La città che "sale". Omaggiando i futurismi boccioniani, Mimmo Paladino offre un potente racconto di unità peninsulare, con la sua gigantesca istallazione in Piazzetta Reale a Milano

The "riseing up" town ("rise" in italian means "salt", that is the material used by Paladino to make the mountain). Doing homage to the Boccioni's Futurism ("La città che sale" is a very famous Boccioni's panting at the start of XX century), Mimmo Paladino offers a powerful narrative drive of peninsular unity, with its giant installation in the Piazzetta Reale in Milan

La città che "sale"

La montagna di sale di Mimmo Paladino, 
evocando antiche memorie ed ancestrali miti italici,

indica nell'arte e nella fantasia la strada al futuro proposta dal nostro paese, capace di promesse e di ottimistiche prospettive

The mountain of salt by Mimmo Paladino, evoking ancient memories and ancestral italic myts indicates in art and in imagination the way forward proposed by our country, capable of promises and  optimistic outlooks

 fotografie di Enrico Mercatali per Taccuini Internazionali

La montagna di sale di Mimmo Paladino, evocando memorie d'uno spirito antico,  espresso attraverso figure  d'ancestrali miti italici, indica come nell'arte e nella fantasia stia la strada  proposta dal nostro paese che conduce al futuro,  capace di avvincenti promesse e di ottimistica predisposizione al domani:  non vi pare che questo fantastico e liberatorio gioco tra cavalli, come  immersi  in una soffice neve, sappia rappresentare simbolicamente lo spirito rigoglioso di una rinnovata libertà condivisa?

Milano, 7 aprile 2011

Servizio fotografico di Enrico Mercatali

Photos by Enrico Mercatali

Milan Novecento Museum - Taccuini Internazionali suggests

Giorgio De Chirico, Piazza d'Italia

Milan

 Novecento Museum

A future of less narrow rooms, more space, 

more accomodation quality

"Taccuini Internazionali" suggests to aggregate the twin Arengario by unifying the buildings, and regaining new volumes on the coverings.
The planner must be selected through an international contest.

Ca' Brutta by Muzio, a bridge between 2 part off the building. 

It can be an example for the today problem to connect each other the two Arengarios

Little after the great, almost unexpected success of the first opening days of the new Milanese Novecento Museum, while TACCUINI INTERNAZIONALI was already exalting its planning qualities, both for the interior mounting and for the structure of the hosted collections, while even our magazine suggested its future expansion over the current borders, completing itself with the twin building, other voices started hazarding suggestions about the other Arengario’s recovery, and a possible connection with it.

 Milan, the twin "Arengari" in Duomo square, as they appear today.

Above the title:

the rendering shows how the complex “Novecento  Museum”could appear, once the Arengari are linked to each other through a “bridge” crossing, integrated at the height of the last levels, and elevated a floor higher, so as to house spaces for restorative and art editorial accomodation capacities.

 (project Mercatali and Partners)

Since the brilliant idea, which maybe noboby would have had before the official opening of the Museum, would have become possible due to that immediate success, we consider it useful to strenghten it by showing you the rendering so as to let you get an  overall sense of it in general terms, before you fully consider all the pros and cons. We want to present it to you again after some months, at least to keep alive a debate that we consider useful first of all for the Milanese international tourism, so that it can expand beyond the current confines, and then for a city like Milan, big and important on the financial, commeTricial and cultural side.

 The bridge inte ther Novecento Museum, connecting today the Arengario and the Royal Palace

The Museum has been appreciated by everyone who has gravitated around it, both directly and indirectly; everybody has loved the initiative, the context and the project, and the first stage of “dress rehearsals”, which has registered a great public affluence, is now over. The phase of normality is starting, and after a period of free access to the museum, the price is now €. 5,00 per head; the time has come, for anyone who is interested in it, to start a designative phase so as to determine the orientation of its spaces’ completion, by aggregating and integrating the Second Arengario.

 Novecento Museum, perspective drawing of the project’s tridimensional model.

Taccuini Internazionali has talked very positively about this project at the time of the Museum’s inauguration.

However, it hasn’t been able to give an adequate solution to the cruxes related to some exposure problems, due to the spaces’ characteristics and slenderness, especially in some sections.

The idea of aggregating the twin building is fascinating because it would allow the univocal function’s recovery of the whole complex realized in 1936 by the architects Piero Portaluppi, Enrico Griffini, Piergiulio Magistretti and Giovanni Muzio. We really appreciate this project since it would give space to the collections created during the first twenty years of the 20th Century, constituted by really fine works today confined into narrow spaces; it would also give roomines to the interiors, highlighting the Arengari’s architectural quality, especially in the rooms with columns on the first floor, which are now constrained and almost mutilated by the “comb” distribution of the exhibition panels.

Novecento Museum, the beautiful Column Gallery had to square with the insufficient space for the displayed works. The perspective view of the marble columns has thus been sacrificed, and intersected with the comb panels certainly invasive and architecturally incongruous. It is clear that new spaces are needed so as to give a decent location to all the works created before the 20th Century

We consider it indispensable to recover new spaces first of all for broadening the exposed permanent component as opposed to the one filed inside the storage areas; but also for expanding the paintings’ distribution, by giving them more autonomy and adequacy of location than it is offered now, especially in some rooms (for example the general really criticized placement of the “Forth State” by Pellizza from Volpedo).

Arengario was ispirated by the square Colusseum in Rome, at the EUR quarter, here near to a contemporary FIAT car

TACCUINI INTERNAZIONALI just wants to express what we think: a connection between the two twin buildings would be preferable at the height of the highest floor, more than underground. The first reason is related to the arrangement of the technical rooms and the ones for the works’ storage, which should be separated from the spaces bound to the public. The second reason is linked to the public’s necessity of movement at the level of the big bright rooms of the high floors, especially if, as we think, an even higher level will be created so as to host the functional service structures and the restaurants. In this case, a connection next to the terraces would be indispensable. Yes, this is in fact the proposal we put forward, and we don’t think it would cause any feasibility issues: creating a new addition, with a texture similar to the one of the “bridge”, on both of the buildings, instead of the current “pavilion” covers.

 Also the Muzio's Triennale palace was ispirated to the Novecento's milanese style of 30' ages

 The rendering that we have put at the beginning of the article, above the title, helps starting a debate about all these aspects of the issue; not only from a technical point of view (which will be discussed before the construction phase and after an International contest of ideas) but from an administrative and cultural side; thanks to this, the administrators will be able to identify all the feasibility criteria linked to the necessity of emptying the second Arengario from its offices, and the curators will take into consideration all the exhibition projects about the works  in the public collections and in the private ones, which could become part of the enlargement project.

Muzio's "Ca' Brutta" ispirates itself to the Novecento italian and milanese style of '30

With an elevation of modest identity, which wouldn’t cause a really considerable impact, you could create two new platforms, with surfaces as big as the buildings themselves, and which would offer a location for new functionalities above the square and the other surrounding buildings. This would allow the creation of comfortable restaurants (I’d like to remind you how important this aspect has been in the Tate Modern project), and the chance that the museum is lived also as a site of relax, other than a place where you can enjoy culture tout court, maybe through books about the museum’s contents that can be easily consulted. A self-service restaurant, for example, could be really useful, beside the existing restaurant which offers luxury for little affordable prices. A bar with wide bright rooms, between the first and the second part of the visit to the Museum, would become an assured stop for all the visitors (as it happens, by now, in the most part of the big European museums).

The most important painting of Novecento Museum is "Il Quarto Stato", by Pelizza da Volpedo

We hope for a quickness of choice and organization, so that a Milanese museum completeness, together with the New Contemporary Art Museum, will have become reality when Expo opens its doors, in the closer and closer 2015.

Come on then, Milanese institutions, let’s get moving! 

Enrico Mercatali

 Milan, february 28th 2011
 (translation from english by Penelope Mirott, on april 2011)

All the milanese novecentism was ispirated to the De Chirico pantings of the ages between 1920 and 1930.

Here on the backside of the Triennale Palace in Milano, the fountain by Giorgio De Chirico

In Milan an exhibition of delights, dedicated to Giuseppe Arcimboldo

The 5-meters-high statue, made out of fibregalss, realized by the contemporary artist Philip Haas, towers in front of the Milanese exhibition.

It is a tribute to one of the most popular Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s works: “Winter”, and it also represents its cultural topicality.

        (Picture taken by Enrico Mercatali)

ARCIMBOLDO MILANESE ARTIST BETWEEN LEONARDO AND CARAVAGGIO

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Winter", realized in 1563, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Milan, in Palazzo Reale, from February 10th to May 22th 2011

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Sledge with peacock", pen, blue ink and watercolor cm 15,7 x 18,75

Drawings and Prints Room, Uffizi (Florence)

The modern artist, who anticipates 18th, 19th and 20th Century vanguards, is the protagonist of an exhibition which will appeal visitors from all over the World 

In this image "The librarian", Oil on canvas cm 97 x 71, from  Skokloster Castle, Styrelsen, Sweden

The next 10th of February is going to be inaugurated in Milan, in Palazzo Reale’s rooms, an exhibition really awaited and excellent for the provenience of the works, and the prestige of the team that took care of it and realized its project.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, self-portrait, 1575, Pen and blue watercolor on paper, cm 23 x 15,7, Narodni Galerie, Prague

The exhibition’s curator is the director of the picture gallery of Kunthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the prestigious museum which, together with the Louvre Museum in Paris, contains the most part of the works. She works in close collaboration with the qualified composition of the Scientific Commitee constituted by Giacomo Berra, Giulio Bora, Chiara Buss, Silvio Leydi, Roberto Miller, Giuseppe Olmi, Caterina Pirina, Francesco Porzio and Lucia Tomasi Tongiorgi.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Project for costume "The Dragon", pen, blue ink and water color on paper, 29 x 19 cm. Drawings and Prints Room Uffizi (Florence)

What these experts tried to recompose is the context in which Arcimboldo’s art had its origin: the cultural and artistic setting of Milan during the age of Leonardo, in the 16th Century. This equipe has also proposed examining the culutral roots in which the young artist lived, inside the Milanese environment, since they broguht him to investigate and develope the theme of still life. This element has then spread over with Caravaggio, as part of an investigation method which is at the origin of Arcimboldo’s art, and has had a great success during the following centuries all over Europe, until becoming a background for the 20th-Century-artistic vanguards.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "The Water", Oil painting of 1566, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Animal species which compose the allegory (see the legend below):

FISHES: 1. Murena Murena (Teleost)- 2, Mola Mola, Moon fish (Teleost)- 3, Hippocampus Hippocampus, Sea horse (Teleost)- 4, Salmo Trutta (Adriatic trout) (Teleost)- 5, Belone belone, Garfish (Teleost)- 6, Sciaena Umbra, Corvina (Teleost)- 7, Exos Lucius, Pike (Teleost)- 8, Lota Elongata, Molva Occhiona (Teleost)- 9, Cyclopterus, Lumpfish (Teleost)- 10, Cyclopterus, Lumpfish (Teleost)- 11, Botide (Teleost)- 12, Labride, Labrus Tardus, Thrush (Telost)- 13, Triglide, Capone (Teleost)- 14, Triglide Capone (Teleost)- 15, Agonus, Sorcio di Mare (Teleost)- 16, Pegasus (Teleost)- 17, Raja, Raja Clavata, Ray (Teleost)- 18, Head of a  Teleost (Teleost)- 19, Catfish- 20, Head of a Teleost- 21, Head of a Teleost after desiccation - 22, Head of a Teleost - 23, id.- 24, id.- 25, Dorsal fin of Callyonimus, Terragon- 26, Caudal fin  of a Teleost- 27, id- 28, Gills of a Teleost- 29, Skin of Scylioirhinus canicula, Dogfish, Selaci- 30, Shark with barbs (Eterodontide)- 31, Spike, with supernumerary gills.

AMPHIBIANS: 32, Temporaria Frog- REPTILES 33, Caretta caretta, Tartaruga Caretta (Chelonidi)- MAMMALS: 34, Pelagius Monachus, Seal (Pinnipeds)- 35, Head of seal (Pinnipeds)- 36, id.- 37, Figure of a Pinniped similar to an amphibian- INVERTEBRATES: CNIDARIA: 38, Corallium Rubrum, Red Coral (Esacoralli)- 39, Profile of Sea Fin (Pennatulacei)- PLATYHELMINTHES 40, Planaria, Turbellaria- ANELLIDA POLICHAETA: 41, Anellida of Phillodocidae family- 42, non-identifiable Anellida- CLITELLATA: 43, Irudineo, Sea leech- SHELLFISHES: 44, Tritonium nodiferum, Triton nodifer (Prosobranchia)- 45,Buccium, Jack (Prosobranchia)- 46, 1d- 47, non-identifiable- 48, Slugs (Pulmonates)- LAMELLIBRANCHS: 49, Arca, Ark (Filibranchs)- 50, Cardium (Eulamellibranchs)- 51, id- 52, Pearl of Oyster- 53, Pearls of Oysters- CEPHALOPODS: 54, Sepia Officinalis, Common sepia (Decapoda)- 55, Octopus, Octopus (Octopoda)- CRUSTACEANS: 56, Squilla Mantis, squill (Hoplocarida)- 57, Astacus fluviatidis, crayfish, Peracarida Decapoda- 58, Palaemon, (cooked), Shrimp, Perecarida Decapoda- 59, Cancer Pagurus, Sleepyhead, Peracarida Decapoda- 60, Astacus Astacus, Crayfish- ECHINODERMS: 61, Asteroidea- ECHINOIDEA: 62, Crown with rays whose aspect reminds of quills of  Cidaroida. OBSERVATIONS: the number of the species represented is lightly higher than the number of identified species. Some animals are represented in a way too concise to allow a certain diagnosis. You can see how the different animals are not represented on the same scale. Some represented animals don’t correspond to well-known organisms. Some anatomical characters appear as voluntarily modified, especially eyes, which get a humanoid look, both for the shape and the exaggeration of their dimensions. (Taxonomic card determined with the collaboration of the Ichthyology of the Natural History Museum in Paris, by Pierre Noel and Jean Depeche - Paris)

Even though this critical linear interpretation is by now universally shared, at the base of the recent success that most of the organized exhibitions about Arcimboldo’s art have had, what the equipe wants to do today in the Milanese exhibition is to investigate in the opposite direction, or rather about the reasons that brought so many following imitations and inspirations of Arcimboldo’s effects; and this will be possible by looking especially at his past, at the origins of his career.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Jurist, 1566, Oil on Canvas, cm 64 x 51, Statens Konstsamlingar Gripsholm Slott, Sweden

That’s the reason of the importance of the Lombard investigations, as well as the culture around which Leonardo himself has worked, the artistic Milanese workshops during the period of Grand Duke Moro, the comparison between Arcimboldo’s early paintings with the naturalistic Lombard illustration between the 15th and the 16th Century; a great importance is also given to the role of the systematic scientific investigation, which has had its best theorist in Leonardo, whose studies turned towards “typifying” human expressions basing on genre, age, character etc., constitute a philosophical theoretical summary of the topic treated by the artist, whose figure summarizes in itself every speculative quality. It’s in the turmoil of these elements that the figure of Arcimboldo grows, and the artist dedicates to it in a sort of exclusive way, unwittingly laying  the foundations for a long-lived and persistent future of art.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Vertunno", portrait of Rodolfo II d'Asburgo 
(Emperor of the Sacred Roman Empire between 1576 and 1612),

carried out in 1590, Oil on board cm 70,5 x 57,5, Sloklosters Slott, Sweden

This is the occasion, with Arcimboldo in an exhibition, for deepening his themes, his characteristics and above all the visual pleasure that comes along with it!

Maybe also for this reason the exhibition is an occasion to incline young people to art, because it makes them smile. These are the words of “Giorno dei Ragazzi” in order to promote the exhibition:

“Arcimboldo milanese artist- between Leonardo and Caravaggio”: Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, at that time Giuseppe Arcimboldi, son of Biagio, painter in the Dome Factory. He was therefore a son of Art, but the classic case where the son surpasses his father-master in fame and ability. In Milan he got to know Leonardo’s art, from which he drew inspiration above all from his caricatures of human heads, a sit is said; Arcimboldo elaborates them in an original way, using  Nature’s fruits to compose them. This inspiration brings him to become one of the first ones to start a new pictorial theme, the one of “still life”.

 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Market Gardener", reversibile Still life, 1590, Oil on board, cm 35 x 24, 
Civic Museum Ala Ponzone, Cremona

Here’s the reason for the smiles: not because nature is ridiculous in itself, but because of the fantasy of being representated in such a “living” way! In any case, this theme will inspire in its turn Michelangelo Merisi, Caravaggio, born in this same town, who owes his nickname to the origins of the family (Cravaggio, in the province of Bergamo).

  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Market Gardener", reversibile Still-life, 1590, Oil on board, cm 35 x 24, 
Civic Museum Ala Ponzone, Cremona

In Palazzo Reale other than Arcimboldo’s most famous paintings (the cycle of Four Elements, of Four Seasons, the “reversibile” heads, which you can look at upside down) you will find Leonardo and Girolamo della Porta’s sketches, and the work of a contemporary artist, the american Philip Haas: 5 meters of fiberglass, obviously inspired by the eccentric Milanese artist.

 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, " The Fire " , 1566, Oil on Board cm 66,5 x 51, 
Gemaldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This is what “La Repubblica” says: “ He entered art’s legend with his triumphs of fruit and vegetables, waterfalls of apples and red peppers orchestrated on the board so as to form faces of nobles, ladies with shrimp-shaped eyes, knights with helmets made out of eggplants and courtiers with a ruff made out of asparagus and herbs.

Arcimboldo, the Milanese painter of the 16th Century, invented a genre hung between portraiture and still life.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, project for a costume: "Cook", pen, blue ink and watercolor on paper, cm 30,5 x 20, 
Drawings and Prints Room, Uffizi, Florence

This is a thing for which he became famous, and contributed to make him being remembered as a great caricaturist, even though his story is much more complicated. This is revealed by the exhibition “Arcimboldo- Milanese artis between Leonardo and Caravaggio” in Palazzo Reale, produced by the city of Milan and Skira in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches of Vienna (from which a lot of displayed works come from). Masterpieces of him and authors who interwove his story, useful to restore the atmosphere of an age marked by the luxury industry in the richest European courts.

Timetable: 09.30-19.30 (Monday14.30-19.30; thursday and saturday 09.30-22.30). Until the 22th of May.

Enrico Mercatali

Milan February 8th 2011

English version 26th of March 2011

(translation from italian by Penelope Mirotti)