Events

‘Aurora’ (1948) by Salvador Dalì.

“…My ruthless and patient painting[2]”, Salvador Dalì has been admitting. Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[3]

I found out Salvador Dalì only recently and thanks to Facebook, where often good authors are hosted : here I’ll tell about his ‘Aurora’ (1948) which by me can well assert Dalì, otherwise criticized as often happens to someone able to be noted with good reason.

“…I believe that the time is near when, through a paranoic and working process of thinking, it will be possible (concurrently with the automatism and other passive conditions) to systematize the confusion and contribute to a total discredit of the world of reality[4]”.

The biggest sun of a radiant aurora appears behind eggshell-clouds breaking in the sky, while diligent workers climb on its surface and, slinged not to slip, do their best to scratch it. The two halves of the shell are also the two halves of a fragrant small white bread, and the sun a fresh egg yolk, and the profile too of a flourishing daisy : in front of such a wealth the sailor who was taking off with his boat, is running away terrified in the opposite direction.

“Today I declare that the new sexual appeal of women will depend on the possible use of their spectrum attitudes and resources, that is to say on the possibile their dissociation, bright carnal de-composition. The rainbow-coloured spectrum sets itself against the ghost (still performed by that homesick chemist of a country town so much resembling, desperately, to the other prosaic and diabetic ghost named Greta Garbo). The spectrum woman will be the dismantlable woman[5]”.

All the painting elements really make up an ironic performance, light and serious at the same time : Salvador Dalì looks incredulous at the terror driving any scientific discoveries and giving rise to cruelty, since the revolutionary atomic and quantum energy were soonest used for unimaginable devastations[6].

“I’ll not insist on what today it seems to me absolutely unacceptable, not only a poem, but also any literary production not responding to the anti artistic notation, loyal and objective of the world of facts, whose occult sense we’re still asking and looking for the revelation… Neither is the moment to fervently praise the photographic evidence, but to wander without a method on paths of unintentional, and notice the simple fact that the reason is becoming more and more the essential element in the knowledge field …[7]”

A thought definitely anti-artistic, anti-lyric anti-decorative is present indeed in the epiphany Dalì called ‘Aurora’, as any epiphany is not generalized until is individually recognized, coming out from darkness of a crowded night with the same delirious dreams which at morning we are conscientiously building, looking for hostility all around us. The good genius of Dalì was meeting the diabolic Picasso[8] and let himself be laughed at, due to his own affective fidelity and his disarming frankness.

Here however he dares to point out that our conscience ‘knows’ how to take back to a faultless justification perversion and paranoia by which so often we face the new and the unpredictable, until we do our famous existential doubt, invalidating but absolutely ‘natural’ for humans : an obsession indeed, able to crumble our experience, as far as the delirium itself.

“It was just a dream…!”, is the common saying of our clichè.

                                              Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio – January 7, 2021

[1] “One day I’ll have to write long, maybe a book, on a character named Eugenio Sanchez, to whom I was linked as a friend during the nine months of my military service. To that extraordinary man, of whom unfortunately I’ve lost any trace,  I owe some of the richest hours in my life and, moreover,  the reading of a few most interesting texts. The man I’telling about was a carter by trade and absolutely uncultured; he could only read and write : however I could understand myself with him, better than with anyone else and right about on most unapproachable items, not only to our language but also to our own conscience”. Cited by :  “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 ÉÉditions Denoël – original title ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.96-97

[2] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 ÉÉditions Denoël – original title ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.234.

[3][3] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’..

[4] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 ÉÉditions Denoël – original title : ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.132.

[5] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 Éditions Denoël – original title : ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.201

[6] Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic explosions of August 6 and 9, 1945.

[7] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 Éditions Denoël – original title : ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.95.

[8] “…I twill be then natural that, when his fierce eyebrows (Dalì refers to Picasso, editor’s note) once more shoot the poisoned arrows of the objective world of his outward Saint Sebastian, he is the last one to be informed about the physical pain he does cause”, cited.by : “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 Éditions Denoël - titolo originale ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.232. ‘Saint Sebastian’ is also the title of an essay Salvador Dalì published on the magazine ‘L’Amis de les Arts’ (1927).

The laboratory house where Raffaello Sanzio[1] was born.

In the picture : Urbino, leaving the Albornoz Fortress towards Raffaello Sanzio’s birthplace. The Fortress was built between 1350 and 1370 at the behest of the cardinal Egidio Alvaros de Albornoz, and already in 1375 had to resist the siege of Antonio da Montefeltro who claimed the city handed over to him by people rebellion.

On the first floor of the birthplace in Urbino, there is a fresco in the room where Raffaelo himself was born in 1483[2] : a young woman reads with an absorbed look and almost forgets about the child sleeping on her legs; it cannot go unnoticed, indeed it immediately indicates the author, passionate and shy, who was Giovanni Santi, Raffaello’s father and mature spouse of the young Magìa of Battista Ciarla[3].

Raffaello, who was weaned in this room and played until he could go down to his father’s workshop – where he began to learn the job very early and precisely from the older collaborators to whom he was entrusted – learned of the marital bound, about which he had no doubts in the years to come, even from that simple fresco by his father : the fresco is known as ‘Madonna di casa Santi’ and confirms the competence of the young wife, also in their neighbourhood.

Orphaned at just a few years old, first of his mother and then of his father, Raffaello was in fact adopted by his father’s workers over whom ‘Perugino’ virtually supervised, and to whom Giovanni Santi had presented the youngest Raffaello in 1494, for him to work for the Master as an apprentice[4] : at seventeen, therefore, Raffaello found himself master of his father’s laboratory – thanks to his real talent but also to his father’s prudent foresight – and above all capable of obtaining work orders.

If the sketches constituted a precious and indispensable investment for a Master and for his laboratory – so much so that they formed ‘de facto’ alliances when they were lented to other Masters[5] or significant damage when they were sold clandestinely – Raffaello knew well what he intended to achieve for a commissioned portrait : so that we do not find in his many Madonnas the same intense gaze of the young woman portraied by her husband in their marital rooom, although we are equally admired in the commissioned works by the unique and refined colours that distinguish Raffaello’s painting and the perfection of his drawing.

With a surprising, but reasonable reinterpretation for the working methods and the environment that they both frequented, Giovanni Santi would have taken from Piero Dalla Francesca and from his work now known as ‘Pala Brera’[6] (1472) – commissioned to him by Federico di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino - the conceivability of a ‘politician’ woman, exempt from those formalities and forced care with which instead women were trained and made useless by the courteous Culture.

P.S. I sincerely thank the museum ‘Casa natale di Raffaello’ at Urbino and the ’Accademia Raffaello’ for their advice during the visit.

                                   Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 29,  2020

[1] “Lavamini ed mundi estote” is the Latin inscription that can be read on the wash basin in the courtyard on the first floor that connects the house, with entrance on the main street – now Via Raffaello – purchased by Giovanni Santi in 1460, with the house on the first floor overlooking the narrow  Via Santa Margherita, brought as a dowry by Raffaello’s mother, Magìa Ciarla Battista’s, and equipped with a well : the motto speaks of the power of everyone in being able to amend one’s mistakes when they are truly recognized. The laboratory house helped Giovanni Santi to immediately get started working in the Duke’s service as a decorator of painting tables, so that he was subsequently able to transform his activity into the most sought-after ‘painting laboratory’.

[2] Raffaello lived between 1483 and 1520 : 2020 is in fact the 500th since his death.

[3] As still happens in some Countries - in Russia and the ex-Soviet area, but not only – already at Raffaello’s time, women were identified by paternity : and this well beyond marriage.

[4] “…And Pietro (Perugino) who was benign by nature, not being able to fail in that great desire, accepted Rafaello. So Giovanni (Santi) returned to Urbino with the greatest joy in the world and, not without Rafaello’s mother tears and great cries he took him to Perugia. Where Pietro (Perugino), having seen how Rafaello drew, his manners and customs, made with all this a judgement which time proved true…”, p.612 ‘Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri. Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’, Giorgio Vasari – Giulio Einaudi editore 2015.

[5] Not only Raffaello Sanzio but also other artists, later even Leonardo Da Vinci, used the same sketch several times, adapting it to the client and to the work.

[6] ‘Pala di Brera’, or ‘Pala Montefeltro’, is located in fact in the ‘Pinacoteca di Brera’ in Milan.

The suit titled ‘Portable Organ : to catch the sound’ – the designer Sara Pernatsch produced it in collaboration with Margherita De Candia for “Il Teatro della Moda”, School for haute couture training in Milan, inspired by Leonardo’s homonymous sketch and remained unfinished; the pencil drawing is present in the ‘Madrid II Codex’ (1491-1505), at the ‘Spain National Library’. The thirty suits of the exhibition “Leonard prisoner of flight” www.leonardoprigionierodelvolo.com are already offered for sail ‘by public auction’ : the proceeds will be donated to V.I.D.A.S. for the first children hospice in Lombardia (Italy).

Reproducing sounds in Nature, as they are catched by our sense of hearing, inspired the two young women authors, Sara Pernatsch e Margherita De Candia who interpreted and translated Leonardo’ sketch ‘Portable Organ’ by which Leonardo Da Vinci began to project a bellows vertical keyboard, ancestress about 300 years earlier of the accordion which uses the pressure of the fingers of both hands to modulate the sound just entered by the player in exhalation. The sketch by Leonardo has been happily taken up by the luthier Mario Buonoconto[1] who made with it a fully functional accordion.

“…It was not so obvious to find a source of inspiration that didn’t make me fall into the ‘banality’ or in a ‘bad copy’ of the original. So, I wondered, what would help make me feel so close to Leonardo Da Vinci to be able to understand his own works to the point of creating one myself ? I had to find something in common with a man lived 500 years ago, which would allow me to give free rein to my imagination, but remaining at the same time connected to his own studio. Really, I haven’t found anything that unites us, if not just the love and passion for our respective jobs. That’s exactly where I started from to develop my project. We can’t be more sure that everything Leonardo worked on, was the fruit of great love and passion…

I liked reproducing the immensity of sensations which a melody can give, right through the grandeur that characterizes this dress. The inspiration almost came by itself within the walls of my apartment, listening what is, at the end, the real source of inspiration for the whole projects : music…”[2]

                                               Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 29, 2020

[1] Mario Buonoconto, workshop ‘Antichistrumenti’, at Majano – Udine (Italy).

[2] Cited from the description of ‘Portable Organ’ suit, shown at the exhibition “Leonardo prisoner of flight” www.leonardoprigionierodelvolo.com at ‘Palazzo Morando’ in Milan, until last January 5.

The hidden town - Urbino underground [2]

In the picture: screenshot shared with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCPhob2Z-dI Michele Magnoni – G.S.U. Gruppo Speleologico Urbinate. In 1998, thanks to the discovery of the ‘Relazione sulla conduttura della Fonte di S.Lucia di Urbino‘ (1841) it was possible to identify the access well to the Roman Aqueduct with subsequent restoration of the water pipe (2002).

Perhaps few people know that, since the 1st century a.C., Urbino’s territory – Raffaello Sanzio’s native town and which marks in 2020 the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death - and the historic centre itself, located in the in the highest part oft he Hill were equipped, thanks to the presence of wells and sources of underground and rainwater, with an efficient system of large cisterns for collecting water and pipelines for distribution and supply to the built-up area : the most important hydraulic work of which evidence remains is the aqueduct of St. Lucia with a length of approximately 277 metres. 

The importance of this ancient system came in handy during the 2nd World War, when the German army destroyed most oft he aqueducts, and the inhabitants did their best to restore the wells and cisterns from the Roman era.

Even the underground of the historic centre and of the Palazzo Ducale itself, made up of permeable rocks that allowed the water to circulate, is still crossed by walkways that began with cracks produced by spring water. 

On this characteristic of the underground city a funny dialect comedy was based, and presented last March at the ‘Raffaello Sanzio‘ theater in Urbino : two inhabitants of Urbino, well equipped as a matter of fact with specific maps, decide to reopen the underground route that already existed in antiquity to reach the Palazzo Ducale without having to cross the town. 

The maps, difficult to be interpreted, however would not be complete according to the two poor men : infact, essential information is missing, that not even the Technical Office of the Municipality is able to provide…  While the beautiful project risks remaining an unsolved enigma, the answer will come from the oneiric in the guise of an ancestor, the Count who lived in the house at the time of the Duke : so geometry alone wouldn’t be enough ? 

‘Da do s’passa?‘ – with a question mark though – finally becomes a help, capable of putting even a child to work when, committing himself or herself to be born with all one’s own strength, moves away from the suddenly narrow space of the place, hitherto welcoming, that hosted him, or her. 

                                        Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 24, 2019

[1] ‘Da do s’passa’ (Translat: ‘Where you go through’) is a comedy in two acts by Paolo Cappelloni in Urbino dialect, presented last March at the ‘Raffaello Sanzio’ theater of  Urbino by the ‘Compagnia dialettale urbinate’, directed by Amleto Santoriello.

[2] ‘La città segreta – Urbino ipogea’, by E.M. Sacchi-F. Venturini-M. Betti/ ‘Gruppo Speleologico Urbino’ / Monacchi Editore 2013