When I first overheard this, I nearly laughed out loud! After taking a moment to compose myself, I got down from my high horse, recalling that prior to working at the PGC, I myself knew very little about the seminal work. For fear of embarrassing the woman, I didn’t have the heart to tell her and her group that she was entirely mistaken regarding everything she said about Materia, however I figure that the story gives me a perfect excuse to deconstruct and reconstruct her statement for all of you!
1. Materia is not a pointillist work, but rather a futurist work. Pointillism is late 19th century technique developed in France by George Seurat in which tiny purely colored dots of paint are applied to a canvas in such a way that they appear to blend, creating a cohesive image. Futurism is an early 20th century Italian movement founded by F.T. Marinetti that is based on embracing technology and the mechanization of society, and celebrating war as a means of hygiene, all for the purpose of forgetting about the past and focusing solely on the future.
2. Peggy never owned Materia, but rather it is currently on long-term loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection from the Gianni Matiolli Collection, a world-renowned collection of early 20th century Italian art.
3. Materia is not Duchamp’s work, but rather Boccioni’s work. Marcel Duchamp was a French/American artist associated with the dada and surrealist movements; he was a dear friend of Peggy’s and probably best known for Fountain (1917), one of the most written about works in the entire history of art. Umberto Boccioni was a contemporary of Duchamp, however he was an Italian artist associated with the futurist movement, who is most famous for his work Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), which is on the Italian 20 euro-cent piece.
4. Materia is a portrait of the artist’s mother, but she’s not in a sauna!!! The large work depicts Boccioni's mother on a balcony in Milan, with the dynamism of the modern world behind her. Because of the dark and garish colors as well as the cubist inspired style, it is hard to distinguish between the background and foreground narratives. However, one clear element of the painting is the mother’s massive, gnarled hands that are locked together in a harsh, impenetrable way. Overall, the message does not speak positively about mothers, which is fitting in light of the fact that futurism was an excessively anti-women movement.
As you can see, I’m not a fan of futurism but I’m trying to learn more about the movement for the sake of understanding its positive qualities. So, more on futurism soon, and hopefully more in general soon, but I have many exciting guests visiting me in Venice over the next few weeks, so posting might be a bit slow…
Wow! Your post raises so many interesting questions. What is the role of expertise in making meaning? What is the relationship between simple indisputable facts - the painitng is by Boccioni not Duchamp,Boccioni is portraying his mother on a balcony not in a suana, the painting is not owned by the PGC - and the art of interpretation - the act of meaning making? Is there something to be done with the woman's factually incorrect interpretation - Bocciono's mother in a suana looking hot? Why did she see it that way? Should the fact of her seeing the painting in this clearly factually wrong way and the probability that the people viewing the painting with her accepted her interpretation and then as a consequence also probably "saw" it that way effect our expert seeing or should we simply call her interpretation wrong and point out the facts? Is there a relationship between this wrong interpretation and the correct interpretation? Where is the line between wrong and correct when it comes to interpretation whether of an art work?, a sacred text?, our lives?
ReplyDeleteBut my favorite line in you post is, "recalling that prior to working at PGC I myself knew very little about this seminal work. For fear of embarrassing I didn't have the heart to..."
In the end this comment is about your charachter. If in some serious way art like all human creation and cultural production is somehow about our trying to express and understand ourselves and life more deeply and truthfully so as to improve the human condition then it may well be that, fair or not fair, the charachter of the expert is one of the most important qualities of all.
Awesome story, Gabi! I love watching people look at art. If I can find it, I'll send you a quick video I took of people looking at Seurat's 'Sunday Afternoon' (an actual pointalist work) in the Art Institute Chicago - some people come into the gallery, take a quick photo, and move on - not even noticing the detail of the piece or even looking at the thing except through the LCD screen of their digital camera. Perhaps it's a good thing that the students were actually given some info about the paintings if it gets them to look at a piece for more than 3 seconds at 8 megapixels - even if the info is wrong.
ReplyDeleteHowever... you're not a fan of Futurism!?! Oh dear. If we look past the sticky social and political situations of futurism and 1910's-30's Russia & Italy (e.g. sexism/racism/fascism/___ism/etc), there is some fantastic work out there that - while not always the most amazing artwork in its own right (although Boccioni's 'States of Mind' series is on my personal all time favorites list) - it undeniably and dramatically altered the development of wide swaths of 20th century art - especially my little bubble-world of architecture. Futurism is at the root of so many later architectural movements that it is impossible to disregard.
The soaring art deco towers of NYC (Rockefeller Center, Chrysler Bldg, etc) might have never happened without the representational work of Hugh Ferriss, who developed the majority of his aesthetic from Italian Futurist architects Antonio Sant'Elia and Angiolo Mazzoni and their ideas about movement in form. Also, his compositional framing of the subjects (buildings) as a shining beacon in a harsh, angular, violent modern city is a direct analog to the paintings of Boccioni or even Malevich.
The flowing forms of expressionist-modernism (Eero Saarinen's 1962 TWA/Jet-Blue Terminal at JFK or anything by Frank Gehry) stem from the development of abstract representations of flight, motion, and technology.
Even more stunning is the relationship between Italian Futurism and the formal composition that runs through the work of deconstructionists like Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind. Some of their buildings are almost canvas-to-building interpretations of futurist aesthetics. Check out the background around the mother's head in Boccioni's 'Materia' and then look at Libeskind's Denver Art Museum or Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Or, check out Zaha Hadid's representations of her work: (Zaha Hadid 'Vitra Fire Station Study', 1990)
http://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/lwblog-zaha2-2.jpg?w=540&h=877
Zaha Hadid even acknowledges her futurist ties by titling some of her study paintings 'suprematism' after Malevich's abstractions of aerial views produced 1915-1920.
To me, not only are the graphic similarities shocking, but the rhetorical themes of movement, chaos, and modernity are also rich throughout. What is it about this period that has such a lasting influence? Maybe it's that futurism is a movement of time, motion, and action in the now. As F.T. Marinetti wrote in his 'Manifesto of Futurism' (and as an architect might say):
"Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl defiance to the stars!"