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April 10, 2009
The Future was once so exciting . . .
I went to the big Futurismo: avanguardia avanguardie ("Futurism: Avantgarde, Avantgardes") at the Scuderie del Quirinale - the old stables for the Quirinal Palace - yesterday.
I thought this was another example of a bad exhibit with great stuff. The theme wasn't particularly clear - the subtitle helped, but there was no wall text beyond identification for each work. You had to read the little booklet, and it wasn't very helpful. The STUFF was great - the first floor was all Futurists. My favorite was definitely Guido Severini's Memories of a Voyage. Because it's from a private collection (and perhaps because I didn't write down the Italian title!) I can't find it online. There were very few of the usual paintings, though there were great examples by all the usual suspects.
The second floor had "the Avantgardes." The Cubists, the Vorticists (who were an interesting change - I hadn't seen any of these paintings before), and a bunch of Russians that didn't fit so well.
The show closed with a sudden slamming door. There was one room of Futurist war paintings, a series of Balla patriotic horrors. One was called Forms Shout 'Viva l'Italia!', a sad demonstration of what happens when abstraction becomes political. In the center of the room, with no explanation, was Boccioni's Development of a Bottle in Space from 1912. Now it made perfect sense as a formalist comparison to the Ballas on the walls - but this was supposedly a thematic show and this was a room supposedly about how the war ends Futurism (I guess).
The lighting on the first level deserves a paragraph of its own. The first level is a huge open hall. They had built an insert to hang the show. It was a perfect color - a soft blue-grey. Then they lit it. In my notes on the spot I wrote "CRAZY drama lighting!" When I told a colleague that last night she laughed and agreed. The lighting designer created strips of bright light that sometimes did and sometimes didn't overlap paintings. When they did overlap glassed paintings the glare was way beyond annoying and up into the "makes it impossible to see." You've never seen so many people dancing around to find the right place to get past the glare. If you follow the web link above and look for the link for photos you can even see the effect. Crazy. Dramatic. Not good.
All in all I'd recommend people see it (it's up until late May). The art is WELL worth €10.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at April 10, 2009 9:53 AM