those years. Vittorio Venussi and Cesare Musatti had studied the effect of stereokinesis, ie the fact that the relief, which art generally rendered using shadows, can also be obtained by rotating structures with concentric circles drawn. Having said this it seems difficult to explain, but it is a bit like the effect we have when we observe, for example, a spiral that turns. When we see it turn, the center seems to penetrate or come towards us depending on how we look. And it is a three-dimensional effect that is obtained thanks to movement: the circles seem flat when we see everything from a standstill and they begin to gain volume when they are set in motion. This is an example of a survey that was carried out in Padua.
And it is interesting how the scientist elaborates his figurations step by step also to submit them to the people on which to verify the effect, while the artist gives us extremely complex configurations of great symbolic, analogical charm. It is interesting to see the difference between laboratory materials and artist materials. “

There is also the contribution of a philosopher to the exhibition …

“The philosopher Elisa Caldarola wrote an article for our catalog addressing the problem head on. The question is: why do we perceive almost identical images from totally different fields such as the scientist’s plates used for her experiments, and the images produced by the artist? In truth, these are identical paintings which, however, have two different lives. If I can allow myself to summarize brutally, the difference is given by the gaze of the beholder. So the scientist is expected to solve some problem, they are works that look for their functional factor towards the formation of new knowledge. On the other hand, one does not go to the artist for the final solution but one is enchanted to notice the orchestration of forms that have ends in themselves and not in the solution of a problem. “

What approach did you have towards the visitor?

“It was very important to be friendly towards the visitor who may be starved of art: there are explanatory panels and a useful audio guide. It is an exhibition that requires some attention to record the vibrations that are created between shapes and colors. At the same time it is an exhibition that accompanies the visitor through history in defining certain situations of Paduan origin as Group N of international importance. It is a great exhibition, it would take a lot of time. It is capable of giving a lot to children because there is a level of reading of the works based on amusing perceptual effects, almost a game. One of the first days of the exhibition opening, I heard Edoardo Landi, one of the members of Group N (together with Alberto Biasi, Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa and Manfredo Massironi), give an interview in which he said that their masters, such as Emilio Vedova, accused them of playing games. And Landi said: “very well because we want to talk to children, we want to show these works on seeing those who have an innocent eye open to perceive without preconceptions “. Art is a game that can also be very serious, that knows how to open up knowledge and take us to an unprecedented level of depth. ”