Congdon in precarious balance.
An exhibition of William Congdon at the Renaissance Humanistic Library in Milan (2015).
In the photo : next to Santa Maria Incoronata in Milan, with the characteristic two entrances portals on the facade, there is the Renaissance Augustinian ‘Libraria’ that hosted William Congdon’s exbition.
By William Congdon, born at Rhode Island in the States, belatedly approached Christianity, I had recently appreciated a ‘Nativity’ exhibited during the Christmas period in the church of San Raffaele Arcangelo in Milan, near the Duomo.
Passed through heavy experiences that led him during the 2nd World War to enter the lager of Bergen-Belsen and then into the mud of Mumbay and Calcutta he also found himself collaborating for a long time with Peggy Guggenheim at Venice, Congdon finally landed in the Milanese countryside of Gudo Gambaredo, living in a Benedictine monastic community for almost twenty years and until the day of his death, at the age of eighty-six.
An earthly, material and very pleasant painting, where Mary of this ‘Nativity’ is barefoot and the swaddled baby almost a luminous larva who, from the bottom of the cave where he was born, radiates up to the angels - almost terrestrial birds – and until going outside. Hope, the only possible one, is to feel good in your own skin : that ‘Nativity’ really says the change of something which happens to you, hope is if it can become reality.
Then, walking towards the Renaissance Humanistic Library[1] of the Augustinian monks at the romanic church of Santa Maria Incoronata of Corso Garibaldi, I was intrigued by this new William Congdon’s exhibition, fourteen selected tables preparing Christ’s Easter, passage to resurrection and therefore indispensable work. The theme of the Crucefixes is the Sabbath[2], the Saturday of the descent into hell, temporal place in which humanity continually risks catastrophe : in the pasty material of Congdon, on this Saturday of History, man is a big dark larva, the heart – of gold – an engine that proceeds alone, but is then able to ?
According to Congdon, the partner is still a promise to the child that the adult does not keep.
Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - May 2, 2015
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[1] The Augustinian ‘Libraria’ of Santa Maria Incoronata, Humanistic Library of the order of the ‘Augustinian Observance’ is a Renaissance jewel in Milan : built in 1487 and functioning for about three centuries, it has been restored in 1987 with very complex works, after abandonment following the Napoleonic destruction which also caused the theft of the precious preserved volumes.
[2] ‘The Sabbath of History’, by William Congdon. With meditations on Holy Week by Joseph Ratzinger (2012) KOFC